One advantage we have is it will be a daily driver through the summer months, it will not have to be low to the ground. I don't mind 8"-10" of rocker clearance (I just measured, our PT has 9" of air space under the bottom of the rockers), like most normal daily drivers have.

yeah, i missed a figure !
thanks for the correction. i just forgot to push the other key to complete the info. a putz i can be.
i had a 3.0 in my 2000 "bus", and it logged 230k before the body "fell off" due to rust.that engine ran great, and used NO oil and didn't smoke at any time ! i was totally surprised, as it was the original engine. i bought this from the original owner i have known since childhood.
i had forgotten about using the daytona struts to lower those things.
i "think", but not positive, the lower strut bolt pattern and width between the retainer pads on the struts, plus the upper bolt pattern where the strut bolts to the tower were the same for a very long time, but have no real way to check, as all my first generation vans and my daytona/lazer are long gone.
i still have my 95, 2000, and 2002 vans parked at my buddy's mini junkyard, and i could measure that stuff the next time i'm out there. if i don't forget, that is..........
having the PT to use as a starting point is the best way to go, as you pointed out, because he has it.

well, I'm not hacking up our PT, my wife will need it to drive through the winter months. PTs are cheap, and so are minivans, finding a donor of either won't be hard. When we get to that point, measurements will be made. I have a PT to make some measurements with, but its already well past 90 out there, so not today. I am also not limited to using a factory setup. I can pick to use as much as I feel will work, or will save me work.

Given a choice, I think I would rather have a V6 instead of a turbo 4 cylinder. A non-turbo 4 would probably be a hard sell to my wife, and probably a harder sell to me. I'm not building a race car, but I'm not building a slug either.


On the bright side, I have been in contact with the seller today, he got side tracked by a chaotic weekend and had forgotten about taking more pictures. It is a project car that sounds like it was taken apart to restore. He is suppose to have "all the parts". Assessing the reality of actually having them, and then evaluating their condition is forth coming. Moving forward with that. The car is a 6 hour one way drive from here. We will likely make the trip to inspect it, buy it, then get it hauled home, or reject it. I'm well past the point of buying something based on pictures alone, pictures are to determine if its worth traveling to look at. I no longer have a car trailer, so that is another obstacle.

if i were doing this project, i would use the 3.3 engine.
my "bus" gets 26-28mpg loaded, unloaded, city or highway, and although i drive like a grandpa, if you stomp the right pedal, it has surprising pick up, considering the weight of the thing.
i also installed a trans-go shift kit and those lock tabs that go on the ring gear and retain the "death pin" for the spider gears. those retain the pin in case the original retainer bolt breaks or comes loose and falls out, thus saving the transaxle case from the pin trying to escape.
the shift kit isn't the "bang-screech" type, rather just an improvement of the clutch pack engagement[s] and releases, plus eliminating the into low gear "bump/bang" when coming to a stop.
if you decide to tackle this project, please keep updates coming, as i for one would sure like to see what a conversion like this would require, and how the end results turn out.

I will keep everyone up to date on how things progress, or don't.

Conversations with the current owner lead one to believe we may also be looking at replacing much of the glass. The pictures show some glass is not installed in the car, including the windshield. I inquired if he still had the glass and what condition it was in. He says he has it all and it is "sort of" OK, which also would probably require the rubber around the glass to be replaced. The seats are also not bolted in, He says he has them all too, they appear to have been redone "years ago, but still look OK." The inexpensive buy in is pretty reasonable, but it appears the cost of the project may be escalating. The car body looks pretty good in the few pictures I have seen, and he says its really pretty solid. We are at the point its time to go look and see, but that is something we can't do until about mid July.

Anything past that is just speculation. I will be looking into drive train and donor vehicle options. My brother in law just picked up (with in the last year) an older rust free minivan and he installed a reman motor with a 60,000 mile warranty, but I'm not sure what year that van was, or what motor. He did his himself, so I'm sure he will share his info with me. I basically have a PT and a minivan and a 48 Plymouth (the target car is the next gen 49) I can take measurements off of, so between now and then, I can have a plan and a better concept of the projected cost (and the amount of work involved) the project will be. Keep in mind, I completed a ground up build on my 49 truck in 2022 (after the paint & body work), pic posted.

Ray good for you. I’ll be 80 in September and I just started a 64 Dart restomod build. I really believe working on these old cars is what keeps me going.

Poorboy that sounds like an interesting build. I have always wanted to use v6 out of anew Challenger or Charger. I’ve been told the whole suspension and engine drops off as an assembly. It’s probably to wide for what you’re doing.

You guys are making me sound like a spring chicken, I'll be turning 68 in a few months. My problem is if I have a major project, everything else has to sit outside through the winter, my wife is getting pretty used to parking her car in that heated garage, and I'm getting there pretty fast myself. I already have one car sitting outside year around, this project would be two (plus whatever piles the donors are going to make). Not so sure the city would like that very much. When I ran my shop here, I told the city to pound sand (it is a business zoned property) but the business or any related action has been dormant for 3-4 years.

My son has an 08 or 09 Charger ex squad car he drove for several years and has been replaced. He is planning on pulling the Hemi drive train out of it. I'm sure we could make a deal on the rest of the car, but that front track width is pretty wide, probably wider then the late model minivans.

Huuuum again. Two things. As usual one thing always leads to another, a new (extra) project without shop or storage space unfortunately means the need for a new, or temporary, or prefabbed, or repurposed heated shop or storage space. I doubt very much that the city would know that your business has been dormant and even if they did you should still be zoned for a shop/storage space?

The biggest possible issue with the business zone property where the business has closed is, the reopened business may now be required to meet all the new requirements the city has tacked onto businesses over the last few years. When the business was still operational, it was "grandfathered in" (exempt) from nearly all of the current added laws. Those laws include a paved and lined parking lot with handy capped reserved parking spaces, parking lot lighting (even if the business is not open during the dark hours of the day), and several other "requirements" to meet the current city desires for as business clement (businesses of which the city is loosing very fast, almost daily). The problem is, I won't know where I stand until a City official is standing at my door, or I get a letter in the mail.

I have become pretty laid back during my retirement, especially after I got the 49 truck roadworthy and painted (about June of 22). I'm getting pretty used to not having a set time schedule and I'm becoming pretty guarded about tolerating many inconveniences. If this project moves forward I may have to schedule an actual working time again. (I can just tell you are all feeling sorry for me)

That 49 truck was my 3rd "last project" and I really thought I was done. I had no desires to do another one until this popped up. I even cleaned up and got rid of a lot of my stuff. That lasted about 2 years. I am really not sure I want to go back to those thrashing days with a 4th "last project". It will also be a bit more expensive, I will need to buy nearly everything for this project, there isn't very much here anymore. Add in uncertain times and one has to really evaluate his true desire.

It looks like I have a couple weeks to figure it out. Maybe the car will sell by then and will make the decision for me. I hate arguing with myself.

Here's a thought, and it's just me thinking along the simplicity lines. Does a Charger/300 3.5 V6 make sense? Another option might be to use the 3.8 minivan V6 bolted to a Dakota-sourced auto trans. I recall, from selling cars in the 90's, that many of us marvelled at how much nicer engine the 3.8 was than the 3.9, despite their common roots. I believe the 3.8 will bolt directly to a rear drive trans.

That may be an option, but I'm concerned about the 3.5 Charger V6 computer complexities. The Chargers were all new in 06 or 07, and had lots of "security stuff" built into them from the start. The minivans and PTs were still old school and were starting to age out. Most of them escaped the "security" updates until the government forced them to comply after 2013ish.

I have not heard about the minivan 3.8 bolting to a Dakota auto trans, that could be an interesting direction. Locally, a used engine out of a junk yard would cost as much, or more, then a complete rusty donor vehicle. I would still need to source a donor vehicle for all the odds and ends I would need to build this ride. If I have to buy a donor to complete the build, I might as well look into modernizing the brakes, the front suspension, and gain power steering at the same time, all of which the donor vehicle could provide. Still processing.

The buyer pool for the FWD version would be VERY small when it came time to sell. I would try to find a wrecked charger/300 and go 3.5L or a wrecked Charger/300/Ram/Durango/Grand Cherokee and go 3.6L. All the security stuff has been long figured out, I wouldn't let that bother you

I was over at my son's place this morning. We did some measuring on his 09 Charger ex squad car. The actual wheel mounting surface on the front is 64", that is about 2" wider per side then the wheel track listed on a 49 Plymouth (commonly agreed as being a 60" wheel mounting surface to wheel mounting surface), and the 49 fenders are wide with the original tires and wheels well behind the fender lip. My son also has a 68 Coronet (also with a measured today, 60" wide wheel mounting surface to wheel mounting surface) with the standard 5 1/2" (or 6"?) wide tires and wheels (I didn't look to see if the tires were 14" or 15"). The 09 Charger squad car steel wheels are 18 x 8" I believe. With our totally accurate ( ) measuring equipment on hand (a broom handle as a straight edge and a tape measure), with the straight edge against the tire sidewall and measuring as good as possible from the outer side of the steel wheel mounting surface, on both sets of wheels and tires (09 Charger and 68 Coronet), the outer surface of the tire was the same distance from the wheel mounting surface. The Charger wheels have a pretty big negative offset.

All that mess says is the if 2" of a wider track on each side can be accommodated by the wide fenders, there shouldn't be a problem with tire clearance (the Coronet has plenty of tire to fender clearance). The only issue I could see was if the total OD of the Charger's 18" short sidewall tire diameter was much larger then the outside diameter of the 14" or 15" tall sidewall tire diameter of the Coronet (or the 49) tire was. If the differences was large, one may have to trim the corners of the fenders to clear the tires when the wheels were steered to the max in either direction. The 49 front fenders do not curve under the body like modern car bodies do. I believe the larger diameter would have to be much larger to be a problem. I do expect to find about the same thing with the minivan front track width. According to the numbers above, the PT track width is with in an inch of the 49 track width.

My wife has been driving a front wheel drive Mopar for 30 years, I still believe a FWD would be better for her (this car is being built FOR HER). A 49 Plymouth does not have E brakes on the rear axle, it has a very limited choice of rear gears, and the rear axle has the tapered axle drum brakes. The 49 also has the 2" wide rear leaf springs, so if it remains rear wheel drive, a rear axle assembly with replacement spring would still be required. If it is converted to FWD, the rear axle can be swapped over to the PT or minivan trailing axle and the 2" springs (or the donor rear leaf springs) will be OK. The Charger has independent rear suspension, so there would be another major project.

Unlike some of you, I don't really give a rip about the future resale value of my stuff. If I build this car, it will be for my wife and my enjoyment. We are both nearing our 70s. resale is not in our future plans, that will be my children's problem. Neither of them are too concerned either. If my time, effort, and money, create a flop, its on me and I'm ok with it. After we are no longer involved, my son will simply sell it as a driver, or part it out and move on. He is a car guy, we raised him right.

Not at all.The Explorer 8.8 is a common swap into this era cars. All you do is slick off the Explorer mounts and weld on a new set of 2" perches, commonly found. All the rest stays original.. On axle parking brake setup, better gear selections, limited slip option.

This does assume the original springs aren't all wore out and in need of replacing regardless.