73 SE body work thread-father and son project

[billrabe]

My son Seth and myself are currently restoring a Florida 73 SE that we bought last fall. The back story is that he and I had initially purchased a 73 SE a few years ago and he was 14 at the time. My older son and I were restoring a 66 Mustang and I bought the SE for my younger son to slowly work at. He spent about a year just trying to take parts of the car off by himself as I was too busy working on the Mustang to assist. I invested in a full floor panels, trunk panels, rear floor panels, gas tank, paint gasket kit, heater box kit, body bumper kit and a few odds and ends. Last summer we finished up the 66 Mustang and I turned my attention to the Charger and discovered severe frame damage that I didn't feel was fixable given our meager skills. As we started to look at the car we noticed that the hood was a Superbee hood with a Superbee insert. We looked around and found another 73 SE with an power windows and power sunroof that had been "restored" and upgraded from a 318 to a 1972 440 engine, rewired using a Painless harness and POR 15ed throughout with some putty work over the rear quarters. It looked pretty good compared to what we were starting with. The floors had been replaced and the under seat area and trunk had some galvanized metal patches. The rear SE quarter window panels were filled in and the vinyl top deleted. After tearing into the car, it became evident that the repair work was not the finest and the floors were welded on top of the rusted out old floors and the old metal had not been cut off. Also, the floors and trunk patches were not welded to the frame. The exhaust system dragged on the ground whenever the car bounced but at least it ran and drove. The Painless wiring harness was only partly hooked up and multiple wires were fed through the firewall without a grommet. We noticed that the suspension was worn out but there were new K frame isolator bushings. We removed everything from the car and fashioned some brackets for our Whirly Jig Rotisserie and had the car blasted.  There were a lot of rust through areas now visible in the cowl, firewall, boomerang area of the quarter window, trunk gutter but the frame was excellent and most of the rest of the car was sound. We cut out the floor and rear floors (the PO had replaced with two separate floor pans-driver and passenger-and had welded a thick bead around the patches causing significant warpage). We then turned our attention to our cowl and noticed rust through areas all over the place inside the car on the firewall part of the cowl. The "hat" in the passenger area of the cowl had rusted away. A bad rainstorm would have flooded the car. Having dealt with cowl issues on the 66 mustang with a new cowl we set about to find another cowl and firewall and noticed a discussion on this site about the new E body firewall and cowls and the possible similarities. Taking a gamble, I ordered both the cowl and firewall (with clips) and we removed the firewall and cowl (several hundred spot welds!). We cleaned up the metal, applied Rust Bullet to the inner frame, 3M weld through primer on the weldable areas, traced the frame on the floor pan and drilled and punched holes for plug welding the front floor pan and today we welded in the floor. It fit great, needing a little convincing in places with a ball peen hammer to meet the frame. Afterwards, we clamped the firewall to the front of the floor and the cowl sides and welded it in. I am happy to report that the 70-74 E Body Firewall with AC works fine on the 73 Charger. The cowl looks like it will work but will need to have parts of the old cowl welded onto the top to form the windshield channel. The first picture is the original Charger we bought, the second photo of my other son and the 66 Mustang we did together, the third shows the second (and current) 73 Charger SE we bought. More photos to follow.

[billrabe]

More photos of the project.

[billrabe]

Getting the car ready for sandblasting.

[billrabe]

Glass slurry blasting. The company that did the project had not used this process before. It consists of using glass beads at low pressure in a water stream and was very good at removing rust, paint, undercoating. The panels were not subjected to high pressure or heat. Highly recommended and no need to worry about the effect of soda blasting on painting.

[billrabe]

The firewall and cowl appeared reasonably clean but were not glass slurry blasted because the contractor ran out of glass slurry. We cleaned it up using wire cup wheels.

[billrabe]

There are several hundred spot welds to be drilled out connecting the front floor and rear floors to the frame and the cowl to the firewall and the firewall to the front cowl supports. We used a combination of 3/8 inch drills, Blair spot weld cutters, hammer and body chisel, pneumatic chisel and grinding to free them all. After the panels were removed/separated, the remaining metal was ground using a flap disk, straightened and coated with weld through primer.

[billrabe]

The cowl itself has some rust spots but the firewall section was so rusty to be unsalvageable. Luckily I ran across a post here on this forum that the E body firewall should be the same as a B body firewall.

[billrabe]

Determining if the new cowl is similar enough to the old cowl.

[billrabe]

It looks like the new firewall (E body) is very close to the B body firewall for the 73 Charger!

[billrabe]

Welding begins!

[billrabe]

I bought out every welding clamp I could find in Elk River, MN!

[billrabe]

It was very difficult to get the cowl welded to the cowl supports and then match up the floor and the cowl intersection. Lots of clamps were needed and gentle persuasion using ball peen hammers and using a floor jack to lift the bottom of the firewall up to the floor.

[billrabe]

More welding and clamping! It went very fast once we got into it. We welded using a Hobart welder, 23 gauge solid core wire with Argon/CO2 shielding gas with settings 2 amps and 35 speed with very little burn through. It was my son's first welding experience and he did almost every weld!

[billrabe]

Our next project will be trunk, trunk drop off and quarter replacement. The wheel wells are in good shape, the trunk panels from AMD and the quarters from Tabco seem to fit well. I will post more as that part of the project progresses!

[jdiesel33]

That is awesome you guys. Regardless of how the cars turn out, the bonding and time spent together doing all of this invaluable!! And it just so happens the cars are turning out great too!!!

[AirborneSilva]

Great work, thanks for sharing the pics