34 year quest finally begins.

[Ohiowoodchuck]

I want to thank you gentlemen for the comments and if I’m boring you or dragging this on i apologize. I have bought several parts from several members on here and when they would ask about the car, I would give them a summary story. They are some of the ones who have encouraged me to do a members restoration thread on this car.

 

[Ohiowoodchuck]

After we got done with the quarters, next it was time to move on to the door skins. I don’t think I took any pics of the passenger side but you guys understand. Then we proceeded to prime the underside and the inside.the primer really shows off any splatter from the spot welds etc. we went back in a cleaned up everything we missed the first time, cleaned everything up again and gave it another coat. Now we are almost ready for paint.

 

[Challenger RTA]

Constructive criticism. I can't see everything. The way you have the the car up could be a safety problem. Induvial jack can move unexpectedly with very little force. Now that the floor is mostly complete. I would be more secure with a 4x4 or 6x6 under the rockers with jack stands or cribbing on each side.

 

[Ohiowoodchuck]

Constructive criticism. I can't see everything. The way you have the the car up could be a safety problem. Induvial jack can move unexpectedly with very little force. Now that the floor is mostly complete. I would be more secure with a 4x4 or 6x6 under the rockers with jack stands or cribbing on each side.

Good catch. We had it like you mentioned. We felt good about it and it actually felt solid but anything could happen at any time. It didn’t stay like that for long as we moved on to installing the rear axle and springs. When we did that we actually bolted the bumper brackets back on the rear and put stands under that also to keep from falling on us.

 

[Ohiowoodchuck]

Next it was time to primer the out side, block the outside and add a coat of paint. I’m not a painter but my buddy is old school. He likes to apply a coat of paint and then sand any imperfections out of the car than give it its final coat. Is it the correct way to do it idk? Is it a 15k paint job no, but it’s about as good as it when it came off the assembly line.

 

[Challenger RTA]

installing the rear axle and springs.

I was going to say that. With jack stands under the axle it would be lot more stable.

 

[Ohiowoodchuck]

Well I didn’t figure it would go so easy. Ran into a problem. If you go back to post #42 and the next to last picture. Laying by the jackstand you’ll notice the front spring hanger bracket laying by the jackstand. You’ll also notice it has two holes in it. Now I’m not sure if this was a direct connect item from back in the day or it was taken out and drilled in a shop a long time ago. I know from my old Mopar chassis books they wanted you to have a spring hanger bracket with multiple vertical holes to set the height of the springs and therefore make the car hook harder or looser depending on what you needed. My leaf spring packs on both sides looked horrible, plus someone, maybe it was my dad put 9 leafs on the righy sideand 7 on the left side. I completely understand what they trying to accomplish. I was going to redo the whole packs but after some miss communication with a vendor on front spring eye bushing diameter, etc. I decided to order a set of Mopar super stick leaf springs since there still being manufactured. When you put it all together, this is what you get. A rear axle slide about 2.5” to 3” further back in the car.

 

[Ohiowoodchuck]

So after a little research I came to the conclusion that my front spring hangers are either a direct connect item or they was homemade. Whoever made them if that’s the case done a good job, because the holes for the studs and the bolt pattern are done perfectly. I went and crawled under my other and then realized they only had one hole in each bracket for the spring eye. So I got me a set of those coming. After measuring the original to the car ones and the other set, I figured out it did indeed push the leaf spring back about 2.75’’ so we put the news to me set on and it brought the rear tire back into the center of the wheel well. The funny part about all this is that there was no fight to get either bracket installed etc. both sets went smoothly together.