Change in plans

MoPig buried under tons o' sh!t in garage

MoPig revealed after ??? years

Loading up MoPig

Nice looking Challenger!

Bye bye, MoPig!

Nice car. What’s up with that one

Are you done?????

Holy crap I thought you took pic of my garage then I remembered I don't own a challenger. So what the plan?

Off to Mikes place?

Bought it in August 1995.

Tired of putting $$$ into it and still not running since 2009(?) after the last time I hurt the engine.

Let somebody else deal with.

RIP

Is it “sold”, or are you just having it finished somewhere else?

Divide & Conquer

Hopefully it’s not gone so long that the wife gets used to seeing the garage empty.

There was so much stuff piled on & around the Challenger that even w/ the car gone it doesn't look "empty". What a freakin' mess...

Next task on my list is clean & organize the garage so I can do my part while Mike's doing his.

BTW, you totally spoiled my intent to make everyone think I sold the old P O S...

I've seen this a lot as of late. A car sitting for 10 plus years with the best of intentions then........... It goes bye bye. Then a brand new Challenger adorns the vacant spot in the garage.

Glad to hear your keeping your car...

Glad to hear you're getting it back together. I always enjoy reading about your updates and track reports...every 10 years

LOL, and it's so much cooler than a new challenger. I've found my projects take a LOT longer these days.

Oh good, sounds like you got some help. The to-do list must be a long one.

Bout time so you can test all those bitty carbs then step up to a DOMINATOR............ Pretty soon Brad, petty soooonnnnn............

Divide and Conquer works for me too. If I have something I can't quite deal with then it is time to phone a friend. Sometimes a second set of hands makes the job go 10x faster.

I'd come up w/ a project plan that covered a whole bunch o' things around the whole car, but hit sanity overload when it came down to making real progress again. My last big push got the engine assembled and on Dwayne's dyno in Oct 2017. But then I needed to start taking it back apart to deal w/ numerous oil leaks, the crappy Mr. Gasket MLS (Must Leak Something?) head gaskets, etc. Normally I'd take it a bite at a time and pull in my friend Mike Hynes to help w/ another set of hands, a different skill set, and to keep making headway.

This time I've hired Mike to work through a set of tasks simply to make sure they get done while I can focus on the engine & trans work. When we rolled the MoPig into his garage on Sunday and parked it next to his work-of-art '71 440 Six Pack Challenger restoration (he did just about EVERYTHING but the paint and some hard-core body work, IIRC), it was a real-life E-body Beauty and The Beast comparison. Yeah, mine's an old rusty P O S... with a 670 HP engine waiting to get put back into it. The chassis is only legal for 10.0s, so the next question will be how close to that am I capable of getting the car.

Progress has been sooo sloooow and stop & go since I pulled the engine out back in spring of 2009(?). I'm hoping this strategy creates momentum and gets it moving on its own power before the tracks close this fall.

EDIT: Added another pic from driveway w/ partial view of the modified T/A repro hood to the right of the car. Ain't nuthin' subtle about it. Considering new plates for it, of which one option is LC73R. Not expecting too many people to pick up on that, but ZIPPY will, if he sees this.

Divide and conquer. The Admiral would be proud. He did teach you something after all.

That car provided a lot of inspiration for me over the years.

I recall printing out a post you did on Moparts back in late 90's or early 2000's where you methodically described what you had done up to that point and the results from the changes. It was in my desk drawer for years!

Good to see it getting a new lease on life.

Didn't you have an A12 car, too, at one point?

The Admiral taught me a lot of things, but very little about cars. If he'd had any interest, he'd have been a really good Rally Car racer; he was a pretty sharp driver under a wide variety of road conditions. Not sure if being a Navy jet pilot had anything to do w/ that, or both were simply a result of him being who he was.

That post in the late '90s may have been my first "real" Moparts.com post... Wow, that was a LONG time ago.

Yep, had an A12 RR, too. It's been gone now longer than I actually owned it, unfortunately.

LC73R does means something to me.
Tip of the hat to you from Detroit, from the funny looking white cursive F instead of the big blue M.

One of my most memorable posts over the years was pre-UBB moparts, where you went over a bunch of things that had been done, and it sounded like quite a list...and at the end, you said something like...Oh well, it's all food for thought. I still have to figure out where the "missing" power (or ET or whatever)is.

Nobody had any good suggestions.
If I remember right, at the end it was a cam issue(?)

I've sure enjoyed reading about your journey.

Glad to see that it is not going anywhere. Get it done & start making some passes. Someone has to, mine still is not done yet?

Yep. Finally figured out the cam started eating lobes after about 1100 miles when the car "mysteriously" lost about .3 and 3 MPH between a couple of track visits.

Long story short: engine builder ignored cam grinder's spring load recommendations and used his "favorite" SFT springs, which had about 30#s more open pressure than the cam grinder's max open spec. Broke in fine; broke down after about 1000 miles of excessive over-the-nose load.

No, he didn't cover the repairs on his dime. And, no, I don't have him do work for me any more.

Probably more than I've enjoyed living it.

Whomever said "Life's about the journey, not the destination" wasn't on a journey with multi-year long delays that repeatedly pushed back getting to the destination.

My memory isn’t that good........ I don’t remember that post at all!!😲

Mine, either. I only remember paying the repair bill.

....and here I thought one of us had come to there senses!

If I ever came to my senses, nobody on the internet would ever hear from me again.

.... I’m to the point that every time the car is on the jack stands (which is often), I’m worried it may never come down again.

I hope you get it running in the near future. I too enjoy your detailed posts showing the effects of changes you make on it.

I want to see more pictures of the hood if you don't mind sharing them. From front, side, and from inside the car if u have them.
Glad u are getting it back out

More pics of hood can be found on a couple of older threads. Search on key word "hood" with my name as poster going back 2 years and they'll be in the links returned.

Havent seen that car in a long time......be good to see it back out.

Get a boat it will be fun they said. So I did when I retired in 2010 and it’s still sitting there to this day without touching the river. Only thing I can say was at least I bought a used one. Maybe this Fall. Lol 😂

So much for my belief that only four other people on the planet remember seeing my car at the track; looks like there are five.

Lol, a few of us definitely remember that car.....was impressed because you always drove it to the track....havent been out with our cars too much this year do to the weather but hopefully I can make it to the MIR Mopar race and do some testing.

Brief update:
- Mike's made good progress on the items he's been tasked with

- He also found a serious crack in the frame near where the k-member attaches to the driver's side; going to need to find someplace to repair that, plus install front spring mount reinforcements that I picked up at Carlisle a couple of years ago

- I'm still working through The Garage From He11 to get it in shape to do engine & trans wrenching again

- I was going to post some progress pics, but most of them didn't turn out very good. I'll try again the next time I go by Mike's place.

It's still a 20 footer -- maybe more like a 50 footer -- but it's what I have to work with.

Make that six...

Nope; you & Douglas are two of the original four, Mike Hynes is the third, and John Dallain(sp?) is the fourth. I did forget include Jim Hanrahan, probably because he dropped off the radar years ago. Guess that does make six, though.

My car isn't even a 50 footer but I still enjoy it. I think I've gotten to the point now where I'm not super concerned with how it looks as long as I can get in it and drive it.

Bummer about the crack in the frame. That might take some work to get fixed.

Keep plugging away. Progress is progress even if it doesn't seem like it somedays. I worked on my car a bunch earlier this year without anything seeming to change and then one day it was ready to fire up. Of course, as soon as I started to drive it again I immediately made a new list of stuff that had to be changed...........

That's a cool car, I'm thinking you have a solid plan. Just keep it to *this* plan and all will be good. : )

I also just got my 66 Charger roll bar project out of the barn after replacing the frame connectors, passenger floor pan, and welding up a bunch of cracks over the last two years. I'm putting in the 511 and GF5R tomorrow now that I have my bellhouing back from cert/windowing. Next step is to fit the forward bars and start tacking it together now that it's on the suspension again. It's a long road, hang in there!

No updates on my effort, other than my garage isn't quite as cluttered after having spent some time sorting thru sh!t.

Mike's actually made progress, for which I have some photographic evidence. The things I've asked him to take on run the gamut from replacing fuel system components I'm concerned were damaged from extended E10 fuel exposure to handling some body & paint stuff to slightly "re-image" the car per some ideas I had.

I provided him the remaining '70 B5 paint I received w/ the car in 1995, but the color match is off enough that it doesn't appear to have been what the car was actually painted with before I bought it. The front & rear bumpers have been relocated flush w/ the body as w/ '70-72 Challengers, we've gone w/ body-color bumpers & rear tail light trim, the tail light modules are now black, the grille's been blacked out, wheel well bright trim removed... just a bunch of stuff. Still definitely a "20+" footer, yet different.

Old fuel tank & fuel pump swapped out for new shiny parts. You can see the "Plain Jane" Strange S-60 under there that got installed last year, IIRC.

New "Spoilers by Randy" chin spoiler along with the painted & relocated front bumper. Even though the spoiler is sold as an E-body Challenger part, it still fit like a universal-application part. It's got much better under-valance coverage than T/A replica "twin" spoilers, since I'm hoping it reduces the amount of air getting under the front of the car.

The new M&H front radials are shorter than the 215/75R15s still on the wheels, too, and will help drop the front end a bit. It sat basically level before, but will have a bit of rake w/ the new tires without looking jacked-up.

Engine compartment still grungy. The one nice feature is what I believe is one of the last 3-speed wiper motors restored by Jules D'Addio before he passed away. Gotta love a grubby street car with a show car wiper motor...

Frame rusted & cracked on driver's side near k-frame. Gotta get that fixed before the car gets hammered on again.

Interior stripped out. One shot of the back of the roll bar (and the now-painted, formerly pitted chrome, door mirror) and one w/ the Auto Grip handle sticking up from the floor. I had been driving w/o the console the last time it was on the road, but the console's going back in.

Funny thing... well, not really funny - Now that Mike's been inside, outside & underneath my car, he started telling me about what a rough life my car had before I bought: front end had to have been pulled straight after an accident; quarter panel replacement, patches in floor & trunk where it had rusted through... all that "good" stuff you never really wanted to hear about the POS that you've stuffed waaaay too much $$$ into over the last 20+ years. I guess it's a good thing I didn't pay a huge price for it when I bought it.

Looks good, any progress is good progress.

Looking good to me.

Exactly.

Looks like Mike is getting right after it!!

What's the deal with the patch that was welded inside the engine compartment on the left inner fender?



I like the red pin stripe on the grill



Also the crack on the left front frame rail is this common on the mopars ? I think someone else has found a crack on the frame rail, Doug with the 64 dodge I believe

i wish the engine compartment of my charger was as "grubby" as yours ! i would open the hood for sure.

Good progress. The body color bumpers look really nice on there, I like it better than the black.

Let's see that cool looking hood scoop...

I think that's where the battery mounted originally. Not unusual to have rust from the acid.

The battery was still in the front when I bought the car. If that area had already rusted when the front end got bent up (per Mike's ), maybe it needed to be patched before the battery tray could be mounted there again.

Probably nothing that hasn't been posted here at some point in the past, but since I don't feel like digging around for pics in old posts...

I wanted the entire grill blacked out, but Mike thought the bright trim still looked decent enough that he put it back on. I think the red stripe was from the factory... I may go "full black" anyways, if I don't want to look at the "fish mouth" grill any longer.


No idea. Mine had the rust hole in the frame when I bought it, but I'm pretty sure the cracks developed during the time I've owned it. I figure that every time it came off the line w/ the front wheels jerked 4-6 inches in the air that there was some stress being applied around the front suspension, etc.

Lookin good Brad! I also found a crack on the front driver's side frame rail of my cuda. Near the front K frame bolt. Welded a patch over it and no more problems...been that way since the car was running in the 10s, so 2003 or so?

Love the scoop.

Yep. He told me today his work will be done by the weekend, so the car should be returning to La Casa de Chaos soon.

Now it's up to me -- again -- to make sure things keep moving in the right direction.

Did you put the fuel pump inside the tank with the new setup? I think tanks with internal pumps are a bolt in deal for E body cars now.

Just looking at the Holley EFI Tank page the other day. Nearly everything but the early B's now. Here's the E body tank.
https://www.holley.com/products/ls_power/fuel_tanks/parts/19-137

Naah... had purchased a standard replacement tank and a spare Mallory 140 pump quite a ways back... simpler & cheaper to do a basic parts swap at this point.

Mike's work is done and the MoRust -- uh... MoPig -- is back home.

Car-side of garage is cleaned up; work-side of garage still needs some attention before I start wrenching again.

These semi-crappy pics don't look much different than what's been posted before, but they're as of Sunday afternoon once the car came back.

Another few good looks at that big ugly mother-effing scoop, too.

The project will continue...

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TTFN