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My 70/72 'Cuda (re) build.

tklockwood

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I am re-building my 'Cuda. The first time I did this car was in 1989. I did not have the maturity or resources that I have now so the car turned out pretty good but not as good as I had hoped for. This is my 7th 'Cuda, and the one I plan to keep forever. This is a 1972 340 'Cuda that was originally kind of a petty blue color with a white interior and a white vinyl top. I bought it as a body shell with an 8 3/4 rear end. No other parts were included. No doors, hood, fenders, interior, wiring, front suspension. Nothing. I assembled it using mostly parts from a 1970 car that was too rusty to save. I painted it white because I wanted to. I like white cars. For most of its life it has had mismatched side markers and 70 parts up front. I also used an AAR hood, rear spoiler, and Supertrapp mufflers out the side like the AARs had. The Supertrapps are long gone.

The trunk had some rust issues that I "solved" by fiber-glassing over it since replacement parts were not available at the time. A couple of other very minor rust issues were patched in steel. I converted it from an automatic to a four speed using parts from the 70 donor car. I like sticks. I also used the 383 from the 70 car. Sometime in the late 90s a "friend" of mine managed to hit it with the open tailgate of his truck when it started in reverse and hit my car while it was parked in my garage. That pushed the tail panel into a more pronounced curve than it was supposed to have, andpulled the top of the tail panel down causing the trunk opening to be distorted. This was going to take some work to fix. By then I was a single dad raising a daughter mostly by myself, and dealing with a divorce. The car sat. And sat. And now I want my car back again. I have moved from Illinois back to Minnesota, and I have the tools and garage and most of the cash to fix the car.

I started out by picking up a trunk floor and a 1970 tail panel. Some time ago I found 1970 tail lights at a swap meet and since the front is already 70, and I prefer 70 I am turning it into a 70. No judgements please. The car will still be titled as a 72 and will never be sold. I am building it my way. For me. So I started by cutting the tail panel out. That first cut was one of the scariest things I have ever done. Once I had started and was committed it got easier. I got the tail panel out and then started on the trunk floor. Luckily the fiberglass had actually separated from the rusty floor and I was able to peel it off and throw it away.

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Here is the 'Cuda sitting in the garage before I started on it.

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Here the tail panel and trunk floor have been removed.


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Here I was putting the gas tank braces on the bottom of the trunk floor before installing it in the car.

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This shows a quick test fit before I added the braces, and then the braces before I welded them on. More to follow...

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tklockwood

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More Progress

I started out doing the work while the back of the car was on large jack stands. That was okay for the trunk floor and tail panel, but I wanted the car resting on it's wheels front and back but high enough for me to work under it for the installation of the frame connectors just to make sure it was in the right shape as I welded them in. So for this I built some blocks out of dimensional lumber to set the car on. Because of the droop in the front suspension when I jacked up the front of the car, I couldn't get the front quite as high but it was the same side to side and looked correct.

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I am using the US Car Tool sub frame connectors that follow the contours of the floor. I like that idea of them being so tightly coupled to the car and essentially looking like they belong there. They are in at this point but I didn't take pictures of them because of where they are. They will be visible once the car is on the rotisserie. These next pictures show the tail panel and trunk in. I have some more pictures but I think they are in my camera.

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Kind of funny but this is a picture of the cabinet full of engine parts for the car. I have a 360 with the machine work done ready to get assembled using these parts. It will be a 408 stroker with an Eagle crank and rods and Mahle forged pistons. I also have Edelbrock aluminum heads and an air gap intake for it. And more...

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Most of the interior is out of the car and I am almost ready to mount it on the rotisserie. The picture shows the old engine in (a crappy placeholder 318) but in reality it has been removed from the car. I will also remove everything else under the hood including the K frame so I can spin it. More to follow...

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tklockwood

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Front sheet metal removed

These are not the best pictures but you get the idea. The grille, front header, and front fenders have been removed now to allow access for the rotisserie brackets. 2014-12-23 18.23.15.jpg2014-12-23 18.23.46.jpg

The wheels and tires are just there to hold it up for now. They are not the final ones. I have some black Torq Thrust Ms with nice new rubber that will be going on it.2014-12-23 18.23.22.jpg2014-12-23 18.23.03.jpg2014-12-23 18.23.08.jpg

The grille is sitting inside for now until I find a place to keep it. It's amazing how much space you need to store a whole car's worth of parts even for a simple car like the 'Cuda. It doesn't help that I also have a 1980 Volare apart for a separate project...
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More to follow...

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moparlee

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Welcome to the site! Nice work and looks like a pretty solid car for your project.
 

js29

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i was thinking the same thing, welcome aboard. nothing wrong with building your cuda the way you want it. good luck and enjoy the car
 

tklockwood

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More work done

Here are the rotisserie brackets I made for the back of the car. They, of course, use the bumper bracket holes to attach. The rotisserie has a 3" square horizontal bar that will go through these brackets. Painted with orange engine paint I had laying around.

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Not much left up front now. Here are the beginnings of the front rotisserie mount as well. I am starting from a very generic mount that came with the rotisserie. Had to cut and grind most of the car side of the bracket away to make it work. I am building it so it will be level and the same height as the rear mount so the car wont be stressed when it is turned.
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Unfortunately the positions of the front bumper bracket bolt holes are not ideal for this. This means I can't just weld the brackets to the top of my main angle iron brackets and need to create side plates to weld down to the angle iron and to the sides of the bracket itself. But it should be fine. I just want to make sure it is level front to back. I am expecting a friend over on Friday to help me get it on the rotisserie so I am trying to get it finished up.
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This last picture is of the trunk floor after it was plug welded in. I didn't have a picture of that on here before.
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DetMatt1

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Welcome to the site from the Motor City! Great project and very nice work so far. Can't wait to see more. What's the plan, back to white?
 

aussiemark

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Great work and very nice car I like the 70 and 71 taillights better then the latter ones (they look like copies of 2nd gen Camaro taillights) with those parts you have stockpiled and what you've got going on with the body this will be one mean machine.
 

tklockwood

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It spins! Well, sort of.

Thanks! We got the car onto the rotisserie yesterday. The rotisserie I have was a cheap one made by a local guy. It doesn't have any means to raise the car up to get the center of gravity right. It has the adjustment but it is up to you to get the car raised up. My friend Dan and I created a way to use the ram from my engine hoist to push the car up to the highest rotisserie setting. So it is as high as the rotisserie will go. Unfortunately it was not high enough to get the center of gravity such that I can easily spin the car around. It took both of us to get it on its side as shown below. In the second picture you can see the U.S. Car Tool sub frame connectors that I am using. They are like the XV ones that conform to the floor. I like that. I did enough from underneath to hold the car in its happy shape before I put it on here, and I will finish the welding on that as part of the under body process. It is the weld through primer I used on the frame connectors that makes part of the floor look almost white. There is a lot of dirt and grease under there but overall it looks pretty good.
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The windshield is still in since I really don't have a good reason to take it out... I wasn't sure if it would break when I did this, but it seems ok so far. Sorry for the mess on the benches in the background. I hadn't cleaned up yet when I took the pictures. Not as nice of a sight as the Miss Direct Connection in the first picture... This last picture shows the under floor after about 10 minutes of scraping. Already looking better...
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Now I have a lot of work to do. I want to get the rest of the under body cleaned up and any surface rust removed so I can apply the white truck bed liner I plan to put on here. I also have a little bit of work to do on the quarter panel bottoms and one of the trunk extensions. I can't wait to get that all done so I can set the car back down.

Any advise on rust removal process and products? I was thinking oxysolve but it seems Eastwood has morphed that into a new product. That product makes mention of embrittlement which does not sound like a good thing in a car. They say to bake the part at 400 degrees to reverse that effect. I do not see that happening. I can easily remove the grease and grime along with the little bit of surface rust for most of it, but there are some smaller more complicated areas that will be difficult to get to. Open to suggestions...

Thanks for following along.

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tklockwood

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That may be a good choice, especially for places that I can't get into very well to sand all of the old rust off. I think that SEM is known for pretty good products, right?
 

js29

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Sem makes some of the best auto body produces out there. but sandblasting works the best. you will want to etch prime asap when you are done. if you can't move the car you could build a tent over the car to contain to mess
 

tklockwood

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What a mess...

Sort of a delayed post here. Trying to get caught up.

Just more work on the car now that it is on its side. This is not fun work. I have tried to manually scrape off what I can to keep it out of the air but some stuff is just better done with power tools. The new trunk floor is obviously looking pretty good. I have cleaned up a bunch of the main open areas. Not looking forward to the more intricate areas... I was disappointed to find rust holes in the rear frame rails hidden under the sway bar mounts. More work to do... You can see the frame connectors in the last shot. Some of these pictures look sort of foggy because of the crud hanging in the air. I can't wait to get this part done.

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tklockwood

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Getting there...

The growing shine on the bottom of the car is testament to the work I have done. Getting closer and closer to ready to final clean it and shoot it. The factory undercoating seems to have done its job in the wheel wells. I heated it up and scraped it off in the upper (drivers side) wheel well. Looks good in there. The passenger side is still waiting to be cleaned up.


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tklockwood

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One hole fixed.

Tonight I cut the rusty area out of one of the frame rails where it had rusted under the sway bar mount. I cut a piece to fit the hole and welded it in. My MIG tank is almost empty and I hoped to finish it up. Nope. Still going... Maybe when I fix the other hole tomorrow it will empty my tank so I can get it filled.

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