Duff's - 1971 'Cuda 383 4spd B5 Blue

[Duff]

Holy moly i've been busy.  Shut the doors to my tire shop in California, packed up everything and took it to Iowa to my pop's shop.  The cuda is now residing in it's very own shop with TONS of work space

As for the car, since my last post i've done a ton of stuff.

1.  Removed trunk floor and prepped for trunk pan install
2.  ordered/received 2 piece trunk pan (still waiting a week more for the dropoffs from AMD, then all this will get installed.
3.  Removed a "patch" on the passenger quarter panel.  It was a pop-riveted panel
4.  Removed the front clip and started work on the front inner fenders to repair holes chopped for old headers
5.  Sent my engine to the machine shop for work.  Everything's been hot-tanked and the block, heads, and water pump have been magna-fluxed and are all good!  Engine's been bored 0.30 over and is ready for more work when parts come. 
6.  Bought all 4 door hinges
7.  Went to Farmington this past weekend and met Buddy Martin!!!  ... among other things like drooling over every car there...

Next up:

1.  Order engine parts and continue engine work
2.  Order a kit and rebuild my factory original holley (so i'm ready for the dyno)
3.  Order a kit and rebuild my factory original distributor (not for dyno, I think we'll use MSD for that). 
4.  Get my quarters off and fit metal work
5.  Get a cross member and install it
6.  Try and post pictures on here from my phone.

[Duff]

BTW, i'm having trouble posting pics from my iPhone cause all the files are too large, and it sucks to put them on facebook, then save to my computer, then post them (like i've been doing so far).  Anyone know a better way to post pics directly from my phone???

[Topcat]

That can't be a CA car?

The dirt is a light sandy color. CA dirt is a darker brown clay color.
At least up here in Norcal.

Someplace dusty in summer and gets lots of rain in winter.
Mid west area I bet.

[brads70]

Line the inside of the frame rail with duct tape. Then from the outside cover the frame rail with some long strand fiber fill. Once dry grind into shape and load on the undercoating.
That should stay within your budget and cover your beer drinking tab too.

Don't laugh to hard but my first Challenger in the 80's this is almost exactly what some jerk did. Only they used cardboard, expandable spray foam insulation and roofing tar to make a frame rails.
My younger/dumber days.......

[Duff]

  

So, here are some: 

[Duff]

And more

[Duff]

Might've gotten a bit ahead of myself here by not fixing the rocker first, but this was my first attempt at metal repair on the car, so I guess I won't beat myself up too much.

[Duff]

Trunk floor with the fuel rail installed.  This took me about 3 hours because I had to do a ton of measuring using the fuel tank.  For anyone who might care later, the rails from center to center measure about 10".  I also decided to por15 this, though I guess it didn't really need it since its on the top of the fuel tank.  This was my first install using spot welds and I learned that they work best when I started my welding "pool" in the center of the spot weld and worked my way in a circle outwards.  I also needed more hands than I have many times to push the two metal pieces together, so I put a hammer to my chest with the rubber end pushing on the metal while I used my other two hands to hold and weld... turned out to work pretty well.  Another side note:  If you've got long hair it's not good to get por15 into it, so yeah....

[Duff]

This is a pic of my frame rails with por15 and weld-through primer on them. 

[crocha617]

This is a pic of my frame rails with por15 and weld-through primer on them.

Are you going to clean up that crossmember while you still can???

[Duff]

Good thinking Crocha.  I just wire-wheeled it and gave it a couple coats of flat black since its all the way under there.  I think I'll put some por15 on the rest of the outsides of the frame rails after I wire wheel them, and i'll do some undercoating in the other places.  Can you or anyone recommend some good stuff for the underside of the car?  This is going to be a daily driver for me in California. 

In other news, I got my trunk halves in!  Took me two nights of work for the two halves, about 11-12 hours total.  Not too shabby I guess.  The majority of the time was spent fitting my gas tank and measuring eleventy thousand times.  After that a bunch of "massaging" of the panels and rails.  I still have to deal with where the panels connect to the rear valence (tail light panel).  The AMD panels come up short of meeting with it, so I guess i'll bend a 2" piece 90 degrees and plug weld it into place.  Next up is the dropoffs, then quarters. 

[Edison1970]

The panels are short because they are usually installed with the tail panel in.  I had to fabricate a piece myself because mine had rust through the tail panel.

[crocha617]

Glad you got it cleaned up, it's nearly impossible to get it later. Not sure if you did this but it looks like you could use a few more welds toward the rear ends of the frame rails especially on the bracket that flairs out and attaches to the rear crossmember. The factory put 3 or 4 welds on each side and it is the thickest metal on the whole rear of the car and I'm guessing that's an important stress area. It didn't look like you predrilled that far back when you prepped the pan.

[Duff]

You know i'm still kind of dumbfounded about that exact issue.  On the right side floorpan pic if you look you'll see I drilled a few holes to do that exact thing, but when I installed the pan they were so far elevated above the surface of the rail that I knew I couldn't weld them (or pound them into "fitting" so that I could weld them).  I ended up just shooting some weld-through primer on them cause I didn't know what to do and figured i'd end up just filling the holes.  That's why I didn't drill on the left side for them. 

When I think back to removing what was left of the left side floorpan, if I remember correctly there weren't any welds on those areas anyway, though I think there could have been a couple welds on that elevated piece on the back end. 

Are you 100% on this crocha?

[crocha617]

You know i'm still kind of dumbfounded about that exact issue.  On the right side floorpan pic if you look you'll see I drilled a few holes to do that exact thing, but when I installed the pan they were so far elevated above the surface of the rail that I knew I couldn't weld them (or pound them into "fitting" so that I could weld them).  I ended up just shooting some weld-through primer on them cause I didn't know what to do and figured i'd end up just filling the holes.  That's why I didn't drill on the left side for them. 

When I think back to removing what was left of the left side floorpan, if I remember correctly there weren't any welds on those areas anyway, though I think there could have been a couple welds on that elevated piece on the back end. 

Are you 100% on this crocha?

I'm pretty sure there are supposed to be spot welds there. I have a trunk pan /rear frame rail section at home that I separated recently by removing at the spot welds so I can take a better look tonight and get you a picture or 2.