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Daughter's 73 Challenger

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Been a little overdue starting a thread here.

Brief background: My daughter, Hunter, was taking Automotive classes at Com College and she's into 60's and 70's era cars. We got her a 360 LA with 727 to tinker with and it soon became a priority to find a car to put it in.

Two summers ago, we found one from FEBO member quapman. On the whole way home towing the car, Hunter, was in dreamland. On more than one occasion, she asked, "Is that really my car?"

Between school, work, some crazy family stuff that always seems to crop up, we have not made the progress on the car we'd like to have by this point. Hunter is finishing her AA Automotive degree this semester and is starting diesel school in the Fall, so a good bit of "car work" time has been put into working on cars other than her own. She relishes the time she gets to spend on the Challenger. But, we are enjoying the progress we are making and we recently changed our personal situation so we now have a better place to work on it.

I'll post some updates and pictures in later posts. Here are two to get started.

Unloading the 360 (was about 20 degrees that day).

Yesterday pulling the axle shafts. She's taking the dif in to class to get her teacher to help swap it from 2.76 to 3.23 rear gear and to install limited slip. Can't see it in this picture, but my wife's Subaru is in the next bay getting a transmission swap, so as I said, other car projects take up a lot of time!

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Chryco Psycho

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Very cool to see , Congrats & have fun with the project !
Quapman is a good guy , I have bought shifters from him & met him twice I recall .
 

fasjac

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Fantastic ! I like to see the interest from the younger generation. Good luck with the build and look forward to watching the progress!
 

budascuda

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"Is that really my car?"
The sweetest thing a child can say to his/her dad, that would bring tears to my eyes, I get emotional in moments of deep sentiment.
Good luck to both of yous and Thanks for the pics.

By the way, what has happened to quapman?
I hope he is okay.
 
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Thanks for all the kind words and encouragement.

Yes it is great to see a younger person interested in a project like this. The machinist she took her block and heads to was very excited to be working with her and spent a good bit of time talking to her about stuff and swapping stories. Cool dude.

She enjoys the engine work more than body stuff, so this post shows some a bit of that.

Worked on tearing the engine down two years ago. Pulling the pistons.

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Also, we found that one of the pistons had not grown up yet!

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On more serious note, we were bit surprised to find flat-top pistons in the '72 360 having been of the understanding that most 360's came stock with dished pistons. I figured at first that perhaps someone had replaced the stock pistons with something like TRW's. When we got the pistons out, we noticed the Chrysler logo and a Mopar part number. A little research and I found that some of the 360's did use flat top. Learned something or maybe I was misled and the flat tops were a lot more common than I thought.

Check rod bearing clearance during re-assembly:

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70chall440

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I think most people prefer engine work over body work.. :lol: I call all of this "discovery learning" and it is by far the best teacher, I have been doing it my entire life. There is very little as satisfying as building an engine and hearing it run the first time (and praying for no weird noises). This is an experience that will last your daughter a lifetime.
 

Chryco Psycho

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It is not so much the flat top or dished top , I believe most 360s used flat tops but it has more to do with how close to the deck the piston comes up , the 340 was slightly above the deck where the 360 was .080 or more down from the deck , funny that one was that small LOL
 
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the 340 was slightly above the deck where the 360 was .080 or more down from the deck , funny that one was that small LOL

Thanks. These 360 flat tops though flat were down pretty far. I think we have the numbers recorded somewhere but I don't have them in front of me at the moment.

New KB's come up to near the top, but we have put the indicator on it yet. Got a bit sidetracked with other projects, but hope to get back on it soon.

Thanks again. I love learning the history of vintage engines.

BTW, that small piston was from a lawnmower engine we had taken apart around the same time. Might be pretty corny, but we love that picture/joke.
 

fk5aar

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Awesome car and work! Hello from Roanoke va! Keep the pics coming!
 
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