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Ok, so like most have said this is also a project thread I’ve copied & pasted from other forums I posted it in on the interweb & it covers my ownership both in Ireland & now here in Australia & it’s pretty long by now … Also something that will become very obvious to all very quickly is that I am by no means a mechanic & really haven’t got a clue what I’m doing here & most of what I’ve done I learned on the job, so I’m sure that there are better smarter more correcter ways of doing what I’ve done… but I’m having fun playing with it & that’s all that matters.

Right so lets start right at the beginning… this is how she looked the week I bought her & brought her home to my house in Hollystown at the time.. this house had no garage so our time living there post buying the Challenger was very short as we hunted a house with a garage big enough to take the car.







Once I had the car I started to put together a list of the things that I wanted to fix/change & I started to put together a bit of a plan in my head as to what I wanted from the car ultimately & that’s what the US call Restomod & I’ve recently ordered some big bits to kick that change off… but we’ll get to that in time when the pieces I’ve ordered get delivered. The car had a bad vibration when I bought her so I started down the path to find the fault & fix that, I pulled the driveshaft off to check the uni joints & they were very worn, so new uni joints where ordered as well as a new slip yolk… also the steering had a bit of play as you would expect from a 40 year old car & I tried to adjust it out with the built in shim adjuster but the box was too far gone, so I ordered a new quick ratio box for the car as well as some of the manuals







Some the first job was to pull the drive shaft off & have a look at the uni’s… well to say that they were stuffed is an understatement, they were so worn that the end that should be perfectly round looked like splined shafts the needle bearings had worn on them so much…



New uni’s where pressed in place to see if that would fix the issue, I had planned to swap out the slip yolk at this time also as I was lucky enough to have access to mate's lift to get easy access to the shaft… sadly the slip yolk they sent me was the wrong one…. So we just had to put the old one back in.. the new Uni’s made a huge difference to the car, but the vibration was still there, now just not as bad

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Then I decided to work on some of the simple little details that I felt would make the car what I wanted, I’ve always felt that sometime the simple small detail changes can make a huge difference to a car.. for example I really love the clean lines that my Challenger has from the side because a previous owner decided to remove & fill in both the front & rear side marker lights that a Challenger should have.. I just love how so many people have stared at her & said “it just looks different, I don’t know why it just does”… So I chose to replace the steering wheel which looked & felt like one from an 80’s arcade car racing game & I opted to go with a larger diameter Grant wood rimmed wheel, not only did it look much better now but the larger wheel made the steering feel lighter & easier at low speeds for parking & the likes



Then I decided that I just had to have the famous Pistol Grip shifter for my Challenger, in my mind this is an Iconic image for a Challenger… so out with the old



In with the new



Another iconic image I always had of Challengers was the flip top fuel cap… but they stopped fitting them as standard from ’72 on.. so mine just had a flat cap… so off that went too



& on went the race inspired flip top



I then changed the plain black plates you can see in the first pics for a set of US styled plates… as I said, for me it’s the small details sometimes that outweigh the big ones



By now the correct slip yoke turned up in the post so it off to find somewhere to allow me access under the car to pull the shaft yet again, my mates lift was full of Boss Stang at the time so a pit was found





Now this improved the vibration even further but it was still there, so I went looking for someone to balance the drive shaft & tried another 3 places… all of them told me that they couldn’t help & that none of their equipment could test or balance a shaft like mine…. Now whilst under the car this time I noticed that the inside of the drivers side rear wheel was covered in oil.. looked like the axel bearings has shat themselves… so I decided that this was a job too far for my skills & I farmed this one out… A guy in central Dublin was suggested to me & I was amazed to find a workshop & nearby lockup filled with ‘50’s & ‘60’s American cars in central Dublin… for obvious reasons I’m not going to post up the location here.. but if anyone has an American car that needs work done PM me & I’ll give you a good tip..

So back in the air she went again

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By now I had been doing a lot of driving in the old girl & I was feed up with the way the suspension was working, or not working as it was… so I ordered a shiny new set of adjustable shocks for her



Nice easy job, jack up a wheel at a time, pull the old shock off & fit the new one…



Old front vs new front



Old rear vs new rear



The new fronts made a massive difference & are fantastic I must say.. when the old rears where removed it was noted that they could not be compressed at all really they were almost solid, the new shocks even on the hardest of their 12 settings where way softer & this showed up the fact that the rear springs where shot too…. so a plan was hatched to replace them too, this hasn’t happened yet but the bits are ordered.. to give you an idea of what I’m doing google the Hoskitch E-Max Challenger..

I went for a long drive to the beach one day with my brother & his Camaro & on the way out the M50 the car started to develop a misfire… so whilst we ate some chips on the beach we pondered what that might be



We checked all the leads & noticed that they were badly cracked really & probably should be replaced… then once home I did a bit more poking around & found a cracked plug to be the issue



So I replaced the plugs all round & ordered a new set of leads to make up





Now putting the stupid clip ends onto the leads to make them up is a complete frontbottom of a job if your using the crappy little tool that they give you in the kit that has to be hit with a hammer… but it was all I had so it was round to a mates place for a helping hand to knock up some new leads.. how he still has all his fingers is anyone’s guess. I’m not happy with the lengths of the leads & I was out shopping today & I bought the correct professional crimping tool & I plan on recutting all the leads & making them up fresh again

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A few weeks later on another long drive she developed a new noise… I knew straight away what it was, once of the exhaust gaskets had blown… so back on the interweb & a new set ordered.. when I pulled the headers off there was so little of the old gasket left it wasn’t funny..



Doing this job whilst leaving the exhaust under the car all hooked up & leaving the engine in was actually very tricky, there isn’t as much wiggle room in the engine bay as you find with a Chev or a Ford of the same era.. whilst I was doing the exhaust gaskets I decided to also do the rocker cover gaskets & to retighten the rockers down to ensure the correct lash was set





That was the last of the work carried out on Irish soil.. I then just drove here the rest of the year before making the decision to leave this fair isle & return back to Melbourne, these are the last pics of her ever on Irish soil…





I took this one, just after I backed her into the container… my last view of Ireland from behind the wheel..



All tucked up for the trip



She must be the best travelled Challenger in the world now… started life in the US, then move to England, then Ireland & now in Australia…. Now whilst I was a bit cramped with her in my garage in Firhouse



I have no such issues with my new house here in Melbourne



So now this has us up to date with her arrival in Australia late last year… I’ll continue the story in a few days of what’s been happening & what’s been done & what’s been planned for her here down under

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So a few months passed where I was in Melbourne but the ship that my containers where on was stuck in Europe.. so what should have been 6 to 8 weeks without my stuff become a little over 12 weeks in the end, but all my stuff got here in one piece so I guess I should be grateful of that. The Aussie customs guys where a complete joke, even though both of my cars had been professionally cleaned before going into the shipping containers & when I say cleaned… they were spotless inside & out & undersides & under bonnet… But they deemed that they were dirty & needed to be steam cleaned before they could be released to me... so the costs I was given was:

Steam clean the cars at $656.50 per car x 2 = $1,313.00… yes you read that right 1063 Euro’s to steam clean 2 cars!!!!… clearly they need to get some polish lads over here quicksmart

Towing to & from accredited quarantine treatment location $338.00 per car x 2 = $676.00, as they hadn’t cleared customs I couldn’t drive them to be cleaned

Then the one that really made me feckin mad was a quarantine re-inspection fee of $304.20… yes that’s right after making me pay to get them steam cleaned at the one & only authorised cleaner in Melbourne I then had to pay for them to check that feckers work!!!! Surely if he’s your chief steam cleaning man then he shouldn’t need his work inspected… & for $1,313 I expect the cars to be cleaner than a fecking F1 car..

Oh & how did the cleaning work out I hear you ask…. They came back dirty… yep, they went away clean to be cleaned & came back covered in crap!!! I was going to scream blue murder at the time, but the guys in the warehouse said that if I complained that the cars where dirty then I ran the risk of the inspections guys demanding that I get them cleaned again… so I just took the cars & left..

I’ve since found out on several US car forums here in Australia that it is a well know scam & every single US car brought in gets this special revenue raising “wash”.. they reckon if the Range Rover had been on its own it would have been fine, but as they know how much money can be made importing US Muscle they sting everyone with this bull

Luckily the import taxes where a lot less than I was expecting & as such the total expense for the whole thing was less than I had budgeted for anyway..

I’ve been driving her very little the last few weeks as she’s not registered here yet… I have to get an engineer to sign off that she’s compliant to all the Australian design rules for 1972.. so she needs a bit of work:

The front lights need to be swapped as you’d expect as they point to the wrong side of the road, so I’ve stripped the front down.. interesting to note the colour of the light buckets..







Then I got a new set of Hella H4’s to go in



The issue that I now faced was that the small park light that’s built onto these sticks out to far to go into the bucket without me doing some surgery to the buckets.. something I was not keen on at all… after some further thinking on that, I made up a set of LEDs for them that when fitted almost sat flush with the light & could be just squeezed in without having to touch the buckets at all… happy days..





So now I have bright driving lights that point the right way too..



It looks like I also have to rework the rear lights as the US style blinking brake light may a no no here for a ‘72.. so I may have to rewire the car so that the reverse light is the indicator, having two orange lights for the reverse lights is fine (my XB had that from factory in ’75)

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The brake hoses are all have different dates stamped on them & two of them have no standards stamped so they have to go too…



So I got a set of braided hoses made up to replace the rubber ones











I’ve pulled the tail shaft out again, as I was never able to find someone who could balance it correctly in Dublin



Came back last week from the shop & they confirmed that it was out of balance & it shook their machine at around 2600.. which was pretty spot on to what I was sure was going to be the answer from them… so the newly balanced & painted shaft was back

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I’ll need to swap back to the original wheels when she’s being engineered as the Cragers are a two piece wheel & they were made illegal here in the 80’s as they can fall apart if you hit a bad enough pot hole (or some I’m told)



So this is how she’s sitting in the garage now for the last few weeks, as more bits are ordered & I find more things that really need to be fixed





The other thing that I need to do is to fit some extra mufflers to the exhaust as she has to pass a noise test at 3300 RPM & she’s miles over right now… will be fitting something that can be removed after she’s got her plates… sadly I can’t fit cut outs as they are very illegal & they can confiscate your car if your found to have them fitted… where as if I just refit a load exhaust it’s just a fine & I get 30 days to fix it.

I also need to replace the seat belts, the Chally has a set of two piece belts in the front, this means that you can wear them as a lap only belt or as a 3 pointed belt, but as the shoulder part is not retractable they have to go





Well Australia was ahead of it’s time in ’72 as they required proper drop link 3 point retractable belts in the front & 3 point retractable belts in the rear.. I’ve found a place that makes them to suit.. so I’ll be getting a set soon & bolting them in, the fronts will go straight into the existing holes, but as the rears are lap only I’ll have to fit some mounting brackets in the rear parcel shelf & both the belts to them.

I also have to pull the dash to replace the headlight switch as the one in their now only works for the park lights, to turn the lights fully on is a 2nd switch under the dash… I was lucky to find a NOS headlight switch on the net & that’s sitting on the bench in the garage along with the NOS windscreen washer bottle & pump that I need to fit as she’s not road legal without one.

NOS windshield washer kit



I also have a new handbrake cable to fit that came with the car when I bought her...

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I was making good progress on the project in the Skunk Works garage, however between lots of travel for work, just general being busy at work & the fact that I keep making the list of things I want to do to the car bigger & the resultant delay that adds not only in work effort but in the weeks it can take for parts to turn up from the states.. I’m still a ways away from having this all done. On the bright side I’ve been having a ball doing the work, it’s been years since I did any sort of big project work on a car & I’d forgotten just how satisfying it can feel when you’ve replaced or repaired something on your pride & joy.. now I’ll be the first to admit that none of what I’ve done is rocket doctorary in any way shape or form but I still get a warm happy feeling at the end of a long day in the garage when I can look at something & say, I did that… it’s a great way to unwind from my normal stressful job & my incredibly understanding better half has even taken to joining me in the Skunk Works to work on the car & I don’t mean just handing me tools, she’s in there getting her hands dirty, she is particularly fond of using the air tools I’ve found.

Anyway, back to the car.. so the lights are now sorted, well on the outside I still have to pull the dash apart to replace the headlight switch as it doesn’t work anymore & then whilst I’ve got the dash apart I have now also bought a new set of gauge lenses as the ones on the car are so badly scratched & foggy now that you can’t really see the gauges at all.. I’ve also ordered a new Quartz movement kit for the original Borg dash clock, these all failed in every Challenger & Cuda ever made, so I’m not going to pull the dash until I have the clock parts too & then I’ll do all 3 repairs at once.

NOS headlight switch



New Gauge cluster lenses



The next thing I figured I’d sort was the windscreen washers, as you saw in a previous post I found a NOS kit & bought that, now all I had to do was fit it into the engine bay & wire it up.. simple.. well no not really the space where it should live is now occupied by my vacuum tank for the brake booster..



A quick trail fit & it actually looked like it might just fit if I removed the vac tank & installed the washer reservoir first & then reinstalled the vac tank next to it



Once I had the vac tank off I noticed that it was rusting a lot around the central join it would need some cleaning up before I put it back in, later that day I happened to be at a car show & I spotted these for sale, so I figured you can never have enough chrome bling in the engine bay of a muscle car, so no need to tidy up the old one now.



Sorry for the pic quality or lack thereof but the camera focused on the wrong point… but you get the idea



The metal pipe that you see dangling in the air is for the charcoal canister that the car would have ran from the factory for emissions, as the canister is long gone & there is no room for a new one, I removed the pipe.. see just like Colin Chapman, I’m applying the lotus principle of adding lightness where I can…

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Next on the list of things to fix was to fit the new handbrake cable set that I got with the car when I bought her, now this sounded like a nice simple task, as the only parts of the old cable set-up that where still on the car was the flexi cables that connect into the rear drums & the flexi cable that runs up & into the footwell of the car & connects to the foot pedal that operates the E-Brake as the US would call it.

When I was ordering some new parts from US, I decided to get the full set of manuals for the car, so I have the Chassis, Body & Service manuals now & a complete set of the electrical diagrams.. should come in handy



The old cable had rusted itself to the car where it passes through the bodywork into the footwell, the old grommet had long perished & getting this old cable out took a lot of profanity to do the job properly



Old cable vs new



I went shopping for some new grommets so when I installed the new cable section into the footwell the cable would be protected somewhat, once I’ve finished & I’m sure the cable is not coming out again then I’ll fill the gap with some sealer to stop crap getting into the car, but until I’m 100% sure the cable doesn’t have to come out I’ll just leave her as is







Then it was onto the rears, I had to dismantle the rear drums to disconnect the cable from the handbrake adjuster in the drum



I hate undoing these stupid clips that hold on brake shoes, inevitably one always ends up shooting off into the furthest corner of the garage as the pliers slip off at some stage



Once undone I then removed the old cables, they had now set hard into an immovable shape, this did not ease the removal of them at all oddly enough

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Working with shiny new parts is always a dream, they are clean & tend to fit up nicely, installing the new cable ends was a breeze





Then I just had to install the adjuster bar & the actual cable part of the kit, I suspect that it’s actually supposed to be routed over the top of the exhaust but the exhaust on this car is practically touching the floor so there is no room at all to do it that way.. when I replace the exhaust I’ll sort this then, for now the car has a hand brake as the law requires to get her on the road & it works.. so job done.



If you look at that picture above you’ll see two fuel lines running the length of the car, one of them is the real fuel line & the other is a dummy as it’s not connected to anything at either end, I’m guessing that this is a safety device to confuse anyone trying to cut a fuel line on my car.. again in the guise of adding lightness & removing crap that’s not needed I’ll rip that off later.

Whilst working on the handbrake cable I decided to finally get around to fixing the very annoying leak that she has from the transmission, upon closer inspection I can see that there are two distinct issues here, one is that some prior owner damaged the drain bolt & rather than replacing it or fixing it opted for some NASA spec silicone to do the job.. this clearly hasn’t worked



Also they have (I’m assuming it’s the same captain silicone responsible) over tightened the bolts on the transmission pan & this has crushed the gasket & pushed it out the sides.. sorry for the blurry pic, but if you look at the bolts to the right of the in focus bolt you can just make out where the gasket is totally stuffed



I had bought a new pan for the car ages ago, but had never gotten around to fitting it as the only axle stands I had in Ireland where too small to actually get under the car properly to be able to comfortably work on her, so off came the old pan, you can see now that the old gasket was fully stuffed





Once the gasket & the filter where removed I cleaned up the internals to make sure that there was no crap in there



The new pan that I have is a deeper pan that the one it’s replacing so I had to fit a spacer block for the new filter

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Job done



The old pan is a fascinating design that I’d never seen before, it actually has cooling channels that run through the base to act as heat exchangers for the oil.. very nifty



After cleaning off the drain bolt I can see that it sits in a plastic retainer & the whole thing is actually free to spin… this doesn’t seem like the best design in the world for being leak proof if you ask me





Still I might see if I can get someone to weld it in place so that it is then leak free then I might look to reuse it again as it does get bloody hot here in Melbourne.. although she does have a front mounted trans oil cooler fitted already so she should be fine I guess.

I was showing the car off to a mate the other week & he wanted to hear how load she is, so even though she’s up on stands being worked on we fired her up & smiled at that lovely lumpy idle that she has, his girlfriend was sitting in the car & we told her to give the load peddle a tickle & she did… what I then saw chilled me to the bone.. the fuel line that runs up along the engine had perished so much that every time she blipped the throttle it shot a small jet of raw fuel just past the back of the alternator… NOT good.. so we shut the car down right away



With the alternator removed you can see where the fuel has been spraying & then collecting grit & general crap on the front of the engine



So now I had a few options open to me to fix this, I could just replace the hose that was perished with new hose or I could run a metal fuel line like I did on the XB when I was cleaning up that engine bay



But I didn’t want to do that as I was never mad on the idea of having the fuel run that close to the block for heat reasons anyway, so I figured that I’d re-route the fuel line so it was clear of the engine.. I also decided not to go with rubber tube or with a metal hard line, I decided that I would teach myself how to make up lengths of braided hose & so it was off to the Interweb for an Earls catalogue to order bits from… so I sketched out what way I would run the line & measured it all up working out what adapters & ends I’d need along with an inline filter & enough length of braided hose for me to make up the lengths I needed… it’s amazing how such a small amount of shiny parts can cost so much.. but I was very happy with how they looked.



A closer look showed that a previous owner had done a fantastic job at rounding off the nuts that hold the lines in place & based off the excellent job that the silicone was clearly doing on the transmission pan they opted to gunk these up too..

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So off I went & I bought a shiny new Holly pump to replace the old one, I opted to use Teflon tape to help seal my new fittings on instead of covering the outside with silicone.. madness I know



New vs old



I would also now have clear access to clean off a whole section of the engine that I couldn’t get into before..

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I did a bit of research on the Interweb as to how to assemble up a braided line with Earls AN adapters & it’s luckily very simple (as evidenced by the fact that I was able to do it) When I got my length of braided hose the end wasn’t exactly neat & ready to be used



So I was going to have to cut the end off & make a nice neat end to work with, now there are a few methods listed out there.. the actual people who make the braided hose say to use a very sharp chisel & block of steel to guillotine cut the hose, I didn’t have said chisel & also I was pretty sure that that was a sales ploy from them as I would no doubt have turned my lovely new braided hose into a flat mash of rubber bits embedded with lots & lots of mushed steel strands… the other two options are a hack saw & finally a cut off wheel in a grinder of some sort… the hack saw sounded like manual labour to be & not nearly as much fun as the grinder option. I started by locking the hose in a vice, I don’t own a set of soft jaws for my vice so I used a cloth to stop me from damaging the braided hose, I then taped up the end of the hose very very tightly to stop the steel strands from moving as I cut.



The Earls connectors are made up of two parts the red inner (I call it the inner as it ends up on the inside of the hose if that makes sense) section & the blue outer section



Now of course I cocked up the first cut.. I simply tried to cut right through but as I got to the final bottom section the waste cut off section was flopping around & it pulled some of the steel strands… so for my 2nd attempt I help the grinder in one hand & used a set of pliers to hold the waste section taut as I was cutting & this did the trick. Then I held the inner non movable section of the connector in my vice & slowly press fitted the hose into the connector, being very careful not to allow any stray steel strands to go outside the connector



Once the hose was in the connector far enough, should be just shy of the threads



I then marked the hose so I could see if the hose moved at all out of the connector whilst I screwed in the inner section



Then I applied a little oil to the blue outer connector & placed it in the vice & proceeded to press the red connector onto the threads whilst screwing it on at the same time



Once it was on hand tight I then did it up with a spanner in the vice



I then checked that the hose hadn’t moved from the line I marked earlier & then you’re done.. the first one took me longer than it should of to be honest as I was being very careful not to bugger up the hose or the shiny connector, the rest of the connectors went on in no time

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Once I had mastered the art of hose building I was feeling very chuffed with myself I must say (I know small things, small minds) then I arranged everything out on the bench to ensure that I had enough ends & to be sure I knew where I wanted everything to be in the engine bay





Fitted the new fuel pump & ran a new length of rubber hose from the tank hard line to the fuel pump.. I’m now thinking of running a full length of braided hose from the fuel pump back to the tank… not 100% sure yet, I’m also thinking of fitting an aluminium drop tank to replace the OEM tank & running a proper electric pump at the tank end… we’ll see



Started to route the new line & filter in, making sure that none of the bends are sharp & that there is nothing for it to catch on or rub against, it is touching the water bottle but I’ll keep an eye on that





The next part of the puzzle was putting an AN adapter piece onto the metal fuel rail from the 6 Pack, you can see the red cover on the end of the rail in the pic above. They do make an adapter than uses an brass olive that forms the liquid tight seal, I had to cut off the existing flared end of the pipe as you can see





This had to be done so that the red connector end & the olive could both slide onto the fuel rail



Then you simply push the blue threaded end into the red connector & tighten until they join crushing the olive & making a leak proof seal, sadly I damaged the soft connector in my vice.. note to self but some soft jaws

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Then I simply connected up the other sections of hose that I had made up & installed my inline fuel pressure gauge





Now with the alternator reinstalled it’s a very cosy corner of the engine bay, but everything fits & nothing is rubbing or catching so I’m happy