69 Charger resto story

[Homerr]

Here's the restoration I did on my 1969 Dodge Charger back from June 1992-August 1993.  And by 'restoration' I mean 'restification', it wasn't meant to be 100%.  I bought the car in May 1992 for $3500 at pretty much the peak of the early '90's muscle car buzz.  I no longer have the car (sold it in 1995 to a shop teacher named Ted S. from the Salem, Oregon area and bought a house), but here's the story of it...

(If anyone knows of who/what/where this car ended up I'd love to hear about it.)



It smoked a bit on the test drive but my friend Tyler (I'm including people by name that might be relevant later.) who was into Mopar's (he had a clean 1971 Satellite w/ 318) assured me that the puff of smoke on hard acceleration wasn't that big of a deal. He knew a guy (Monty) that would rebuild any Mopar engine for $500. Pics above were taken outside the crappy apartment in Vancouver, Wa. where I bought the car from a guy named Chris. He's a real twitchy guy and I have 35 $100 bills in an envelope stuffed down the back of my pants. When we went into the guy's apartment to make out a receipt there was a chrome plated automatic sitting on the coffee table, nice.

I'm 21 years old, just bought my favorite big block Mopar, and this mother is LOUD. I had no idea what to look for but I did notice that the trunk was rusty, pretty weak looking even. No problem, my best friend's dad (Mike Sr.) does paint and body work - I'll talk to him. The next 3 weeks of driving this beast would be pure driving ecstasy and still fondly remembered, even today.



(Monty cleaning the block; Monty doing some assembly; without an engine it's riding high in the front; engine compartment is a bit grungy, but not bad, for it's age - except under the battery tray was corroded (just above the black vacuum 'coffee can'))

I knew it was just a matter of time before the engine was going to need real attention, so Tyler and I head out to talk to the guy he knows - Monty. He's an out of work lumberjack and a nice guy, has a '71 440/4spd Road Runner that looks real clean and he takes us for a ride in it. Suddenly I'm sold on needing more power. We started talking about a $500 basic build and by the time the conversation is done we're up to $1500. It ended up that the cylinder wear was very light so we reused the original pistons. New high-lift cam, oil pump, water pump, bearings, gaskets, valve guide seals, and a bevy of machine shop work in addition to Monty porting out the heads.



Now that the car is out of commission for a bit I have more time to inspect it. Yeah, that's rust around the bottom edges of the rear window which explains the rusty trunk....and the rusty lower quarter panels. I had probably just dropped off my first resto item of many I was to do on the car - the black crinkle-finish air cleaner with the '383 Magnum' pie tin (and the first of many orders to Year One). It turned out perfect. When I bought it the car had no pie tin, and I'm not sure it ever had one originally. But I figured I wanted the car the way I wanted it, and the pie tin was one of the many cool things that I loved about Mopars.

While the car was at Monty's he told us about the 'broadcast sheet' and we immediately pulled the back seat and found it stuffed behind the seat springs, still in excellent shape. It indeed was an original 383 4bbl 'Hi-Po' motor.

The motor takes longer than planned and I only have a few days to drive it before it's scheduled to go in to Mike's garage to have him look at the rear window. As I come over the hill to his shop the water pump lets go and spray comes over the windshield. I cut the ignition and coast into the shop. My freshly painted turquoise engine block (stock Mopar color) is stained with the green of anti-freeze.



When Mike and I first talked we had also talked about a respray of the whole car in addition to the rear window/trunk/quarter panel fix. He charged $1500 for the paint job portion (included door jambs and removal of much of the trim) and $45/hr. for body work. At this point I was expecting something like $2500-3000 for a freshly painted and repaired car.

Mike called me and said they were going to have to pull the vinyl top after all to do the repairs and that I should come down and look at it. So, here it is after being at the shop a couple of days. The top corners of the rear window were also rotted near the lead seam where the roof sheet metal transitions to the rear buttress area. The good news was that this was now known and would be repaired as well. The roof was covered in surface rust and would now need paint too. I debated ordering a new vinyl roof.

At this time I requested the side bumper moldings be removed too, didn't want it looking like a granny car.



I was also struggling with the color - gold. It was obvious the car had been repainted at some point and this latest color was better described as "green gold". The sanding prep of the roof and the removal of the side moldings revealed a big surprise. The paint was 3/32-1/8" thick! Over the original factory gold there were an additional 4 coats of paint! The car was only about 23 years old at this point.

Closer inspection of the roof also revealed pencil sized holes above the windshield (a bit hard to tell in the photo, just left of where the whitish vinyl roof seam residue is). Both front sides had about a dozen spots like this. Mike was concerned that metal patches would be visible after a couple of years since I was now talking about keeping the vinyl roof off.

I did decide that the gold color just had to go. They weren't going to guarantee the paint job since it would be the 6th(!) coat. What were my options? Since Mike knew me he said that if I came down evenings/weekends and worked on stripping the car he'd just charge me for materials to do it. I should mention that Mike is a workaholic, generally working 9am to 9:45pm Mon-Fri, 11am-8pm Sat, and 11am-5pm Sun. So I had plenty of time overlap with him to work on the car and still put in my 40 hours as a draftsman 8-5.



Here the trunk floor is cut out, spot welds drilled out, and metal being ground down. And a shot of me stripping paint off the trunklid. I'd brush on the stripper, wait a few minutes until the paint started to bubble, then start to take a coat or two off with a metal scraper. This process would be repeated until getting down to metal. Then the whole area would be washed with paint thinner to kill the stripper. Then a quick wipe with Rust-Mort to deter surface rust. The light blue protective paper had to be used wherever the stripper might contact something.

The shop was at the Port of Vancouver and Mike repaired cars damaged in transit as his bread and butter with the restoration work filling the rest of his time. He had one other guy (Ron) helping him as work ebbed and flowed. A 390/4spd Mustang is there in the background.



The lower quarters were ordered from a place in Montana and finally arrived (think they were about $140 for the pair). The old metal was cut off and saved, which was a good thing to do. The replacement sheet metal wasn't quite right and Mike and Ron spent a fair amount of time matching it to the old. Using the stainless steel wheel opening trim also helped.

The metal was butt welded and ground smooth inside and out. This is where one can tell quality, or restoration, work. A typical shop would probably crimp the remaining quarter panel at the raw edge with an offset (about half an inch up), then the new metal would overlay the old and be welded in place. A skim coat of filler covers the grinder marks to be sanded down at a later time.

[Homerr]

So...the roof. It needed to be dealt with somehow. I wanted the vinyl top gone which would have covered and cosmetic blemishes left from repair work. So we needed a new roof to make it a quality job. Mike heard there was a Charger at a wrecking yard he needed to go to for another customers parts so I tagged along one Saturday.

The donor car was perfect. It had been rear-ended but the roof was straight. I bought the whole roof for $120 and stripped the paint off it when we got back to the shop. The upper right photo shows the original unfaded gold color of the package tray. Tyler is inside the car and Mike outside helping to remove the interior. Can't have interior in place to catch fire when the plasma cutter is about to cut the roof off!



Here the roof skin is coming off via a plasma cutter. Mike points out the other holes around the rear window inside the buttress area where the roof sheet metal meets the quarter and has a lead filled seam.



The donor roof skin has had its spot welds drilled out. It'll have a few small dings worked out of it and be prepped with a coat of base primer before it's ready to mate up to the car.

It was becoming obvious that another whole level of work was going to have to be undertaken. I had never pulled an engine before and hadn't really planned on this. But I did get over the mental hump and Tyler and I pulled the engine. I had Monty weld up an engine dolly similar to one I had seen at his place. I had a couple of hundred miles on it so I changed the oil once it was out. (This Sept. '92.)



The sideways pic here is one of my favorites - looking through the roof structure and through the trunk floor. IIRC, the Charger was the only Mopar to be representing the pentastar - mostly Chevy's and Fords went through the shop while I was there.

The engine out meant I spent about a week removing everything and then stripping the original one layer of gold paint out of the engine compartment. Because of the rougher sheet metal, the welds, and tight corners this was quite a job. The corrosion under the battery tray is apparent here.



The guts behind the dashboard. This would stay a mess like this until the next spring.

One of Tyler's buddies, inspired by work on the Charger, decided to get some work done on his Satellite. He was going to have his neighbor do the bodywork and bought a shell of a car as a source for sheet metal. We worked out that I would pay Mike to haul the shell from where the car was bought to the guy's place, stopping at Mike's shop so that he could cut out the inner fender I needed (both are B-body cars).



A couple of shots just before the Charger went into the paint booth for primer. All the filler here is paper thin and just enough to cover grinder marks. When I stripped the paint off we found several older minor repairs that had used filler to fill dents. I had Mike grind it all out and pull the dents out.

It would get one coat of base primer (the more tannish color as in the engine compartment) on the whole car and a couple coats of finish primer (grey) on the outer bodywork. The lower right photo shows it also misted with black paint to aid in sanding.



Some color going on! The first pic shows W1 White on the tail (this was a 1970 Dodge color). Next is X9 Black on the back. This was originally a flat black but this looks crappy after a couple of years. I had had a '69 Triumph TR6 with the flat black rear panel and wanted lower maintenance. This wasn't going to be a 'correct' restoration back to factory.

Next, the engine compartment and trunk were painted and this was my first real look at R4 Charger Red (called Bright Red on non-Charger 1969 Dodges). I knew the overall color I wanted and I went through all sorts of paint books to get just the right shade and finally ran across a non-Mopar car at a show in this color, it happened to be a 1969 only factory color for Chargers! I knew I wanted it as soon as I saw it. (Most red Chargers are the darker R6 Red.)

And there is the stripe, I wanted one but didn't want to get the decal because it had 'R/T' cut into it and I wanted the look but didn't want to present my car as an R/T when it wasn't. I measured the R/T stripe on a guy with a 1970 Charger R/T I had met since getting the car and Mike taped it off (counter-taped?) and painted it.



The first pic here shows an orange Camaro decklid spoiler on the left, my Charger's front lower valence on the right, and a red model T in the background (similar to R6 Red). I took this pic for discussion with anyone who saw my car and thought I was painting the car orange! I love the Dukes of Hazzard and all, but I wasn't building a General Lee.

Next shot is it in the paint booth moments after being painted, the paint is still wet. The air in the paint booth was blowing toward my point of view so there was little chance me sticking the camera through the door would mar the paint with dust.

The next day seeing it dry but still with the over spray on masking made it look way too red. Removing the masking thankfully fixed that for me. By this time I had bought a spare set of rims and tires (that were well worn) to move the car around the shop on.

[Homerr]

So far you've seen the car in the shop from July 1992 to December 1992. The assembly pretty much started with the new year of 1993. I was working about 36 hours per week on the car starting mid-August. So to this point I'm a good 550 hours into the car (plus about 100 hours helping Mike so as to offset my costs), Ron the painters hours (40?), and Mikes hours (80?). By this time it's freaking cold in the shop, but work has to continue. I'm in Mike's good graces and I don't want him to either, 1) kick me out, or 2) charge me the actual cost of my stay there - so I'm there 9 nights out of 10 to keep work going.

But it seems like the hard part is over. The stripping of paint, sanding, greasy removal of parts is all done. Then Mike says, "Those wheel wells are gonna look like shit if it goes out the door like this." Good point. He tells me that they have a Boss 302 Mustang coming in soon and I should do what his guy does to the underside of the Mustang and repeat it. I do this as best I can. But I do have the advantage of time and ability to remove all the suspension whereas the Mustang owner was paying for 40 hours of detail work and that was it, most of his work would be done in situ with the car jacked up.

So the first pic here shows the rear axle out and the dust/overspray under much of the car. Had I (or more importantly Mike) known where this car was going restoration-wise a few months prior we could have masked many of the areas off to minimize this. But there was also a 20+ year coating of road grime and grease that the overspray sat on to be dealt with anyway. I spent a couple of weeks under the car scrubbing all this shit off and much of it landing in my face.

The lower left pic shows pretty much the view upon walking into the shop. I was making daily progress on my car so the other customers and potential customers always saw something going on. Mike's shop was quite large and some of the other cars would sit for weeks or months until he got payment on them to continue. In this particular shot some of the major under body parts can be seen - K-frame (supports the engine), sway bar, torsion bars, and springs. At this point I knew I was replacing the rear springs with 'hemi' ones but the other parts have just come back from the sandblaster's shop. I would eventually decide to put 'hemi' torsion bars up front as well.

In the storeroom this was my designated area for storage, about a 10' long aisle with shelves on either side. All this stuff takes room and I'd say a car restoration needs at least 70 square feet dedicated for storage. In the coming months it would get even more crammed as more deliveries came in.



As I learned more about everything Mopar I decided that I wanted heavy duty rockers and rods in lieu of the stock ones. I spent an evening installing them. Oh, and another new water pump. The first new one on the engine latest a couple of hundred miles, hopefully the replacement would last longer. I borrowed the paint booth to respray the engine with the stock turquoise color.



After getting the engine freshened up I was eager to get it back in the car, I felt it would be a noticeable jump in progress. The engine had been pulled in the conventional manner, up and out. But after some careful measuring I decided that the engine should go back in the way the factory did it. While we would be tipping the front end of the car up quite a bit it seemed much less likely to scratch the paint in the engine bay.

Everything went as planned and we slid the engine/transmission under the front of the car on the engine dolly, then grabbed the engine from above with the cherry picker, removed the dolly, tipped the front end of the car back down, brought the K-frame in underneath the engine and lifted it in place and bolted it to the frame and motor mounts. The result was zero scratches or dings, I was quite happy.



Here that Boss mustang is, as well as another (1968?). Accessories are starting to go back on the motor. Meanwhile most of my work during this time frame is still under the car. I put in a deeper transmission sump cover.



Rollout! This is around March 1993. Just getting the car physically outside the shop for a short while to blow the dust out feels pretty damn good. My efforts on the wheel wells feels well worth it and the 4-piston front calipers have returned from a 2 month trip to NY to be rebuilt. When I took the brake pads off they were wedge shaped, the calipers were definitely not wearing evenly. In the lower right photo the stainless steel wheel arch trim has yet to be installed.

My 1969 Dodge pickup is in the background. I bought it to haul parts around in during the restoration, paid all of $300 for it and it only ever needed an oil change and one radiator hose.



The black air control box is in place as the freshly painted tan dash is about to go back into place. The wiring and hoses made this a nightmare. Half my masking tape tags had fallen off by this point and I spent hours figuring out where everything went. And some general shots showing little bits of progress here and there.

[Homerr]

Once the front seats were back from the upholstery shop to have the new foams and covers installed and the headliner installer came out I was able to put the rest of the interior in in an afternoon. New carpet and rocker covers, a stock vinyl floor mat in the trunk. Stock stickers go on the underside of the deck lid and in the door jambs. Every night since the car was painted it gets covered with a thin, light plastic cover.

In the background are a 21 window VW bus, don't remember the black land-yacht, a '65 Chevelle is tipped up for underside cleaning & detailing, '55 2-door post, I think the '68 Mustang is hidden, but the Boss 302 is back for more detailing.



Several of us pulled an all-nighter to get the Charger fired up and running. Here it is after it's maiden voyage a few blocks down the road to the 24-hr gas mart. This is within a few days of it's anniversary of entering the shop. I've spent 1600 hours on the car to this point and another 200 helping Mike out around the shop. I had no life other than working on the car and my day job as a draftsman, but I was happy and doing what I wanted to do.

There was a push through July to get the car done as Mike would be going to Hot August Nights in Reno and I was invited to come along. But it wasn't to be, we had to leave a few days after the car was running and I had no time to run the car in and test it. I felt pretty good about all the work I, and everyone else that helped, had put in - but not quite enough to put it through 1200 mile round trip. I still went to Reno with Mike and got to put about a hundred miles on his perfect '55 2-dr. hardtop on the way down there and had a blast.

Good thing I held off too because the transmission blew out 2 weeks after we got back, and the radiator was barely able to keep it cool on the hot summer days. I had a local shop rebuild the tranny and ordered a larger capacity radiator that cured the near-overheating issues.

The upper right pic here shows the Charger at its first car show, a small event in Portland. I'm reminded by the gold anodized tint under the front that I also went with a heavier (7/8" to 1 1/8" ? (from memory here)) front sway bar and added a 3/4" (?) rear one. It sits pretty low next to a Mustang.

Lower left is the 'Rod Run to the End of the World', in Long Beach, WA. I went to this 2 years and would be the farthest from home I took the car (about 125 miles each way). Won an award for best paint of show first time there. The paint had not been cut and buffed, but everyone asked if it had been. I put the photo album in front of the radiator at car shows and everyone seemed to love the pictures, especially the roof being cut off.

The lower right pic shows my place outside Vancouver, WA in late 1993. I was car-poor by that time and couldn't afford to move to a place with a garage. I had the then-best car cover and washed the car weekly, with daily dustings. It never sat under the cover more than 2 days since it was my daily driver, even in rain. But for snow the truck was needed.



Upper left shows it at the Westcoast Mopar Show, another best of show paint award and best B-body (modified). The rest of the photos are part of some that I took to sell the car. I drove the car as a daily driver for 16 months, and kept it up at show/near show condition that whole time. It did only have to survive half that first winter outside until I was able to move to a place with a garage. I sold it in October 1994 and was happy to get $10,500 for it then. It went to a high-school shop teacher that had been searching for pretty much exactly this sort of deal. I gave him the skinny on what the car needed - to have the front grill pulled and detailed, same with the tic-toc-tach in the dash (it worked fine but didn't look as nice as the rest of the car), and the exhaust was optional.

I used the proceeds to buy my first house, which seemed like a good thing to do at the time and still does.

The reality of it is that I bonded with the car as a lump of mechanical bits in the year that I worked on it. I didn't have enough time to actually drive the car in the 6 weeks I had before it went into the shop it to bond with it (3.5 of those weeks the engine was being done). So, really, I had around 20 days of driving it before my relationship with it changed.

I had owned a '91 CRX before the Charger and sold it because of insurance rates. The Charger was cheap to insure for sure, but didn't deliver the driving thrills in other than a strait line despite all my attempts at uprating the suspension. In this way I felt that either I, or the car, had failed. It was also a tremendous time-sink for upkeep. Washing wasn't that bad, but each of the rub downs with 3M Finesse-It II (used at Mike's suggestion) reminded me how big this car was. By this time I had a girlfriend then too, and no matter how nice, a Charger was slumming it a bit for her. That was her problem, but the car definitely competed for time with her.

Gas prices then paled to what they are now, but I remember cringing at $1.30/gallon for premium plus a $5 can of octane boost if I wanted it to run decently. The best mileage I ever got was 11mpg on the freeway absolutely feathering it and trying to get good mileage. Around town I got 6-8mpg.

I got pulled over 2 times in it, never speeding or to get a ticket. The police just wanted to check it out and let me go on my way after asking "what's under the hood?" In any sort of area with buildings to bounce some sound waves off it would regularly set of car alarms (this was probably the height of those stupid multi-toned alarms). Oddly it idled in such a manner that outside from the doors back you couldn't hear anyone or yourself talk, but it didn't seem very loud. It was all bass.

Which brings me back full-circle to a short story. Shortly after I did buy that house a couple about my age moved in next door. Nice, straight-forward people. Six months later the guy and I have become friendly, if not friends, and I say something about a car I used to own. He asks me what kind of car. I tell him and he says he had one of those too. He sold it when he lived in some crappy apartment there in town. We look at each other and realize that I bought the car from him originally, this guy is Chris. He tells me how back then he was whacked out on speed and completely paranoid. It ends up being a joke from then on and his wife tells me each time I see them how much she cleaned him up, and I believe it!

Chris eventually tells me that he had the exhaust put on at a place in Idaho when he was visiting out there. The mufflers are straight glasspacks and he bribed the installer $20 to 'make it louder'. He said he went around the back of the shop with the guy where he poured kerosene down the mufflers and lit them before they were installed to burn out the filling.

I bought high and sold low, but I wouldn't trade the experience I had for anything.

Please feel free to ask anything about the car.

[Vainglory, Esq.]

Great write up. Sorry I can't help you find it, but the story and pictures are appreciated.

[Homerr]

Thanks, I've been reading this site now for a while and looking at others projects.  Got me motivated to post this up.  I should also note that when my car was done I traded test drives with a stock '70 440 R/T 4-spd Charger with bias ply tires and absolutely loved the feel of it.  I should have held out for a 4-spd car myself, it's what I really wanted and contributed to me eventually selling this car.

BTW, only a year or two ago I finally brought myself to add up the cost.  I estimate the total was about $17,000 including the car in 1993 dollars - and that was with very healthy offsets in the cost of the bodywork.

[Charger 1]

Good story but I can't see any of the pics!!!!!

[nvrbdn]

car turned out great.

[Homerr]

They are hosted on my Dropbox account, they seem to show up fine on a couple of computers I have here.  Refresh your page?

[tan top]

     good  reading , & pictures , thanks for posting Dude  

[DC_1]

Great story! 

[Just 6T9 CHGR]

Wow great story!

PM me the VIN # and Ill see if I have the car in the Registry!!

[moparstuart]

 

[Neal_J]

Fun post. 

Except when you changed the color.  T3 rules!~

Just kidding...

Thanks!

[doctor4766]

Yep great write up. And the car turned out very nice

[Just 6T9 CHGR]

Fun post. 

Except when you changed the color.  T3 rules!~

Just kidding...

Thanks!

Maybe but.....it looks more Y4 Gold to me

[bull]

If it's not 100% do you think maybe 98%? Lots of Mopar guys from Salem go to the Woodburn Mopar Nationals but I don't recall seeing that particular car there, assuming it looks the same. I'll keep an eye out for it this summer though.

[Homerr]

With 20 years of adulthood I might have stayed with the stock color, who knows?     But I was a 21 year guy that wanted a flashy muscle car back the day.

As I eluded, I do remember Ted S's last name.  Some extensive googling only shows that he may be in one of the outlying areas around Eugene, Oregon and aged 66 (which sounds about right).  He doesn't seem to have any web presence though.  No white pages reference.  I had hoped to find him on Facebook or something similar and invite him to continue the story. 

As for the VIN - I don't have any record of it, or a photo.  Nor the broadcast sheet, but I do recall that it was sold through Hollywood Dodge and at the bottom it was noted as a "Dealer Demonstrator car".  I've tried the WA state department of licensing site to see if I could somehow find a VIN with no luck.

[doctor4766]

Oh btw Homerr.
That black coffee can thing is actually the vacuum canister for the headlight doors.

[Homerr]

Oh btw Homerr.
That black coffee can thing is actually the vacuum canister for the headlight doors.

Yep, I wanted to post this same write-up in another forum (car section of a computer/tech forum) so I'm sure everyone here will notice a few simplifications.

Your profile pic is making me wonder if this car ended up down under!

[72Charger-SE]

Great Story!  Such a 'small world' we live in.   Paths that crossed back in the teenage years cross again later in life by chance...  All because of a person's Love for a Dodge Charger!  That is just cool!   Thanks for sharing!

[Homerr]

Great Story!  Such a 'small world' we live in.   Paths that crossed back in the teenage years cross again later in life by chance...  All because of a person's Love for a Dodge Charger!  That is just cool!   Thanks for sharing!

Well, one other twist I have remembered that Chris, the guy I bought the car from, related to me when we realized we had both owned this car.  He had parked the car in his grandmothers driveway on the other side of town.  My GF's house was across the street and I saw the car there on and off for a year or two.  When I finally decided to buy one the car was suddenly gone.  A couple of weeks later it showed up in the local thrifty ads and I went and bought it.

I also tried to look up Chris last night but the best I could find was a baby announcement for him and his wife back in 2003.  How do people not show up more on the internet these days?     I guess I've gone from motorhead to geek in adulthood. 

[doctor4766]

Oh btw Homerr.
That black coffee can thing is actually the vacuum canister for the headlight doors.

Yep, I wanted to post this same write-up in another forum (car section of a computer/tech forum) so I'm sure everyone here will notice a few simplifications.

Your profile pic is making me wonder if this car ended up down under!

Nah, mine was a bronze small block when it arrived here.
Does look similar now though.

[Chippa]

Looks familiar....but no its not this one

[aussiemuscle]

You don't often see them with the stripe trim anymore