72 Challenger R/T/A

[gomopar440]

No, but I have to fly back to Puerto Rico on Tuesday.:huh:

Thanks for the offer though.:bravo:

 

[revolucien]

right on bro, looks like you're gettin some stuff knocked out... :bravo:

 

[gomopar440]

The passenger side wheel house was a bear to get cut out. It took a while but finally came out in one piece. Getting it put back up was a chore as well. At least it's finally done now though.:clap:

The afternoon was not as productive as Mark kept getting pulled away for other things that kept coming up.:huh: The drop off, wheel house and quarter panel should go on tomorrow... Hopefully:helpme:

Anyway on to the new pics.:dance:

 

[gomopar440]

Couple more pics... I added a shot of the painted air cleaner lid too.

BTW, We got some JY tires on the Magnum 500 wheels. Nothing pretty but they at least hold air.

 

[BB71Challenger]

Man Paul it is really starting to look good with the body work :clap: It has been hectic here but I should be able to send the '70 tail panel soon, will it be hard to integrate after everything else has been welded in? BTW I love the steering wheel, I have the same one in my challenger. I know it is not correct for a 71 but I think it is the best looking steering wheel to ever grace the interior of a musclecar

 

[gomopar440]

It will require cutting the old panel out and fitting the new one in it's place. Of course, saying it is a lot easier than doing it. I will get it done, I'm just not sure when yet.

 

[gomopar440]

The morning was a wash work wise. I did pull the radiator to find a leak. Theres a 1" crack around the lower hose spout. That'll have to get patched before any extended tuning can commence...

The first real things to get worked on was aligning all the parts together for the pass side quarter area. Pretty much the same as the other side except the places that were tight or loose on the other side were just the opposite on this side:hmmm: :huh: . Either way, we found the best fit for the pieces and started out by welding in the pass side trunk drop off. Once that was in solid, the inner wheel house was next. With that in place we were able to align the quarter panel and trim the edges to fit.

One area that would not cooperate with us at all was the mid quarter panel body line at the back. We had to tack the panel in place front to back and then slit the body line about 6" from the end to allow the panel to align properly. Then we tapped it down until it came together evenly and welded the split closed.

We were going out to dinner with friends tonight so had to call it off around 6pm. We'll finish the welding on the quarter panel later. It's on solidly for now with the tacks all the way around it.

 

[gomopar440]

Here's a shot of the driver side wheel house looking through a tail light hole. I ought to be able to fit some WIDE tires in there. The 3" spring relocation will help even more with that. I'll have to measure it to see how much total actual width I gained with the mini tub job and spring relo kit. So far it looks wicked good!

 

[mr340]

Lookin Good!!!! Gonna have it on the road for the Nats???[smilie=p:

 

[gomopar440]

trying to but some, uh, issues have come up that may have put a kink in the works...

I am going to try to get it drivable enough to move it around the shop and backyard before I go though. Oh yes, there WILL be pics if that happens[smilie=i: [smilie=i: [smilie=i:

 

[gomopar440]

Considering everything that we've cut up and rewelded so far, I'm surprised we haven't had a problem like this before now. When we tacked the pass side quarter on solid and then compared it to the driver side. The driver side got pushed in about 1/2" when we were welding it up. We are going to have to cut the weld along the top of the panel and push it outward until it has the correct slightly bowed out profile again. Oh well, at least we caught it now instead of after the paint is on. The downside is that this will kill the chances of getting the spring relocation kit, subframe connectors and torque boxes installed this time. That means my chances of getting it ready by the nuts nats won't be very good.

I'll at least try to get the new leaf springs installed so it will sit level when we set it back down.

 

[gomopar440]

The bow is back! Of course it took half the day to get it there. :shifty: Anyway, on to bigger and better things...

Next on the fixit list was the crack in the lower radiator hose mount tube. 5-10 minute job tops. Easy as beeper in his... well lets just say it was REAAAAL easy to fix it. LOL

The belts for the pullys I had bought last month were now going on. Or so I thought... :hmmm: The PS belt fits perfect. The Alt belt however requires a shorter belt to be able to use the limited available travel of the brackets that were meant for the bigger style alt. I only have about a 1" range of adjustment before the barcket hits the alt or the alt hits the fuel pump. Mark had a big pile of leftover belts from various projects over the years and I dug through it till I finally found one that would almost fit. It was still too long so I just got creative with the adjuster bolt and just used a big honkin washer to bite down on the outside tip of the adjuster bracket. This gave me an extra 3/4" past what should have been the end of the adjustability. So far it seems to be holding pretty well, at least until I can get the proper size belt on there.

While we going in and out of the car, the driver side door alignment problem (sagging a bit) finally got the attention it deserved. about 15 minutes of messing with the lower hinge and we finally had a smooth operating door. The passenger door shuts fine but we will need to adress the W I D E gap some other time in the future.

 

[gomopar440]

I had to make another post so I could attach more pics. You don't mind do you?:dance:

Time for some fluid changing. :wtf: Gotta be done since the oil and tranny fluid both look almost black and can only be told apart by smell.[smilie=f:
First the radiator got topped off with the best faucet water money could buy. Then the oil change. No problems cept maybe adding a little too much oil. not enough to worry about though.

Now we get to the fun part, the trans fluid and filter change. Has anyone here EVER been able to get a tranny pan off without spilling at least 50% of the fluid you were trying to get INTO the drain pan all over the floor and yourself? Me neither.:doubt: That was only the beginning of the fun though. I relieved the pan of the remaining fluid, spilling half again as much as it had left in it of course.[smilie=l: I took a looksee in the pan and immediately wished I hadn't... [smilie=2: Can anyone identify what these parts may have been at one time long ago? I had a few other pieces about the same size as these but they fell in the oil drum when I emptied the fluid. My best guesstimate is they would be from something about 6" around. It was sitting in about 1/8" to 1/4" of aluminum shavings covering more than half of the bottom of the pan. :doh: At this point, I am figuring that this 904 trans is a lost cause. However, me being the optimist I am, I cleaned everything out, sanded and repainted the pan, stuck a gasket to the pan and then bolted it back up. Then I tossed a gallon of tranny fluid down the tube for good measure. The real acid test will come shortly. What do I have to lose at this point, right?[smilie=i:

While I was rolling around on the creeper I got a couple of pics of the rear sub frames where the spring relocation kit will be installed. The kit will give me more room for bigger tires and at the same time it will replace a very bad section of the pass side frame rail. If I wasn't planning on doing the relo kit I'd have to either replace the rail or cap it.

Anyway, onto the fun stuff... Hook up the battery, stick the fuel line in the gas can, clear everything outta the way and turn the key. Man I love the sound of open headers. :dance: Anyway, first issue to pop up is a hose clamp on the tranny line going into the radiator making a mess. Shut it down, tighten clamp and start 'er back up. So far so good. I was messing with the shifter to seet what kind of noises the tranny was going to make. When I pulled it out of park into neutral, I felt something shift in the car. I looked out the door and saw the rear wheels slowly turning. If the tranny is shot I shouldn't get anything out of it I would think. I let Mark hop in and work the gas and shifter while I watched the rear tires. It would go into gear forward and reverse and shift throught at least one gear change. :hmmm: Mark even took it up to 110 on the speedo with the only visible problem being the unbalanced tires. :wtf: Maybe I got a cat tranny with nine lives or something? I won't really know how well it works until we put a load on it and see if it can actually MOVE the car. So far it looks promising though.:dance:

While the car was running the dash lights and some of the guages started working. I guess they needed the Alt hooked up or something.:huh: After we got out of the car I looked under it and saw a large puddle forming. I checked it out and found it to be dirty water. When I looked inside the car right above the puddle I found the front of the passenger side floorboard was full of water too. Apparently the heater core has now popped.:doh: I just cut the big hose and ran it to the small hose nipple on the intake and removed the hoses from the firewall. Problem solved for now until I can get a new heater core.

BTW, Here's a pic of my project for tomorrow morning. These springs have got to go! I'm going to just put the new XHD springs in the stock location until I can get the spring relocation kit installed.

That's all for now folks. I may have to wait till I get back to PR for tomorrows update post. We'll see:bravo:

 

[a12bee]

Mad props for having the heart to dig through this.

 

[Da-ho]

Looks like its tranny time fer sure, that appears to be a snap ring from the rear drum. If you dont beat it, you might still be able to move it around some until you score a 727.

 

[mopar_man]

Has anyone here EVER been able to get a tranny pan off without spilling at least 50% of the fluid you were trying to get INTO the pan all over the floor and yourself? Me neither.:doubt: That was only the beginning of thhe fun though. I relieved the pan of the remaining fluid, spilling half again as much as it had left in it of course.

First time I did a fluid change in my transmission, I took out all the bolts and broke the seal between the transmission and the pan. Needless to say, I wore a lot of fluid when that pan fell into the drain pan. Helpful tip (and somewhat common sense) is to leave a few bolts in loose and break the seal. Let it drain out as best as possible. Loosen the bolts some more and tip the pan to drain some more. Finally unbolt it completely. Of couse, the easiest thing is to install a drain plug in the pan.

 

[gomopar440]

Helpful tip (and somewhat common sense) is to leave a few bolts in loose and break the seal. Let it drain out as best as possible. Loosen the bolts some more and tip the pan to drain some more.

I was doing exactly that. The pan gasket wouldn't let go of the rail until it let go everywhere all at once and splashed out of every side.:doh:

Anyway, I'm at the airport now and figured I'd kill some time writing this post while I wait for the flight.

First thing in the morning I brought the new springs and shocks down to the car. I started out by spraying some PB Blaster on every nut and bolt holding the old parts on. I let the stuff soak in for about 15 minutes, put a jack under the axle and then started unbolting the shackles, front perches and lower shock nuts. I didn't even try to mess around with the U bolts. I got out the angle grinder and cut through the top of each bolt till they popped loose and just pulled them out the bottom of the plate. Everything came out ok except for one stud broke that off the front spring perch when I tried to remove it. I only did one side at a time to keep everything lined up. After both sides were done I took another look to make sure everything was on tight. I noticed that the hard brake line from the "T" fitting to the driver side wheel cylinger was now wet with brake fluid. I must have hit it somehow and cracked it when I was pulling the U bolts out. I was planning on replacing the rear brakes and lines anyway so no big deal.

BTW, Here's a pic of the hacked together 9 leaf spring packs that were under the car. You'll notice that the arches appear to match. The shocks in the pic are both fully extended. The shorter passenger side shock was acting as a down travel limiter and causing the entire rear end to lean like it was. What the pics don't show is the springs have almost no stregnth left in them. I was able to bend them down by hand.

And a few parting shots to show why I've been doing the mini-tub job. These tires under the car are 215's and from the looks of things I could almost fit two of them under each wheel well. The spring relo kit will remove the last big obstruction from the wheel well and then I can get some good measurements of how much actual room I'll have for rear tire width.

 

[a12bee]

What do you do in PR and why do you flip back and forth?

 

[gomopar440]

What do you do in PR and why do you flip back and forth?

I like a challenge and it helps to build my sky miles.


Actually, I'm in the Navy stationed in PR right now. If the drivers didn't suck so bad here I would have brought the Chally here a long time ago. After being here for a few years now, I'd never bring a decent vehicle of any kind to this place. It'd never last.[smilie=f: :doubt:

I've only got about six months left here so the next trip over to PA in August will be probably be my last chance to get to work on the car. I'd like to try to get over there in July as well but we'll have to wait and see.:huh: Hopefully after that, I'll be able to get the car hauled (or driven:helpme over to wherever I get stationed next so I'll be able to work on it whenever I want.:helpme:

 

[08Challenger]

I like a challenge and it helps to build my sky miles.



I've only got about half a year left here

lucky bastard