My 70 Panther Pink Challenger Project

[manycj]

Hello everyone. I'm in the process of restoring a 1970 Panther Pink Challenger that I bought off from E-bay back in Feb 2012. It was in an accident in 1987 and it has been sitting in a musty garage in Drums, PA up until I won the auction in 2012.  It's an all original 318 car with 54K miles on it. Not much for options accept for AC. It sat for so long that the underside of the floors were pretty rusty. Not many holes though.  I had to get into the inside frames to sandblast them so I bought the bullet and pulled the floors.  At this point it has new floors in it from firewall to tail panel. I'm about to put new quarter panels on it shortly. I've been buying my sheetmetal from AMD and Roseville.

I have fully documenting the restoration of the car on its own website here:

http://www.relicrecyclery.com/PantherPink/ChallengerFM3.htm

I will gladly post any pictures here if anyone has any questions or helpful tips. My plan is to update this topic every time I update my website. 
Let the comments fly, thanks for listening - Chris

[roadman5312]

    Lookin good. 

[anlauto]

YIKES....How are you going to be certain the car is still "square" once it's back on the ground ?

[manycj]

YIKES....How are you going to be certain the car is still "square" once it's back on the ground ?

Good question. Generally it will stay square as long as you don't cut apart the main structure. However, when I pulled the tail panel, replaced the rear crossmember and trunk pan I had to worry about the rear frame rails being off. To make sure things went back into alignment I supported the rear of the car at the center rear crossmember (where the shocks mount), leveled the car along at the rockers and pulled the rear rotisserie section off. I measured the distance between the ends of the frame rails to the floor and the distance between and diagonally at the rear frame rails.  As soon as I pulled the tail panel and rear reenforcement, the right rear frame rail shifted up by about 1/2" and went inboard about the same.  With a little prying while clamping the new rear reenforment and trunk pan in place I was able to bring the frame rails back to square. I stacked a bunch of weights (perhaps 75 - 100 pounds) over the right rear frame rail to bring it down where it belonged. After welding I pulled the clamps and weights and remeasured. Turned out pretty good if not a little squarer than the factory had it. I will be butt-welding the new quarters in place at the lower seam that runs just above the parking light, so I don't have to worry about alignment issues that would occur if I were to change full quarter panels.

Chris



 

['cudaCruiser]

That's good stuff!
 

[Cuda Cody]

   I thought the same thing as soon as I saw how much metal was removed while it was on the rotisserie!!!!  You are much braver then I am. 

YIKES....How are you going to be certain the car is still "square" once it's back on the ground ?

[anlauto]

In a unibody car, the floor pan plays a huge part of the cars integrity 

[dutch]

When mine was on the rotisserie,I welded a couple of bars in when I cut out the dutchman panel and trunk floor at the same time... just sayin...
ok... maybe no one will say it out loud... but you cut out waaaay to much . You will not get it straight and square this way.  Get it on a decent jig , get the big book with factory specs out the dust and start measuring stuff. 

this guy had the same problem, only he didn`t have to take it to an alignment shop... 

[manycj]

Thanks for the input so far everyone. I appreciate it. I do have frame gauges and it actually does measure up well within the factory specs. The doors and fenders hang pretty good as well. My bubble will probably burst as soon as I drop the running gear in it.....

I didn't remove the dutchman until all of the floors had been replaced and the rear seat cross braces were welded back in. It certainly would be a mistake to take the dutchman out earlier than that.  Not shown very well in the pictures was that only the center of the trunk floor was removed at the time I welded in the front/rear floors.  There was still plenty enough of the original trunk pan in place to help keep things in alignment in regards to the rear structure. Being very aware of the structural integrity of the car is definitely something to keep in mind when cutting into a unibody car, but I think I did OK on this one. (is there an icon for eating crow, just in case ?) - Chris

[82firebird]

Should be a fun one to watch! Congrats on a real FM3 car.

[usraptr]

You're making some good progress.    Keep us posted.

[68427vette]

sooooo..  how did it turn out??? 

[AARuFAST]

You all amaze me with the restoration on your rides.  Like I said before
you all could do a better job for a TV show than Wormer. GYC.

[manycj]

sooooo..  how did it turn out???

Still in process. As of 2/8/16 I have the RH door left to skin, the RH front fender to repair, the trunklid to repair then she's ready for high build primer/blocking. Here are a couple recent pics.

[DAYLEY/CHALLENGER]

Looks good from my house!