72's charger... slowly... but sure enough

Well, I figured it was time I'd show the progress I've made since I got this car a year ago. I guess you could call this car some sort of restomod/hotrod/muscle car project. A lot of original pieces to the car will still be there while at the same time adding some creature comforts but not too crazy. I promise there will be no 26" rims with rubber band tires in this thread

Picking up the car... this will be the starting point on this project, oh boy! You might notice that there's no fender, hood, bumper... or really just the entire front end. The car was in a head on collision, from what I was told it was with some sort of tree or pole. Apparantly the entire front end was unusable, everything got mashed into the radiator and in turn went into the fan... barely.

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Well look at that, a 318! It had been rebuilt with very few miles before the car was crashed. I opened it up last week and it has infact been rebuilt with a 30 over. In exchange for a rebuilt 318 I get no front end of the car. Oh boy

Day after getting the car home, beginning rust removal

On the upside, it does have the rally dash, which appears to be in good shape. Thats really the only thing special, it also had the inside hood release, rear window defroster, back windows rolled down, A/C, and 150mph speedo. None of the interior panels are worth using honestly, but more on that later.

Problem solved. Almost decided to restore this car but come to find out it has some major rust issues, you might be able to see it. Quarter panels behind the wheel, over the back tires, along with a lot of rust in the floor pans.



Another shot there. Previous owner put new tires on them road wheels. Being a 225/70/14 tire, it won't do me much good, another possible item to sell.



Even had a brand new 1 1/2" dual exhaust system installed, neat! Although for the engine I plan on using this will be inadequate. Someone could make use of it I'm sure.



This is what mainly kept me from using the second car... You can see the rust in the other photos above. The car has all the door panels that are in excellent driver condition, the front fenders, hood, bumper, valence, grille, headlights, and other assorted pieces needed for the front end are in great shape and do not appear to have been hit by the rust.

Its gettin there

Getting the underside clean. Used an engine hoist to lift the car up in many different ways.





Got the rear end out... blasting time.







Eastwood rust encapsulator and extreme chassis black







Disassembled the rear end in order to swap out to 3.55 gears





Since I'm not using the 318... Got a 440+727 for $850. It came as a whole assembly, has all pullys, brackets, kickdown, entire ignition system, voltage regulator, started all still hooked up.



Took the 727 off. Rebuilt it at tech school when we were doing automatic transmissions. Gonna add a stall converter when the engine has been built.



Removed the heads on the 440 to inspect, overall it appears to be a good rebuild canidate.









This was apart of an 8 straight hour blasting job to have it all finished up. For working so hard I was rewarded with the air compressor giving out, ended up getting a new one a couple months later.













Painted the floor pans, trunk pan, everwhere inside with rust encapsulator, to then do bodywork over it.





Using all metal to fill holes, and smooth out some rough spots.







Finished. Came out better than what I thought

I finished body putty throughout the floor pans 2 days ago, will get that cleaned and finish painting. Today I disassembled the 440 to measure it out tomorrow to decide the next steps on it. Will add pictures for all that soon enough. There's alot more pictures of different steps along the way. I'll all be here eventually.

Very nice work! I'm using a combination of rust encapsulator and Rust Bullet on my '72. Keep the pics coming.

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Very nice work! I'm using a combination of rust encapsulator and Rust Bullet on my '72. Keep the pics coming.

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Thank ya. I'll have more up later today