Back in the saddle!

[DadsCharger00]

Hate to quit...

BEAUTIFUL!

[lloyd3]

Thankyou.  I'll never make it as a geek, I just tried to upload a photograph from 2-years ago of the same shot except the body had just returned from the media-blasters and its just a bare metal shell.  It's something like 63KB and the site won't accept it. Go figure?

[lloyd3]

Sometime in 2007? The pre-golf cart era and one I hope to enjoy again fairly soon

[bakerhillpins]

WOW   

I love your car!  UU1 is beautiful     Someday Ill get my 69 back to Q5!  So happy to hear you have it back on the road and can enjoy it now.

[lloyd3]

Thank you. I believe there were three different colors of blue available on Chargers in 1968, and it seems that UU-1 was the least popular.  I remember a friend in highschool who had what I think was a UU-1 Coronet, but I don't really remember any others.  Maybe the odd Polara wagon or some other grocery-getter, but nothing really memorable.  This car also has a C6B Frost Blue interior, which wouldn't have been my first choice either, but when I was looking for a good four speed car in the mid-1990s (on a fairly strict budget!) my choices were somewhat limited.  Over the 16-years I've owned the car, the color has grown on me to where I'm fairly pleased with it now.  As a younger man, I was a big fan of the high-impact colored cars (Sublime, Go-Mango, etc.), but time has tempered my tastes to allow for appreciation of the more subtile. It must be a married w/children thing.

[Ghoste]

I like the blue colors but the UU1 is certainly a choice that I can see not being for everybody.  You did good to keep it in my opinion, it looks fantastic.

[ErikH]

Odd that you are from Parker...I'm just South of you in Black Forest.  Your car looks just like mine except mine has hubcaps.

[DadsCharger00]

I'm out in thornton. Give me a holler!!!

[lloyd3]

Thanks Ghoste for the kind words.  Light blue seems to fit my situation, so I just stayed with it. It also works fairly well with the black vinyl roof (and I'm not really a vinyl roof fan normally, I don't think I've ever even owned one before).  I have seen cars where changing the color (and other things) is a value-add, but for mostly original cars I'm a stickler for keeping them that way.  I guess it's also part of the nostalgia for me to open a hood and recognize everything, so mine still has it's factory dual-point and 4428s carb too.  Even my paint is now back to what it should be.  When I bought it the car, it had been painted (most likely in 1990) in a modern base-coat/clear coat style.  My restorer, being the very definition of old-school, likes to paint with the original-type Chrysler sanded primers and acrylic (?) enamels, so I agreed to go with that (I hate it when the clear coat crazes after a few years anyway).  I guess I'm in the Turtle Wax camp again.

DadsCharger00 - I'm game for a get-together, but let's wait until I finally get this car back.  Erik - Unusual that two 44-year old UU-1 cars should end up surviving and being so close together.  How is yours equipped?

[lloyd3]

Finally!  Before paint in 2010.

[lloyd3]

From the front in 2010.  With the new AMD fender and hood.

[ErikH]

DadsCharger00 - I'm game for a get-together, but let's wait until I finally get this car back.  Erik - Unusual that two 44-year old UU-1 cars should end up surviving and being so close together.  How is yours equipped?

My R/T is 440, 727, PS, Power drum brakes, black top (originally white) black stripe (originally stripe delete) and A/C.  Blue interior with console.  Not much else...rear radio speaker (not sure about how stock that is).  I don't know what the stock wheels were but I liked the look of the red-centered hubcaps so that's what she has now.  She needs an engine swap but I'm backlogged with my other cars...but I'm getting there.

[lloyd3]

Here's part of why I believe this was a drag car for many years.  Any excess metal in the interior had been removed (replacing it was quite a process) and there were indications of a fuel pump and battery box in the trunk.  The rear quarters had been reskinned as well.

[lloyd3]

New carpet, headliner and even cats-whiskers for the windows means everything comes out.

[lloyd3]

ErikH:  So yours is a 1968 UU-1 R/T automatic?  Very nice.  Did you ever find your build sheet(s)?  Mine are non-existant.

[hatersaurusrex]

I have to ask the obvious question:  Did you do a disc conversion?

[lloyd3]

Considering my history with this car, I can understand your question.  The answer is no.  Until my accident, the brakes were more than adequate for the way I was using it.  I don't drive the car in heavy traffic very much (if ever) anymore.  Driving in the Denver Metroplex these days is nothing more than wading through a glut of humdrum econoboxes and minivans (LA anyone?), and is way more brain-damage than it's worth (& the car is frankly an attractive nuisance, w/people gawping instead of paying attention to what they should be doing) so.... I head into the great wide open, which is south and east of me.  Nice little two lane roads with only minimal traffic that connect nice, little, two-horse towns.  All I need is a gas station and an occasional watering hole (or a Dairy Queen) and I'm happy.

Before the accident, I knew the brakes weren't working as well as they once did, but I was having issues in other areas of my life and didn't feel up to dealing with them.  That certainly contributed to what was an expensive mistake (about $26K now and counting). Now that my brake booster is refurbished and the shoes and drums are up to snuff, I'm hoping my big 11x3s are up to the task again (a job they've done admirably for 44-years now).  With that said, if my next sojourn makes me feel uneasy about braking performance, I'll certainly revisit that option.

[ErikH]

ErikH:  So yours is a 1968 UU-1 R/T automatic?  Very nice.  Did you ever find your build sheet(s)?  Mine are non-existant.

I believe I did find it.  It's in my parts manual...I haven't researched it much though.

[lloyd3]

Erik:  Do you know where your car was made (Dodge Main?) and when (i.e. the born-on date)?  Mine is very late in 1968 (July 5th).

[ErikH]

I'm not sure how to find out that information.  My parts book/build sheet is back in NM at my Dads house.  My car has the earlier type (slide down) of ash try.  That is my only bit of data.

[lloyd3]

Erik: It's been so long since I've done it, I've forgotten how exactly.  The information on the fender tag identifies where a car was built and when (using a variant of the Julian Calendar system).  Information on the pad near the distributor does the same for the engine block.  Four speed transmissions have stampings on a pad near the shift arms and automatic transmissions have stampings on the passenger-side top of the bell-housing (I believe) that even includes part of the VIN of the vehicle they were originally installed in. Someone will either remind us here how that is done or I'll end up searching through my stuff (or the internet) to find it again.

[ErikH]

I have my restoration guide which can step me through the decode.  I'll have a go at it this weekend.

[grizparker]

http://www.stockmopar.com/mopar-fender-tag-decoder.php?vin=AAA

Easy peezy

[lloyd3]

Grizparker:  Thanks!  Much quicker than Galen!  I just finished going through "the 1970 Hamtramck Registry" which has been included in another post here, and learned a few things (that I might have already known but had somehow forgotten).  Chargers were made in only two places in 1968, St. Louis or Hamtramck (IE. Dodge Main).  The 7th digit in the VIN identifies where a car was made.  "G" is St. Louis and "B" is Hamtramck.  R/T cars are XS29, anything else wearing R/T badging is a clone.  R/T cars had only two engine options, 440 or 426 Hemi, all R/T 4-speed cars were Dana 60 equipped... What else, oh yes, the codes for blue paint in 1968 were EE, QQ and UU which were Dark Blue, Bright Blue and Light Blue respectively.  This is yesterday's news for some of the old-timers and die-hards here, but some of the newbies might not know this dogma quite yet.

[lloyd3]

Tomorrow is the big day.  Long in coming and with many setbacks and false alarms.  Plan is to get it home and then settle in for the long "inspection". The final payment is over twice what was quoted 18-months ago, but somehow seems insignificant.