My '72 Challenger project

Got a call when I was away for work last week to tell me that my parts had arrived & where ready to be collected… happy days… so I headed out this week with the trailer & got my boxes of happiness…



I’ve unboxed everything to make sure that I have everything I need & to ensure that nothing is damaged, because my old grille was held on with rivets I decided to get a new one to fit correctly to the car when I get to that stage of reassembly, my parts catalog for YearOne is from 2011 & so some things have changed over time… for example back in 2011 you could get the grille in silver or black… now it’s silver only, so that’s what I got… not an issue as I’ll be re-spraying the car anyway



You may recall that there were a few tiny rust bubbles on the bottom of the doors, I won’t know how bad that is until I strip the paint off, so I ordered a set of lower rust repair panels to use depending on how bad the rust is… to be honest it looks like nothing… but a good coat of paint could be hiding anything…



The drivers floor section has a patchy fiberglass repair on it, so I have a new repair panel to go in



There are some bad rust bubbles on the driver’s side lower sill, just in front of the rear wheel, so I have full sill replacements now for both sides



I’ve never been happy with either the front or rear valence panels on the car, they are bent & dented a little too much for my liking, so I got a new set…



Of course let’s not forget the big bit… my shiny new perfect firewall panel… it looks great, so happy with the quality of all the bits really…



Now I probably could have reused my old cowl section to go back on top the firewall when I replaced it… but I’ve gone this far so no point in cutting corners now… so I have a shiny new cowl too



Together they look like this….



I also got new side sections that join the firewall to the floor pan.. again who knows if I actually need them, but I’d rather have them here & not need them that need them & not have them…

It’s been a while since I’ve updated this… things are happening, just not as quickly as I would have liked.. but it’s my own fault, I’m travelling a lot for work & I refuse to let my panel beater mate work on the car without me there helping & learning, but I won’t rush things or do things half arsed if I can help it, so it is what it is….

First up was removing the center console, fairly simple step really… remove the shifter handle & then the top plate screws off, I noticed that this plate is bent a bit & the finish on it is pretty tatty.. so I’ll probably replace that





With the top plate off I can get to the screws that hold the console in, most of the retaining holes are snapped off & it has always wobbled about as a result & it has lots of extra speed holes drilled into the sides from years of CB/Radio/Phone kit installs I guess, so I figure I’ll replace this too whilst I’m at it.



Now you may remember that I had that one wiper arm that I couldn’t get off as it had been glued on using some bonding material of unknown origin, so I had no option but to cut that off in the end…



Now, let me introduce you to my new fave tool…. The humble spot weld drill bit, these little buggers are fantastic for what they do, the premise is simple they are flat so that you can just drill through the spotweld in the top panel & not drill through the second panel, now sometimes they do bite in & in the panel is thin they just rip through both… but all in all they are very easy to use, sadly rust seems to blunt them quicker than good metal & they are not the cheapest little things..



I just realised that I never took a pic of the process that I used to peel the panels apart… but it goes like this:

Find spotweld
Drill out the spotweld being careful not to drill through both panels
Once all the welds are drilled, get a cold chisel place it against the seam of the two panels you want to separate (between two of the drilled spotwelds)
Belt chisel with a hammer & it will lift the two panels apart, then just chisel & lift as you work your way around the panel

First thing I did was to grind back the paint on the panels to clearly show me where all the spot welds where.. the “placement” of spot welds show me that this car was clearly build by Roberts & not by Robots.. some didn’t even join the panels..



Then drill them out



Then peel back the panel using the hammer & chisel



Once you’ve made it all the way around the panel you’d be amazed how easily it all comes apart… so now the old Upper Cowl is off

The pile of crap removed is growing…





Also used this time to remove the smaller sections that I had patch panels for… again can’t say enough for the quality of these parts, they fit almost perfectly & at most need a tiny tap with a hammer to get they lined up 100%





Next up was to offer up the new firewall & see how much “massaging” if any this would need to fit…



This trail fitment went far better that I had ever expected it too… I had envisioned many hours of me cursing & throwing tools around & regretting having ever started this stupid repair attempt… I have a spot welder, but when we tested it, it really wasn’t working…





So we decided that plug welds where the way to go… so next up where for me to mark out & predrill the holes for the plug welds (basically picked the spot between the old spot welds)

Then the day came to offer up the firewall, this would be a two stage process… step one was to bond the panel to the car using a Sikaflex bonding agent, so we put a layer of Sikaflex around the panel edge



Then we clamped the firewall on… it’s a bit fiddly to get it all lined up perfectly… but again I cannot speak highly enough of these new panels… luckily between me & my mate we had enough clamps… just.. note to self, next time you see clamps on special buy them all…





This was then left for a week for the Sikaflex to fully cure before the clamps where removed



Then I had to go around & remove the Sikaflex from within all of the pre-drilled holes that needed to be plug welded, to be honest that was the worst job of all so far in this whole process… once that was done then we plug welded each hole… then we started to test fit the upper cowl panel to ensure that that would be a perfect fit too





Took this time to mark out where the cowl panel will be welded to the firewall, then buffed off the paint where the welding would happen & ground back the welds on the firewall to be flush like a spot weld would have been





I’ve also predrilled & dressed the cowl panel in prep for its impending union with the firewall

Another quick update… good progress was made on the weekend here, it was time to mock up the front chassis rails for fitment to the car.

The process I used was to bolt back on the K-Frame to the two chassis rails & then to measure all the datum points that I had taken of the gaps between the original rails prior to cutting them off. I didn’t take a pic of them (I think I need an official photographer at this stage) but the large bolts that mount the K-Frame have a tapered shoulder so when they are tightened up they center the K-frame on the chassis rails. Once the K-Frame was tightened up the gaps where almost spot on front & rear. Then we fitted up the front upper & lower rad supports to tie that section together again to the same measurement specs that we had taken from the original piece before removal. This was a very fiddly process that took a long time with lots & lots of measuring distances & angles & lots of tapping of things to get an angle or measurement spot on that of course then put another angle or measurement out… but after what seemed like several hours we had this…



Then I bolted & welded my engine leveler to the k-Frame & used my engine hoist to get the whole assembly up in the air, this made it very easy to move around & the leveler made it very easy to set the angle of the structure to the angle that the car is on.. once we moved it into place we were able to position & clamp the chassis rails where they have to connect onto the existing sub-frames.. again several rounds of measuring & checking & taping & re-measuring & re-tapping where required.. then as we got each piece to the exact location it needed to be we started to put some tack welds on to stop things moving as we fettled the large frame on.. we also took this time to test fit the windscreen & I’m happy to say that we have the exact same gap all around the screen that the original had to within .5mm.. I never got a pic of the window in as I wasn’t taking a lot of brakes to capture the moment.. but this is the frame tacked on







It was finally starting to look like a car again…

Now I didn’t get any pics of it (will do later) but there is a some bog in the outer sides of the boot floor I noticed & on the inner panel that joins the boot floor to the rear Qtr.. I didn’t have the time or the heart to start digging to see how bad that is, so I just decided that it’s better to have the new panels handy in case I need them… so I got a set





Then I decided, feck it & I got a whole new boot floor too…. I opted for the two separate halves option as I’m told the one piece floor is a bugger to install if you don’t remove the rear Qtrs & I really don’t want to so that…



I hope that I don’t need to use all of these new panels & there is only patches that need to be cut out & replaced, but as you’ve probably guessed by now I don’t do things by half, so whatever needs to be done I’ll do… & who knows maybe one day I’ll even be finished….

Now you may remember that when I was taking the front off the car & unbolted the nose that it snapped off where it had been bonded to the driver’s side guard… well here’s a refresher pic anyway…



Well I cut that little bit of front off so I could re-fiberglass it back onto the front nose & what did I find behind it…. A ********ton of bog…



Now I know what you’re thinking, how much bog on a flat panel surface is considered a ********ton…. Try the best part of 10mm



Now the bonnet is also not really perfect either, it’s got more of a curve in the passenger side than it does on the driver’s side & some of the support bracing underneath is cracked



So I’ll do some soul searching over Xmas & decide if I fit what I’ve got or just buy new panels & not fix these ones… my concern would be just how bad are then one I have them blasted back to bare metal…

I was having a real hard time with the bonnet, it just didn’t seem to want to shut properly & I couldn’t figure it out as I’m using brand new hinges… well it turned out that the new drivers side hinge is fouling in 3 spots, not on the bonnet, not on the inner guard but on itself… first the spring end fouls on the bracket



Then the upright support is too thick & it sticks right between two of the coils of the spring





& finally the stopper tab is too large & it also fouls on the spring…



So that’s another issue to sort later, there is an aftermarket set of billet hinges that uses struts & not springs that I might opt for… we’ll see how good Santa is too me I guess…

Right it’s been a while since I updated this thread, work has been ongoing but I’ve just been slack at the thread updating part of this…

I got sick of looking at the vinyl roof on the car so I decided it was time to rip that off, plus I’ve grown tired of nobody believing me that the roof under there is fine, so I undid all the side bright work so I could peal the top off





Then with the trim removed from the rear window I was able to simply peel the roof off, interestingly the passenger side was really well glued on, but there was little to nothing holding down the driver’s side, I suspect that the glue had gone off before that side was being pushed down… no wonder it was peeling up, definitely an example of how not to install a vinyl roof…







The roof whilst sticky now in large parts, looks great.. no damage or rust, in fact the guy that installed it never even scored up the paint to give the glue something to bond too… unfortunately the chrome trim than ran around the base of the roof was installed correctly using the pop in clips & I now have a collection of small holes that I don’t want & will have to fill…







With the vinyl roof off there are actually some nice lines in the roof that you really couldn’t see, the angle that the roof slopes down towards the rear window is much more pronounced now



Also the curve at the base of the roof where it joins the roof looks so much better with the vinyl & the chrome trim there… looking forward to see it in shiny paint eventually…

Next up was fuel tank removal… nice & easy really, just supported it with my transmission jack, undid the straps & lowered it down out of the way…





Now with the tank out of the way you can see where someone has had a go at putting in a new boot floor here before, now instead of removing the whole floor looks like they decided to only replace the back half of the floor, as you would expect a halfarsed job was done on this…





Next up was to pull the bumper off, that would then show the extend of the rot behind… yeah it’s pretty bad… guess who’s buying more repair panels from the US…





There was also a little bubble on top corner of the boot channel, nothing too big



Also bought a new tool… a door jack to make the removal & refit of the doors a one man job (in theory)



Now for the fun bit… I get to play with the plasma cutter again, out with the old floor(s)

It seems that someone had installed… well that’s a strong word to use, someone had inserted an additional set of inner boot sides between the rear Qtr & the existing boot floor sides… looks like they literally belted them in place with a hammer & then wedged them in place with old cut up spanners… I can only assume that the mechanical genius here went on to work in F1 or for NASA, if not I’m sure you’ll agree that they are a wasted talent…







I opted to just cut the Qtr panel to get the stupid old floor out in the end as that particular Qtr panel has a few bad spots & I can see a full replacement panel in its future to be honest…..



I needed to drop the rear springs down to give me more room & to take the strain off the rear chassis rails as I start playing around back here, so first up I cut the exhaust off as it wasn’t designed to be bolted off the car in pieces



Then I was able to use my trusty transmission jack to take the weight of the diff to allow me to unbolt the end shackles & disconnect the rear springs

My new Bonnet turned up & it looks pretty bloody good.. there are some slight imperfections towards the front where the crease line for the central bulge runs down, I suspect that this is a stamping crease line & that they all have them… it’s nothing major & a tiny skim of filler (or a 2nd coat of high fill) will cover it up.. my panel beater wants to massage it out a bit more before we get to the filler stage, but it’s such a small imperfection I not fussed





A new set of door hinges too….



The new guards also turned up & they look great,







The only thing I would have liked to see on them is the holes for the side gills pre-drilled… so now I’ll have to go google the exact measurements needed for their placement…





Also these guards have the cutouts for the side marker lights to be installed in, now my car never had them when I got it.. both the front & the rear side marker holes where covered up & I think that I’ve really grown to like the smooth lines that that gave to the side profile of the car so I think that I’ll cover them up on the new guards too

Wow, it s been a while since I ve updated this thread.. I ended up spending a little over two months out of the country there in April & May & then when I got back there was a lot to catch up on long story short I m a long way off where I had expected to be by now but for those of you following along at home this is where I m at now.



Ok, so this update starts with more new boxes . I m on first name terms with the shipping & customs guys by now.. so I headed out to the airport the other week to collect my goodies..







So what s in the box Dave I hear you ask well there a few bits as you probably tell by the number & size of the boxes I have the under boot floor brace sections with the new fuel tank mounting brackets, the rear beaver panel that sits behind the bumpers & two rear chassis rail sections I m wasn t 100% if I would need the chassis rail sections, but they were relativity cheap & I figured I d order them & be happy if I didn t need them rather than discover later that I did need them & then have to wait weeks for them to turn up







I also order two complete inner wheel houses







& of course two full rear Qtrs











Once I started to remove the paint & what turned out to be a lot of bog on the top of the rear Qtr where it joins the roof I started to suspect that this was not the cars original Qtr on this side, I m pretty sure that the lead & bog work are not factory..











Where the Qtr joins the door jam doesn t look too bad







The lower section on the sill is buggered, but as you may remember I have two complete sills already so I can replace that easily enough

Once I had all the easy to hack off bits hacked off then it was time to break out my trusty spot weld drill bit & drill out all the welds that held the inner wheel well to the support structure & the weld that held the guard to the inner door etc















Then whilst cleaning bits up I discovered that the rear panel beneath the rear window is also badly rusted & has had a halfarsed fiberglass & bog repair carried out on it, so that s another section to be repaired added to the list now







I also started to have a look at what would be required to swap out the rear chassis rail sections should I decide to do that











Then to cheer myself up I decided to test fit the new Qtr so I can see just how much fettling is going to be needed to get all the bodylines to match up.. the first test fitment went well, looks like it won t be too much drama (fingers crossed of course)