I'll post here the things that are currently going on with the project. This will eventually make it into the restoration chapters and new progress will replace it. The latest additions appear first. If you want to follow along from the beginning, scroll to the bottom and work your way up.

The Deck Lid is on and the Tail Lights are checked for fit.

A coat of 2K Primer went on the entire topside of the car. [August 4, 2004]

Some Etch Primer went on the doors and firewall. [August 3, 2004]

The Driver Side Door is on now. [July 31, 2004]

The Passenger Side Door went on and got lined up. [July 27, 2004]

I was in town on business so I dropped in to see how things were going with the car. [July 9, 2004]

The Roof is all cleaned up. The vinyl glue was removed and the entire area shined up. [July 1, 2004]

That dent is all smoothed out now. You wouldn't even know it was there. [June 30, 2004]

The dent in the passenger's side quarter panel was fixed up. It will only need a small amount of filler to smooth out. [June 22, 2004]

Driver's side quarter panel weld is finished and the trunk pans are tacked in place. [June 21, 2004]

The driver's side quarter panel is stitch welded in place.  [June 20, 2004]

Lots of primer went on in the last little while. The floor pans and underside got 2 good coats of epoxy primer. A high build surface primer will follow. [May 23, 2004]

The driver side quarter panel is cut and fit into place. We're waiting on rear shackles to hand the suspension back on before we start to weld up the panels. We want to make sure everything fits right. [May 21, 2004]

The floor pans are in and the welds are starting to get smoothed over. The pans overlap, but are welded on both sides (not like it was when I got the car) and the welds will be smoothed out and sealed with everglass and/or seam sealer. [May 16, 2004]

The front frame rails needed a little more work and once that was done, etching primer started to go on there to start the sealing process. [May 10, 2004]

Work started on the rear end and K-Frame to get them all cleaned up and painted. They need to go back on the car to check for proper fit and I'll need it all rolling to get it home... [May 7, 2004]

Some work started on patching and smoothing out the inner wheelhouses. The outer wheelhouse was test fit and was almost perfect. They need to be modified a bit as they were built for all B-Body MOPAR cars and the Charger has a slightly different body line in the area. [May 6, 2004]

More frame rail work going on this week. It's coming together nicely. [May 03, 2004]

Things started to go back ON the car this week. A lot of work was need on the centre cross member, but it's getting there. Floor pans and outer wheelhouses and the like are the order of the day. Etching primer is going into all the cracks and crevices before they get covered up for good. [April 29, 2004]

The car was blasted and a lot of things cleaned up really nice. There were a few extra surprises underneath, but nothing that's scared off the body man. [April 20, 2004]

I've been getting regular updates from the restoration shop. There's a lot more pictures on the BodyWork Page. Mostly pictures of what's been cut away, but here's one of the first pieces to be put ON to the car.

[April 14, 2004]

I took the car to a restoration shop on Thursday. They will do the major rust repair and bodywork. You can follow the progress on the BodyWork Page. [April 10, 2004]

I pulled the engine today. I didn't get pictures of the process because I figured I had a long way to go before I actually got the crane hooked up. I ended up using the crane to lift the engine slightly so I could shift it side to side a bit while I fought with the headers and the engine mounts. Then, when I got to figuring out the tranny mount, I pretty much had the whole thing swinging from the crane. I didn't want to leave it all unattended while I ran for my camera. So, I just kept going.

Here's some pictures of the empty bay and the engine itself. [Mar. 14, 2004]

I got the rest of the steering column apart today. The bearing housing came off easily with the removal of two screws. But the lower bearing support proved a bit of a challenge. I finally "persuaded" it out with a length of soft wood and light taps with a hammer. There are a few assembly line markings on these pieces. So, I thought I would make a record of them for future reference. You can click on the thumbnails for a larger picture.

[Feb. 28, 2004]

I had a tool made to remove the steering shaft from the column. My brother made it for me at work. I used the turn signal switch retainer as a template for the base and then measured up the rest.

Here's what I got:

Here it is mounted on the column. I used the screws that held on the retainer.

The bolt goes in the end and you just crank it down until it presses the shaft through the upper bearing. once it clears that, you can just slide it out of the bottom of the column.

Here's the tail end on the shaft before I started pressing it out.

And here's a shot of the shaft coming out of the sleeve.

And here's the shaft out of the column.

I did the work on my bar in the rec room. It's too cold to work out in the garage.

[Feb. 26, 2004]

I bought another gauge cluster for parts. What I got was in great shape and has some parts that are in better shape then what I have. Plus, I found another MOPAR friend not too far from where I live.

I also got a rear package shelf to replace the butchered one in the car now. I need to replace the speaker holes:

I should have all I need in this piece:

[Feb. 14, 2004]

The weather was fantastic here this weekend. So, I got to spend a good amount of time in the garage - in a t-shirt and jeans. I managed to get a bunch of things done. I cleaned and wrapped a bunch of parts for storage. I also peeled the vinyl roof off and addressed some scaling in a couple of places. Overall, the roof is in great shape. The scaling didn't go deep at all. [Nov. 23, 2003]

I also cleaned up the back seat a little. The seat back is in great shape with only two bad spots on the top edge. They could be easily fixed with a vinyl repair kit. The seat bottom is toast I think.  [Nov. 22, 2003]

My brother gave me a hand yesterday and we pulled the hood off the car. That gave me a lot of room to manoeuvre and last night, I made some good progress on getting the under-dash parts out of the car. [Nov. 4, 2003]

I purchased an original 1969 AM/FM radio on eBay. I got it home and tested it. It works great! Here's a picture from the eBay listing. I took some of my own but the lighting wasn't the greatest. I'll take some more and get them up here soon. [Oct. 19, 2003]

I need to do some more modifications to my engine hoist to get it all to fit together. August was almost a total write off as far as working on the car is concerned. Between vacation and training, I was only home for 1 week out of the whole month. I've got to get cracking on this project.

I tore down the dash and tested all of the gauges. They worked great. Here's a picture of the cluster before I took all the gauges out. [Aug. 3, 2003]

I got the dash out today. [July 31, 2003]