71 Charger R/T

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....

Quote:

---

Many Many years in the making.

---

WooHoo !!!! That's what I'm talkin' 'bout !!!!

Man, it is a good feeling. I remember when my former '68 Hemi Charger got paint at year 6....... Keep it up.....