This is what I started with. I bought this car in about 1976. The car was a one owner and was on
Lakewood (Colorado) Chryslerville's lot. It had 24K on the clock. I paid around 2700 for it. It has been
in every western state. Turn the calendar forward to April of 2007 and 168,000 miles total and this is
how it looked. It was time. I started with safety issues first. The front end bushings were nearly
metal on metal. A box from Just Suspension and the car would finally take an alignment.

Fender code:
V6W 26 EN2
M25 M31 M88 N85 R11
H51 J52 JS4 L25 L91 M21
VLW U B41 C16 C56 G37
TB3 A6B5 000 B28 139368
E44 D34 BS23 G3B 24XXXX

Most of the sheet metal was in sort of good shape. The outer wheel housings, the trunk extensions and the right rear quarters needed replacing due to rust. The back valence was damaged in the blizzard of 82 when it got yanked from a 5 foot drift. A fellow firefighter Brett Marine fitted the pieces for me. I was going to patch the right quarter but Goodmark announced a full quarter so that was the route I took. It took care of a rust spot under the rear window as well as the other rust damage behind the wheel.

Looking good

Really neat. Thats a long time to own a car, glad she will be restored too.

Sheldon

While waiting for the paint guys to get to my car, I gutted the interior, disassembled the dash. After a media blast and cleanup, PPG textured interior DTL paint was applied to the frame.

I also sent a core I bought on Ebay to Ultimate Rides by way of Nick (on this board from AZ) with the group Moparts buy. My old pad had a relief map of the Grand Canyon crossing the San Andreas fault. The new one is sure pretty.

The electronics in the dash were next. I bought from Greg at RT Engineering new innards for my tach. Mine had three popcorned resistors that had seen high heat at some time and did not work. I checked the meter first to make sure the armature was still there. I also bought his quartz clock conversion and his electronic regulator to replace the mechanical limiter Mopar used. With it all apart, I reattached the speedometer needle that broke before I bought the car by super-glueing a small wire in the fold of the needle to splice the two pieced together. I then touched up the paint on all the needles and the tach over rev numbers that had faded.

The dash harness was totally unwrapped and checked for crisp wires. I did not have the usual ammeter toast but I had a petrified wire to the steering column. I replaced it with a wire from a harness I bought at a swap meet that was in good shape. In the near future, I will changing out the ignition switch harness that this red wire plugged into that is also petrified. I also put a tach wire back in was cut off by the previous owner for an after market tach. I think he did that because he fried the original one.
The whole harness was re-wrapped with non-adhesive vinyl tape of the same width that came off of it and put into the dash frame.It is ready to go into the car.

Looks great! Keep up the good work.

These are what's left of the door panels. Chalk, body grease, sun, more sun and these have had it.

With horror stories about grain, fit, and pain of installatioin, I decided against reproduction panels. I have yet to see survivor panels in B5 that were in any kind of shape. I bought one on ebay but the picture was not very good and the panel was even worse. I finally found a set of black panels in the upper midwest. It cost a fortune to ship them but they were in pretty good shape. Next step was to dye them blue. The local SEM shop spent two weeks matching the freshly painted glove box door. I am not sure why they call it dye. When you dye a cloth, it is the new color all the way through. This is just a layer on top of polypropylene substrate. Hope to replace them one day with new reproductions if a good one ever comes along.
The pic is of the original black one.

Here is the redyed panel.

The car went off to the body shop. It is turning gray. This is not going to be a rotisserie resto. Cannot afford it. The car is pretty much stripped to just a rolling chassis. Steering box and K member and fuel lines still in place but all brake lines removed, firewall stripped but differential and gas tank still there.
Craig

Another gray picture

While that is gone, turned attention to the heater box. Using DMT foams and gaskets, redoing the box was a breeze. Amazing how easy it was to get the old petrified stuff out of there. I bought an after market heater core but the piece of junk did not compare at all to the original one so it went back for a refund. I took the old one to a radiator shop and he boiled it out and pressure checked it and it went back in. Checked the evaporator and it also was tight so I will reuse it too.

Hey Craig....looks really good. You are doing a great job and that door panel looks AMAZING! Keep the progress pics coming.

Joe

Finally, something besides gray. Color on the jambs, engine compartment and trunk. Also doors, hood and trunk lid.

More

Hood

Looking very nice!!