What have you done with your Charger lately?

[Chris 69]

In the middle of a 4-speed swap...

A833 has been rebuilt, interior gutted, cut the hole in the floor, 4-speed pedals installed.

Pulled the 383 this weekend, finally got the automatic's alignment dowels out of the back of the block (broke the tap off in one of them), welded in the z-bar bracket this afternoon.

Now considering a 440 as long as the engine is already out of the car!

[myk]

My only day off after a 9 day work week and it rains today!  That didn't stop me from crawling under the Charger and installing my Hotchkis rear sway bar, though.  Unfortunately, I'll have to take it to my shop to have the front sway bar brackets welded in.  Btw, does anyone know off-hand what size socket you use to remove the top bolt on the rear shocks? 

[Charger-Bodie]

My only day off after a 9 day work week and it rains today!  That didn't stop me from crawling under the Charger and installing my Hotchkis rear sway bar, though.  Unfortunately, I'll have to take it to my shop to have the front sway bar brackets welded in.  Btw, does anyone know off-hand what size socket you use to remove the top bolt on the rear shocks? 

Nuts and bolts on those rear shocks are 3/4.

[myk]

Thanks for the quick response-looks like I'm going to have to buy a deep socket and some more WD40.  What about the fronts?  I'd imagine they're 3/4" also.  

[Charger-Bodie]

Thanks for the quick response-looks like I'm going to have to buy a deep socket and some more WD40.  What about the fronts?  I'd imagine they're 3/4" also.  

Lower fronts are 5/8 on the bolt head and 11/16 on the nuts.

[Paul G]

What do you think I am doing? There is a clue.

[myk]

Blinker fluid change!

[1974dodgecharger]

I wish i had Paul's garage.....

[jaak]

Converted my 68 grille to a 69, repaired and repainted.





Jason

[JB400]

 

[BrianShaughnessy]

I fired up Black Betty,   got some gas....  then changed the oil and put in a hotter thermostat as she's needed for an un-named project...      Details in due time.....

[Musicman]

It's been a couple of months since I last had an opportunity to do anything with the Charger. I had a couple of hours to spare this morning however, so I made up a couple of pieces for attaching the body to the rotisserie I made. These are just the front pieces obviously, I still have to make two pieces for the back. It's not much, but at least I got something accomplished anyway.... ever forward.

[tan top]

 last thing was back in the summer ! moved the coil to the inner fender &  re routed the main engine harness & lengthened as necessary to run round to the passenger side fender !! ( I know not stock , but have altered the charging circuit anyway )  main reason heat , also , kept looking at how the factory routed the harness & how it was bent  from the fire wall to run across the right side valve cover ,  getting hot with engine heat then cooling engine movement etc  !!  the wires inside did show some signs of stress ! , over kill yes , but i'm nutts like that over thinking stuff  .

[myk]

last thing was back in the summer ! moved the coil to the inner fender &  re routed the main engine harness & lengthened as necessary to run round to the passenger side fender !! ( I know not stock , but have altered the charging circuit anyway )  main reason heat , also , kept looking at how the factory routed the harness & how it was bent  from the fire wall to run across the right side valve cover ,  getting hot with engine heat then cooling engine movement etc  !!  the wires inside did show some signs of stress ! , over kill yes , but i'm nutts like that over thinking stuff  .

You did good brother.  There's nothing wrong with making the car better than what it was; a Charger is a beautiful thing but it wasn't born perfect, either...

[Lord Warlock]

repainted the passenger door, top of front fenders and yellow areas of the hood today.  turns out the previous attempt was too thin and when i was sanding and buffing you could tell where it had gone thru the thin layer on the last coat, leaving faint lines of paint layers, didn't want that wanted the flat areas to be shiny and the sides to be smooth with little if any orange peel showing.  Will have to repaint the v21 hood treatment as it got some overspray on it in places but had issues on the edges of it anyway and planned to redo it soon before driving it anyway.  Have to order a couple cans of organisol from totally auto.  

Also ordered some stereo equipment to install in a couple weeks, an mp3 deck, 6 small low powered speakers called exciters that make any surface a speaker, they sound pretty good if you find the right place to put them, a 200 watt amp (50wpc) and picked up a sub enclosure today to put in the trunk area behind the rear seat.  Will have to wait to move it to the back garage, wife will get pissed if she sees me carry that thru the house.  Imagine she's getting tired of me wasting money on a car that hasn't been used in over 20 years.  (Its what i do though-i'm good at wasting money on the charger, at least its getting close to getting on the road again)

[myk]

WOW.  All I've done is install the rear Hotchkis sway bar and I can feel the car is much flatter going into turns that normally have me pushing up against my door.  I'm salivating just thinking about how the car will handle after the Hotchkis front sway bar and their Fox-built shocks get put in next week.  I should've done this YEARS ago.  Furthermore, I'm not sure I can wait to purchase all of the Hotchkis suspension pieces as per my budget; the real performance returns from these parts is too tempting and way too much fun!

[XH29N0G]

Looks like everyone did a lot today.  Fun to read about it. For me, it was warm enough to start the car and drive it some to test repairs on a header leak.  So far so good.  I went with Percy's deadsoft aluminum and they sealed.  Have a new air cleaner and the carb linkage adapter in place.  The ride also gave me more things to add to my to do list.

[myk]

Good day for Chargers and their keepers!  It did start raining like it hasn't in San Diego for years today though, so I had to cut the playtime short...

[Bob T]

Did another wedding chauffeur gig with a mates silver 70 Charger 500 in support.

[Dino]

Looks like everyone did a lot today.  Fun to read about it. For me, it was warm enough to start the car and drive it some to test repairs on a header leak.  So far so good.  I went with Percy's deadsoft aluminum and they sealed.  Have a new air cleaner and the carb linkage adapter in place.  The ride also gave me more things to add to my to do list.

Good choice.  Be sure to re-torque the header bolts a few times after warming it up.  I did mine 3 times total and haven't had it leak since.

[Paul G]

Good day for Chargers and their keepers!  It did start raining like it hasn't in San Diego for years today though, so I had to cut the playtime short...

We had rain yesterday too. First rain we have had in 70 days. Rained hard, on and off all day. Got the Charger back together and on the ground. Might be able to test drive it today.

[PlainfieldCharger]

Started my install of some crane ductile rockers. Good thing I making this upgrade, rockers shafts that came with it were really sad..

[DixieRestoParts]

Here are a few pics of a restored starter I installed on my car. Pictured are the 7ish year old Autozone lifetime warranty starter (which failed) and the fresh restored one. Restored is on the left. We restore starter and alternator's to OE condition for those interested in such things. Email me direct for details or click here:

http://www.dixierestorationparts.com/products.cfm?ci=82337DF1-FFE7-955A-8E5C45D5F2A82413

Note the overspray in the photos. This is factory correct, and we can apply as little or as much as you want. In five years of commercially restoring alternators and starters, we've handled 50 plus original equipment starter assemblies. Of those pieces 80% or better show substantial overspray. Based on what we have seen the starters were painted as an assembly with no attempt to mask the body EXCEPT the area where the starter cable connects to the primary and secondary terminals. Looks like Chrysler used a small diameter cardboard tube that slid down over the terminal area of the brush holder during the paint process. We found a set of these a couple of years ago in an NOS starter box and have been using them during final painting. Also, after looking at some original starter examples, it seems (?) Chrysler might have started either using a mask or painting the field coil can separately sometime in late 1970 or early 71. We can't be sure because we just haven't seen enough original pieces to make a firm cutoff date for the overspray. As always any further opinions and observations are welcomed as this will only help us all better understand the assembly processes.

[JamieZ]

Fixed most of the turn signal issues.  The hood mounted ones (which I installed but never tested) work now, the driver's side was not making ground, probably because of the paint.  If I wiggled the light it would work, so I decided to run a ground wire to it.  That fixed the issue.

For the valance lights, the passenger side connector was broken, so I snipped it off and put a brand new connector in.  There was still an issue with the lights not working when connected through the harness.  Again this turned out to be a ground issue.  The lights were only seeing 1-2v difference when the hazards were flashing.  I took the common pin and rerouted it to the radiator support ground that the rest of the front harness uses and then the lights were getting a 10-11V difference when flashing.

Once I verify all the wiring worked, I went ahead and reinstalled the bumper and the valance.  I swapped all the valance bolts to be the same, as for some reason 4 of the bolts that were on the car when I bought it were metric.



The turn signals still do not work.  They flash erratically if at all. I suspect the flasher is dead (since the hazards are fully functional).  I have a spare flasher, but it was starting to get cold so I decided not to crawl around under the dash looking for it.  Something tells me the AC duct is going to be right in the way. Sunday the snow came back so I guess it will have to wait until next weekend.

[XH29N0G]

Good choice.  Be sure to re-torque the header bolts a few times after warming it up.  I did mine 3 times total and haven't had it leak since.

Done - thanks for the reminder.  I took it for a test drive today.  Afterwards I shortened the tail pipes so the tips came in by about an inch.  By my judgment they were too far out.  Now I have to button up everything and wait for winter to be done.