Last one for tonight from fitting the Fenders. This was from the beginning of November. Don't worry, the C-body rims are just temporary to make the car mobile.

lookin' good.

What is the black that you sprayed on the belly and wheel wells? I'll assume the grill blackout is paint.

Looking good.

Thanks

The radiator support is paint. As for the underside and wheel wells we did a bit of experimenting. My intention is for this car to be driven, I didn't just want to leave the underside alone, and regular undercoat seemed like a mixed bag when it came to durability. We looked around and found a product (3M I think) called Body Shotz. It dries hard like a truck bedliner (which may be its intended purpose now that I think of it), and looks damn close to the texture of factory undercoat. We only had an issue in one area with this, that was the rear wheel wells, on both sides the product seemed to shrink as it dried and pulled away from the housing creating a sort of brittle eggshell if you will. I would say it was probably surface prep on our part which caused that. Otherwise it seems like a layer of armor across the bottom.

I've been away for a while, Just got your PM. Glade you sent it or I may have missed your post.
Looking GREAT!!! I bet you're getting excited as it is taking shape again! I bookmarked this under favorites, so I'm looking forward to your updates. Do you have the rest of the running gear for it?

I do have the drive train for it. Not numbers matching but that just means I get to have more fun with it! This was engine candidate number 1, a 72 block which turned out to be too far gone to be worth building. It was going to need to be taken out to .060 and three sleeves.

I may have just ponied up the cash to get the 72 motor together except the opportunity to get a solid 71 block presented itself. I had it checked out and it only needed .040 over so I went with it. I had the block steel abraded, the forged crank cleaned up, installed ICON forged pistons, and a Hughes cam.

Topped the long block off with a set of Stealth heads, Mancini rockers and 3/8" pushrods (had to clearance a few of the holes in the heads for them).

With the rockers

It was about this time that I had to put things on hold again. I had to move about 7 hours away and taking the Charger with me at this point was not an option. This was the last picture I personally took of the cars progress before leaving town.

Found another one, I knew I put the wheels on before I left!

Anyhow, even though I was going to be out of the area we pressed on to get the car into a displayable condition to enter into the annual Counts Car Show in Rapid City in the unfinished class. The guys at Sargent Garage kept plugging away at some of the detail work like getting the vinyl top, stainless and graphics installed.

One of the pieces of stainless which runs the length of the quarter underneath the vinyl was tweaked pretty badly, which led to a month+ search for the right one. I sourced one initially through Tony's parts, only it wasn't quite right. A+ guy I didn't have any trouble returning it. Through a fair bit of research I found out there were two different versions of this molding, one for cars with and one without belt line molding (the stainless trim which runs along the top of the door). Since this car doesn't have that it requires just ever so slightly different molding. If any of you ever encounter this the difference can be seen here. The lower one with pointed end is from the with belt line molding, the blunt end is from the without. You can also see the slight difference in length here (out of about 4-5 feet overall length). I finally found one through Jimmy Boros in Minnesota. Of course he instantly knew what I was looking for, and it also worked out that I wound up having him restore the grilles for me!

Better!

Here's where I guess I may lose a few people, decided to go body color bumpers. I know its not "right" for a concealed headlights car but I think it just looks mean on these. Here's the back bumper being mocked up.

Graphics!

More!!!

They got it presentable and in the show, took best unfinished! Kind of weird having your car win at it's first show and not even be there...

That was March, and this was 3 weeks ago....

love it! 71 rt's are right up there with my favorite body style!!