My '72 Challenger project

Ok… so I’ve been doing lots of small detail work, but I figure that you’re not interested in 50 pics of the arse end of a car that you can’t really see any difference in, but let me know if I’m wrong here… but the rear panel is in primer now





I will no focus on the rear panel below the rear window & the top corners of the boot channels



To do this I need the boot on too to work out the gaps & clearances





Time to fill that rust section I cut out











So now she’s looking more car shaped again & I love seeing the primer go on as it helps me how much of the car is actually done… or close too…. I may redo bits… probably will actually….

I really took my time with this to be sure that I didn’t do too much too fast & put any real heat into the panel as roofs are real easy to warp







The top of the A pillars where they join to the roof panel are normally lead joined, this was long gone & now was just filled with bog.. so I’ll lead fill these again





There is a small bit of rust at the top of the rear window, you can also see yet another hidden body number that Dodge had been hiding all over the cars back then



The top of the A pillar on the passenger side also was lacking lead but then had a big hole in the roof that was just filled with bog, so I’ve cleaned the bog out & I’ll have to make up a patch to cover this



Before the car was painted by who ever did it last time the prep wasn’t right & the bog hadn’t bonded to the metal, this has left some rust pitting that I’ll have to sort out… the bits of bog here would flake off if I blew compressed air at it



This is how it sits now, I’ll clean up the pitting & repair the rust during the week

I’ll need to make up a rust repair patch to fit to the rusted front section but I need to get myself a metal shrinker/stretcher to make the curved shape properly & my local bodywork supply shop is out of stock of them for a few weeks they say, so I’ve just rust treated all the pitted area & then primed the roof so that it’s protected & I’ll sand it back to do the repair once I have the shrinker to make the patch I need









There was some small rust holes here at the back of the roof, so I’ve welded them up now





I’ve also taken the rear parcel shelf back to bare metal to ensure that it was all fine… which it was & have primed that & the inside lip of the rear window too







Next I’ll start working on alignment of the front panels whilst I wait to get the tooling to fix the roof section…. Stay tuned

I finished cleaning up the inside of the rear taillight panel & painting that up



Now it’s time spend an ungodly amount of time messing with the front hanging panels & their gaps.. I’ve put the car up on some stands to make it a little easier for me to play with







With the panels off I’m tidying up some small areas, like this one where the inner guard meets the core support panel.. straightened it up a little, did a little more welding & then primed it





Also did the areas at the base of the A pillars where the firewall & cowl panels end





Then I threw on all the panels including the front light panel & the lower valance, the plan now is to slowly work my way around the car moving or modifying each bit as I need to whilst constantly checking to see what knock on effect every little tap I make has on the other connected panels

The passenger side of the front valance is fine



But the drivers side needs work as it wants to bolt up way too high



I took last weekend off as it was bloody cold in the shed & there was live V8 Supercars racing on.. so this is as far as I’ve gotten so far… but my plan is to get back out this weekend.

Also MrsXB got me a cool shrinker stretcher tool for my B’day so now I should be able to make up the repair patch for the roof section much easier (famous last words)

quietsailor wrote: »

Mrs XB is cool!

Yes, yes she is... always willing to get out into the shed & get her hands dirty working on the cars if I need a 2nd set of hands... supports me buying part's, tools & more cars when I need/want, loves coming to car shows with me etc... I am very lucky

The shut line between the top of the guard & the edge of the bonnet is pretty good on this passenger side





The same cannot be said of the drivers side… but I’m ignoring that for now as I’m only working on the passenger side











I don’t know is the pics do it justice here but the top edge of the drivers guard has a bow in it.. that’ll be fun when I get around to that side I’m sure

Now the gaps are starting to look ok



I’m sure someone who knew what they where doing would be swearing at the screen about now but I’m getting close to as good as I can make this with my limited skills in my shed… there are still a few tiny spots that are just short but that’s just case of adding a tack to each one.. I threw some black paint on as I think that the bare metal makes it look a little worse that it is… it’s looking pretty close in black… I’m starting to think I might be able to do this panel gap ****e after all

Got most of the work done on the drivers side over the weekend, it needed just as much work but didn’t take as a long as I’ve kinda got this done now..









She’s coming together & is starting to look like a car again…





There are some fiddly bits to be done now like some brackets that hold the tops of the front guards up don’t quiet fit now so need to be modified & then I need to clean up these upper rear side window guide pieces…. Sadly my mate was the one who removed these & I wasn’t standing there to get pics so I’m not 100% sure how they go back on… but I’ll figure it out I guess

Then I put everything back together again & I think she’s really starting to look bloody good, she’ll need a skim of filler in some places but I’ve stuck to my self-imposed limit that I don’t want any more that a 1mm of filler under the paint if possible & that has made this take a LOT longer than it could have but I hope its all worth it when she finally has a shiny coat of Black paint on













There is more to be done of course & I want to remove all the suspension & do the underside of the car fully but that would mean putting her on a rotisserie & I already have a crappy old Muscle car on my rotisserie… so I have two options:

1. Pull the XB off the rotisserie & put the Challenger on to finish it but then have to put the XB back on to finish it afterwards.
2. Finish the floor of the XB now & paint it so that it can come off the rotisserie & never have to go back on & then put the Challenger on the rotisserie.

Right now I’m leaning towards the latter, I know it means a few weeks of nothing getting done to the Challenger but I think all up it makes the most sense… well at least it does to me… so for now I’m putting the Challenger in a corner to rest a while & you’ll start seeing updates to the XB build thread now for a bit.

Ok… I’ve been a bit slack with getting stuff done in the shed of late… time to pull the finger out & get back into it, the plan is that when the XB comes back from my painters the tow truck will take the Challenger back as the return trip. That means that I have to get this car finished before then, so I’m going to put her on the rotisserie now so that I can do the underside properly.

To that end, I’ve pulled her out of the corner & put her pride of place in the middle of the shed… ignore my mates Holden Ute in the corner now I’ll be doing all the body work on that for him soon… are people interested in seeing a thread on that even though it’s not my car I’m working on?





First step (after jack up your car obviously) is to pull all the hanging panels off again…





Next steps will be to drop the front K Frame & the diff out of the rear & then make up the brackets to mount her on the rotisserie

Next up was the K-Frame at the front that still has the steering box & drag links bolted to it



This is a stupidly heavy bit of kit





Luckily it’s not going back on, I have a new QA1 tubular item to replace it which is 1/5th of the weight I’d guess but still stiffer

Time to make the brackets to put the Dodge on the rotisserie… to that end I bought myself a new toy for the Skunk Works, this is one of those times when I’ve put off buying one of these forever & then the first time I used it I’m no wondering why I didn’t buy one year ago….

I got myself a 35Amp Plasma Cutter, this will cut steel up to 18mm thick & I’ll never need to do that so this small one is more than big enough for me & my projects..





For now I’ve just stacked it beside my new welder on top of my old welder… but I’m not happy with how this looks or it’s practical nature, so I need to go looking for designs for a cool welding cart that will hold both the welder & the cutter & make it easy to hang up all the wires & torches etc… feel free to share any ideas if you have them.





I’ll be making the brackets on the weekend but I couldn’t not have a quick play with the new toy when I got it home… so I mark out the cut lines & set a square edge to run the plasma torch along





This is 6mm thick plate & the plasma cutter cut thru this in seconds & it’s a pretty clean cut.. I ended up with a bit of “doss” on the bottom of the cut, I’d have called it slag if I was welding but the booklet that came with the cutter calls it Doss… seems I had the power up too high & if I dial it back a bit it will cut cleaner with less doss to be linished back on the underside of the cut..

Next up was the front brackets.. I was going to use the two boltholes on the front chassis rails that the bumper irons bolt too, I figure that since the original jacking points on these cars are slots cut into the bumpers that must mean that these holes are engineered to take the weight of the car when working on one.. so the weight of an empty shell should be nothing..



The plan is to use some old thick angle iron I have (old bed frame, you should never throw any good thick metal out) this will be bolted to the rotisserie out riggers & welded to the new plate that bolts to the car





Again lots of measuring & level checking is done, not that I think it’s super important here but if I’m making them may as well make the effort… sadly my mini level doesn’t make a noise..



With them clamped up, give them a quick tac before taking them off & fully welding them up





Then bolt them on & line them up with the existing bolt hole on the front of the out rigger used for the XB’s mounting & then drill the rear hole



Now that hole was too far in thru the tight opening to get my hand in so I tried different complex ways of doing it before I realise that the simplest idea is nearly always the best, so I stuck some tape on the ring spanner & sat the nut in it & feed it into the tube & then lined it up so I could screw the bolt down from the top… job done

With the painting of the XB coming along a little quicker than I expected it's time I jumped back onto this old girl as she's going to paint when the XB returns... I don't have the balance point right yet as this is as far over as I could rotate the car on my own... 

Part of my issue is that the mounting points for the arms of the rotisserie on the body of the Challenger are about 6" - 8" higher up the body than the XB's had been, this means that to be able to rotate the Challenger without the Qtr panels hitting the center beam I needed to raise the jack rams all the way up & this has had the side effect of tilting the shafts that spin the car around & they are binding... not really sure what I can do here to make this better...  

Since it's the floor I'll be working on... time to remove the last part from the car, the shifter

You can always tell that the last person to work on your car was an expert when you find they've used 3 different fasteners to hold on the one part... in this case a hex head bolt, a self tapping screw & a torx head bolt... I can only assume this was part of some engineering experiment where they were testing the different fasteners to determine which one was best for the job

Next job was to remove the rear leaf springs, something that would normally be an easy task... but way back in 2013 when the car was still driving I installed a set of fancy chassis connectors to stiffen up the old girl. Now during that install I had to modify the front spring bracket in such a way that you can't get the spring off anymore... now at the time I'm sure I just **** it that's future Dave's problem.... well today "future" Dave became today Dave... 

The front bracket for the rear spring is designed that you cannot take the spring off without removing the bracket at the same time.. you just can't get the long bolt out, end of

Normally you'd undo the lower two bolts you can see & then you'd pull them out & that clearance would allow you space to spanner up between the eye of the spring & the bracket

However I can't do that as the installation of the chassis connector called for me to weld the bolts to the connector on the other side of the chassis rail that this bracket is mounted too.. you see the installation instructions for these said to do up the top bolts first, then the bottom bolts as you can't access the nuts for the top bolts once it's installed.. then weld them in place

Now I really want to get these springs off as they will be in the way for me cleaning & painting the underside of the car plus one day I may actually need to remove/replace one so a solution is needed... so step one was to use the grinder to cut a perfectly good bolt in half

I decided to finally remove the roof liner, it's just been hanging in there so far, but now that I've done that she is 100% a bare shell now 

It's not rust I promise it's just the colour of the old glue.... I also removed the blanking plate that holds the wiring loom in place that passes into the boot... **** me there are a lot of additional speed holes drilled into this car, guess I'll weld them all up as I go now

What's really annoying is that under this stuff is just surface rust... who ever did this job last time never bothered cleaning back or treating the metal, they just painted over the surface rust... like why **** bother if you're not going to do it properly... 

I've gotten most of it cleaned back now 

I thought I'd spare you lots of pics of all the little sections getting welded up or of dents being pulled from the floor.... I've not got it all cleaned back, rust treated & 2K primed.. 

Next step will be to spray it with the tuff ute liner like did the XB

Seam sealing has been done now...

Tomorrow I'll look to mask off the car & set up my temp paint booth tent again & then hopefully I can have the underside painted in the Ute liner stuff by the weekend.