Sublime Lime 70 Challenger R/T SE

[Dodgey]

Another weekend gone and a dew more small bits of progress. Cleaned up the inside of the sill area, made up a patch for the rusted section of the inner sill area and replaced the top half of the forward sill end cap. Combination of rust and casualty of removing the old sill. One more patch to do on the inside sill lip, then I can paint it all up and weld on the new sill. I'm about to head away for work for a couple of weeks, so might have to wait a bit ...

 

[Katfish]

Keep at it, looking good!

 

[Dodgey]

Made up and welded in a replacement bottom section for the inner quarter panel section. Ultimately not sure what you call it, but that'll do. Almost at the point where I can paint all the exposed metal surfaces and spot weld the sill back in. Still a bit of surface clean up to do ahead of painting though. Although that should go pretty quickly.

 

[Dodgey]

Had a pretty productive weekend. Managed to make a decent amount of progress on the passenger side. Granted I painted the sill sections last weekend.
Inner sill sections epoxy primed, contact points weld through primer.

Spot welded the sill on and had to persuade the front door hinge panel lower sections back in place. Still need to clean it up and give the outside a quick hit of primer to seal it all up again.

Spent quite a bit of time lining up the rear inner quarter section. Due to the amount of rust repairs I'd had to make, the whole section was floating. Sitting there loosely, the passenger side of the rear window corner had drooped, so I had my laser level out lining things up so that left to right they are the same height from a level line across the rear floor. Spot welded the inner quarter panel to the top of the sill section, then re-installed the brace. I had to build up a fairly large section of the rear brace as that had rusted badly and was paper thin against the inner quarter panel.
Quick coat of weld through primer on the contact points and epoxy primer on the remainder of both the rear door jamb and the inner quarter panel. I'll check the door opening and weld in the jamb next weekend. At that point I will clean up the outside of the sill and epoxy prime all the remaining sections of the sill and jamb etc to seal it all up while I tackle the rust on the sail panel section.

 

[Katfish]

Wow, lots of progress!
How many hrs for just that 1 section?

 

[don selleck]

beautiful work!

 

[Dodgey]

Wow, lots of progress!
How many hrs for just that 1 section?

Thanks!

I don’t really count them, but there’s probably something like 10-16 hours a weekend I put into it. I had a couple of weekends I was away for work, so at a guess about 50 hours since the last post.

Granted I get side tracked on other things as well, so maybe not quite that many. Good thing I’m not paying for my labour

 

[Dodgey]

Got the passenger side door jamb pillar installed, although neglected to take a photo of it ...

Once I got that completed, it was onto the sail panel brace structure. Started with the top one. As you can see from the pic, only the upper facing surface was still intact.

I shaped the side and bottom as two separate pieces. Bead rolled the side section to get the drip rail relief in it. The bottom section bent the flange, then using the shrinker, stretcher to get the correct curve on it then TIG welded it all together. Unfortunately AMD only make the front section of the 4 pieces (the primed forward piece is an AMD piece).

I'll Start on the next one down next weekend, same approach. Once I've got the braces made up and removed, I'll tackle the inner sheet metal, as you can see it's got a little rust in it as well.
Sometimes I wonder why ... but then I stop and look what I've done so far and I think it's worth it.

 

[Katfish]

Good progress, nice!

 

[Dodgey]

Before I could start on the next brace down, I've had to fix the rusty inner pieces first.

It doesn't look as bad in this pic, but it was ...

New piece fabbed and installed

Also had to make the next section up as well.

In case you're wondering about the discolouration on the new piece of metal above, it's got "easy phos" on it to give some protection from rust. Once I take the lower brace off, I'll clean it up properly and remove all the rust ahead of painting and re-assembling.

I'm going to have to do some re-modelling of the brace I made up already for the passenger side. When I was test fitting the drip rail, drip rail trim and upper door trim, I've done soemthing silly with the alignement of the brace. I'm likely going to have to cut and splice it to get everything to fit properly. After a little panicking, I did the same test fit on the drivers side that I made up previoulsy and I've managed to get the alignment spot on with that side.

I'll be test fitting all the panels shortly to make sure I've got everything lined up on the inside, then I'll start working my way from inside out fixing the various pieces in place. About to be a lot of on, off, on, off again with the various panel pieces to make sure it all goes back together the right shape.

 

[Katfish]

You've been busy, and made a lot of progress!
Nice work

 

[Challenger RTA]

I'll be test fitting all the panels shortly to make sure I've got everything lined up on the inside, then I'll start working my way from inside out fixing the various pieces in place. About to be a lot of on, off, on, off again with the various panel pieces to make sure it all goes back together the right shape.

Nothing like blood sweat and tears. Then a beer to sooth everything. As myself too. It is so gratifying to look at something you made out of nothing. It's not that you want to do it, you have to do it. Your are doing a great job. Words can not explain what your doing. This tread is and will be so beneficial to this site. You are going places not many gone to. I admire your work too. Thanks

 

[Cuda360-4]

I was just going to replace the bushes, tie-rod ends and ball joints. That soon turned into take it all apart, sandblast and re-paint …
Now the fronts out and looking sparkly, I halfway to putting it into the rotisserie to fully check out the underside and strip and redo the diff.

Slight detour

View attachment 104729

The most expensive words in restoration: “while you’re at it.” Looks fantastic! Beautiful automobile

 

[Dodgey]

Nothing like blood sweat and tears. Then a beer to sooth everything. As myself too. It is so gratifying to look at something you made out of nothing. It's not that you want to do it, you have to do it. Your are doing a great job. Words can not explain what your doing. This tread is and will be so beneficial to this site. You are going places not many gone to. I admire your work too. Thanks

Thanks mate, that means a lot to hear you say that!

 

[Dodgey]

The most expensive words in restoration: “while you’re at it.” Looks fantastic! Beautiful automobile

Ain’t that the truth! This all started because I wanted to freshen up the passenger side kick panel under the dash!

 

[Dodgey]

I have these two Trim strips that are apparently for the sills.

I can’t seam to work out how they fit and they seam to be only about 2/3 the height of the sill. I’m thinking they are not part size f my challenger?

Anyone seen sill trim strips on a challenger before?

 

[Dodgey]

After a lot of fiddling around, I'm happy now with the sit of the passenger side braces. They now line up with the drip rail and drip rail trim and inner door trim pieces. Also replaced the lower rusted out section of the rear vertical brace.

Starting to make better use of the Cleco metal fixing pins. Not surprisingly, finding that if I drill the Cleco locations before I drill out the spot welds to take a piece off, they go back in the 100% correct spot each time while I'm creating the rust repair sections. I guess better late than never ...

Now that I have both sides braces repaired, I've started re-fitting the rear end pieces - "dry-fitting" at this stage to get the alignment all sorted out. I've spent quite a bit of time trying to get the passenger side wheel tubs in the right position.
Again a lot of fiddling, but using the Clecos to keep the reference point the same should make it go a lot quicker and closer to how it should be. The inner tub on both sides is the original tub - so I used the drilled out spot weld holes as the initial reference to get the inner tub lined up as close as possible to where it originally sat. I've then matched the sometime replaced outer tub to the inner, then Cleco'ed in place.
I've got a few rust repairs to do on both the inner and outer tubs before I'm happy to move onto the drivers side wheel tub.

As I got this far, I just couldn't resist clamping on some of the new metal pieces to make me feel like there's some real progress happening
New pieces in the pic below - parcel shelf, trunk floor, right hand side trunk drop side and deck filler.

 

[Katfish]

Gotta give you a big thumbs up, making steady progress.

 

[Lunchbox]

I concur, this had been a great thread to follow.