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Thanks Tom, I am located just north of the twin cities about 20 minutes off of Hwy 10.
As for the challenger, I am still debating if I should by one of the kits out there that has everything included or if I should piece it part by part. I also am looking for some info or even pics of where some of the small stuff goes, like the z-bar and I believe there is a pivot point involved somewhere. Its the stuff that attaches to the body I'm unsure about.
I know about the trans tunnel, pedals, but will I need a different transmission crossmember? Anything I'm not mentioning?




You don't need a different transmission crossmember, there's no difference between an automatic and manual crossmember. I believe there's a notch or a mark in the frame where the Z-bar pivot gets welded on. That's one of the things that was cobbled together on mine - I made my own bracket for the frame Z-bar pivot, and it's in the right spot, so I never needed to correct it when I got the 'correct' parts. But yes, there are a lot of little things - a few more off the top of my head: Your crankshaft may not be drilled properly for a pilot bushing - they are sometimes drilled, but not to the finished size (I crushed the first bushing I tried to install due to this). Although the bushing can be filed down to fit into the crankshaft, the best thing to do there is to use a roller bearing instead of the bushing, I think they were used in '90's Dakotas, and they press into the torque converter register instead of the pilot bushing hole. Another thing that can be easily forgotten: You need a return spring on the clutch lever. It's a fairly lightweight spring that is not designed to return the clutch, but it's designed to pull the clutch lever fully back so that when your clutch is released, the throwout bearing doesn't ride on the clutch levers, which would cause your throwout bearing to wear out quickly. There's also some strange little clips and hardware used to hold everything together. I did a lot of rummaging around the old Anoka Auto Wrecking yard off of Bunker Lake Blvd back when I was converting mine, trying to figure out how all the 4 speed stuff went together. They didn't have any E bodies there, but plenty of A, B and F bodies that I was able to dissect. I really miss that place...

I've got a lot of friends in the Mounds View/Blaine/Ham Lake area, so I get up that way a lot. I'm guessing that 20 minutes North of the Cities would put you in the Anoka/Ramsey area, so your in the same general area. If you decide to piece it together part by part, I've still got a lot of leftover stuff - Z-bars, clutch forks, shifters, etc that you could use. The problem is I don't know if they're E body parts of if they go to something else, so getting a list of part numbers would help. I'll dig around over the next few days and see exactly what I've got.


1974 'Cuda 360/TKO 1990 Ram Van 1998 Neon