My 69 HEMI Charger got paint!!!! :)

Thanks for all the kind words guys...

If you want to see the whole process documented and follow the restoration, I have a facebook page on it:

http://www.facebook.com/1969.hemi.charger

I still have to do the updates on the paint though!

OK thanks for the heads up. Had a look at your facebook pictures, man you have a lot of patience to rebuild that Charger.

N

Domingo, unreal. Looks unbelievable. You really are an artist. Make sure you leave some marijuana joints and your initials all over before the carpet install.. Oh ya, leave some wrong build sheets to make it official..


Kiddding. Looks amazing. Great work.

Looks beautiful, I love F8.

thanks!

Domingo,
Very nice work! Thanks for sharing.
Ray

Oh man I love that color.

Thanks guys!!!

I had the guts to apply the black tar sealer yesterday!!!

Ouch!!!!

its gonna take quite a bit to dry, but oh well, it looks original.....Ill be working on my 71 cuda clone in the meantime....

nuther....

s`more...

last!!!

....I know this was applied b4 paint.....but when you check out original cars, its almost like it was applied after because the paint was sucked in by the tar and the paint residues are barely noticeable. I dont know though what extent of time this happened really, so I decided to paint, seal, and then once the sealer is dry Ill just dust it over very slitghly with some F8 paint to replicate the original look you would fin on a survivor typoe car...

Great job!! Looks like Wayne (the retired Detroit Autoworker) came out of retirement just to lay down sealer one more time...

Awesome. Doing a great job. Its those types of details that really make them stand out.

Thanks!!!

The black sealer came out great....the downside is that its taking forever and beyond to dry



I guess Ill just have to wait....

Ill work on another car in the meantime I guess....

Domingo

Heat lamp of some sort might help. Even if you took a cheap "tin hat" type heatlamp with a generic light bulb might speed up the process.

Yes, Im gonna figure out something along those lines!

How long has the car been in peru?

Check out the facebook web page for its full history since new. The car is an export car originally sold new in venezuela....ive had it in peru for close to four years now...

the job appling the sealer looks great!
What did you use? Is it dry yet and if so how long did it eventually take to dry?

I used tar sealer...which i think is the same thing the factory used....but its taking forever to dry!!!!!

more pics, more pice,, i love that green on a charger!!

The tar sealer is slowly drying....I guess 1 more month till it's completely dry. I will then finish off the paintjob....Im just letting the body sit there until its dry...

In the meantime I have lots of things to restore and get ready to mount on the freshky painted shell once its done!!!

So, I have decided to work on the engine now. I am gonna rebuild the numbers matching HEMI engine. Its going 30 over, I already bought a brand new and balanced rotating assembly: eagle 4,15" stroke crank and stock size rods, and 0.030" over diamond forged pistons. So its gonna be a 477 CID hemi. I got my blueprinted and balanced rotating assembly off Best Machine Racing engines, so I know its done right and ready to drop in!

Im gonna build it with 10,5:1 compression.

The block is really nice and there is no corrossion at all in the water jackets. Looks like new!!! In fact I have never seen a used favtory block as clean as this one-

Now the heads are another story...they had been ported and whoever did the job got a bit carried away so they are junk. Its a shame because the water jacekts on these heads were perfect as well, and they had no cracks at the chambers. The port walls were left too thin after porting though and they cracked.

Oh well....since the original heads are no useable, I just opted to get brand new aluminum heads for it. I gor a great deal on a pair of brand new alum MP eddy heads, and I sent em over to Jeff at Modern Cylinder head. I know these heads are not exact in appearance to the originals (shape of the alterntor boss, some extra ribs or bumps at the end of the head, etc) but they are dimensionally the same and all the stock components bolt on. Really only 1% of the people looking at the engine inside the car would notice, and since its only a bolt on item I'm not sweating it. Its not like Im not gonna miss that correct bump on the end of the head or the correctly shaped alternator boss with 600 HP under my right foot! LOL This is what I got back...

Thanks! I dont know exactly what they used but this looks quite the same....i could probably lay the carpet over it right now and it'd be just fine, but Id rather wait for it to harden some more....

OK guys....we just applied the inner quarter panel undercoating, just like the factory did it!!!! with all the factory slop and texture!!! Here is an original example for reference....

OK.....here is how the HEMI turned out: I think we got pretty close to the real thing....what do you guys think??

one more...

Here is a shot of the other side....it went on nice and thick!!! and the texture is just about the same....it took some experimenting with different products and different undercoating guns....we used the same tar sealer that we used on the floorboards...

Ftre having been working on the body and get it super straight with lots of blocking....here are the final results with a couple coats of basecoat to sort the final details and catch the last few flaws.

We are hitting the paint booth on saturday.

YOu cna check the full progress step by step here: http://www.facebook.com/1969.hemi.charger

another one...

More....

We like to put some basecoat on the car before hitting the paint booth. We thought this one was ready for the paint booth when looking at it in primer, but after some f8 paint we could still catch some flaws.

Some people say that doing this will cause paint adhesion problems afterwards, but that is not true, as long as you scuff the paint ENTIRELY once more after hitting the paint booth. Then you spray it with 2 more coats of base and then clear and it works just fine!

Also we like to do it this way because since its all covered already with the right shade of basecoat then it's a lot easier to get full paint coverage. Even if it it goes a bit thin inside the paintbooth in a spot that doesnt get as much paint as others it will still show the right color even if it got a teeny bit less paint.