My 70 cuda convert

thanks scott

Nice project. What is the story with the car? How long have you owned it? Where did it come from?

owned it for about 2 yrs. came out of Nebraska. My good friend found it and resold it to me (I begged him to let it go). B5 blue car w/black top, black int. It got media blasted today, a little more needs to happen tomorrow. Very cool to see in raw metal. Suprisingly, its mostly rust free. Was a concrete product salesmans car in Omaha (had airshocks to lift up the tail, and a trailer hitch). Only cool trivia I like is it was shipped to the same dealer in Omaha as the purple 4spd hemi convert that is out there (and used to have that crazy metallic multicolor paint job). I talked to ola the other day (ebody registry), and he confimed the VINs were super close to each other, both were feb 70 cars. Thought that was cool, they were probably on the same trailer in the snow...in feb of 70. A mega dollar ride, and my little 340 (going to Omaha)

I got to find out what rear end is in it, (your t/a got me thinking). A friend said the early 70 340 4spd cars had a 2:66 first gear, and they changed it to 2:40 when the T/A came out. Not sure why, but they were faster with that gear ratio, so he says. He also said the best times would be with a 3:91 rear end. So that's on my list to find out, if so, that would be cool.

Good luck with it. Very cool.

Sometimes there is a little metal tag on the rear end housing, under one of the bolts that attaches the chuck to the housing, that will list the ratio. Maybe it is still there if it has never been tampered with. Take a look.

rear end tag looks sweet and clean after media blasting (glass beads). 3:23.

Updates are here (below). I was super nervous during 10 hrs of blasting, it came out awesome! Most mopars I have been around would have vaporized.

They are going to begin surgically patching just the bad metal. I am nervous to see how they minimize warpage (hammer the welds out).

http://artiesrestorations.com/70plymouthcuda.html

Now that looks good. I just got another great idea from you.

They will jump around when doing the welding: it minimizes the warping. Weld a 1/4 of an inch, stop, move a few feet away, do it again and again until it's all joined. Tedious, but it has to be done.

Sweet and clean looking convert!

Update. Pretty happy with the quarters. Only getting rid of the cancer and not going crazy on cutting good metal off. There was some old body work that had to be addressed. Once the rough metal work is done, it goes on a rotisserie for hammering smooth.

I want to keep as much as the original metal as possible, and felt like its being achieved.

trunk floor is nice! looks good in epoxy primer..did not have to replace, hard to believe...

Very pround of what was fixed on the leading edge of the quarter. Had to put in a 2.5" replacement piece to overcome a previous repair. The gap is perfect.

Saving original metal is not easy!!!! The risk to damaging the original quarters is actually pretty high, so dodged a bullet on this repair! The seam is smooth inside and out.

Could have spent $10K on NOS hardtop quarters and had them reformed into convertible quarters (another $$$$ investment on top of the 10K), but still its not the original DNA of the car.

Very happy so far (mainly just the lower quarters behind the wheel wells have been replaced into super clean metal just below the center body line). Lots of dents though (no rust) everywhere else.

Those rollers from summit (auto twirler) worked out great. Price was great too, free shipping.
They got the Gene Gregory bumper on. Fits perfect.

Got it home today to put suspension on, then it goes back to be finished. Love the B5 blue paint! Wife says it looks like a HotWheels color.

Christmas came early!

Man that looks good!

It is a great feeling getting back something looking so good. I could not leave the garage yesterday for hours! If the paint wasn't still outgasing, I would have slept in it last night.

I got a lot of money in doing the one inner fender correctly. We used a NOS 71-74 one I had, and patched in a very small portion of a new AMD one to remove the notch that would not be correct for 70 (a one yr only inner fender). Turned out nice. They also replicated some of the punches that the 70 had which the 71 did not.

I like the AMD sheet metal and consider it the best, but when compared side by side, the NOS metal is nicer and stiffer. I put an NOS trunk extension in (kept original trunk floor which was fine). Same for the inner fender, less flex, plus it felt heavier.

I now got to scramble to find a person to help me rebuild the rear end, the body shop decided not to rebuild and handed back to me in pieces. That sucks. There has to be someone decent in the chicago area, so the search begins.

Very impressive. I also remembering taking the hump out of the inner fender when replacing on my 70 cuda.

WOW! that looks great!
Pat

thanks!