Nice backstory on that 71 Charger R/T (that rots about photobucket) and wish the best outcome for you and your son as the project moves forward

Sorry, I didn't intend to deceive, My Charger is done. I'm just re-telling the story with pictures since photo bucket ruined my, and so many others, posts by pulling the photos.

Back at it.....
Having sat out in the sun for many years, the interior was pretty baked out of the car. The front seats looked decent but were very brittle and the vinyl had shrunk so the stitching was about to pull out, the rear seat was baked badly and the top of it was gone in places. The dash pad looked like a bunch of potato chips. The headliner was nearly gone except for some remnants hanging from the listing rods. The V.I.N. plate on the dash was baked clean of it's paint.

Restored the dash with a nice original pad I found up in Seattle Wa., cleaned up the gauges and rebuilt the clock. Restored the V.I.N. (without being removed from the dash) Got the "Chrysler corporation" dry rub transfer from Dave Walden at ECS. Also found (finally) a decent "Charger R/T" emblem for the dash.

Recovered the seats. New on the left, old on the right.

Assembled the motor, put it in the bay but pulled it back out to do some other work on the car. (I did try to leave some "patina" and original marks in the engine bay.) You can see the grease pencil "3" and "X" on the firewall as well as the sloppy undercoating sprayed over it.

It felt good to drag the car out into the sun once in a while. It gave a different perspective.

I purchased New Legendary door panels and stretched them onto the old frames. With limited room for all the parts accumulating, I had to temporarily install the door panels and seats in the car to keep them from getting damaged in my mess!
(temporarily, as can be seen by the crooked window switches and release handle.)

I finally got to working on the hood. Painted the underside and fit it on the hinges, Restored the louver and installed it. (again, temporary..... I like to do things many times over again!)

It was tough to get the louver fins straight. But lots of patience and perseverance got it pretty good (I think)! I see a lot of these on nice cars, and they're wavy! It really detracts from the car's appearance!

As I said earlier, I replaced the roof skin with a rust free one from a '74 Charger. That car had a canopy vinyl as well but the '74 molding and the '71 moldings are in different locations. I had to grind off the weld studs from the '74 position and weld some new ones on in the '71 position. This necessitated the use of my uni-spotter to weld them on.

Did a little detail work to the radiator saddle (had a little too much "patina").

Got all the great options. AC, PW, 6way seat. Nice car! Doing a great job!

Seems I'm not able to get on here as often as I had hoped to finish this post. I'll try to speed it up. Not sure there is much interest in it anyway since this is a repeat post , but......





Restored the taillight assemblies, cleaned up the original bumper (still with the "Brevard community college" bumper sticker from the original owner) and put on my nice 1971 Minnesota license plate.

With all the body work done and primer blocked out. I disassembled the car, got the car masked and ready for sealer and paint. Cleaned up the garage a little and put up some more lighting.

Set up the valences and bezels on horses.

The moment I had waited for, for so long! Finally...... PAINT!

Basecoat..........

Clear flash coat........

After the fog lifted from three more coats of clear...

Reassembly begins.....