My '69 charger restoration / conversion to clone R/T / ...

[UH60L]

Well, first, I have always wanted a '69 charger ever since I was a kid.  I looked for one when I was in high school.  My friend Tom and I searched the Willamette Valley here in Oregon back in 1986 and 1987, but either found cars we could not afford or cars that the owners were gonna restore "one of these days".

One such car, with a 440 in it, was sitting behind a barn in Albany OR in almost perfect condition.  The owner said he drove it for a year, smacked a telephone pole with the right fender and never drove it again.  He wouldn't sell, saying he was gonna do something with it eventually.  Two years ago, it was still sitting there, rotting away!

So, in 2004, after talking with my friend Mark about getting a Charger "some day", I started looking on e-bay.  I started bidding on a '69 Charger with a 440 that was going for $3000.00.  After a week, it was up to $7000.00.  I placed one last bid on Friday morning for $7100.00, figuring that was as high as I could go.  Saturday morning, I got an outbid notice.  I figured that was it, I was done.  Then on Sunday morning I got a bid retraction notice, I think someone was padding the bids a bit.  So, on a Sunday night in May of 2004, I became the owner of a 1969 dodge Charger.

It was white, formerly a 318 car, and located in Salt Lake City Utah.  My friend Mark and I drove out there from Salem Oregon on a Saturday, and I drove the Charger back to Salem on Sunday with my friend following me.  I had never driven any old car and definately never a muscle car before.  (Continued)

[UH60L]

It had a tick in the engine, the seat belts were in a box in the trunk, the turn signals didn't work, the exhaust was a single pipe cut off about midway down the car, it wouldn't shift into drive until about 65 MPH, the gas tank was leaking, there were no license plates, and the front seats were out of a hyundai.....and it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen or heard!

I drove across Utah, Idaho, and Oregon with a huge smile on my face and my friend Mark snapping pictures from the truck.  It was the start of a new chapter in my life.  I was a muscle car owner!

Here are the original aution pics:

[WHITE AND RED 69]

Nice car.  7 grand is a hell of a deal. What are the plans?

[UH60L]

Well, originally, I was gonna make it a blue R/T clone.  Then my dad died in 2007, and I decided to go with a General Lee clone with "dedicated to dad" on the quarters, because that was the one show he and I both watched when I was a kid.  But, after paying a huge bill to the body shop and seeing how nice the orange paint is, it will probably just be an orange R/T clone / restomod.

[UH60L]

Here are some pics from the drive home from Utah.  Since it was originally a 318 car, it has a 2/76 rear end.  We got 22 MPG most of the way!

Check out the manual turn signal in the second pic, hehe!

[UH60L]

Still driving it home.  First one was our lunch stop, then back on the road again.

[UH60L]

Later in the summer of 2004, I took my family and the car to my first car show, at the Tillamook Blimp Hanger and air museum.  We got to park inside the Hanger, very cool.  Even though I had not done much to the car yet, it ran really good and we had no problems with it that day.  Luckily the wipers and heater worked, because we got rained on all the way there.

For a relatively small turn out, amazingly there was another white '69 charger there (second pic) and it was driven there by the original owner, who bought the car at the dealership in Tillamook Oregon in 1969.  So far, that's the only one owner '69 charger I've personally seen.

[UH60L]

This is a pic from the all mopar show in Salem from 2007.  My car club puts on the show every year.  That year, an original General Lee, one of 19 surviving cars, from the original tv show, came down from Seattle to attend.  The car on the other side of the General is the color of blue I originally wanted to paint my car.

[UH60L]

Getting ready for the body shop.

[doctor4766]

"seeing how nice the orange paint is, it will probably just be an orange R/T clone / restomod"

Yep, similar story here.
And I think you'd get over driving it as a GL all the time fairly quickly.

Nice car btw, I've seen your "painted" pics on another thread. Looks great!

[UH60L]

Thanks.  It's getting there.  I just need more money and more time, but then don't we all.  It is kind of nice to walk into the garage and just see that fresh new paint job. 

If that's yours in your profile pic, yours is looking pretty nice too.  I like all the '66 to '74 chargers,  but the second gen will always be my favorite. 

[twodko]

What a platform to start with and you drove it home!!!!! How sweet is that for $7k. Congrats my friend. Judging from the floor pan and areas under the hood perhaps it was originally Q5 bright metallic tourquoise? It sure looks like the color of our 69 which is Q5.
Time to turn, burn and pull pitch....................clear!

Tom

[UH60L]

I think you are correct about the color.  From what we could tell, it looked like it had been painted 3 times.  I think the original color was the Q5.  The second layer we found looked more like B5 blue.  Then someone painted it white, and didn't do a very good job of it.  It sat in some guy's garage in Idaho for 14 years before the previous owner bought it.

Yeah, all things considered, I got it cheap.  I'm very happy about that, and so was my wife, aka "the bookkeeper".    

But, the guy I bought it from claimed to have 9 more '69 chargers, and I saw 6 other muscle / sports cars at his house when I picked this car up.  He had a mid '70s red corvette, a late '70s black montecarlo, a very nice green el camino, a '69 coronet partially restored in the garage and what looked like a pair of '69 roadrunners in his shop!  Plus the 9 other chargers he had at another storage area!!!!  I think my car was cobbled togeather from all the parts he did not want off of the other cars.  Amazingly it ran great driving from Utah to Oregon, only used/leaked 2 quarts of oil and one of tranny fluid!

But it's all good now.  I replaced both quarters, the right fender, the hood, both front and rear valances, the trunk floor, the trunk floor extensions, the corner caps, new out wheel wells, and I have all new glass for the car.  On top of that I got two used doors off another car because mine were too structurally degraded.  The floor pans were solid other than extra holes for the non-mopar seat and a bit of dirt surface corrosion.  The frame is solid.

Just need time and money to finish it.  I'll post more pics after work today. 

[tan top]

looks a good  project  ,  good story 

[doctor4766]

Wow, 7 grand.
I paid AUD$17000 for mine over here and I still had to fit a big block,727, full bodywork/respray, interior, wheels, brakes and exhaust. Mind you, being a CA car it actually had no rust so there were no floor pans to replace.
Lookin good man. Good luck with your project.

[UH60L]

More pics.  Disassembled and media blasted.

[UH60L]

The used 440 block that I started with.  Alot of money on my garage floor.  The rusty trunk floor after all the fiberglass was removed!

[UH60L]

Cleaning, prepping, and painting engine components.  Last pics is my rebuilt 727 transmission with a new torque converter and 7 quart aluminum pan.  This is the same transmission that was in the car when I bought it, but I bought a used 440, because I was not sure of the condition of the one that was in the car.

[UH60L]

The passenger compartment floor pans were in good shape. 

Second and third pics are of the engine coming togeather.  I goofed when I painted the exhaust side of the heads, and ended up using a set of gaskets and repainting those to more closely match the the outline of the manifolds.  (you'll see it in later pics of the engine)

[68RT4ME]

Your car looks like it's coming alone just great. Looking forward to seeing more   

[RD]

great pics, great story... thanks!

[UH60L]

Thanks guys, here are more pics.

[UH60L]

In the first two, the carb, fan, and valve covers are just sitting on the engine for the picture.

Third pic, the welds on the supports behind the back seat were all broken, now they're fixed.

The right front fender  had bondo and chicken wire for the first foot or so.  The car had been hit in the left rear too.

[UH60L]

The third one is my new right fender.   

[bakerhillpins]

 

Is that bondo as thick as I think it is... Good god.    The car must have listed to one side.



Looking good! Inspiring good in fact.