409053 - original owner daytona

[odcics2]

Is there a published parts list that details all the required parts and modifications to turn a 69 Charger into a Daytona?

http://www.dodgecharger.com/forum/index.php/topic,134934.0.html

As far as the parts go.... 

[wingcarenvy]

This is getting good!!!!

[bad88t-top]

Following for sure.  I just might have to load up a Charger and head to Talladega in October.....

[held1823]

picked up the 26" core support this afternoon, along with some other parts that john has been gracious enough to supply.

we took some measurements off of his incredible daytona that will help with placement of a few components on the support.

nothing like staring at that beauty to motivate a person. best part is that it's the same color combo, so i can visual what mine could eventually look like again.

[held1823]

some photos from today to give an idea of the amount of rust repair this thing needs

the first ones show the crude welds from when the 22" support was put on years ago

trying to determine the best way to remove the '70 headlight mounts as we start to modify the fenders

[held1823]

do i need to keep any part of the '70 hood latch or its brace?

the trunk floor isn't as bad as i expected, but it appears creative didn't bother with applying any surface covering to the wing washers

[held1823]

a few more inside the trunk

the plug is a definite concern, made even more so with the chance of damaging the trim or the glass when it comes out

[held1823]

more of the window plug

[held1823]

the wing area and rear panel rust issues are fairly significant

also an issue at the door jamb/quarter panel area on the passenger side

[held1823]

both quarters are needing attention

[held1823]

if i can salvage the material, i am most likely going to leave the interior this way.  the headliner is also done in this fabric, as are the sun visors and these head rests. i will probably put the charger head rests back on it, and imagine the visors are in good shape underneath the velour.

i first thought that the original blue door panels were swapped out for black ones, but now think this is them dyed black. the donor car for the front end was a '70 with black interior, but those panels would be different. i know a '69 was parted long, long ago, but find it hard to believe these panels came from it. with any luck, i am wrong and will stumble across the blue ones.

the car is never going to be numbers matching nor all original sheet metal, so it might as well retain a bit of its history. the seats and wheels are a big part of that.

some patch work is needed in the front drivers floor area

[held1823]

the newly acquired and correct 26" core support is even the right color

the engine is just sitting in it, and will come out in the next few days. it ran VERY well when pulled out of my old GTX, but has sat for 35 years. a friend had built this engine for his 1976 short bed 4x4 to drag race (300 feet on dirt). it had a tunnel ram on it when pulled from the truck to swap it for a freshly rebuilt stock 440, when he needed to use the truck to pull his business trailer and thus retired it from racing. hopefully a quick trip to a machine shop and a rebuild kit is all it needs.

i need to make sure if these valve covers are correct, or if i need to find the originals.

the brake booster was swapped for an incorrect one as well, so that's another item i need to eventually track down

the out of place wiring was for the electric headlight doors on the '70 front end

i know there is an issue with the amp gauge wiring, but haven't pulled the dash yet to see the extent of it

the intake that was on this engine in the GTX. you can see the spare hood that was cut out for it on top of the original one.

[Mopar John]

held1823,
First things first!
I am really happy to see you moving along on this family Daytona!
With all the rust that I see in the pictures I think the most cost effective way to start
would be a trip to Evansville for a Redi-Strip body dip after Talladega!
Then repair - replace the bad metal.
To answer your question about the 1970 Charger hood latch tray,
The only thing you need to hang onto would be the pop up spring if you don't have another.
To answer your question on the valve covers,
They are correct 1969 440 valve covers.
Keep on keepin on!
MJ

[held1823]

John, it was great to see you the other day as well as drool on the cars. Thank you for having me up there.

With no chance of tearing the car down and rebuilding it before the meet in October, this is the condition it will make the trip in. I plan on hanging the front end on it, and with some luck, have it running down there. if not, i hope the area is flat so I'm not pushing it uphill the whole time. Once back home, the hard part can start. I just hope some of the car is left after it gets dipped.

I believe those valve covers were from my GTX, and the ones from the Daytona are stashed away along with various other pieces from it. You'd have to see the disaster in that corner of the barn, to grasp the project in digging them out. Just ask Croxford, he's been back there, lol.

I'm not sure if the transmission currently in the Daytona is its numbers matching one, or one of the spares Dad and I accumulated over the years. Lord only knows which driveshaft among them is the correct one for the car. I don't even know where the radiator is at the moment. Or the intake, air cleaner, jacks, etc. Cleaning out the barn might be harder than redoing the car. Both forty foot end walls are floor to ceiling with shelving, and there isn't a bare spot along them. five rows high, six counting the floor, not to mention the crates and boxes stacked along the back wall on one end. yikes...

I will go overboard with photos as the project progresses, and undoubtedly wear you guys out with questions.

[Mopar John]

Ernie,
I assume your 1969 GTX is long gone?
That pile of parts once sorted will become very valuable to you.
Once you sort through them and decide what you need for the restoration,
The extras can be sold/traded for the parts your missing.
At this point the more parts you find the better!
MJ

[held1823]

yes , the GTX was sold decades ago.

My first car was a 1970 Super Bee, plum crazy, 383 four speed. the car was bought in 1980 before I even had my driver's license. It was sitting behind a barn just east of town, wearing faded red paint. the engine was apart and in the trunk. the complete fresh air assembly was still under the hood, the body was amazingly straight and solid, and the car was mine for the hefty sum of $150. No one gave any thought to matching numbers at the time, so the disassembled engine was literally tossed in the trash. We never even looked to see if it was the original one. A local guy had recently built a very stout 383 for his challenger, and totaled the car soon afterward. I bought that engine from the local junk yard for either $150 or $175, and the car was set up by our local Mopar wizard, Bill Baker. Bill was a mechanic at the local Dodge dealership, and actually told my dad that he was crazy to turn a 16 year old kid loose with that much power under the hood. Dad took great pleasure in showing me just how strong the car ran, while also telling me that he would take it away from me and sell it, if i was ever caught driving it the way that he was showing me it ran. if he wasn't romping on it, Dad would almost always take off in third gear and never shift the car. Years later, he commented that he knew i was "running the hell out of it" but said luckily for me, he never had anyone tell on me. He said he could tell anyway, when a new set of bias ply G-60's didn't last a year. it was originally a white bench seat car but i swapped it out for the bucket seats and console that came out of  the same charger 500 that the dog house now on the Daytona  came from.

Another fun memory of the Bee was involved a new clutch going in it. A high school buddy and his Dad were huge Chevy fans, and his Dad was always teasing me about the "junk Dodge" i was driving. He was a local fireman, and we would often stop by the fire house to b/s with him on his work days. I had just bought a Zoom Strip clutch for the car, but struggled to find time to change it. The buddy's dad offered to change it for me during one of his 24 hour shifts, just to pass the time. He had the Super Bee inside the fire station, on jack stands behind the ladder truck.  The fire station occupied the front half of our city building, and the police department was in the back. My buddy was taking me there the next afternoon to pick the car up, and as we pulled up, we noticed a set of black marks that started directly in front of the station, and disappeared over the hill several houses down the street. The grin on his Dad's face was priceless, as he told us one of the policemen actually watched him do the test burnout. I don't recall hearing the junk dodge comment any more after that day.

I was working for AutoWorks as an assistant store manager at this time, and bought a new 1986 Ram 50, retiring the Super Bee from daily driver duty. Later in 1986, i bought a 1968 coronet R/T convertible. the car was in a barn in Huntington, Indiana, sitting beside a GTO convertible. the owner told me he had to sell one of the two cars to restore the other, and he didn't care which one was sold. it was the dead of winter when dad and i made the two hour drive for me to look at the car. I had $1700 in my pocket, thinking i could get there from the $2000 asking price. we hadn't made it out of new castle before dad rear ended someone with my mom's new car, so i assumed the trip was over before it started. dad had a different plan, saying there was no way in hell he was going home to face mom after wrecking her car.

we met the owner at the barn he had the cars stored in. he was carrying a battery with him that we dropped into the r/t, and it fired right up. the body was pretty rusty, but the car was basically untouched from new. i wanted it the moment the 440 roared to life, and offered the $1700. the owner was willing to take $1800 and include the battery, which we needed to get the car home. Luckily, dad had a hundred dollars on him that he loaned me, and the car was mine. the heater core was looped off, with one piece of heater hose clamped to each side of the water pump, and the rear window was missing.  i bundled up, and off we went, headed south on interstate 69. i was freezing to death, but pushed on until the windshield started icing up on the inside.  we would pull over for me to thaw out in mom's car two or three times, and each time dad would tell me i was nuts for buying that rust bucket. i had to steer with one hand and use the ice scraper with the other to even see out of the windshield to get the car home.

i bought a Kawasaki 750 from one buddy in early 1987 for $750, and traded the bike even up to another buddy for his 1969 GTX.  he had found a 1971 GTX he liked better and he REALLY wanted a motorcycle.  i now had the 1968 R/T convertible, the 1969 GTX, and the 1970 Super Bee. Apparently,none of these were fast enough to suit me, so I bought a brand new 1987 Honda Hurricane 1000. i then had fast enough covered in spades. these bikes would run 10.60 at 130 mph, right off the showroom floor. i took it to 160 mph one evening, at which point it was pulling 12,800 rpm on its 13,500 red line. it was still accelerating, but i wasn't brave enough to see if it could drive out of the speed wobble it had just developed. At 155 mph, it was as smooth as running 30, but man was that inline four singing through the Supertrapp mufflers I had on it.

I pulled the 440 from the GTX and sold the body not long after that, then sold the tunnel ram to a vendor at the Mopar nationals. I then met the wife to be in 1988, and we moved to Goshen, Indiana when I got a promotion to store manager.  That turned out to be a salary versus hours worked nightmare, so I took a job as the parts manager at the Jeep dealership in Goshen. While living there, I sold the convertible for a tidy profit, and also sold the Hurricane. The toys were replaced by a new Plymouth Horizon for her, and a new Dakota for me. The foolish things we do for what we think is love. In  late 1990, I took a job as parts manager for the Chrysler dealership in Anderson, and we moved back south with a baby on the way. I sold the Super Bee just before my daughter was born in February 1991. I almost bought this car back around 1998, but the now ex wife was not keen on the idea, as she wanted a new house. I should have bought the car and unloaded her.

[Mopar John]

Ernie,
Nice story and pictures almost!
You ended with the part about an ex!
Unfortunately I share your pain as have others here I'm sure!
So I decided I better reply with something and get us back on track.
When we restored our B5 Daytona we were lucky and found an NOS driveshaft.
So for the last 12 years the original driveshaft has been sleeping in a nice warm blanket in the basement.
Here are the measurements you need to look for on a Daytona with an auto trans and 8 3/4 rear:
With all the u joints straight it should be 52 inches from center of u joint cap to center of u joint cap.
It should have the large 7290 joints that are easier to measure across and right at 3 5/8 inches across.
Find the correct one and put the rest up for sale!
MJ

[held1823]

the engine was just sitting in the car, so we pulled it out today

the engine is from a 1969 Charger R/T, vin XS29L9B266274

if that car still exists, its owner might want to get in touch with me
i would trade my block for another '69 block, to reunite it with the car it came from

i have a valance ordered from Janek, along with the headlight doors and fender scoops.
Ted offers three levels of quality/pricing, and I went with his premium line.
These should be the last major components I need for the front end

where is the best place to find info on modifying these 1970 fenders correctly?

[chargervert]

You should have Mike make you a steel valance. An original Daytona needs a steel one.

[held1823]

He will, later on.

[Dave Kanofsky]

Good luck on this project, and love that '70 Bee!

[held1823]

we pulled the fenders off to go ahead and swap the core support back to a correct 26" piece now instead of waiting until after the reunion like i first intended.  hopefully that is done next week. is there a best way to modify the fenders while i have them off? any advice and/or measurements of where to cut off the lower edge, as well as for locating the fender scoops, is greatly appreciated

this is as deep into the car as i intend to go prior to talladega. once the support is changed, the front end will go back on until next winter. extra work, but i want to make it to my first reunion. i planned to go to the last one as a spectator, but lost my father that weekend. i only wish he could see the car once it looks like it did when he drove it off the dealership lot fifty years ago.

i will also have to use the 1970 hood i have, so it needs hood pin holes cut into it. does any one have measurement details for them?
this is the hood pin set i intend to use. $50 is more suited to my budget than trying to find originals, and i'm not out to build a show car.

[Daytona R/T SE]

where is the best place to find info on modifying these 1970 fenders correctly?

Trim the lower dog leg of the fender down to the width of the mating surface of the valance, fold  it over along the body line, weld and then drill your new mounting holes.

I made a bending jig from two small pieces of angle iron, slit and welded back together in several places to follow the curve of the fender at the body line.

Clamped to the fender along the body line, one inside and one outside, it was easy to hammer the now abbreviated dog leg into shape.

I can't find any pictures of the angles right now, but here's the cut fender after folding and welding :

[Daytona R/T SE]

I found the pictures of the angles clamped in place :

[Daytona R/T SE]

Looks like I left the dog leg a little long, folded it over, and then trimmed it and welded it up...