The Dodge Challenger Message Board

Arising from a thread on here about this Challenger being for sale I bought it a couple of weekends ago and drove it back down the M4 from Slough to Bristol.... Must say I was impressed with how well it went and it certainly got some attention on the motorway. There is another thread on here that I started where I'm looking for early history and owners of the car before circa 2002 so I've decided to start this thread on the little bits of work that we will carry out on the car as time goes by. The intention is to keep it on the road and do various running repairs rather than a strip and rebuild..

First job was to give the car a thorough clean inside. Its amazing how badly some people prepare a car for sale? A good hoover of the carpets and some elbow grease with cloth and polish and the interior is sparkling. Despite the sellers claim that the car was always garaged the leaves stuck in the front A pillar behind the wing and the green mould on the window seals told a different story. The paintwork was also mottled where clearly leaves had lain on the roof, bonnet and trunk but a good T Cut and polish got the paint sparkling... Pictures don't actually show the difference hence no pics !

First job was to remove all the redundant air conditioning pipes, canisters and radiator. This was the engine bay as purchased. By the way, do all Challengers have colour coded engine bays?



After removing everything the engine bay looks a lot tidier now. All the original parts will be safely stored in case future owners want to restore it back to original. We are just awaiting delivery of a new heater control valve (the old one leaked) to reconnect the heater pipes back up.



In the first picture you can just see a battery cut-off switch mounted near the brake servo. The wiring to this was a bit wierd and the switch position was a bit awkward, and a lot of the wiring in the engine bay had been messed about over the years and needed tidying up. So the switch was moved to a more convenient and less visible place and new cables made up for the alternator & battery / starter motor to simplify & improve the wiring.

Being new to the world of Dodge Challengers we need to do some research on how to remove the aircon compressor and re-configure the belt drive to the alternator. I guess it will have to be replaced with an idler pulley in the same position but any advice will be greatly received !

Also intend to move the battery to the boot.
Also need a new dash top as the existing one is badly cracked... I see I can get one from Legendary Interiors (not cheap !) so has anyone refurbished their own or knows a UK company that can?

Last picture is of the Challenger in our workshop alongside some other projects of ours.... the 1943 Willys Jeep has just been finished and will be up for sale soon. The white shell is a 1989 Mustang 5.0 and just out of site is my 1969 Camaro which is the subject of a complete rear half replacement of all sheet metal including the roof.. hence we don't need any more projects and intend to keep the Challenger on the road for some fun...... as and when the sun shines of course !

Looking good! Amazing what a bit of graft achieves eh?
The aircon removal is a piece of piss, replacement alternator brackets are cheap and readily available here too.
As far as I'm aware the engine bays were body colour on most cars but I have a feeling that some colours had the bulkhead painted black for some reason
Check with Drew about the dash pad, he's just covered the replacement of the cover in his post Fish Has Left The Compound in General Chat section

you wont want or need an idler pulley. Just get the non-a/c brackets/pulleys from used sources,(Moparts is probably your easiest bet), or new re-pops from here www.bouchillonperformance.com nice shop!

All Mopars have the engine bay painted body colour.

The 1970 cars painted bright or light colours (not sure about the other years?) usually had various areas shot in matt black paint to hide various bits.

The very top of the bulkhead (around the air vents), the metalwork in front of the radiator (so you couldn't see it through the 1970 grille) and the large pinch weld that runs along the bottom of each sill (because they are fucking ugly).

Obviously with dark colours it was pointless.

Those alternator brackets are on UK eBay most of the time for about 15 quid, they are cheaply plated but could always be painted, come with bolt and spacer too

Thanks for all the pointers guys - much appreciated.... Good to add a few more jobs and parts to the list !

That explains why we can see black paint on the bulkhead top where the green has flaked off in places then - cheers for that....

Hi,
Just reading about your recent purchase and living in the UK. I am soon returning back to live in the UK with the similar Ebody to yours. I have a 72 Sublime 383, 4 speed.
I am looking fwd. to driving it on the UK motorway.
How did the motor run at speed? what rear end gears are running? Mine has headers and a 3" Magnaflow exhaust system making it very loud, wondering if it will pass an MOT.... decibels and all that.
See you soon.
Mike

xbrit wrote:Hi,
Just reading about your recent purchase and living in the UK. I am soon returning back to live in the UK with the similar Ebody to yours. I have a 72 Sublime 383, 4 speed.
I am looking fwd. to driving it on the UK motorway.
How did the motor run at speed? what rear end gears are running? Mine has headers and a 3" Magnaflow exhaust system making it very loud, wondering if it will pass an MOT.... decibels and all that.
See you soon.
Mike

If my old 1969 Mustang with 3" Flowmasters (albeit not with headers) passed an MOT, I think your car will! I don't even think exhaust noise comes into an MOT? As long as there are no gases leaking, you'll be OK. Whereabouts will you be living in the UK? I'm sure we can find a musclecar-friendly MOT station for you!

Not sure where we will be living yet, but staying with in-laws Newcastle area.

Well not been on here for a while as the Challenger has been just great cruising out and about Bristol. There a really good informal car meeting on the 2nd sunday of each month in Queens Square and last time my two boys took the F100 and the Challenger down along with me in the Plymouth Roadrunner... The Challenger looks a little small sandwiched between the two !! .....

The 70 Roadrunner is one of my all time favourite cars.

Three lovely vehicles there you lucky git

dave-r wrote:The 70 Roadrunner is one of my all time favourite cars.

Me too

Update on some restoration work we've now started.....
The intention with this Challenger is to start AND finish ONE job at a time, rather than start stripping the car and it being off the road for years ! That way we can still have some fun with the car....

Currently we've totally stripped out the front suspension which is being sandblasted, painted and rebuilt with a front end suspension kit of all new joints & bushings, etc. Car is up on axles stands as per photo. We will be putting the stock drums back on for now as they worked really good and maybe thinking about a disc brake conversion in due course.



Suspension as stripped and laid out ready for cleaning, sandblasting and painting......the old shocks are very weak so a new set of four are now on their way over from the US.



The offside rear quarter has been replaced sometime previous to 2001 but the wheel arch / lip has rusted through again, plus the rear lower quarter had a real bad spot of rust. So instead of leaving it alone I couldn't resist poking it with a screwdriver and before you knew it there was a large hole......

Didn't look too bad to start with.............


And by the time the paint and all the rust had fallen out this is what it looked like.......


So I've fabricated a quick patch panel and welded that back in as a temporary measure until a new rear quarter skin and possibly an outer wheel tub are brought over from the states to do a proper job. Yes, there will be a bit of filler but its only temporary.....



Original dash top was badly cracked all over and this picture doesn't really show how bad it is



When we bought the car the previous owner had purchased one of the cheap ABS plastic dash covers but never fitted it. After seeing the price of new / repro complete dash panels we decided to see how good the ABS cover fitted. It actually fitted over the old dash really well and has made a huge difference to the look of the interior. Again this picture doesn't do it justice. It was also a non-A/C cover so it doesn't have the vents which we actually like...... we'll get a better picture for comparison sometime !



The wood effect covering on the centre console and the door panel was also badly cracking and peeling so this has also been removed and the underlying metal given a brushed aluminium effect. Again, it tidies up the interior no end and can always be replaced if required. The door inserts have also been stripped back to bare metal as well since this pic was taken...........

You can buy the wood effect sticky-backed-plastic from most US restoration places. Not sure what the quality is like these days but years ago it was never quite the factory shade.

Well I've not posted on here for some time as we've been sticking regular updates over on the MMA forum. So rather than duplicate it all here, go and have look at this thread http://www.moparuk.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=46126

So we've now pretty much finished a quick winter restoration on the old girl. Both front wing lower rear sections were replaced, both rear arches have been patched up with new metal, lower rear quarters have been patch repaired, new rear valance with exhaust cut outs has been fitted, all the Challenger badges on the grille, wings and boot have been removed, the wheel arch trims were too far gone so they've gone in the metal bin and all the screw holes welded up, aerial removed and welded up the hole. The bumper chrome was in poor condition so we welded concealed bolts, smoothed out the bumpers and painted them body colour as well as the front chrome trims. Boot chrome trims were removed, holes welded up and smoothed out with a skim of filler. Rear over riders were removed and the valance holes welded up and smoothed out with filler. Both sides and the rear end have been re-painted in basecoat / clearcoat and finally the wheels have been painted black gloss... Here is a 'before and after' picture of the front end and we'll post some more pics in due course.....

That looks very nice, I love colour bumpers on 70-71 cars, spesh in hi impact colours