Well I've been meaning to put a post on the projects page for ages, looks like I'm finally getting around to it.

A little background: I purchased the car sight unseen off of a message board almost 15 years ago! For the life of me I can't remember which one, I frequented the old Dallas Mopar page, various Dodge Charger boards and the earliest versions of Moparts as well. I was a young Airman in the Air Force and finally had some cash to burn so I decided I needed a 71-72 Charger with concealed headlights. It was my only real requirement as the car which made me fall in love with Mopars was a 72 with concealed lights. I had been scouring the internet for cars meeting this requirement near me (within a days drive of Western South Dakota). By dumb luck I came across a post for 4 71 Charger R/Ts for sale as a package deal and had to find out if the seller might part with one of them. The answer was no, but he had another one that he would sell for the right price. It came out of Pennsylvania and needless to say it was much further away than I had planned. It was a scary prospect for young guy but the price was right and I couldn't pass up the opportunity to get a real 440 4 speed R/T! Of course I was sure I would have it fixed up and driving within a year or two, but the realities of life intervened and its still not on the road, but huge strides have been made over the last 2 years and I have every confidence that it will be soon.....

I'll start with a picture of it from about 10 years ago...

And Another

Another

stop teasing, lets see it!!

All in good time!

Here's the first major project I took upon myself: As rough as the body was the only bad parts of the floor were the forward drivers side pan and the trunk floors were full of pinholes.

Fred Flinstone Style

So after many fits and starts, a near complete teardown of the car and scavenging many parts, in 2007 I got around to the first major surgery on her. First out was the 4 speed hump.

Out

Pan Removed...

New Pan... I'll have to dig through my receipts but I'm thinking it was a Year One sourced panel.

Fitting the panel. I don't seem to have much more in the way of pictures after this point in the floor pan replacement. I can say in retrospect I kind of jumped the gun on this part, I really should have had the car media blasted first, I was working around a lot of surface rust and while I got lucky in that when I did finally have it blasted we didn't need to go open back up any of the work I did, I very easily could have.

After this point the project and slowed again, it had taken me about 2 months to do the floor pan and I was looking at the passenger quarter panel and trunk floor next. Other realities put the brakes on the project again for about a year, and it started to sink in that if I was ever going to get this done I would have to swallow my pride, open my wallet and get some professional help

I started asking around my car club if there was anyone they could recommend for sheet metal repair and boy did they have a good one. I've got more pics of this somewhere but these are the only ones I've got handy.... Quarter removed

He went on to clean up the inner structure, replace sheet metal as needed, replaced the inner wheel well which had obviously been smashed and crudely repaired in the past. We were originally going to use the donor panel shown, but the metal proved to thin along the bottom so we decided to try one of the then new AMD quarters. He was very impressed with the quality, saying it was one of the best pieces of aftermarket sheet metal he'd used. This pic of the donor car is from 05. It was smashed in the left front, but provided several other critical pieces of sheet metal, glass, and also provided parts to help resurrect a friends 71 Bee.

Trunk Floor in work

About another year went by and it was time to shift gears, off to the media blasters.....

Which brings us up to Jan 2013. As many of you already know, old paint can hide a lot of issues...

The drivers side firewall and cowl area where the worst of it, but this had pinholes all over the place. It was strange, the lower areas of the car were for the most part solid, but higher spots (roughly top of fender level) were the roughest part of the car.

Last one for tonight.... Much more to come!

Pressing forward, that's all you can do........ Keep at it....

Well, as many of you know the only way to make some of these projects happen on a budget is to make a deal where your car is essentially a side project, and it was no different for the media blasting, it was nearly a year wait to have it cleaned up, when it was finally done I wasted no time in turning back over for sheet metal and body work. Here's a shot of some pre-assembly in work.

Some more

Starting to look like a car again. Had the hood the entire time, it was just stored away separately from the car. It was actually pretty rough, a lot of pitting on the bottom, since my goal is to have a very nice driver and the top was good we decided to rehab the top sheetmetal completely, cleaned up the bottom, and actually put a thin coat of paintable undercoat on the bottom to give it a uniform finish, the underside isn't smooth like a perfect hood, but still looks good, and besides who cares what the underside of the hood looks like when its going down the road!

More

One last look in bare metal!

Finally!

Many Many years in the making.

Lookin good, can't wait to see more pics.

Some great work there, it will look stunning when finished....

Very Cool

Nice GB5?

Car looks fantastic. your making huge progress! I love 71 Chargers
KID

I love them as well. Here's my old Hemicar for inspiration.

Sheldon

Thanks for all the comments! That was back in September of last year. It is GB5, the paint is the Modern PPG 2 stage base clear equivalent, I'd have to talk to my friend who did the paint to get the exact specs. It has a ton of Pop to it, not really sure how else to explain it. Right after spraying it seemed a little lighter than expected, but has darkened up a bit as it cured. Don't have too long to post tonight so I'll get a few more pics from body assembly up.

Out of the Booth

Beginning suspension assembly. I went a little off stock here, not the only time! I had most of the front suspension pieces powder coated to look like bare steel. Fortunately I had access to this lift to assemble it.

Looks very nice!

Once again my car club comes to the rescue. Had the Dana overhauled by one of the members using Doctor Diff components, had it powder coated too!

Installed!

Front Suspension Again. We actually had to move the skid plate over to a "new" K-frame because the original was cracked, can't even tell it didn't leave the factory on that K-frame. Also had it Powder Coated. Note that the T-Bars are also out.

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. Glad 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?
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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!!

JB's the man for pieces for '71 B's...

(Painted bumpers will ALWAYS work in this camp)...

Absolutely beautiful and Congrats!

Looks great !!! Now, did you paint the leading pinch-weld on the hood black like it is supposed to be? Also, the lower rocker panel pinch-weld is painted black too......

Thats all on my to-do list, along with painting the black in the door jamb. It will be a bit more of a pain with it as far along in assembly as it is but shouldn't be too much of a hassle.

Ha, didn't realize that they were brushed on!
Here's some shots of a few of the sheetmetal repairs that were done.

rot cut away

In these hidden areas we weren't too concerned with duplicating every dimple and ridge, just wanted it to be structurally sound. Didn't get a pic with the brace all stitched back up too but it got done.

Lower drive side hinge area.

Peeling back the layers

A little more with some spot blasting and rust treatment in the crevices for good measure.

putting it back together

This was the one which personally amazed me most. The valance was pretty straight, other than being swiss cheese along the front edge.

More cheese!

next time it looked like this. Gene, they guy doing the sheet metal work made it all look too easy, a true master at his craft. You couldn't even tell it had been repaired by the time he was done, and he was fast at it too!

I've got some other pics like these, the drivers inner fender, the passenger cowl, underdash by the drivers side vent intake. Lots of little areas which added up, probably would have taken me years to do them myself, with no where near as good a result.

Any updates?

Back from the dead! Or something like that.... funny how things work out. I can't remember what drew my attention away from the board but I "completed" the car about 5 years back. I use quotes because these are never really done. I was looking for some build pictures and remembered this thread, seems I put quite a few pics on here which I've lost elsewhere. Anyhow here are some recent photos of the car. If anyone's interested I can dig up some of the other in work photos I took during the process.

That's a beautiful 3rd gen!

Hope mine looks half as nice some day.

Very,very nice!

Thanks for the update, looks great. Would definitely be interested in more photos!!