Amazing workmanship!!

This one fought back hard and you beat it!!!

Very inspiring!!!

Ryan W31

That thing sits pretty good as far as ride height goes. Will be interesting to see this all finished. Great color combo.

Dave you are amazing. I just dont know how you do it.:flag::beers:

Cudos to Dave! (Pun fully intended)

;-)

Thanks guys! I appreciate the feedback! Yes, Ryan. This one fought me hard, but like you say, it inspires me to continue (eventually) and restore another (maybe):laugh:

And speaking of that, it was supposed to by the Crunchy Cuda up next, but I couldn’t get the owner of that to sell it after it was all said and done. He was ready, then I wasn’t, I was ready, then he wasn’t. Finally it all came together and he just couldn’t part with it. It’s understandable, though. It’s all for the better but you never know what chapter is next! Right now it’s concentrating on finishing up some things around here I kept putting off and pushing forward on the BMW 507!:eek2:

Thanks Jonesy, glad you enjoy my handiwork!:flag:

Cheers:beers:
Dave

Thanks, but I wouldn't go that far, Lee. Although it is purpley in hue!:wink:

And the comment on the deck, the proper fridge fer thisin' is wanna them side by side jobbies. That way no matter what der is open you dun gots support! :laugh:

Cheers:beers:
Dave

The purple car is officially here in Joysey now. Arrived this evening. All safe and sound tucked in the garage now. Will update tomorrow.

In the garage.

Now where do I start assembling???

First, I guess I'll start from the ground up. I have to tighten all the front suspension bolts. Dave indicated he left it all untightened because his alignment guy usually tightens everything during the alignment procedures. Luckily when the trailer arrived we noticed a castle nut on the floor. Looked underneath and both tie rod ends had fallen out of the spindles. Whey! Now that would have made it exciting when it came time to roll her out! No problem. We threw my son under the car and made him screw the nuts back on. That's what skinny teenagers are for, right?

I pulled all the boxes and parts out of the inside and trunk and got her up on stands now. Let the fun begin!

The first real thing I need to do is get the white headliner installed. The entire interior revolves around the headliner being in place, first. Hopefully that arrives soon...

My first addition to the car - now it's officially a Mopar.

I've had this Pentastar emblem in my dresser drawer for 35 years. Finally used it on something worthy. :-)

Love those rocker moldings!

Holy moly, it looks like the car blew up!:shocked:

I'm glad it arrived safely, Steve-O! I'm anxious to watch the updates! When's your dad coming over to see it?

Cheers
Dave

BTW, if anyone needs a car hauled, Matt Lewis who picked up the purple cuda (and also transported my 73 SD455 Formula when it was sold) is a great guy to deal with. He has an nice, clean enclosed trailer with a winch and picks up on schedule and arrives on schedule. (I know, what a concept these days!). I highly recommend him.

His contact info is Lewis Detail Factory and Auto Transport (937) 418-9831, The great [email protected] Also on Facebook under Lewis Detail Factory. He is located in Ohio.

He's in Connecticut so we have to wait til the cootie virus risk lowers. He's in his late 80's. I'm sending him photos right now.

I got the car up on jackstands and started working on the suspension. I tightened, cotter pinned, and lubed all the tie rods and ball joints. I am working my way from the ground level, upwards.

I ordered a set of the front and rear ceramic metallic brake shoes from these guys and they should be here next week. http://www.musclecarbrakes.com/stage16572charger.html

I measured all four of the original 11" brake drums and it looks like they were only cut once in the past half century. The fronts are .010 over and the rears are .020 over so there's still a lot of meat left in them. Getting them cut this weekend at my friend's garage.

I have been buying up bottles of silicone brake fluid (DOT-5) to fill the system with something that won't harm Dave's paint in the event of a leak.

I was able to heat up the broken mirror glass in the passenger side racing mirror and pop it out. I brought the reassembled pieces, all taped together, to my local glass shop. They said it will be about a week and $20 to cut a new mirror. (1970 was a one-year only mirror size for the passenger side so the aftermarket doesn't make that mirror insert.

Other than that, I have been collecting parts and sorting through all the stuff Dave sent me and trying to figure out what language he labeled all the tiny bags of screws with. I think it's either early Olmec or possibly Prediluvian.

It’s a mix between Predelousional and Postbezerkian that I perfected between 2nd and 3rd grade. It stems from a long lineage of thinking the more the teacher doesn’t understand the less I get wrong on the test!:biggthumpup:

You know I’m a text away! Not that I’ll remember what I wrote, but still!:hmmm:

Those brakes are new that I put on there, so after you do a few burnouts, you’ll have an extra set on hand already!:biggthumpup:

Cheers
Dave

I thought I'd swap out the brake shoes for the best material there is. Back in the day when I had my 71 hemi ragtop with the 11" drums, The Mopar Gods granted you only one stop at speed before the brakes faded into a distant memory.

In the mid 1980's there was a company called "Velvet Touch Brakes" that made sintered metallic brake shoes for these cars. It was a major improvement. They went out of business in the late 1980's due to the asbestos lawsuits as well as lawsuits from people who didn't understand that metallic brakes had to be initially heated up with some pedal application when you first took the car out for a drive before the brakes would grip fully. If you understood that, you were fine. If not, it took a lot longer to stop.

The guy running Musclecar Brakes was one of their original engineers. We swapped stories for a while before I placed the order. Turns out we knew some of the same people back in the day. Small world!



And just kidding Dave, I was able to decipher your coded messages on the bags into Pig Latin and then translate them into Modern Joysey-speak.

Congrats to Dave and Steve!!
Dave as usual your cars come out so darn nice. I love watching you work your magic.
Steve, the bar is set high buddy. That interior is go to be installed perfect to finish this gem off!!
Can't wait to watch it all come together.

Thanks Lawrence! Oh, Steve won't disappoint and best of all he's building it how he wants it!!

It's gonna look SHARP!!

BTW... email sent

Cheers
Dave

Got the drums cut last night. It took about .020 to get them clean of the bell shape from sitting for 42 years with the shoes rusted to the insides. Probably had the parking brake on all that time. My buddy has a 1970's era Bear brake lathe that I donated to him. I found it at an old garage that was junking it!!!! So I dragged my trailer down there, got it loaded up and brought it to his garage.

Got the mirror glass made at the local glass shop. Dropped the broken pieces off on Monday and they had it hand cut and beveled by Friday. Cost me $20. The old broken pieces came out with the use of a heat gun and small screwdriver. Turns out the factory used RTV or something similar back then to glue it it. You have to be careful with what glue you use to mount the glass to the bracket because most glues will attack the silvered back of the mirror and ruin it.

I cleaned up the front drums and scrubbed them well. You can really see how much of the factory brushed on red paint is still intact on the drums. They really slopped it on there. And the outside of the hub had a green and white paint daub on both drums.

After that I painted the drums with some cast iron high heat paint and then found a 30 year-old can of FE5 Rallye Red enamel I had in my cabinet and used an old paint brush to slop on the red paint in the same finely trained assembly line technique as used by the artisans at Ye Olde Hamtramck Assembly Plant in April of 1970.

I then mock assembled the drums (waiting on front seals to arrive) So I could bleed the brakes. Went through 4 bottles of Dot 5 purple silicone brake fluid just to make sure everything was flushed after I bench bled the master cylinder and reinstalled it. Also waiting on the little $3 rubber grommet that goes on the end of the brake plunger rod before I can final assemble the pedal setup.

Any reason they used red? Seems like something subtle would have blended in better?

That is subtle (For a Mopar). ;-)

It was a 1960’s and 70’s fad to have some bright red color flashing behind the rim openings. Kind of like the various optional bright colors the manufacturers offer now, for brake calipers.

Back in the day it would look kind of like this:

This single 15x7 Keystone Klassic rim and G60x15 Polyglas tire was something I found while cleaning out junk tires out of a culvert by the side of the road many years ago. It's a GM bolt pattern, but you get the idea of the look.

(This is exactly what I want to put on this car - some Keystone Klassics and Polyglasses. Too bad I cant find a set of 14"s that would fit the F70x14" Polyglasses that Dave bought. Cragar makes brand new 15" Klassics but no 14 inchers.)

I like how their directions say to keep the paint off the hub area...but the red was obviously there on these drums front and rear, and most of the others I have seen. Quality control is #1.

Google "mopar red brake drums" and you get dozens of photos of the red all over the place, even up to the tips of the studs on the front drums. The only theme that runs through them all is that none of them followed the 2" of red "suggestion". LOL

Here's a guy selling NOS set of rear drums with a whole lot of red on them...for only $1,050.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/NOS-1970-CU...5.c10#viTabs_0

Did you ask Gary Thomas out in Youngstown? He seems to acquire these type of rims as he believes stock rims are boring.

Is he a dealer or a normal person? Do u have his contact info?

That is going to look sweet with the Keystones Steve, excellent choice.

Maybe Jim has some ideas on this as I'll explain in a minute, but I'm claiming :bs: on those. All drums are the same yet the red paint signified that Road Wheels were to be installed on the car. I highly doubt Chrysler had two sets of rear drums on the shelf since how would they know how many of each to have on hand? In theory, they could have 1000 sets of drums on hand extra each day and I'm pretty sure that's not good for business.

And with that, Jim has posted pictures of his survivor cars further back in this thread that not only show the correct style application of the paint but also shows the red paint sticking to the wheel after they were installed. Not flakes of dry paint, but wet paint.

So what I surmise is after the drivetrain was installed, it was noted on the line that "Road wheels" were optioned and they painted the drums. That would make more sense to me than a stack of red drums on the shelf. Too many logistical inaccuracies that I could list to have them painted by the supplier or by Chrysler when they arrived at the plant.

Cheers:beers:
Dave

And yes, Steve. Get a set of 15" Keystones and keep the stock 14s in the garage! That would be sweeeeeeeeet!!:3gears:

Cheers
Dave

I agree Dave. Certain someone has played with those drums. Never seen NOS with red. It was a production line procedure for any "Road Wheel" - Magnums or Rallye's. The pics I posted earlier in this thread are indicative of what I've seen on many of my cars....and others over the years. Sloppy and always drips on the inside of the wheel.

I thought it looked way too suspiciously like my FE5 red paint from an old can of enamel. Maybe I can bottle it and sell the paint as NOS assembly line red drum paint!!!

With the issues with the site for the past few days I wasn't able to upload any updates. So here's some stuff.

I painted the shaker dome in the same matching chunky-sparkley-argenty paint that the grill was done in. It came out nicely though my recycling trash can/painting dolly is now kind of sparkley from overspray and is at present, the envy of the neighborhood.

Anyway, here's a couple shots of what the underside Rube-Goldberg mechanism looks like. There are two fresh air doors: one that lets air into the shaker grills and one that has a bypass trapdoor to the underside of the baseplate for rainy weather. The doors connect via a linkage arm which is connected to a repurposed vent cable, that goes through the shaker metal baseplate and connects to a bellcrank on the underside of the baseplate. Another actual vent cable (with the word "vent" covered over with a red foil label that says "Fresh Air" connects to that and goes through the firewall and under the center of the dash. When you manually operate that Fresh Air vent cable, it moves whichever door you intended to open or close for whatever purpose you deem necessary.

Final photo is of the two piece baseplate - the metal outer ring with the trap door hole, and the unobtanium, single four barrel, Carter AVS baseplate for a 1970 only, 340 only, shaker hood 'cuda. (1971 used a Carter Thermoquad which used a different height baseplate). Interesting trivia fact: Fram made all the shaker dome parts up in Canada, for the E-body cars, hence the "Made in Canada" stamp on the outer baseplate.

One thing you have probably noticed are the seven 1/2" holes in the outer perimeter of the outer shaker baseplate ring. I noticed these as well when I went to bolt the shaker down and the bolts fell right through the holes. Well, it turns out that this baseplate was among a bunch that slipped out of Fram back in the 1970's without having the circular, flanged, nut inserts tack welded in place. Luckily Dave had an extra three and half pairs of the "special nuts" and I was able to use some JB weld and set them in place, after this photo was taken.

I was rummaging through my 40 year old boxes of shrapnel and found two original 'cuda340 emblems. They were kind of faded but the chrome was excellent. So I soaked them in lacquer thinner overnight and used a brass bristle toothbrush to remove the paint residue. I then sprayed the with flat black and used a small rag with some reducer on it to wipe away the black off the face of the emblems.

The interesting fact is that original shaker hood emblems have three mounting prongs, while standard steel hood emblems have only two prongs. Since the odds of finding a real three pronged shaker 340cuda emblem are about as likely as me finding another hemicuda ragtop in my garage that I forgot to sell really cheap decades ago, I decided to use the two pronged emblems since they cover the middle prong anyway. This way only my hairdresser will know for sure.

Here's a comparison of an original three-pronged shaker hood 'cuda440-6 emblem next to the 'cuda340 emblems (after I did the blackout treatment).

After the blackout dried, I used some thinned out FE5 Rallye Red enamel (the same stuff I brushed on the brake drums) in a paint syringe bottle I got off of amazon. That worked great. I just let the syringe fill the channel with red paint, waited til it dried a little and then wiped it off the raised chrome edge with some reducer and a paper towel. I then cleared over the entire emblem.

And here's the shaker all finished, all sparkley and drying in the sun.

I also started working on getting the grill in place because I got tried of seeing the toothless grin of the purple mobile every time I opened the garage.

That was a little more involved than I thought. The reproduction grill is a great piece, in and of itself. It's the stupid stuff that "soiled my good mood" (a quote from the now framed, two page critique written by my then 6 year-old daughter concerning the behavior of her 1 year old little brother). The headlight buckets have two small Philips head screws that go through two holes in the outer perimeter. The screws go through the headlight buckets and into two white plastic inserts that snap into the inside of the fender edge.

First the headlight buckets don't fit because the inserts are twice as long as they need to be and won't let the headlight bucket even get into place. Then, once I sawed off half the height, the headlight bucket would actually go into place. The new problem was that the predrilled holes were about 1/4" away from the actual inserts. Not even close. So I pull out the headlight buckets and look at the hole. On the back side of the headlight inserts is a small raised, reinforced area where the hole should be. Now how frikken hard should it be to actually drill the mounting holes in that exact spot like the original buckets had, versus just randomly drilling a couple holes within a 1/2" or so???? Oh, and of course they were kind enough to include four chrome bevel headed Philips headed screws that were the size of something you would attach decking to your back porch with. If actually used, they would have instantly shattered the plastic once they were tightened into the much smaller countersunk hole in the plastic. Therefore, I once again went rummaging through my buckets of bolts and found the correct sized, tiny, bevel headed chrome screws for the buckets and used those instead.

So I had to drill new holes and then fill the old ones in the recently painted buckets. Luckily I had some leftover sparkley paint from the shaker. Once that was done, the grill bolted up nicely. The only finagling was to remove the two front bumper bolts so the elastomeric bumper could be lowered a couple inches to allow the grill to clear without scratching the paint.

I was also able to "adjust" the factory hood pins to clear the holes in the hood. The hood pin mounting flange is a separate bracket on the front of each fender edge, inside the engine compartment. They are painted with the car and not really adjustable. Even though the hole in the mounting plate lines up with the hole in the hood when viewed from above, the pin itself pokes up through at an odd angle which doesn't work. So I used the old factory "adjustment" method. I placed a 1/2" deep well socket over the hood pin, attached a 12" extension to the socket, and gently bent forward just a hair. Voila, the two pins aligns up perfectly now! And the pièce de résistance was finding a pair of original 1970 flat, hairpin, hood pin clips in my box of old emblems in the closet. (same place I found the 340 emblems!)

Got the interior parts delivered today after a month or so on order. Unfortunately, they first shipped the $1700 order to someone with the same name as me in another state. I always check my tracking info and I noticed something wasn't right with the destination listed and gave them a call. They immediately contacted UPS and had the shipping cancelled and returned to sender. Once it arrived back, they inspected and reboxed and reshipped to me at the correct address. Everything arrived safely in four giant boxes this afternoon.

Soooo sorry PennsylvaniaSteve, you didn't get a free cuda interior on my dime, this time.

Luckily I have Grampa's Lincoln to lay out all the pieces on.