My 70/72 'Cuda (re) build.

[tklockwood]

These are the Penta Slyder vents that will be in the outside holes in my gauge panel. These things are beautiful and work super slick. You grab the center of the vent and pull or push it to open or close the butterfly valve in the back. They are machined from aluminum and are in my opinion, very nice. Vintage Air seems to agree because they are not inexpensive.

 

[tklockwood]

This is the bottom of the car as I was getting it finished up. I actually built a mini spray booth to contain the bed liner spray because I have never used a shutz gun before and didn't know how much it would throw into the air. It turned out not to be too bad so after the first section I just used regular masking tape and paper.

I am very happy with the final result at this point. We shall see how it hold up. The product is called Custom Coat and is from TCP global. It is available in multiple colors, with this bright white being my choice.

 

[tklockwood]

I have the rear axle back in now and the brakes installed. I bought Dr Diff axles and had him cut the center register where it is above the rotor down to Ford size so my Torque Thrust M wheels can sit flush without a spacer. They fit perfectly now. I love the way the axle pops against the white under the car.

The rear brakes are 4 piston Wilwood's with 12.19 inch rotors. They have the internal drum parking brake which is good because the car is a stick. I had to use the Green snap ring style wheel bearings in order to use these brakes. I really didn't want to but for now it will have to do.

 

[tklockwood]

And finally, I ordered the replacement passenger side core support piece to open the radiator opening to the 26 inch size. These pictures show the work in progress. This was a relatively easy procedure to do, but you really need to take a lot of measurements to make sure things end up back where you got them. Hopefully I haven't created bigger issues for later in the process. I have an aluminum Champion radiator that I was surprised to see did not fit well at the bottom where I had installed the US Car Tool lower core support brace over the existing one. The factory one has an angle where it transitions from vertical to horizontal. The brace has a hard right angle there. So I had to cut out the piece of the factory part that interfered and everything fits now.

 

[aussiemark]

That is the biggest pair of locking pliers I have ever seen, I didn't know they made them that big.

 

[tklockwood]

I found them at Northern Tool the other day. Genuine Irwin/Vise Grip brand. 35 bucks.

 

[tklockwood]

Ok. I have the textured plastic permanently attached to the metal gauge cluster frame I made. I installed the gauges into it as well as the Vintage Air Penta Slyders and the billet black anodized LEDs for turn signals, high beams, and brake warning light. There are two more holes in the lower right that will be filled with the two LEDs for the Gear Vendors overdrive. Otherwise this is pretty much how it will look in the car. I installed the whole thing into the dash to make sure it all fits, and it seems to fit nicely. I love the idea of having A/C vents up there in the gauge cluster instead of the factory locations. Not a great picture but you get the idea.

 

[tklockwood]

In the earlier pictures of my wheels and tires you may have noticed that the center had no caps. The wheels came with plain black flat centers for you to attach your favorite logo to. Since I am kind of going for a "Mopar M" theme on my 'Cuda I started looking for decent looking emblems to attach to these plain centers. To my surprise and delight I discovered that the (I think) 2010 Mopar edition Challenger had Blue M centers on their wheels and it sounded like they were the right diameter or at least very close. I had a part number and found several dealers that had them so I ordered a set. They were quite expensive but just what I wanted.

When I received them I was alarmed to see the back side of one through the plastic packaging. Clear as day you could see a Ram's head on the back side of the center. Oh no! They sent me the wrong one.

But that was not the case. Unbelievably, Dodge had taken these Ram centers and sort of roughly ground the front of them flat and then glued the Mopar logo onto the modified center cap. What a bizarre and cheap way to do this. At least they were like forty bucks each...

Here is one with the plain center from my wheel leaning up against it. Very close to the same size but the Challenger ones fit very loosely.

This cheap construction method actually turned out to be good for me. I was able to separate the logo from the Ram center and then glue it onto the plain flat centers that came with the wheels. Here is the finished product in one of the back wheels. I am quite happy with the finished product.

Here is a better picture of the wheel with the center installed.

 

[tklockwood]

I am at a point where my comfort in my cars is very important to me. And since this car is my summer toy, that means I need air conditioning. My car was originally a non air car and it makes sense to use something modern so I am using Vintage Air for my climate control. I looked around at various options, including from Vintage Air, for the a/c compressor mount. Unfortunately, except for some complete serpentine systems they all seem to mount the compressor pretty much top dead center on the engine. What's up with that? That is not what I want to see when I look at my engine. So I finally accepted that I was going to have to make my own.

After thinking about it, I decided that the alternator should be on the driver side above the power steering pump, and the air conditioning compressor should be where the alternator usually is. So I have mounted my power steering pump, and now built my air conditioning mount to put it on the passenger side. The initial look is shown here.

I have a 170 amp Mechman alternator on order and still need to work out the mount for that above the power steering pump. I have modified my pump with a remote mount reservoir setup that will make adding power steering fluid possible even with an alternator above it. I may need to modify the pump mount to finish this up, but I won't know until the alternator shows up. Here are a couple more pics of the a/c mount.

There will be an upper arm similar to an alternator adjustment arm going from the water pump bolt to the upper flange on the compressor. I am using a Sanden 7176 "peanut" compressor because it is very small and has an available manifold that wraps the two tubes around the body of the compressor and straight down from it. It should make for a very clean install if I don't screw it up. Shown here just sitting there, so not in exactly the right position.

Also, the steel pulleys will be replaced with aluminum pulleys from CVF Racing once I know for sure exactly what I need.

Here is the power steering pump with the remote style reservoir.

I will post more as this progresses.

 

[rbbruno3]

Looking good

 

[340challconvert]

Very cool fabrication work. That engine is going to be something to look at!

 

[tklockwood]

Thanks for the positive feedback. It is very appreciated.

 

[Adam]

Excellent thread!

 

[Moparz10]

nice work !

 

[tklockwood]

Here is the other accessory belt setup on the driver side. The alternator is a Mechman 170 amp one wire. I used an idler pulley to force more belt wrap around both the power steering and alternator. I still need to fabricate a bracket to hold the tension adjustment but otherwise I think it is good to go.

I am getting the engine, transmission, and overdrive ready to be temporarily installed for fitting, wiring, plumbing, etc. then it will come back out for painting the engine compartment, etc. I recently found this McLeod hydraulic throw out bearing. I had trouble finding one for an eighteen spline HEMI four speed, but finally did. I hope it works as good as it works.

 

[tklockwood]

I should have shown this before. I made a fixture that is bolted to just the bottom of an engine stand to hold my engine and ultimately transmission so I can roll it under the 'Cuda to bolt it in. I am using a QA1 k frame and didn't want to scratch it all up, so my fixture has multiple half round channels for the tubes of the k frame to sit into. I used red PlastiDip to coat these steel channels to try to prevent scratches. Just because. Here the engine is shown on this stand/cart.

Since these pictures were taken I added an additional cross piece at the very back that has an adjustable poly bump stop that the bell housing sits on. I also have a single beefy caster with mounting provisions to mount to the transmission cross member boss on the transmission. So once the transmission was connected to the bell housing I added that wheel to hold the back end up and could then just roll it around and ultimately under the car.

I also made this cross bar to bolt to the bumper bolt holes to pick the front of the car up with. I was hoping to just use my floor jack but we couldn't quite get it high enough so we used an engine hoist to lift it up off the jack that little bit more that we needed. That worked very well. Once the engine was in place we lowered it back onto the jack and used that for final positioning. Worked a treat.

Next... The engine goes in.

 

[tklockwood]

So here we put the engine, transmission, and overdrive in the car. This first shot is from the side looking under the car. You can see my QA1 dolly still under the motor.

This is from the driver side. Not really much to see here.

This is more fun. The engine sitting in place though still on the cart. I am pretty happy with that cart. It made this a lot easier.

This shows the trans crossmember in place but no bushing yet. I had previously been using a 1970 crossmember in the car so only two of the four holes lined up with the holes on the car. I found a later style one and had it powder coated so it was ready to go in for this build. Surprisingly, I still had alignment issues between the cross member and the holes in the car. We ended up having to open some of the holes in the crossmember up to make it work. No problem.

Here is the Gear Vendors overdrive at the end of the extension housing. I am very excited to drive the car with this new toy installed.

So here it is sitting in place for now. It was very easy to get the QA1 k frame bolted up into place. The trans crossmember was the only challenge. Here you can see the Fitech fuel injection and the work in progress on the brake and clutch hydraulics. More on that soon...

 

[tklockwood]

So I had decided to go hydraulic on the clutch a long time ago, and had done most of the work on it. Since then I found that McLeod throw out bearing and that led me to use a .75" Wilwood master cylinder instead of the less attractive one I was planning to use. My previous post shows the new master installed on my previously fabricated and powder coated backing plate. The new master is black and hard to see in front of the black backing plate.

I had some clearance issues with the sort of "out rigger" bracket that supports the extra length of the brake and now clutch pivot shaft when you have a stick. My linkage from the clutch pedal to the clutch master is too close to that bracket. So I made my own out of thicker steel that didn't have to be as big. The original, slightly modified, is shown here next to my new replacement bracket.

This essentially does away with the bottom half of the bracket, keeping it out of my way of my linkage. This next pictures shows this bracket installed and shows the clutch linkage as it is now. It may be hard to see but I have a compound angle bracket that holds the push rod on the firewall side and is bolted to the clutch pedal to get the motive force. I wanted the masters side by side which necessitated the odd offset linkage piece. It seems to work fine. It will look better when I paint it all.

 

[tklockwood]

It should be interesting to see the reactions to this. I love AAR Cudas and TA Challengers but I am definitely a Cuda freak more than anything. But I actually prefer the TA rear spoiler over the AAR rear spoiler. So I decided to make the TA spoiler fit my Cuda. They are very expensive to buy so I didn’t want to buy an expensive repop and cut it up. Luckily I found someone with a cheaply made reproduction unit he didn’t need, and I had some 72-74 taillights that he needed and I didn’t. Great starting point.

Initial trial fitting showed the Cuda’s raised quarter panel edges did not work well with the Challenger spoiler. Looking at it, I thought it would work better if it was shorter, I figured about 2 1/2 inches shorter. I grabbed my AAR spoiler and compared them. What do you know, it is about 2 1/2 inches shorter. Good call.

So I cut 2 1/2 inches out of the center and temporarily glued it back together with JB Weld epoxy for plastic. That held it solidly while I added a couple of strips of fiberglass along the bottom to make it permanent.

Below is the chunk I cut out of the center. It was interesting to see that the “bottom” of this spoiler was actually cardboard with a layer of fiberglass over it. I will need to remove some of this material for multiple reasons. First is to allow me to add additional reinforcement up at the top (inside) of the spoiler to make it a strong permanent connection in the center. The other reason is to allow me to install things inside of it, including a backup camera, CHMSL (third brake light), and an amplified Dakota Digital am/fm antenna. And maybe some other stuff.

I used about 2 feet of fiberglass matt to ensure sufficient strength. This is just the initial reinforcement. More to follow.

Here in the spoiler sitting on my deck lid. It is sitting on some anti skid material for tool boxes to keep it from sliding off. There is also masking tape in the middle that I used to prevent the epoxy from grabbing the deck lid while it was initially setting up. Sorry the car is so filthy.

 

[tklockwood]

Here is the bottom of the spoiler after I opened it up and added reinforcement up to the inside top of the spoiler. This will also be the home for the other stuff I mentioned before.

This is the outside top of the spoiler after I ground it down a bit before I do final finishing of the seam.

And here it is sitting on the car again. I have a couple of plastic disks attached to the deck lid now to keep it from sliding off. I really like the look. I just wish I was already done with the fiberglass work. I hate doing it. So what do people think? Good idea? Bad idea? Sacrilege?