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My '72 Challenger project
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Well the weather the last 2 days has been really shite, with lots of rain & wild winds.. so I couldn't just quickly assemble my redneck paint booth outside & then just slide it into the shed over the Dodge like I did when I was painting the floor of the XB..
So... I had to struggle to assemble it around the car... not really a one man job & it came apart more times than I could count...
But that's done now & I have everything set-up so that I can just go out first thing tomorrow morning right at the crack of about 10:47am Sat...
Hopefully the weather improves as I'd love to have the hanger doors of the shed open when I'm painting as even with my breathing mask on this stuff is toxic smelling & as such I'm assuming that it's not safe to drink...
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I have one final bit of welding to do that I want to do with the car still on the rotisserie... there is a bit for the rear qtr window that needs to be welded in
It houses the stop adjustment arm from memory & it goes here
Well actually it goes behind the panel... so this is where it goes... I'll weld them in tomorrow
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Cleaned up that park & painted it in weld thru primer
Welded them in now
I think I'm done with needing the Dodge on the rotisserie now so I've taken her back off... next I'll put the hanging panels back on & start roughing out the gaps.
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Mounted up all the hanging panels today, plan is to work on the gaps over the coming weeks... started with the doors, then the front guards & then the boot lid
Putting the bonnet on by myself was a prick of a job & one that I assume future Dave will be pissed at me about when his back feels fucked tomorrow morning... but I worked out a way to do it without damaging the bonnet or the front guards..
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Now the more observant of you may have noticed my new bling bonnet hinges... these are by a company called Ring Brothers, they make some amazing cars & bling parts like this..
Sadly the standard struts they gave me which are 225lbs force jobs are not strong enough to hold the bonnet up.... told you it was bloody heavy... so I've just been to the RB site & ordered a beefier set of struts
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Couple of small things have to be done before I can properly play with the gaps.. had to fit the rear boot springs, that was a ball ache. There must be a proper tool to use to do this, all I had was a large screwdriver to lever it in.
Need to remove the door latch assemblies from the old doors too & fit them to the new doors
Getting these screws out was fun....
Luckily I have Thor's screwdriver so I could belt the shite out of them to get them loose..
Now to clean them up & install them in the new door
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Did a little work on this today.. I fitted the newer stronger gas struts & the bonnet now stays up & no longer slowly slides down to smack the back of your head... I've also put the car back onto the rotisserie so that I can lift it high enough to slide the dolly I did have under the XB under it so it can be modified to fit the Dodge.
I was really happy to learn that the location of the front leaf spring mount is the same on an XB Falcon as it is on a Dodge Challenger.. so the rear uprights will be reusable
The front dolly uprights are useless as the Dodge has a removable K frame so there is nothing but empty space where the current uprights are, so I'll have to cut them off & make up some new ones during the week, but I'm in no rush to get that done.
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I'd taken a few weeks off doing anything in the Skunk Works from mid December till this weekend just gone. First job was to finish off the transport dolly for the Dodge.. the front upright would never work & I could have made the rears work but that would have needed an angled front upright so I did the right thing & cut all 4 off
The new front uprights have a piece of 6mm plate at the top that bolts to the rear most K frame bolt hole in the chassis, the precision bend you see in the plate was added with my larger precision percussion knockometer
The rears again just bolt into the front mounting of the rear leaf springs
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This job is now done & she's pretty much ready to go to to the painter, I have one last job & that's to cut the hole for the fuel tank filler neck into the boot floor. Not exactly sure when she'll go for paint, the classic Mini my painter is doing is almost done, it's just finished the final sanding phase & should be in full colour this month. He also has a 996 in at the moment that needs a rear Qtr repair & both bumpers repaired... so I'm thinking that end of Jan/early Feb is probably when the Dodge will go to his place.
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Barring anything going off the rails this old girl should be going to the painters next month, so time to finish off the last few tiny jobs I had left. I've replaced a lot of metal on this car & some of those panels where the locations that Dodge would stamp the VIN number under the paint. You normally can't see them unless you grind back the paint so I wanted to put them back on the car.
I won't bore you with too many pics here, but the front rad support gets the vin on the inside face stamped upside down for reasons. The cowl in front of the window gets them as does the drip rail in the boot, so I marked out the spots & tried to replicate the crap manor in which the factory applied them, I resisted the urge to make them straight & clear.
I also needed to cut the hole in the boot floor for the fuel filler neck to pass thru, I'd kept the old section of floor to use as a template
Used a hole saw to make the curved ends & then just trimmed out the middle, thought about making the hole smaller but then figured I wanted to match the factorys work
The big rubber boot seals the inside & I'll do something to seal the underside when I finally get around to reassembly after paint.
There is one final bit of body work that I need to do that I completely forgot about, so I'll get to that mid week or on the weekend.
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Work has finally started this week o n the old girl, starting from the boot & working our way forward as you would expect. The boot gaps are not where my painter wants them to be, the panel under the rear window is sitting a little too low for his liking & the join between the Qtr panel & the roof will be completely redone, all of these areas could of course be fixed with a skim of bog, but that's not the right way... so metal finishing is the goal here.
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Popped around to see the car during lunch today, a bunch of the previous repair work has been undone & redone to my painters standards as he felt that there was just way too much filler being used on the join of the Qtr to the roof.. so that's been redone now.
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The boot lid had an issue with tin canning on the drivers side, tin canning if you're familiar is when the metal has been stretched probably from overworking & when you touch it will pop in & out like an old tin oil can... the fix is to shrink the metal back to make it tight again.
In this case the Welder shrink gun was used
The bare metal work on most of the rear is done, so a good coat of etch primer is needed as we're getting towards winter here now & bare metal won't last long before surface rust shows up
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Dropped off the passenger side front guard at lunch today... the filler work is finished on the passenger side now, don't freak out most of that filler will be sanded off when the whole side is blocked back down. He hopes to have this side finished & ready for high-fill by the end of next week.
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Ok, so due to some non car related stuff going on in my painters life he's been out of the workshop for a while & has only just gotten back into working again. as such the Challenger has sat untouched for 2 months now. But I was around with him on the weekend & he's back on deck & back into the car.
The boot lid & the surround metal needed a good bit of work done to it to make the gaps right to how he wanted them, I've just dropped off the trim pieces that bolt to the back so that he can work that final section to get that right too.
The section under the rear window was sitting a little low & need to be bent up to meet the deck lid correctly with the boot channel rubber installed.
We've installed the light clusters & the rear bar too to get their fitment right also.
Hopefully things move on at a better pace now for the rest of the year.
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Right... life has gotten in the way for both me & my painter so this feels like it's dragging on, but progress has been made & it feels like we're back on track. There was a lot more worked needed on the passenger side rear Qtr & the sill panel that was first thought so it's taken a while to get the side finished. The good news is that the drivers side looks like it doesn't need near as much work so we're hopeful that that side can be finished in a fraction of the time.
As always lots of blocking & sanding needed to be done as this is a black car & black is the most unforgiving colour for a car to be painted... it has to be a mirror finish or you'll see every imperfection.
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This side of the car is in what I call fulll Luftwaffe paint now... so this is all finished, the plan for this coming Sat now is that I'll bring the bonnet around & we'll fit that on, the drivers side door & probably the front nose too so he can focus on finishing off the other side.
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Speni some time this morning with my painter helping him fit the bonnet & the passenger side front guard & door so he can get the drivers side & the front all worked & prepped for paint. He still thinks I'll have the shell fully painted in my shed for assembly by the end of the year... I'm not so sure but as always I'm in now rush.
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Given that I might get this car back in a few weeks I need to get the diff sorted, I want to be able to take the shell off the travel dolly & back onto her own suspension & wheels quickly when she does get back here.
To that end I need to clean off the diff & paint it, fit the big brakes & sort out the fact that it now leaks from front bearing.
I've taken the brake lines off, I'll clean & inspect these but I think they'll be fine to reuse
The bump stop on the snubber seams fine too so probably no need to replace that either
The seal at the front is propper fucked... it's pissing fluid, I need to do some research to see how easy it is to pull & replace that...
I want to paint the housing so I need to decide do I remove off the brake parts still installed or just mask them off with tape & paint around them... from memory removing those handbrake shoes is a massive pain in the arse as I've done them a few times....
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Spent a bit of time this afternoon getting filthy cleaning off the diff, got it back to bare metal... cleaned it up then primed it & painted it. It's come up nice. I didn't bother cleaning the 3rd member yet as I plan to pull that out to swap in a new LSD but I'll do that when the diff is back in the car & the car up on the hoist.
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I took these pics inside the booth, there was another coat to still go on after I got out of the way... but that's all the hanging panels painted now. The engine bay & car interior will be done during the week & hopefully the shell will be painted by the weekend time permitting.
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I'm making a little pile of the last few bits & pieces that need to painted body colour... I'm taking the headling buckets out so that behind them can be sprayed nicely.
There are a few of the retaining bolts that had been snapped off years ago, before my ownership & these will be a pig to get out as the panel is only tapped fiberglass & not metal
The drivers side mirror had it's remote adjustment cables cut off so I have a replacement, buggered if I can find where I put the passenger one this morning... I'll need to have a proper look for that this afternoon... mind you the GT-Four Rally car is getting delivered in an hour so that may not happen today.
I was wondering if I could leave the bonnet vents unpainted as they come a matt black anyway... but one of them has some serious paint flaws that will need sanding off so they'll need to be painted anyway, not sure if I'll do them the same gloss black as the car or if I do them matt or satin so that they stand out??
Other than the missing mirror that I'll hopefully find soon... this is the last of the bits other that the body itself that need painting... feels like the end of a big milestone...
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I have all of the hanging panels at my house now.... man that bonnet is stupidly big & crazy heavy, it will be a 3 or 4 man job for sure when it's time to put that on the car without damaging any of the paint..
The plan now is that the engine bay, the door jams & the inside of the car will be painted this week & then the exterior of the car should be painted next week.. exciting times ahead for my overly packed shed...
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The whole engine bay & inner door jams where fully rubbed back ready for paint this morning....
Then several layers of stunning liquid black gold where applied..... the pics don't do the depth of this paint justice....
Next week the body gets this treatment.... can't come soon enough
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Gotta love delivery day... so that's all 8 cars at home for the first time... I've been told that due to the use of slow release hardner not to touch the paint as much as that's possible for a week or so... not a problem as I'll be focusing on putting the car back on her wheels & off the dolly first so that's all under the car work & not impacting the paint.
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I wanted to get the car off of the transport dolly & back onto her wheels today, so fist step was to jack her up & unbolt the dolly & wheel it out from under.
Then I assembled the diff again, putting the springs back on it
Then I very very carefully slid it under & connected the front spring hanger before jacking up the whole diff to do up the rear shackles
I've had to use the old rear shackles as I can't find the box with the good new ones in, but I'll swap them out later when I find them.
Next job was to look at fitting the front K frame...
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I was able to do up the two rear 5/8 bolts for my new QAI tubalar K frame... as they are the same as the OEM bolts but it turns out that the front's need to be 4.5 inches long & they don't come with the K frame from QA1 sadly....
None of my local hardware shops stock much non metric bolts so I spent a long time fruitlessly looking for some 5/8 x 4.5" bolts... couldn't find any so that has stopped play for the day.
I've ordered a set from an online bolt place here but they won't arrive till next week... lucky for me I have other projects to redirect my efforts, so I'm off now to so some work on the GT-Four Rally car.
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