68 R/T Restoration

[indreams84]

Absolutely gorgeous! If those wheels were in fact from Year One I defintely want 

[mightywing7]

 

You never cease to amaze me with your progress.....great work!!

[xs29bb1]

Absolutely gorgeous! If those wheels were in fact from Year One I defintely want 

They're 15 inch 500s from YO

[charge69]

Your '68 is a stunner!  Beautiful work and the "unveiling" of the completed car will be exciting!  Congratulations!

[xs29bb1]

I gotta say, it is nice to start smelling the finish line!

Here I'm just posting up photos of some of the parts that have been recently restored.  This one's got a couple of the correct radiator, a really nice original rear view mirror, and the original front door electric window regulators

[xs29bb1]

This next one has the restored battery clamp, the restored A/C clips, restored fan clutch, and a nice surprise.... we found some correctly date coded u-joint straps.

[xs29bb1]

This next one has a vent window frame, and my lower dash pads.

We got the upper pad done at "Just Dashes" a while ago and it came out great.  But for some reason "Just Dashes", doesn't get that original stitched look on their lower dash pads.... so these are my original dash
pads that our upholstery guy restored.  They came out really nice.  Very surprised that JD leaves that detail out.

Lastly, there's one of my seats waiting to go into the car...

[xs29bb1]

This post shows the restoration of my VIN tag. 

For whatever reason, I like these photos as much as the paint and body shots.  The guys have been nice enough to document several pieces being restored at each stage, and I think the series of those shots will be nice to have later on.

Five photos total - there's the original, then sand blasted, painted, dried, and then then the finished tag.  (on the next post)

[xs29bb1]

Finished tag...

[MxRacer855]

Almost there! Wow, what an amazing build! 

[charge69]

Beautiful work on the restored VIN tag!  Also, a very nice find on the correct date-coded u-joint straps! The detail work is amazing!

When I restored mine, the dash frame and pad was in very nice original condition and respraying the dash frame made it look like new. Even the speaker grates (3-speaker dash) looked like new with a little dedicated cleaning! A good scrubbing and some vinyl protectant and cleaner had the lower pads looking amazingly nice.

Even the glove box door pad was almost new-looking when cleaned up!  The previous owner was a smoker and there was a couple of burn marks on the pad above the ashtray and the ashtray door itself needed cleaning up and the door repainted but, unless you looked real close, the pad looks perfect!

Looking at your work on here, your Charger is going to be fantastic!

[xs29bb1]

Beautiful work on the restored VIN tag!  Also, a very nice find on the correct date-coded u-joint straps! The detail work is amazing!

When I restored mine, the dash frame and pad was in very nice original condition and respraying the dash frame made it look like new. Even the speaker grates (3-speaker dash) looked like new with a little dedicated cleaning! A good scrubbing and some vinyl protectant and cleaner had the lower pads looking amazingly nice.

Even the glove box door pad was almost new-looking when cleaned up!  The previous owner was a smoker and there was a couple of burn marks on the pad above the ashtray and the ashtray door itself needed cleaning up and the door repainted but, unless you looked real close, the pad looks perfect!

Looking at your work on here, your Charger is going to be fantastic!

Thanks!  Must have been nice to have so many nice original parts.  Unfortunately for me, almost everything on this car that's original was not in very good shape and needed to be completely restored.  What's been nice though is that since every piece needs to be restored and we didn't want to have anything that's not to the quality of the rest of the car... basically everything is being restored/detailed back to "like new" condition.  A ton of hours have gone into the restoration and detailing of even seemingly insignificant parts.  I keep telling myself it'll all be worth it in the end.....

I have the 3-speaker dash too.  My speakers were restored, but I don't think I have any "before" pics of them.  I'll see if I can find one.

[tan top]

  charger looks awesome !!   

nice work 

[charge69]

It WILL be worth it in the end !!!!!!  Keep up the great work and keep moving forward!

[xs29bb1]

A while back I posted a thread regarding a guy who did repro Window Stickers for Chargers - I don't recall the thread, but I know I posted up the guy's phone number.  

Anyway, here are some photos of the one I got from that guy.  It's two pages in my case.  Sorry the photo quality is awful, just snapped them w/ the phone - so I did a 2nd shot of each page closer up so you can hopefully read most of it.  

I wound up getting a paper copy and a couple laminated ones to use at shows and whatnot.

Oh, and nothing's crooked on these, it's just my lousy photos.  I'm sure they don't look 100% legit, but what do you guys think?

[charge69]

That was one highly optioned Charger! At least you know where yours was sold to the original owner.  Looks great to me!

My Charger was bought from the second owner in 1976 and he bought it from the original owner in 1971 but does not remember his name. No dealer sticker on it and it was apparently bought somewhere on the east coast new so, no way to trace it!  Oh well, I can take refuge in the fact that the fellow I bought it from took pretty good care of it and sold it cheap to me back in 1976.

I am looking forward to you finishing this magnificent Charger!

[fy469rtse]

  they never built them this good, very nice job , noticed in photo's those electric motors for glass,
You going have those gone through,  ?  best people I know on electric motors ,
Passion for mopars, there on here

[xs29bb1]

they never built them this good, very nice job , noticed in photo's those electric motors for glass,
You going have those gone through,  ?  best people I know on electric motors ,
Passion for mopars, there on here

Hey thanks. My understanding is they're in perfect working order. If not, I'll look them up - thanks again. 

[xs29bb1]

That was one highly optioned Charger! At least you know where yours was sold to the original owner.  Looks great to me!

My Charger was bought from the second owner in 1976 and he bought it from the original owner in 1971 but does not remember his name. No dealer sticker on it and it was apparently bought somewhere on the east coast new so, no way to trace it!  Oh well, I can take refuge in the fact that the fellow I bought it from took pretty good care of it and sold it cheap to me back in 1976.

I am looking forward to you finishing this magnificent Charger!

Actually that dealership is likely not correct. What I do know is that the car had been in the Denver area it's whole life.  The guy I got the car from only had it for a year and he never touched it or got the title transferred to his name. He bought it with the intent to restore it but never did. The owner before that had the car since 1978. He got the car from someone else, also in Denver, but unfortunately that person is now deceased so I couldn't trace it back any further than that.

So as far as I know I'm at least the 3rd owner, and 2nd since 78 (not counting the guy who had it for a year, never registered it in his name or even touched the car). There could have been one owner or 10 owners from 68 to 78, I don't know

For the sticker, I just had the guy find a dealership that was in that area in 1967 and just went with that. It was the best I could do

[charge69]

I see.  Well, it might have actually been sold by that dealership but, I guess you will never know for sure.  It is still a nice touch to have a repro window sticker. Besides, your Charger is still one of the most highly optioned ones I have seen! 

If those window motors are still working great, just clean them up and paint them and call it even!  How many times are you going to use them anyway? Cannot imagine it will be much and if they fail later, you can always remove them at that time pretty easily for a rebuild.

[xs29bb1]

Been a while since the last real update.  The show is this weekend, so we're coming down to the final stretch.....  as I mentioned previously because we got screwed on the dash it needed to be re-restored.  Not only that, but as expected most of the gauges didn't even work, so they needed to be fixed.  Obviously this took time that was not expected and held up the rest of the interior.  Finally, the entire dash went in late last night.  

While waiting for the instrument cluster to come back from Redline, the car went back over to body/paint for color sanding, polishing, etc to clean up after the resto work.  Planned to do all of this at the end, but w/ a bit of downtime they decided to move it up and the plan is to do any minor work that may be needed Friday afternoon.  

Oh and did I mention..... she ran for the first time today!!    

She sounds great - I have a couple of quick vids, but I guess I can't post them up.  Oh, also - got the car registered and insured, so we should be able to drive it in to the show, provided we make it.  I called the DMV and my black CA plates are definitely clear, but I need to wait a month or two for Sacramento to "officially" give me word I can use them.

One of the guys took a photo of his reflection after the car came back from polishing (the mirror finish on this thing is crazy).  I also put in one of the vin tag back in the car, and two shots from late last night - one showing the front bumper and valance in, and the other is a shot of the dash.  (even though you can't see much w/ it being so dark, I thought the rays of light coming through made it a cool pic)

The windows and interior are going in as I write this... glass goes in tomorrow, along w/ the continuation of the interior.  Hopefully, she'll be sent out for alignment either Thursday afternoon or Friday morning.  Gonna be tight on schedule, but it's getting close.... still might make it!

[Nickrc3]

I've been following your thread from day 1 - absolutely outstanding!!!

Can you identify the shade of blacks and manufacturer/distributor used on the front grill and the dash assembly?

[xs29bb1]

I've been following your thread from day 1 - absolutely outstanding!!!

Can you identify the shade of blacks and manufacturer/distributor used on the front grill and the dash assembly?

I believe Landau Black was used on the grille and the vents - I'm not 100% certain the same was used on the dash - I'd have to check.

[xs29bb1]

Glass going in....

[VegasCharger]

Great progress!   Hope I get to see your Charger this weekend.
Curious I noticed that there's a texture to your dash frame in your VIN pic.
I redid my dash frame on my 68 and it's a smoother texture than yours is. Was this a preference or should I consider redoing mine with a rougher texture?

Thanks