Greetings to all my Mopar friends!
I'm not sure what section to put this in, but it's mostly body work related so here I go: I just got some disturbing news about my '74 Challenger and pretty much knew it had some issues. I joined this forum almost 7 years ago and that's about how long I've had this Challenger, but have owned Mopars since I was old enough to drive. Long story short, I've got about 30K in this car (paint/body work and drivetrain) which is a '74 Challenger, nothing special and originally a 360, now a 543 stroker. The car was painted about 6 years ago and it looked pretty decent & still does, but about a year ago I started noticing bubbles on the rocker panel, lower quarters and lower front fender. There is even a tiny bubble on one of the door skins. I bought this car from the original family that owned and kept it in Auburn CA. I bought the car and had it shipped to Virginia. The car was very solid (or so it seemed) and the only rust I really noticed was that the center of the trunk had some rust/pin holes which is common to E-bodies and had the trunk replaced. I had the car prepped and painted. The shop that did the work is no longer in business. It wasn't a bad job, but it was never taken to bare metal. So I don't know the extent of what might be found upon further investigation or what was painted over.
So here's what I'm looking at. I took the car to Fantomworks here in Norfolk VA. It's the largest auto restoration shop in the US and now there is a show on Velocity TV (Discovery channel) about this shop. I met with the owner and he gave me the low-down. He was extremely thorough & said it needs a do-over. And he told me he could make it look like it did 6 years ago for about the same price I paid and in 5 years I'll have bubbles again. In other words, that's not the direction to go. It needs a total re-do down to the metal (to make sure you find/get everything) and I had to agree with him and I know his shop is top-notch and expensive, and the advice he gave was sound advice.
I had a friend that a similar thing happened to as he spent over 45k to have his '68 Charger restored and it looked absolutely stunning for years (was even featured in a car magazine) and then it started bubbling and they found all kinds of shoddy crap that was done by the shop he had paid big money to restore and he had to completely re-do the car. I can't see spending 10's of thousands of dollars to re-do a '74 Challenger that I already have 30K into. I was thinking of pulling the entire drivetrain (it's got maybe 5k on it since replacement and it is sweeet!) and look for a straight (as rust free as I can find) '70 or '71 Challenger or Barracuda without a drivetrain and fix/paint the body and then install my drivetrain & sell the '74 body. The 70-71 would be a more value-wise candidate for restoration., but I may lack the money to go this route.
I lack the skill and space to do body work/painting, but I'm not a bad mechanic & have been around cars my whole life. I don't want to 'experiment' with the Challenger. My other options might be to buy new panels (or find some oem at Carlisle) from AMD,
maybe do the stripping/excavation myself and then find a bodyshop to do the metal work and painting & keep the '74?
I have finally gotten to the point last year where I was able to drive and enjoy the car which is what I'm doing, bubbles or not!
So I really have come to value the opinions of the folks here. Y'all are a great bunch. I really need some advice as what to do here. I'm sure there are many options I've not thought of. So whatever ideas y'all might have I'm all ears. I'm sure many of you have found yourself in my shoes. I could just strip the whole car, paint it rattle can flat black, get some black cop tires and go for the bad azz stealth look!
Matt B.
