Got a project 70, now the fun/pain begins

[toocheaptosmoke]

Reading this was more fun than I've had for quite a while!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Brings back the good ol' days when building cars was fun and not ulcer inducing expenditures of massive amounts of cash. I still remember driving to the junkyard to pick up my 375 horse Cadillac motor to replace the Olds 350 in my 64 Chevrolet SWB. When we pulled up ,it was hanging from one of those doityourself wreckerboom trucks and clear as a bell you could see the front dump oilpan that we hadn't figured on. My buddy goes, "Is that gonna fit?". I said, "Well hell no, but it will after we get done with it !". I had to buy a $75 Caddy Eldorado to make it fit. Which we did in his driveway!! Thanks you  for reminding me what the fun part of hot rodding is. On a side note, I hope your boss appreciates the fact that he has an ambitious, creative young man for an employee and compensates you well. Compared to the endless stream of know nothing, phone in hand ,spoiled brats that come looking for a job at our shop you deserve it.   For that 70's look, put some speed decals in the 1/4 windows, fun fur on the package tray, chrome or white mudflaps, some bass boat metaflake paint "preferably with a USA flag theme" and you need to name your car and paint it on the 1/4 or deck lid. Something like REDHOT, RUSTY AND ROLLIN" to go with your Snapoff toolbox. In the 70's Snapon had a redhot and rolling sticker that was cool. Keep having fun and keep posting......

Thanks!!!      It has been a fun project, you never know what directions a project will take sometimes.  Using whatever parts are available forces you get creative.      Wonder how many other 1970 chargers are running a 318/nv3500/ford 8.8 combo?    The package tray could definitely use some shag carpet, and I'm already looking for a "Hurst equipped" and some other old school stickers.  Gonna need a Black Sabbath sticker too. 

I also had some good times when trying to scrounge up a used engine from a junk yard.  This one place, a typical rural PA wrecking yard, was trying to sell me the 318 out of their old yard van.  Only had 173,000 miles and "ran like a raped ape."  This was in a van that was partially converted into a truck, with green flames painted on the sides, and cutting torches in the passenger seat.  They fired it up and the open headers screamed as it approached redline.  I decided to pass on that particular engine. 

[Baldwinvette77]

Mmmm shagpile   i just hunted a u-pull-it and found a 66 imperial, i took the window cranks, door lock knobs, gas pedal, steering wheel and other bits, also got the gauge bezal and a speedometer from a 68 mustang, might go back for the imperials radio it looked pretty  

Btw what are your favorite Sabbath songs?  

[toocheaptosmoke]

Mmmm shagpile   i just hunted a u-pull-it and found a 66 imperial, i took the window cranks, door lock knobs, gas pedal, steering wheel and other bits, also got the gauge bezal and a speedometer from a 68 mustang, might go back for the imperials radio it looked pretty  

Btw what are your favorite Sabbath songs?  

You still need door handles?  I didn't completely forget about your parts, just been busy lately.  Actually been spending too much time up in canada for work!!    Got to go back up this thursday/friday and it's putting a dent in the charger schedule. 

I've always liked the classics that got played on the radio, the paranoid album was the first one I listened to a lot in it's entirety.   Mainly their first 4-5 albums, (kind of like metallica  ), Vol. 4 being the one I most recently "discovered" but it's probably my favorite right now.   Love the heaviness of that album, and it's solid the whole way through.

[Baldwinvette77]

i remember first hearing children of the grave, it changed my life, 
and yes i do need door handles, i take anything thats free  ... oh except for that ford tempo my neighbour tried to give me, wasn't worth the cubic feet it took up  also have fun up in canada i'm currently in miami...... God i miss my charger... 

oh also i found a subaru forester front bucket seat for it, a neighbour was throwing it away, IT WAS FREE!!!!! 

[toocheaptosmoke]

Did more undercoating, gotta keep the rust at bay.






Got the wiper motor back in and wired up,








In the spirit of, "If it's not broke, mess with 'til it is"   I decided to clean the headlight switch because it wasn't operating smoothly, and in the process broke the plastic,








Some 30 lb. test fishing line fixed things right up, it's non-conductive so, um, yeah....







More wiring of the gauges,








FUN








Finally got it done, just need hooked up in the dash.







Made a stopper for the clutch pedal, because after the last adjustment the master cylinder was bottoming out before the pedal.












Got the sway bar links in

[Baldwinvette77]

sweet  .... and thanks for reminding me of all the boring, non-welding crap i'll be doing in the future 

[toocheaptosmoke]

Got the rear lights in.  Had some issues with the wiring of the brake lights through the turn signal, but eventually got it sorted out.  Needs '69 tail light surrounds. 








Got all the shocks in.  They are fancy monroe-matics, painted blue.  Cost under 10 bucks a piece and still made in USA.    The camera liked to focus on the e brake cable, which is a stock ford explorer piece. 







Headlights are in, but only have the outside ones hooked up at the moment.   The first light went in great, but that was the only one...  The tabs on the lights wouldn't fit into the slots on the buckets, I have no clue what the buckets are from, so I just started cutting the tabs off the headlights to get them to fit. 








Wipers are in, and they are verified to work!








Threw on the side mirrors,









Got a generic shifter boot cheap on ebay and made it work








Rearview and sun visors back in








Lots of good stuff in this picture.  I got a 16" fan from pro-comp, fits the radiator perfect.  Also got a generic universal washer fluid tank and pump setup.  Then finally topped things off with a fine malt beverage container for the coolant overflow. 

[Baldwinvette77]

Loving everything, except the mismatched mirrors, i mean look at them one is clearly more pitted and faded than the other 

[toocheaptosmoke]

You're right, that one with the nice chrome has to go. 

[MaximRecoil]

Awesome thread.

A lot of what you've done reminds me of what I've done with my '69 Charger since dragging it out of the Maine woods in 2011 (where it had sat since 1994) - link.

Unlike yours, mine was Rust City. After removing the gas tank and opening the trunk lid, I could crawl under there, stand straight up, and have room to walk around a bit. The trunk floor was gone. My mechanic friend is a MacGyver type like you are, and owns a garage, towing service, junkyard, etc., and he loves Mopars, so he helped out a lot. He built me a trunk floor from the roof of a 1-ton Dodge van - link. He also fabricated thick steel pieces to weld up the rear subframe rails, which were mostly gone too, and fabricated rear quarter panel patches.

I did most of the mechanical work (I'm not much of a fabricator, though I'm more of one now than I was 2 years ago), such as new brake lines and new everything else in the brake system, rebuilt the front end, and various other things, and like in Christine, he let me raid his junkyard for free. You might be surprised how many parts from '70s and '80s Dodge trucks and vans fit on a '69 Charger. Oh, and wiper arms from an '80s Jeep Cherokee fit perfectly.

My car is ugly too, and it probably always will be, but it runs good and it is solid/roadworthy; I drive it every day in the summer. Here's what it looks like currently - link.

When I was growing up in the '80s, we used to call cars like this "Don Chenevert cars". Don Chenevert was about 21 and still in high school (a "voc boy"; i.e., he went to the vocational center behind the high school; trucking, farming, carpentry, auto mechanics, etc.), and he always had multicolored cars with patches of Bondo and primer, but they were never cool cars like a Charger, they were '70s Novas, Dusters, Volares, and so on. He'd have the rear jacked up with some bald 31" mud tires, free from the junkyard, for "slicks". The engines in his cars were never anything special, but they usually had a $20 JC Whitney chrome dressup kit on them, and he'd discard the hood, for that drag racer look. He'd drive around town with Z-62 cranked on his Sparkomatic with 6x9s just resting out in the open on top of the rear package tray; speaker wire running out in the open on the floor.

Speaking of Z-62; I'd love to find a Z-62 bumper sticker. WZON, AKA: Z-62, AKA: The ZONe, was an AM hard rock / heavy metal radio station here in Maine in the '70s and '80s, owned by Stephen King, and all the metalheads had a Z62 sticker on their bumper or rear window. There's one on eBay right now, but it doesn't look like the ones I remember from the early '80s. The station still exists, but it is talk radio now (hasn't been rock since '88). Its newer sister station, also owned by King, WKIT-FM, is rock, but that doesn't have the same ring to it.

[toocheaptosmoke]

Nice.     Rust is usually all I deal with, this car has been a nice break from that. 




Was at the local parts store the other day, rummaging through the double-discount bin while waiting in line.  This was where I had found the mag wheel lug nuts, there was Mr. Gasket stuff that was at least 20 years old in there.    Down at the very bottom I see this,







Was just saying about how I needed some of those tacky parts store lift shackles.     








Had to buy them, must have been fate they sat around for decades just waiting to be used.    And, how often do you see the phrase "Chrome OR Zinc Plated"  used as a selling point. 

[Baldwinvette77]

"For competition use only" is a major selling point for people building daily drivers, the main reason why i have super stock springs 

[toocheaptosmoke]

Started working on the exhaust



Them sho am a lot of muffler clamps!








This is one of those "bolt-in" things that requires cutting, hacking and welding. 












Started putting in some front seat belts, I stole them from a 1985 toyota truck.






Gauges going in, bungee cord acted as the ever helpful 3rd hand.




FINALLY






Valance on






Horns installed






Bumper







Hood, with turn signal indicators installed

[Baldwinvette77]

  when the hell did you get a hood 

[JB400]

What's the idea for painting this thing?

[70 sublime]

My car has a 69 dash in it also

With the horns where you mounted them is there still lots of room for the headlight door motor ?

[toocheaptosmoke]

The hood came with the car. 


Still no idea for the paint yet...


That's a good question about the door motor.  I don't have a motor to operate that yet, so I might have to move the horns. 

[Baldwinvette77]

The hood came with the car. 

i knew that i was just testing you to see if you remembered 

[toocheaptosmoke]

Ran into a problem with a coolant leak after I ran the engine with the rad cap installed and pressurized the system. 







Was looking like it was the water pump or intake gasket.    To be sure I took things apart then pressure tested the system, turns out it was leaking from the bypass tube.   OK, take it apart and put on some more teflon tape, right?    Turns out the threads for the fitting were done off center!   I had gotten the intake from Summit, and when I got it you could tell someone had already opened the box, and returned it.  It had never been installed, but you still never like to get a "almost" new part.  If I remember right I think the bypass fitting was already installed, which I just assumed was done at the factory.  But regardless, this was a defect from the factory.






You can see where the threads end, and where the untouched bored surface sits.    So yeah, figured I'd pony up the extra cash for a good made in USA part instead of the import clones...  A lot of the tapped holes on the intake were done a bit rough.  The barb still threads in, it's not stripped, it just doesn't have any threads on the bottom portion of the hole.






At this point even if Edelbrock tries to exchange me an intake I'm not sure it's worth taking apart everything.  I cleaned up everything and JB welded shit back together.  So far no more leaks, but my intake is the last thing I would have expected to need hacked back together.

[JB400]

I've had problems with Edelbrock intakes as well.  Went to bolt one up on a Chevy v6 and the bolt holes were too close to the intake runners and water jackets.

[Baldwinvette77]

wow that freaking rotz, but JB weld is good stuff, i have it holding together a few things on my olds' q-jet 

[Plum Crazy 68]

What's the idea for painting this thing?

More than likely about 20 rattle cans

[toocheaptosmoke]

More than likely about 20 rattle cans

This almost hurt a bit.  Almost.   Drilled some holes in a near mint '70 hood to put hood pins on.     The car was missing everything for the hood latch system, and even the safety latch.  So, the most economical thing to do was put hood pins on it.   I've always wanted something with hood pins anyways. 








Installed the 50 cent NOS reverse light I got from the swap meet, it even has real glass in it.








Another seat and seat belt in








Put in the adjustable controller for the E-fan.  So far the cheap pro comp fan seems to be doing a decent job, although it's flow is a bit on the weak side.








Even with the lowest profile air filter I could find, the hood still hits it. 











Horn system is complete and it works. 







Found out why they make a special tool for that distributor bolt.    Anyways, didn't feel like driving the whole way to the store and spending hundreds of cents on the real deal, so I made one.   Took an old cheap wrench I never use, bent it, cracked it, welded it back together, then welded it to a piece of shepard's post I scrounged from the scrap pile.









Almost time to worry about getting the heater back in.   I have a new vacuum control module thing, but I think I'm missing something to run the fan?    Looks like there was another button that I'm also missing. (left hand side?)

[Baldwinvette77]

Whoa whoa slow down there, 2 SEATS??? You're a madman  and don't feel too bad about the hood, afterall some 70 models came from the factory with hood pins 

[toocheaptosmoke]

We've been churning and burning!  After trying to find the pieces, switches, and all the other crap to hook up my stock heater, WITH a marginal A/C heater core that costs like 300 to re-core.  I decided to just say heck with it and get an aftermarket Vintage air heater kit for a little over 200.

(no picture)



Ran into a problem with the rear tires.   The ones I had on there looked good when I aired them up a few months ago, but after sitting they were looking a little worse for wear...  Not going to pass inspection, and I wouldn't want to run them anyways.






I joked earlier in the build about putting the old tires from my toyota on, but I didn't think it was actually going to happen.      All I have laying around at the moment, and even I have to admit things are looking a bit tacky, and that's saying something coming from me!!    But you do see a lot of cars hauled out of the woods with tractor tires on them.    Shackles might not be staying on, but I had to try them.







Not quite happy with the stance, will probably be changing things down the road.  Needs some more tire up front, that's where I'll move the 15X7 slots.  Then get some wider tires in the back.     But for now, I wasn't buying brand new tires when I don't have the wheels to put them on.








Trunk seal installed.







Why does masking tape never stick when you're tryin to paint something, but when you forget about it for a few months it permanently bonds itself on!?







Have heard the advance on the stock HEI is waaaay too fast for most applications, so I put in a moroso kit with the medium springs.  To set the atmosphere, I was doing this by flashlight, riding the driver's side fender like a wake board, and listening to the Edgar Winter Group.   Managed to not lose one e-clip! 









BOOM!   No classic plates here.   Road tests on the way!







Aaaaaaand the fuel pump is dead...       There goes 40 bucks after 2 gallons of gas through it.   Had a filter on it, checked it after running for a while and it never got that hot being in the engine compartment.   Not sure I want to add up how much money has been wasted on POS new parts that were either D.O.A. or dead shortly there after.   Didn't buy the cheap one, got an Airtex that was supposed to be half decent.





Speaking of DOA, I need some Van Halen...

http://youtu.be/0peSQnpDobQ