Day 45 – The dreaded rear window frame

Let me just start this with, I hate this rear window frame. On so many chargers this is the worst. This is mostly due to its poor design. The wings that anchor the roof down in the rear of the car on either side of the window tend to trap water in the bottom corners of the rear window. This leads to the sealant that is used to adhere the window to the car to stay wet and eventually rot away. This is where it starts to get expensive, once that has rotted enough to let water through, the water will eat through the paint, then the metal and trickle into the rear plenum which is right below the rear deck lid. Now the way the plenum is designed the water doesn’t stay there, it then trickles down into the trunk floor and there it falls into the crevasses between the trunk floor and the wheel house. So now you have a corner of the window rusted through, so that metal has to be cut, grinded, patched, welded, sanded, and painted. This happens to the corner, plenum, wheelhouse and trunk floor. This issue is pretty common with these chargers which are why most of them have rusted out trunks. So here we have cut away the old rear window frame and will welding in the new one.

Day 44 – Removing part of the quarter panel

So it’s time to start cutting the important pieces off, like the quarters. There is a sort of nervous feeling at first when you take an air chisel, stab into the body, pull the trigger and 90 pounds per square inch of air pressure cut through your car like hot knife through butter. But after you carve off that first part of car flesh, you look at it and think, “well there’s no turning back now… “ and you become less timid with what can be scrapped.

As you can see the interior skeleton of the roof is going to need some rust treatment.

Day 43 – Undercoating the car

Well it’s almost winter and time to do a few little clean up operations on the charger. One thing I wanted to make sure I did was under coat the car with something. Paint, Undercoat, Powder coat, it didn’t really matter. Since I got so much good use out of POR-15 (See earlier posts), I decided to use it to undercoat the car. Since the entire underside of the car was not primed with the rest of the car, it was still bare metal and highly susceptible to moisture and rust.

Day 42 – Outer Wheel house 4, Lower Valance and Taillight Panel

Today Travis was back in the shop and we ripped through a lot of tasks today.

First off Travis and I assessed the wheelhouse and decided that we need to re-fit it, clean up some of the old welds and hammer and dolly the seam back together. We then turned our attention to the lower valance. We first leveled the frame by running a straight edge and level across the frame rails and using shims on the jack stands to adjust the level. Once the frame was level we took readings from a few places on the car and they all said the same thing, the rear passenger quarter panel was low. We then rolled a table over and used a bottle jack to jack up the rear passenger quarter panel and weld in the trunk-to-lower valance supports.


Once this was done, I got to work on removing the taillight panel and Travis got to work on the aforementioned wheelhouse.

Once he got the tack welds in for the wheelhouse and I got the taillight panel removed, we went ahead and fitted the new trunk lock bracket to hold the taillight panel in place at the top , and tacked it to the lower valance to hold it from the bottom. While these panels are OE replacements they still require some manual persuasion to fit correctly. As you can see, it’s starting to look like a back end of a car.

Cool Websites for Help with the Charger

1. AMD (Auto Metal Direct) - "Nice Body!":
These guys manufacture almost every body part for the charger, While thier prices are bit more especially shipping, the quality is second to none.

2. EBay - "Need I say more?":
Sure ebay has a lot of parts you will need for a restoration... BUT, you can also find competive prices on AMD Parts as well. Just be sure to always factor in shipping when comparing prices. I also find good deals on grinding discs and other abrasives.

3. Amazon.com - "Tooling around":
I use Amazon for ordering tools, supplies and other essentials.

4. Cyberweld.com - "That's hot":
I find pretty good prices on welding equipment, hoods, glasses, aprons and other saftey gear on this site.

5. Jeff Lilly Restorations - "That's how you do that!":
This site has some pretty cool how-to s on car restorations. VERY informative.

Day 41 – Outer Wheelhouse 3

Today I started the tedious task of removing the outer wheel house. This panel was sandwiched in some places between two other panels, removing it was a bit of a pain. I also had to cut away part of the mount that welds to the top of the wheel house.

I also fitted the lower valance. It’s clamped into place but, but I need to level out the car and then level out the rear valance.

Day 40 - Wheelhouse 2 and Rear cross member

Today Travis finished up the Driver side wheel well while I fabricated 2 end pieces for the rear cross member.

The ends were pretty rusted so on the passenger side, I formed 1 piece by hand trying to get the contour right.

The driver side I used 3 individual pieces welded together to form the contour.

After we welded them into place; I ground down the welds and painted the rear cross member with POR-15.

As that was drying, I started on the outer wheel house. To get a better view of the wheel house, I cut around the wheel house to expose the welds. This is where it gets a little scary.

Day 39 Inner wheelhouse 2 / Tail section 1

Today Travis got right to work on finishing the patching for the passenger side (see previous post). He did have cut a bit of the fender out of the way so he could access both sides of the wheelhouse.

I began work on the rear tail section. I removed the lower valance by using a spot weld drill bit. I pre drilled the holes with a 1/8” bit, while this proved to be much faster, the pilot hole was too big so the bit would move around while trying to drill. This left for somewhat of a messy removal. I would not suggest this tactic if you plan on keeping either panel. I, fortunately, am replacing both so it doesn’t really matter. After the panel was removed I found some pretty serious rust damage on the rear frame on either side. I will have to figure out what I am going to do about this before I can move forward.

Day 38 - Inner Wheelhouse 1

Today we removed the rear differential and leaf springs. Now we could take a look to see what needed to be done on the inner wheelhouse. The Chargers rear wheelhouse (or inner fender) is split right down the middle lengthwise creating and inner wheelhouse and an outer wheelhouse. Due to the water getting into the trunk, the rust climbed up the inner wheelhouse about 2 inches or so. I could get 2 new inner wheelhouses, but considering that 80% of the wheel house is still good, it makes sense to save the $250 and patch the hole with sheet metal. I am going to be replacing the outer wheelhouse on both sides as they are not only rusted through on the bottom but also along the outer edge that contours the Quarter Panel.

Travis was left to create 3 pieces to patch into the area between what was left of the inner wheelhouse and the new trunk pan. Travis first created a pattern out cardboard that would fit, and then transferred it to sheet metal. Once cut out of the sheet metal, he then cleaned up the edges on the grinding wheel, used the pneumatic hole puncher to create holes for plug welds and finally flanged the inner wheelhouse so the patch panel would fit flush against it. Travis will need to repeat this process 2 more times on this side to finish the patch work.

Day 37 – Trunk 3

Today Travis continued working on the trunk welding the 2 pans together and to the trunk brace. I finished work on the front suspension of the charger. I was able to install the updated and powder coated upper and lower control arms. All new bushings and reinstall the steering box.

Day 36 - Trunk 2

This weekend we worked on the trunk, By “We” I mean Travis. Travis got the panels fit and drilled them and also clekoed them in place. Clekos are those pins stinking out of the metal. They allow us to place a piece in place temporarily and remove with ease.

From 2010-07-31 (by Eye-Fi)

From 2010-07-31 (by Eye-Fi)

Day 35 Trunk 1

Travis stripped out a lot of the trunk and cleaned up a lot of the rusted areas. Although half of the trunk extsion panel just sort of fell out.