My '68 Charger resto/build!

[moparnation74]

It will look like shit on paper or in the KBB, but great in person! 

Now that is a true MOPAR guy there

I'm just following my dreams!    But really! A 2nd gen Charger is the best car ever made! It is classic, gorgeous, and badass at its finest! I'm beyond proud to join the club and own one! 

Absolutely!  You were in the club before you knew it brother

[MxRacer855]

Standby for some really cool pics in a few weeks when it comes back from the shop. I was just being lazy and never felt like getting the build thread going. I knew it would be exciting once it got rolling, I just didn't want to get it started. The biggest pain really was in the uploading of the pics. Having to resize everything and rename it was a nightmare. I've done it so much now that it's super exciting to just keep rolling along. Unfortunately, I'm currently all caught up now and have to wait. I do have a bunch of before and after pics of interior stuff and other parts that I could post in the meantime (steering column, dash frame, seats/tracts, etc)

Maybe I'll start putting that up too.

I want to see some pics of that black '69 you got there Moparnation! That looks like my cup of tea! 

Jeff

[fy469rtse]

  we will be waiting ,

[RIDELIKEHELL]

Great progress 

[MxRacer855]

Thanks guys! 

[fy469rtse]

While are waiting Jeff,
Put up what you did in between , metal work and such , any photos are good 

[MxRacer855]

Okay! I will say this though... I'm obviously doing this build my way. I know the purists will hate me for NOT color coding everything correctly and using OEM bolts, but that's okay! A lot of the original bolts were missing anyway. 90% of the stuff I replaced, I replaced with Grade 8 steel.

My friend owns a powdercoating business. It's super tough stuff! So I opted to powdercoat most of my metal parts vs. rattle canning them or spraying them.

The seat foam was older, but still in good shape and the seats were recovered recently (during the previous build). I'll put them in the car and deal with them after it's running. They look great. I think they're Challenger seats.. but the company advertised in one of the last issues of Mopar Muscle will turn the two fronts into bucket seats eventually. That will be cool!

Anyway.. here's some stuff I got for ya!

Here's the seat tracks before and after:

[MxRacer855]

You can tell how horrible the spray paint job was. they didn't strip any of the old grease, rust, or paint. It was so rough and textured that it looked carpeted.

[MxRacer855]

Yuck. These things didn't even want to slide anymore because they were so bad.

[MxRacer855]

Seat hardware.

[MxRacer855]

Just like everything we sand blast and powdercoat, we go down to perfectly clean metal inside and out.

All for seat tracts were done the exact same way.

[MxRacer855]

Here's everything powdercoated and finished up with new grease and hardware. We went with Satin black on most of the interior stuff that I didn't want your attention to be drawn to.

Remember, both seats came out the exact same way.

[MxRacer855]

Some more pics...

[MxRacer855]

Here's the rear bumper support braces/brackets.

The flat pieces were replaced. At the time, I didn't know that AMD made reproduction ones. They just deteriorated too much. The rear bumper brackets however, were in great shape. they just had some pitting. You can't see them anyway. We powdercoated these gloss black. New hardware as well.

As for the front and rear bumpers, they were pretty much brand new. Put on during the last resto. They had minor surface rust on the inside portion, so we sanded that out and painted it silver to protect them (another part you can't see but have to do)! 

[moparnation74]

Powder coating is the way to go!  I took the time to pick and match the factory correct colors and powder coated almost everything on mine.  Including the dash frame in which I painstakingly picked the color/texture that matches the original factory finish.  I thought my powder coater was going to fire me, lol.

Great work as always!

[MxRacer855]

 , that's great to hear! I thought I was the only one powdercoating everything. It's so much stronger and will last forever. the colors are immensely rich as well. We're definitely NOT going that in depth with color (although I am becoming pickier ). Most of the blacks are either Satin, gloss, semi-gloss, flat, or wet (very polished look). There's a lot of silvers we're going to be using as well.

My dash was the one thing that we didn't powdercoat. My body guy painted that Satin black after we sand blasted it. it looks pretty good. There's a tiny dings that I wish we fixed, but you won't notice them. I think the color is a little too glossy as well. Too flat looks cheap and terrible, and too glossy reflects the light from oncoming traffic into your eyes. We did a good job, I just wish it was a tiny bit duller. Certainly wish it was powdercoated with the correct color like yours Mopar! Great job!

I was thinking about powdercoating the grille support after we sandblast that... it might be better off painted satin though... I went all black on my grille with new logos and chrome trim. I like the Argent silver, but I also like the ones that are all black. I don't want everything black on the car, but that is definitely one part that I think looks mean! I may leave the grille part black and paint the outer part that's supposed to be silver, silver again, in the future. we'll see. Excited for the black though!    I'll post pics of it.

Jeff

[jaak]

All the powder coated parts look great... well, everything looks great. 

Jason

[MxRacer855]

Thanks Jason! 

More to come. 

Jeff

[fy469rtse]

Jeff, those look like 70 charger seats to me, those in the know will pipe in shortly, but great job 
Geoff

[tsmithae]

Jeff, those look like 70 charger seats to me, those in the know will pipe in shortly, but great job 
Geoff

'70 Charger seats.

All that powder coat looks quite nice!   

[MxRacer855]

Yeah, I knew they weren't '68 seats. I actually thought they were Challenger seats. They pleated them and all. Looks good! We're going to have a company turn them into bucket seats everntually, so I don't feel so bad about altering original seats to my car.

Thanks for the knowledge though.  I'm happy that they're at least Charger seats! 

Jeff

[tan top]

 looking good  , nice work 

[MxRacer855]

Finishing touches before paint!  

Remember... A full Reilly Motorsports AlterKation kit is going up front... so the OEM K-member was left in there just to make the car easily moveable until it gets back in my garage.

[MxRacer855]

All of the body work is done except for the engine bay and fitting the front valance. 

[MxRacer855]

This is before they really started fixing all of the imperfections.