Willow Springs, Spring Fling, MATS 1600 mile road trip

[ntstlgl1970]

I've had this car since January of 1986 (high school for me) made the mistake of taking it apart in 1987. Put it back together in 1997, drove it off and on until about 2004. There was an oil leak I wanted to fix on the motor (440) and while I had it out, my buddy Mark suggested I should paint the engine, and then paint the engine compartment and then things got out of hand.......

[bb71challenger]

Nice, solid looking car. Is it an AAR? I dont see an antenna on the front fender is why I was asking. Good luck on it. It does not take much more than wanting fresh paint and before you know it you want everything fresh

[ntstlgl1970]

With the engine out, replaced the rear main, windage tray and oil pan with some newer stuff. And after spending a week cleaning the engine with wire brushes and brake cleaner it was ready for paint.

this is/was a 383 gran coupe

added pics of the new rear main seal holder and oil pan

[bb71challenger]

cool, we are in the minority on painting intakes. I see no reason to leave my aftermarket intake plain aluminum and a painted engine adds to the stealth factor as well. I also think it just looks cleaner when everything is painted the right color. nice job. why did you paint it blue first? had some sitting on a shelf you wanted to get rid of?

[Super Blue 72]

why did you paint it blue first?

    

  People on this site have said the chrome waternecks leak...I dunno.... 

[ntstlgl1970]

PPG DP epoxy sealer (blue) then deltron orange, then clear. If you sand the chrome off the water neck in areas that need to seal then they don't leak.

[ntstlgl1970]

more pictures. -It's now 2005

After getting the engine painted, I decided to work on getting the car painted. It hasn't been one color since about 1990. We started with the driver's quarter panel - about the worst part of the car body work wise. One of the guys I work with used to work at a chrysler dealer when these cars were new. He was nice enough to help me out and send me in the right direction. Believe it or not, the flange piece that we welded back on was only held on with bondo and at some point had fallen off the car. Was very glad I kept it all these years so we could actually weld it to the car like it was originally.

[ntstlgl1970]

Originally there was about 3/4" of bondo on the quarter (no joke)
More pics

[ArcticCuda]

I like your Wheel & Tire Combo

[Bullitt-]

Man your doin a HELL-of-a-JOB fixin that OIL LEAK..

[ntstlgl1970]

Man your doin a HELL-of-a-JOB fixin that OIL LEAK..

Yeah I remind my buddy everytime he complains that the car isn't running about who started it....

I like your Wheel & Tire Combo

Thanks, got those in 95 I like em, the offsets required some work, but it was worth it.

- it's now 2006 - Next up it was the forward part of the quarter, the more paint I sanded off, the more weird damage I found. Just like the back of the quarter, they punched holes in the body to pull out the dents with a phillips screwdriver. although you can't tell from the pictures, this area of the quarter is pretty messed up. comparing the passenger side (which has almost no filler in any of the panels) to the drivers side, the driver's side was pretty "wavy"

[ntstlgl1970]

some more, whoever did the bodywork before over worked this area and I had to do a bunch to get it close/shrunk to size. In the last pic you can see the pull pins from the stud welder on the areas I had to work, the middle of the area between the door opening and the front of the wheel well was stretched/oil canned so I had to pull the low spots - studs near the door opening edge, and shrink the high spots and weld up the holes from the dent puller that was used previously

first 3 pics are still 2006, next pictures are 2007. I moved between the times these pictures were taken so that put everything on the back burner for about 7 months.

[ntstlgl1970]

June 2007 - After doing all that stuff it was time to start on the driver's door. This was a huge fiasco but I learned a bunch about doing bodywork because of it. After I sanded all the paint off the drivers door it was obvious that the car had been hit in the door too. The whole area inside the black line was 1/4 - 3/8" low. Since this area is behind the impact beam, the only thing I could do was either fill it up or try and pull it out with the stud gun. I also thought about removing the impact beam but I wasn't sure how much that would change the shape of the door frame and skin. Since this is my first attempt at bodywork and I had never tried to "fit" a door to a car before, I really overworked the metal. Used waaaay too many pulling studs. I ended up doing about 3 rounds of stud welding, straightening, grinding the stud heads off, filling and shaping the door.

[bb71challenger]

I dont know what it is but I have seen several cars with damage to that same exact spot and my car is one of them. It is a royal pain to get it right when you have a dent that extends from one panel to another with a compound bodyline like the Challenger has. Looks like you really put forth a lot of effort on getting the metal close and the fit right. Great job.

[4Cruizn]

Your work is looking great!!  Keep the pics coming.  All that because you wanted to fix a small oil leak??