I figured it wouldn't hurt to start a restoration thread on here. To save myself from typing my story so far I'll copy and paste it from the readers ride section of mopar muscle.
First off a little about me, I'm 23 years old, this is my 3rd Mopar muscle car. My first car was a 1970 Plymouth Duster that I completely stripped to the bare shell, had bead blasted, then couldn't wait any longer to finish it so I sold it as is, and bought a 1969 Dodge Dart Swinger 340. My Dart was a numbers matching car. I had R&S racing of Albert lea rebuild that motor and it put down 346 rwhp. The problem with the dart was it needed body work and I always had my heart set on a challenger or cuda. So when my dad decided to start restoring his cuda, I jumped at his parts car and bought it from him. Its been a race to see which car gets finished first ever since.
When I got this it was originally supposed to be a parts car to help with my dads Cuda's restoration.
It was stripped down to the bare shell and then sent to a body shop called Fast Lane Sports.
All of the old rusty metal that was bad was cut off and then they bead blasted the entire car. Before we had it bead blasted my dad and I had made a rolling chassis cart so it would be easier to get all the hard to reach areas underneath.
The floor pans, trunk pan, rear frame rails, torsion bar cross member, inner and outer rear wheel wells, rear tail panel, front fenders, quarter panels, rocker panels and about 55 other smaller patches were required to get it back into one solid hunk of metal.
As it sits now it is 100% rust free and has all new sheetmetal, but that is as far as I've gotten with it. I am hoping to have enough money saved up soon so I can finish the bodywork and have it painted. Once its painted I can bring it home and start the reassembly process.
It was originally a 318 auto with disc brakes and the light package. I had a 383 rebuilt for it and I also picked up a 4-speed.
My goal with this car has been to make a pro-touring car. I want to put tubular control arms and rack and pinion steering on it. In keeping with the pro-touring theme I also plan to use some 17 or 18" American Racing Torque Thrust II rims. I also want to add rear discs to compliment my front disc brakes.
I am going to have it painted the factory red with a black hockey stick strip.
UPDATE: A few weeks ago I had decided that I want to put a 426 hemi into my cuda rather then the 383. Thinking this over a bit more, I've decided that I'd rather get it on the road with the 383 and not have to save up another year or two for the hemi. The plan is to get it on the road with the 383 and then save up for a year or two and then drop the hemi into it.
The 383 I have is rebuilt and ready for action. Specs on it are:
Date coded 1970 block. It has 915 closed chamber heads, forged pistons/connecting rods/crank. Comp Camps Extreme energy 284H cam kit (included lifters, valve springs, etc), edelbrock performer intake, and a holley carb. Its estimated to have 439 hp which I'll be finding out soon because I'm taking it to an engine dyno to see what it puts out.
Update 7-20-10:
On friday I bought a shaker hood setup for it so that'll be going on it. I also got the mopar performance spring relocation kit so I had my springs moved in 3 inches.
I'll update with more pictures once the paint is applied!
Pics when it was dropped off at the body shop
How it looks 1 year later, well it looks a little different now, he's ground down some of the welds more and done more body work to get it ready for paint:
