FULL REBUILD: Upgrading A 1970 Dodge Challenger Restomod From The Inside Out

today on detroit muscle it's the start of a brand new project the guys go on the hunt for their next big build and do some detective work to uncover the ideal candidate in recent months we've combed the countryside looking for detour treasures exploring boneyards and barns we played detective by decoding cars to reveal their factory origins we've shared tips on how to look for project candidates and mostly we've just got a kick out of seeing what we could uncover but this time we mean business in fact we're on a serious hunt for our next project vehicle yeah we've got word from a friend of a friend of a friend that's got several of those project cars so we thought we'd come check him out we came prepared we got some cash in a trailer and hoping we'd go home with something mark tucker's automotive shops in lincoln county tennessee now from the highway you never know what lies behind it [Music] a bevy of old beauty's mark has amassed over years of wheeling and dealing well i've been collecting probably around 17 18 years are any of these for sale very very few mostly none of them mark turned us loose in this maze of vintage metal where it's fun to look even though we're pursuing something special gotta watch your step here there's patches of gnarly prickly thistle everywhere tom tom did you know that thistle is actually the national symbol of scotland in fact according to a scottish legend some warriors were saved one night when their invaders barefoot of course stepped on thistle and oh well look at this 57 dodges were a symbol of what chrysler once called the forward look kinda looks like it's moving even though it's been parked here for years in the spanish language caliente means hot this four-door sedan is well lukewarm at best chevelle two-door wagons are pretty rare and i bet mark would even throw in the dice if we were game for another grocery getter now mark has a special affinity for old trucks and these rides are the ones he's least likely to let go of this 71 plymouth duster would make somebody a nice project car probably not us but it's worth a look joe is it rusty on that jack i don't know well plymouth satellite this was in pretty good shape too you know this is considered an entry-level mopar to a lot of people and some people take these and try to turn them into something they're not which is not very cool to us if we get a mopar we're going top shelf something like this 1970 challenger rt one of the most desirable sought after muscle cars in the world of course some people would refer to this one as a basket case at first glance it can be really intimidating but the beauty behind buying a car in this style condition well some of the work of disassembly is already done and you get to see exactly what the condition of the body is in it's kind of like this shifter hole here now i can tell you it looks like somebody's cut it out with a torch and a pair of vice grips but it's no big deal it can be repaired but you would never see this with a shifter boot and the carpet laying in place well this old challenger is missing an engine and trans which is fine with us because we got plans we'll tell you about later it's also missing offender tag which usually goes there that tells you about all the options not to worry though still got the vin number and that tells us a lot too jay is the letter designation for challenger uh oh this tells us it's the basic challenger not an rt otherwise this would be an s two and three tells us it's a two-door coupe this next letter is for the engine type a 318. zero means 1970 b tells us it was assembled in hamtramck michigan and the last digits are sequential production numbers which started at one hundred thousand one actually this being originally a 318 car is pretty good news for us because now there's nothing wrong with dropping in a big old bad what's that iconic engine starts with an h ends with an emmy now this car being on a rotisserie is a huge help especially with the inspection side of it now looking at this car it's got some rust in the trunk pan which is a no big deal and i've heard from a few of those mopar gurus they almost think these cars were shipped from the factory with a little back here above the tank well little rust like that's no big deal a car like this i'm kind of excited what do you think yeah if the doors and fender is as nice as the car itself we've got us a candidate we'll just have to see if we can get it home today let's go talk to him getting the deal done was a lot easier than getting the challenger out of the lot and onto our trailer but at last we're homeward bound with what promises to be our most exciting project [Music] ever well we made it back to the shop in one piece with our newly acquired 70 challenger of course it's in several pieces and happy to say that the fenders and doors like the rest of the body we showed you are in great condition considering whether almost 45 years old case in point no rust at the bottom of this door especially in the corner where you often find it in cars this old and looks like original paint too another common problem are fender bottoms ours are in really good shape the fender itself well it has a few dings and pop knots in it but nothing's really bashed in so a quick trip to the blaster and several of these components will be almost ready for paint but before we can make that trip well we got to get the rest of the car stripped down we'll start with the easy stuff all the pieces that aren't attached and the accessible bits like the hood hinges everything we're removing is going to be gently laid out and accounted for some of this won't be reused but a lot of it will and you don't want to accidentally destroy a piece that can't be bought especially you resto guys [Music] the steering column gets detached from the box then a couple of bolts mean it can be removed the dash is a little more involved with some pretty tricky bolts to deal with but like everything else it comes out too then the heater box is an easy picture as well as the pedal assembly well our deck lid here won't be making a trip to the blaster the reason behind that is well it's a brand new part so all we have to do is sand all this dust off throw in a couple coats of primer and then it'd probably be ready for a coat or two of paint a little bit closer this fuel cap is an iconic mopar tidbit that we want to take really good care of oops just a few screws is all it takes for removal good deal saved it we are trying to label and organize most of the things we're going to reuse like these headliner bows the middle ones don't matter much but the front and rear due to the shape of the roof got to go back the way they came [Music] some of these bolts are pretty stubborn and rusted so we'll bust out a can of wd-40 rust penetrate to make removing them easier [Music] we'll use a jack to hold up the k-member and four bolts is all it takes to drop it out of the car [Music] well we got our control arms disconnected the four bolts that hold the k-member out and we went ahead and released all the pressure off the torsion bars now oftentimes i've seen guys cut these out because they can be such a pickle to get out but we're not going to do that today that's right theory is if we push those torsion bars forward enough the k-member and everything attached to it comes out and to make that happen my favorite tool here you go why are you handing it to me if it's your favorite tool besides out now we can move on to the rear suspension this leaf spring setup is a pretty familiar configuration for muscle cars we'll unbolt the shackles on the back of them and knock them apart with a hammer these super rad air shocks were a big deal back in 1983 but we don't think they'll be included in the rebuild then the front perch can be removed with four bolts and the rear end is now detached from our mopar [Music] since we're about to head to the blaster we'll put the body on a rotisserie to make moving it and blasting it a whole lot easier we've made some special brackets to attach it to the car and you'll probably have to do the same with pretty much any vehicle once you find a good attachment point well we got it on the rotisserie so now we can roll it out and make a short trip to the blaster you know i'm gonna miss this gold mango paint hey guys we're at blast from the past and you've seen us use them a number of times we're dropping off our dodge so that we can get it stripped down and ready for some color but before we do all that i'd like to talk about the media and its purpose now you all seeing this fella it's vance he's pretty much the head honcho here at the shop i see you laid out a few of the medias what do you got uh we've got some walnut shell we've got some black beauty and crushed glass crushed black these right here the brown is the walnut shells we use it on very light stuff like corvettes anything wood wood chairs uh anything that needs something that's you know soft and delicate now this stuff is cold slag or what's referred to as black beauty right right exactly so what do you guys use that for we use it on our rough material such as thick metals stuff that we just want to rip the rust and paint off of right quick now these other two are crushed glass one's a number four and one's a number three and what the number refers to is how finally they're ground well i guess we better get out of your way and let you get back to business and i can find something to do yeah we gotta get that thing finished i see in a couple days later gators and a couple days later ours is back from the blaster we've got a good bit of metal work ahead of us including a roof replacement but we expected that you know it's a funny thing but we've had talks about what we like about the 1970 dodge challenger even before we got one and we also talked about how we could make a great thing even greater we like the unmistakable shaker hood option and we like the fact that they were built to go fast with engine options like the 440 and 426 hemi we also like the idea of a manual four on the floor trans with a pistol grip shifter and the fact they came in such bright crazy colors how could we improve from the original how about taking that old-school hemi and slapping on some fuel injection and then taking that cool pistol grip shifter and adding a couple gears with a six speed we also want to upgrade the brakes and suspension of this ride by making it drive and ride like a modern performance car and either way you're doing a ride like this it's always a good idea to keep a clear picture of this thing in your mind or on paper so here it is thanks to this awesome rendering done by our friend dale swanson at swanson artworks who does a lot of our pre-built art the colors what the factory called plum crazy purple in 1970 so we're proudly naming our project car ultraviolet he even gave us a personal slant on the classic rt stripes so that's our game take the iconic parts of this car and ramp them up to the max but don't worry we're keeping the classic looks and styling that make this car one of the most revered rides of the muscle car era today on detroit muscle our new challenger project is about to flip its lid we're taking the ratty rusted roof off this old mopar and replacing it with a pristine panel that's going to get rid of a huge amount of the holes on this thing [Music] today on detroit muscle we're on a mopar mission as we bear down on our newest project ride this 1970 dodge challenger when we found it recently the body was amazingly straight with little rust for its age the stock 318 engine was gone which was great considering our horsepower plants so we wrote the check hauled at home and started the tear down saving as many original parts as possible we even had a rendering made of our vision of the final piece and gave it a name ultraviolet of course we made a trip to the blaster before getting down to our first phase of real work we knew from the get-go we was going to do something regarding the rust on the roof of this car now from the factory this thing came with a vinyl top and back then they used to glue the vinyl straight to bare steel which caused it to rust from the outside in now somebody could patch this roof up but they'd spend a boatload of time doing it and our car well really and truthfully we could put a new panel on and be a better repair and a faster repair now you may be sitting there and being a little bit intimidated about cutting on the roof of a car but after you see it done probably going to raise up your comfort level just a bit well this should raise your comfort level a lot new replacement metal from classic industries to get an idea of how all this goes together kind of think of it as making a sandwich with the a pillars being the bottom bun drip rails being the bologna that goes in the middle and for a top bun this replacement roof skin well we got to get rid of the leftovers first those leftover joe was just talking about well that's these rusty panels that have to come off my first means of attack is using a shear bit inside of the air hammer and then i'm going to follow all that up using a spot weld cutter [Music] the beauty of the shear bit is how it makes super quick work of that sheet metal but if you're not careful it can also be a straw back right now we're just trying to cut the skin of the roof we don't want to get into the structural pieces or the edge where the spot welds are [Music] leaving a small strip still attached to the car with those spot welds once i get all the way around the roof the skin peels right off kind of like an orange with the majority of the roof out of the way it's time to start working on all the little bitty spot welds on it and to do that we're going to use this spot weld cutter kit that we got from matco now this thing comes with a couple different cutter blades on it and it's also a 5 16 size they make them in a couple different ones depending on the size of spot weld that you need to remove i guess it's time for us to get started with an automatic center punch i'll make some pilot holes on each spot weld to help seat the cutter don't be tempted to use a drill bit to do this the idea is to cut around the spot weld not through it a regular drill bit can also cut into the second layer which you don't want [Music] with the chisel bit attached to our air hammer we can now begin removing that metal that was held on by all those spot welds tommy is alternating between cutting spot welds and peeling off the metal with the air [Music] hammer [Music] like always when you use the air hammer be careful not to damage metal that you don't want to hammer away at the channel around the rear window is similar to the drip rails and front and window channels drill out the welds grab an air hammer and go to town [Music] well after digging into this roof repair well we noticed that some of the inner structure has got some rod in it and we're going to have to make some repairs and it's going to involve slicing and dicing it up a bit and we don't want the car to move around so what we're going to do is add in some tubing to keep that from happening it's not really all that big of a deal just got to do a little bit of welding these can be pretty much just nice solid tacks because they're going to get cut back off eventually we'll use the principle of triangulation to add strength to our brace after all using triangles and structure is one of the oldest tricks in the book that's it well here is some of that rot that tommy referred to and it's in several places around the roof but it's something you'd have to expect from a 45 year old car and it's something easily remedied with a little patchwork [Music] after marking the area that you want to cut out with a cutting wheel on a grinder the metal can be removed pretty easily you want to cut a little bit outside of where the rod is but don't get too crazy you just make a bigger hole that will mean more work a sanding disc is useful to help dress the area where the new panel will be welded in and once we've replicated the curvature and shape of the old one we can begin fitting it since this part of the car isn't flat you'll want to attack the piece and shape the metal to fit once it's laid down flush with the stock panel you can tack it in the rest of the way and begin welding it in for good maybe wondering why i cut this off here instead of leaving it one long piece well i've got to replace this a-pillar and i don't want to be fighting it so i just went ahead and sliced it and we'll fix it later once it's welded in we'll dress the welds with a grinder and then repair the rest of the bad spots [Music] coming up we'll continue the roof replacement on our challenger with an a-pillar swap and drip rail install well with the patch panels in place on the roof skeleton we can get back to the original mission which is replacing all the sheet metal now the next piece of the puzzle is the bottom bun of that sandwich we talked about earlier the a-pillar now we've got to drill out some spot welds like we did on the roof earlier on this thing then we'll take it off clean things up and install the new piece by the way this a-pillar from classic industries is as close to the original gauge steel as you can get now you might find one that's cheaper but it's not going to be as durable i'll start the removal process by making a couple of marks on the inside of the a-pillar which i won't be removing and then measure from those marks to the 90-degree spot on the a-pillar part that i will be cutting off this will become important in locating the new piece i'll show you how in a minute now we want to get rid of all those a pillar spot wells here's why you need sharp spot well cutter bits for this job in some places you're going through a single layer the top one to get the pillar off but in others like on the cow you're cutting through three layers of steel we'll work our way up from the bottom to the top drilling spot welds as we go this spot weld on the roof brace really shows how these cars were put together here you see the roof brace top skin the a-pillar and the structural layer of the roof brace all meeting in one place and spot welded together in case you were wondering why i'm slicing up this material well it's because there are panels buried under the other panels so it's easier to cut and remove small pieces and trying to take it out as one big one anything that's left over well the air hammer can make pretty quick work of it come on baby [Music] we need to attack the area with a grinding wheel this will make a nice and smooth mating surface for the new outer a-pillar next we need to lay down a coat of loctite extend rust preventive on all the bare metal when it reacts with the rust and stops it you'll know because it turns purple with the rush treated now we're ready to start fitting the a-pillar once i got it in place i'm going to make a few marks so i can punch some holes in it for the plug welds then we'll be ready to weld this thing up and this calf will be roped [Music] with the pillar in place i can make a few marks for the holes that need to be put for the new spot welds then i'll grab our madco metal punch and make some holes till them cows come home now if you remember earlier i made me a mark on here to give me a reference point and what that tells me is how close this piece is to the edge of the glass kinda in a way because with the a pillar being replaced on this side and that side they both were in let's say an eighth of an inch well that's a quarter inch too tight and you can run into trim and glass fitment issues well it looks like we're a little bit better than a 16th off from what we were earlier a tap or two a hammer one more time i think we'll have it that's her turned the corner now and instead of deleting spot wells we're making more of them these old cars were held together by a ton of these things [Music] after the welds are in place a little bit of grinding will dress them up and flatten them down just like they need to be once all that's done our new a-pillar is installed pretty excited about the whole deal what do you guys think [Applause] [Music] perfect well now the a-pillar work is behind us we start giving the challenger a roof using those replacement parts we showed you earlier because of alignment issues the roof skins got to go on before the drip rails go ahead and get on up top that's pretty good just need a clamp i think this thing's going to fit the drip rail goes here under the roof skin which like i said we'll use to locate the rail in its new home a couple of tacks from the bottom side are a handy way to keep the rail in place after you pull the skin back off [Music] you have to do that in order to access the top of the rail to place the spot wells with the roof skin back in place we can finally start getting it welded back to the car there's just a few spot welds here then a few more here a few more right over here once those are burned in you can cut those tacks off the bottom now you don't have to dress these wells nobody's going to see them but that's up to you [Music] well we jumped one of the biggest hurdles as far as the sheet metal repair on our challenger today and really and truthfully it didn't take all that much time considering the panel that we just replaced i'll tell you one thing tom it's one major step of many on our road to creating the ultraviolet challenger today on detroit muscle it's a major modification for our 1970 dodge challenger g machine that we call ultraviolet we're swapping out the factory k-member for an all all-new full frame that's going to make this mopar handle like it's on rails [Music] our 1970 dodge challenger project lovingly dubbed ultraviolet is still in its early stages after we tore it down in the shop saving all the hard to find pieces we removed the chewed up old roof skin and replaced it with a new one with some but not all of the metal patching work done we're going to switch gears when we did the tear down we also removed all the factory suspension out from under this car now oftentimes you guys see us take a few of those beef them up a bit and make some improvements on them but with this car we're going to come at it at a little bit of a different angle and i bet it's going to surprise a few of you if you know your muscle cars you know these dodge challengers came from the factory with a unibody setup they utilized a front subframe with torsion bars and well we could upgrade the suspension and keep the subframe if we wanted to go that route but technology has come a long way in 45 years so i think we ought to take advantage of it check this this is what we'll be using to give that dodge 21st century handling it's a g-machine chassis from shorts performance with about 20 grand and two days of work you can convert your unibody pony car into a full-frame setup but now i want you to meet the guy behind all this technology jeff schwartz you know i know there's a lot of science in this setup how's it going to change the driving characteristics of our challenger well joe it's going to ride like a high-end luxury car and handle like a sports car starting at the outside moving inward we have the 14-inch xtreme plus brakes these are manufactured by bear for schwartz performance the rotors are 14 inch diameter the calipers are a six piston design and a very rigid structure schwartz manufactures a custom steel spindle that's designed to withstand the combined stress of g-machine turning and muscle car weight it bolts to a billet aluminum steering arm that they also manufacture one cool feature is this adjustable bump stop that helps keep those oversized tire combos from chewing up the inner fenders but jeff was talking about it riding like a luxury car here's one these 16 and a half inch shocks have a ton of travel which of course improves the ride but there's a performance advantage to this as well this longer suspension travel also helps in a handling situation if you're going around a corner and you encounter a bump if you have very short suspension travel the car will lose adhesion the tire will lose contact with the road surface and the car will actually slide across the surface of the pavement with longer shock travel you encounter a bump while cornering the shock absorber will absorb the bump and the tire will still stay planted on the ground our upper control arms have needle bearings with grease fittings this offers a nice smooth ride quality with no deflection the shafts are slotted on the top so that you can adjust caster without using shims the chassis also comes with a race bred tubular sway bar they're attached with billet end links and nylon line rod ends to keep you from having any bind issues the rack and pinion steering pivot is in line with the lower control arm pivot so what does this do well it goes a long way in getting rid of bump steer well jeff tell me something about this g-machine chassis going under our car well joe it's constructed from two by three inch mandrel bent tubing and it bolts into the structural areas of the unibody without any floor cutting well like up front so you got the racing style sway bar back here what about some of these other suspension components though well we've got a triangulated four-link rear suspension it uses nylon-lined spherical rod ends and again that is for bind-free operation it allows the rear end to articulate and gives you a smooth luxury car ride with awesome handling all of our chassis come with a moser differential in this case we used an aluminum third member the billet daytona bearing and a large 1350 billet yoke using a 9 inch forged style rear like this has been a mainstay of performance for decades even in chevies and mopars because of their combination of strength and ease of servicing but they do contain a weakness when it comes to the modern g-machine style events that a lot of enthusiasts participate in no big deal there's a great way to get around that problem from day one our chassis have featured a full floater rear end what that means is the axle floats within the rear end it's got large diameter tapered roller bearings here and this drive plate mates with the axle this drive plate is what turns the hub and the wheel the advantage of a full floater rear end is in a normal ford nine inch there's a wedding ring and that wedding ring will press off the axle due to the g-forces that this chassis generates and that'll cause pad knock-back issues and you have a potential for brake failure okay and you avoid that with this setup well very interesting it's a good design looks good on the stand but it's not going to do us any good till we get the body in there [Music] jeff says that one of the first questions people ask him is how much weight will this full frame add to the car it actually deducts weight from the car by getting rid of the heavy components such as leaf springs cast iron steering gear box the pitman arm center link etc you actually reduce the weight of the car by about 50 to 75 pounds depending on the application [Music] in order to be able to get the frame under there the rotisserie needs to be detached from the dodge and get rolled away there you go now we're going to have to go ahead and modify some of the front frame rails here just a bit to get the chassis to fit now we're not going to have to cut into the floor pans which that's a pretty good little deal but we are going to have to cut the rear rails just a small bit to make it all work great and after he gets all marked up here the sparks are going to fly since our chassis rail is going to fit in the same location as the original rail and our front rail will bolt into the core support we're going to have to remove this rail and we'll be cutting along this line up around the shock tower and then down along the back here by eliminating the shock tower and with our rack and pinion steering you'll have lots of room for headers and large engines since the whole front half of the frame is going to get chopped out we're going to tack in some braces to keep the integrity of the inner fenders and radiator support we're also going to remove that shiny new chassis so that we don't damage it with sparks then we'll bust out the cutting tools and start making some room now this isn't just a little surface metal job there's more to it than that there are several layers of metal to deal with here so you'll probably find yourself making several passes with a few different cutting tools reciprocating saw plasma cutting wheel they might all make an appearance [Music] we'll need to make room for the shock tower on the new frame so with the template in its shape we'll mark out the rest of the inner fender that has to be clearanced out an electric grinder with a cutting wheel is a good choice here to make a nice clean cut [Music] well now that the front of the frame has been properly located on the core support time for the next step and that's to make marks on the factory torsion bar cross member cut a couple of slots and then weld up these heavy duty [Music] plates the cutting wheel is also a good choice for this surgery since we want the cuts to uniformly butt up against the plates once they're installed to get to the spots the wheel can't reach we'll use a body saw then it's on to some of the brackets in the rear which will interfere with the frame fitment drill out a couple spot welds then get after it with an air hammer a little grinding will clean up in preparation for the next step and that would be making a small pie slice in the rear frame rail that piece taken out the side of the rail can be moved outward to make room for the new one which is coming in [Music] now jeff just made a relief cut on this forward side of the rail for his chassis now we're also going to make a little bit of clearance room on this shock brace for the shock brace on his g machine chassis so a little bit of burp saw a whole lot of noise we'll be a step closer [Music] [Applause] now remember there are two of these that have to be removed on each side hey while you were gone tom welded and dressed up the frame rails that were narrowed in the back and he also capped off the front frame rails that were removed now you don't want to leave those open it looks bad makes it weaker and it's a nice trap for moisture and debris well here are those plates we showed you earlier loosely bolted up to the schwarz performance frame they're going to slide up into place in those slots we cut out of the torsion bar cross member and there are shims between the plates and frames that measure 15 thousandths and the idea of that is to make fitment a lot easier once they're being installed first we'll bolt in the front horns of the frame to the radiator support then we'll fasten the rear of the frame and some newly located holes on the existing frame rails in the holes where the front of the leaf springs used to bolt up a set of plates are bolted to the car then weld into the mounting plates on the new frame the same thing will take place on the torsion bar cross member where we made those cuts earlier to make room for both a chassis and mounting plate then to strengthen the car even further we'll go ahead and stitch weld the entire crossmember to the floor pan which were originally only held in by spot welds we're almost to the finish line of installing our chassis the next step is installing this optional brace you want to make sure to attach it to the firewall using a footing plate now we're only tacking this thing into position because we need to make sure that we have proper wheel clearance we may end up having to move it to the inside so we'll just have to check that see where it goes those temporary wheels on our dodge mean that we've accomplished our goal for today making this thing a roller by the end of the day and i think this schwarz performance chassis installation was easier and well less painful than even we anticipated and considering how much this is going to improve the handling of this old dodge i tell you this is a no-brainer for those of you who want to get the most out of your muscle car and one more thing the old mopars back in the day have the engine and training offset to the passenger side yeah the guys at schwartz kept the offset and built motor mounts and a transmission crossmember to match pretty handy and it's going to help us when we get to work on that transmission tunnel for the big six-speed we're going to install it also allows us to go ahead and drop in our plastic engine for mock-up now this is a pie air block that we got from summit racing these things have a bow load of reasons why to use them one of them well you can set it in and out of place by hand and it could save you an engine because you don't want to feel one of those expensive ones full of grinding sparks and that officially winds up our project for today and jeff can't thank you enough your help on this thing no problem i can't wait to see you guys driving this on the road and remember drive it like you stole it okay we'll let you drive it too looks great though yeah today on detroit muscle it's a plan for the pan as our crew steamrolls through a trunk pan replacement for our 1970 challenger ultraviolet we'll go super in depth so that you can address this common problem in your own garage [Music] project ultraviolet our 1970 dodge challenger restomod is nearing the next phase after replacing the roof and putting a high-end full chassis under it we're ready to finish off the sheet metal work now we've got most of it knocked out including getting the quarter patch now the doors and fenders well they were in pretty good shape so we went ahead and hosed on a couple coats of primer but there are a couple issues that need to be addressed and one of those well that's the trunk pan when we got this car we knew it was in need of some attention that's one big reason to get a car blasted if you're going for a high-end build because it revealed the true extent of the damage it's pretty rotten and probably beyond trying to save there are some spots on this car where we can simply make patch pieces to fill in the holes since that trunk pan is beyond the patching point though we're going to outright replace it and to make that happen we'll use this replacement piece we got from classic industries you can use the entire trunk floor or use sections of it depending on the damage of what you're replacing now we're not going to use the entire panel for our application and there's a couple of reasons why well originally this floor goes up and under the tail panel and to put it in we'd have to remove it also the pan is so wide well either the quarter have to come off or the tail panel itself just to slide it in as one big unit so we're going to end up cutting it down the middle on the new part watch after a little bit of bodywork you'll never know it to start with laying out a road map for your cutting is a good idea you want to pay attention to several things where are the braces under the pan what parts of the factory pan are going to stay in the car and where are the spot wells that will have to be cut for removal [Music] you know tommy we could make a lot faster business of this we use the plasma cutter instead of a saw i guess yeah but being slow and true sometimes better right what this is exactly the kind of thing that the body saw was made for so if you've got one it'll be super handy for a project like this be sure to cut shallow when you go over the top of the braces so you don't cut into them as well [Music] now that was a lot of cutting but we're ready to move on to the next job which is what it's going to be drilling out a whole bunch of spot welds so i'm sure you want to be a part of that right i want to be a part of taking a break just like when we swapped the roof skin on this car the trunk pan has its fair share of spot welds to keep it married to the framework use a spot weld cutter on the ones that are attached to the braces so that you don't accidentally punch through the brace there's still a little metal that has to be cut out these things don't just fall out by themselves an air hammer is another handy tool to have for removing one of these pants like with your cutting tools though this thing is pretty aggressive so don't mess up your braces while you're removing the sheet metal well guys we've been making some pretty good progress here in the trunk but we still got a ways to go i'm gonna have to take the body saw and rip right across through here to get this big chunk out of the way and then follow up with some more spot wheel drilling to get this piece off the tub we're swapping out the spot wheel cutter for a 3 8 drill bit so that we can make a pilot hole for the body saw since we don't want to slice through an additional bottom layer of metal here we'll switch to the cutting wheel to finish the cut [Music] inside the tub a quarter inch kin-cut drill bit will make some good pilot holes to drill out these spot welds then back to the 3 8 bit we can use a regular bit here since it's okay to punch through both [Music] layers with all that stuff out of the way well it's time to do some grinding here on the spot welds and some hammer dolly work to straighten this stuff out the flatter you can get the surface in these spots the better your new panel will attach to the braces a uniform surface allows the new metal to lay down correctly when it's time to plug weld the pieces in in addition a little hammer and dolly work will straighten the edges back out then they get grinded too still ahead get in your zen zone because we'll show you how patient trimming can give your trunk pan a perfect fit we'll even include a secret technique for butting the edges we're getting really close to installing our replacement trunk floor but before we do check out the rust inside those rails back here now we're going to be covering them up real soon so this is our only chance to take care of that rust well we got it and that's what this loctite extend rust treatment is all about this is a little bit of insurance and this is the time to use it since that metal will never see the light of day again at this point the majority of the factory metal that needed to go is out of here so we're about ready for that replacement piece from classic industries how do we get going on that now well first of all like joe mentioned since we left a portion of it i've got to do a little bit of measuring to see exactly where i need to cut that new panel our first point of measurement is going to be here at the bottom of this little stamping to where we sliced it you want to make sure to measure it in two different spots so that both of them are square that's an inch and a half also on the new piece we want to come back and cut it a little bit high on the top of this little stamping ridge so that we can come back and file fitted if you will so that'll give us a little extra metal to work with now we got to transfer all that information to our new panel and it's pretty much straightforward [Music] inch and a half here and an inch and a half here now i'll place some nice little dots around the perimeter where we want to start making our cut then some masking tape will give me an easy to see edge to cut up against and then that good old body saw it's seeing some action today for sure [Music] don't forget the corners all right guys i know we mentioned earlier about cutting this thing in half because it wouldn't fit but we're going to give it a shot just to see because if it does fit it'll save us a little bit of time oh getting closer well now we gotta do a little trimming that saved us a bunch of work well it's still hitting right here in the middle so we're gonna have to kind of notch out around that and then do a little more trimming on this excess but it's better to make sure that you cut it too long than too short because it's easier to trim it up than trying to stretch this thing [Music] taking a look at where it's binding up a few marks will tell us where additional cuts need to be made like we said that body saw is carrying the bulk of the cutting [Music] but if you don't have one a good cutting wheel can do a lot of this for you some hairy spots might require something else like tin snips a little extra trimming can also be done with the pan in the car now oftentimes whenever you get new sheet metal it's very close but not dead on right here in the middle of this curve the little lip that turns down that welds into the corner well it's actually at an angle so we need to take it back out and hammer it square if you will so that whenever it slides into place it'll go straight down instead of digging into the wheel tub a dolly on the back side will help keep the edges straight and also makes the process go a little faster since you can put pressure on it from the back side as well since the corner is wanting to crinkle up we'll have to make a relief cut to let the two pieces overlap slightly [Applause] and back in the car again that fits a whole lot better now and we still got to do a little bit more trimming down here on the end to let this thing lay on down but don't get discouraged whenever you're doing something like this because it takes several tries to keep trimming and trimming to get that piece just where it needs to be now if you just took it and threw it in the hole and nailed it in place as they say well they're handing enough seam sealer and undercoating to make this thing look like much from the top or the bottom side [Music] like tom said properly fitting one of these panels might take a lot of trial and error in addition to placing it and removing it from the car quite a bit but a proper repair can be rushed [Music] stick around for the proper placement procedure for those plug welds that'll hold in the new pan well we are back to finish up the truck floor transplant on our dodge challenger those clamps we added underneath got the replacement piece all located properly however they also added some extra tension particularly back here so we're going to add a couple of clecos one back here one up front remove the clamps and move on using an eighth inch bit we'll punch through the top and bottom layer to put in the click holes these things are a staple a panel replacement allowing you to attach panels to the car but leaving the option to move them around if need be oh and watch those clamps when they come off i got a tip i want to show you that i use for fitting these panels nice and tight what i do is using an air saw is i'll actually slice into here and then run uphill just a bit and then all the way across and what that does is that allows me to cut through both pieces giving me a perfect fit [Music] the theory here is that you're using the kerf aka the line created by removal of metal to line the panels up for you this is much easier than cutting and fitting them separately now you can see my cut wasn't that straight but the two panels match perfectly the next thing we need to do is take a marker make a few marks here on the trunk pan to know exactly where to drill some holes to weld this rail to it [Music] i've been making marks inside the lines that tommy drew that represent the width of each rail we know that each lip on each rail measures three-fourths of an inch so if we get right in the middle of that mark we'll be on the money i'm going to start with an eighth inch pilot hole followed by a 3 8 bit large enough to do some plug welding and get this thing in [Music] place after that we'll jump up to a 3 8 bit to finish out these holes the ones along the edge are easier to deal with we'll bust out our hole punch and let it do its thing well all right guys we're to the point we can start melting some wire i'm going to tack weld it on this side and work it all the way across remember this is tacking not welding in case you have to move it around some more this gap between the two panels is what you're looking for this one back here well it's too tight so you just simply take that body saw run back through it and it'll open it up and give you the perfect amount of gap for your weld [Music] still ahead it's the floor finale as we finish off this sizeable stern surgery to complete our trunk transformation while you were gone i went ahead and finished tacking the back seams of the new pan i had to do a little more trimming to make it fit but that's no big deal i'm also having joe hold a pry bar to push the metal down so i can do the first few plug welds aka rosette welds all right guys we got our panel tacked into position and we're ready to start doing the rosette welds now sometimes those things can be a little bit tricky so you need to spend some time and get your welder dialed in just right and also a tip for you is make sure both the panels are sandwiched as tight as possible that'll help a bunch [Music] oh i'm sure enjoying myself holding that pry bar but it's pretty important to keep the pan held down against the surface of the brace for a good weld there's a lot of these rosette wells that have to be done to get the pan attached good thing tom fits so well into tight spaces right well all right guys we got all the rosette welds done now we just need to finish welding right here across the tail pan where we made our incision then after that we'll have to do a little bit of grinding but it's going to look like a million bucks when we're all done now just like if you were welding on a body panel like a door or a fender this metal is pretty thin so you have to be careful to avoid doing too much at once so that you don't warp it i'll break out the big electric grinder to dress everything up real pretty that includes both the rear seam and the rosette weld once it's done you can see the huge difference that putting in a new pan has made and we didn't even have to body work it since it went in pretty well all right guys we're pretty much done all we really need to do is spray on some primer but we'll do that whenever we prime the entire car and this repair turned out really nice and after all that's what you want to see a good repair is almost invisible today on detroit muscle it's the return of our purple pavement pounder project ultraviolet this 1970 challenger is getting its new power plant built with an all-aluminum old-school hemi plus we slip in a six-speed and do a budget valve cover refurb [Music] after tearing down our 70 challenger we gave it a new roof replacement skin then after a few modifications we installed a complete g-machine full-frame setup from schwartz performance more surgery was required out back in fact we removed most of the old trunk floor and replaced it with new metal from classic industries and since you saw it last we sprayed the body with red oxide epoxy primer that brings us to this filling that engine bay with a perfect power plant for our ultraviolet challenger and we think this old mopar well it needs a hemi but this isn't just any old hemi this is one of the first low deck b block hemis ever made and old joe he's on his way to go pick us one up that is after they machine it build it and test it up at any cylinder head if it's got a chrysler engine under the hood chances are all or part of it came from indy cylinder head a company whose name is synonymous with mopar high performance [Music] they've been in business here since the early 1970s the company found its true calling years later all thanks to an underserved bunch of dodge and plymouth guys we got to making parts and filling the void of where chrysler kind of left off and it just took off from there their first head developed for the chrysler 440 was an overnight success but russ flagle knew that satisfying hemi hunger would soon follow in the chrysler person's mind all of them wanted to have a hemi it's just at that point in time they couldn't afford it and there wasn't parts out there to buy today i sell as much hemi stuff as i do 440. nowadays indy can build them from mild to wild no matter what the power goal is though all of their crate engines begin life here well here is our low deck hemi block fresh from the foundry where it's been cast and heat treated according to indie cylinder head specs now all ready for some critical machine work [Music] the first machining process on the front and back of the block is the most critical we regard the two bell housing dowel pins and the two timing chain dowel pins that's what we locate everything from everything comes from those four dowel pins now to finish it we locate these two inch thick plates on either end of the block bolt them to it off of the dowel pins and then we shoot the main line and we shoot the cam tunnel for years b blocks have been used for 383 and 400 cubic inch mopars adapting one for the hemi is a big breakthrough this block being made on the b block format low deck it allows more clearance it gives you another half inch of clearance where there is no clearance it makes putting headers on getting valve covers off getting spark plugs out of it it just makes the whole thing a whole lot easier here's a nice touch torque specs stamped right here on the deck in the meantime this machine is busy c and seeing our aluminum cylinder heads they're basically better flowing stock replacements that perfectly match our street performance goals skilled human hands are still needed to cut the valve seats in the heads to produce the private label rocker arms and to assemble the valves and springs meanwhile here's our low deck hemi bottom end already put together the cam from comps already been degreed in in fact they're ready to finish it but before they do let's talk to kenny lazari about what they put inside this thing already we're going to use an eagle 4340 steel crank and then we're going to use an eagle h-beam rod this is a diamond piston 10.3 to one this is a conventional tall deck hemi pistons same cubic inches you can see how much shorter the low deck hemi is and it also saves 300 grams kenny's installing a new myelodon low profile oil pan on our hemi it's got a windage tray trap door and baffles on this particular engine we're not going for all-out horsepower we we want something that makes good torque we want it to be a good engine that's going to live for a long time do good rpm good horsepower underneath those twin fast throttle bodies is one of indy's mod man intakes which required a new design to work with our b block it's a very versatile manifold but in this particular case we had to make one because the manifold had to be narrower than what the the rv block was now we're ready to top off this good looking engine with a pair of valve covers this cnc machine is putting on some finishing touches words that convey these are for a special engine for a special muscle car next morning time to hear some elephant motor noise down at the dyno first fire up and our low deck hemi sounds great already after setting a few parameters the fast program lets kenny know everything's hooked up correctly and instantly it starts learning all about the engine 558 horsepower at 6 300 rpm 491 foot pounds at 5200 and on a final follow-up run the numbers were almost identical as far as safe maximum power it's right on the money if you wanted to adjust it you would look at your idle and and drivability but that's got to be done in the car hood closed driving down the road it's time to haul our hemi back home that is after a brief stop at the scales this combination has never been weighed before look at that only 491 pounds that's 50 less than a small block chevy well that's a wrap at least for our visit here gotta head back and introduce the stout low deck hemi to our ultraviolet challenger [Music] still ahead we carve out a tunnel for a big bad six speed and install a hydraulic clutch for that smooth actuation well we made it back with our new low deck hemi and it looks good on this engine stand but it's going to look a lot better in that challenger don't you think so tom yes sir i do believe so well we wanted to make sure whatever transmission we dropped into that thing well it'd be strong enough to handle all that power so we decided to go with a t-56 magnum from american powertrain now this thing is considerably stronger than you're just running the mill plain old t-56 it can withstand 700 foot-pounds of torque another deal is when you shift in the fifth and sixth well they're overdrive with a final ratio of .63 to one and with that aluminum case she's nice and light they also sent us this quicktime bell housing now this is the strongest steel bell housing on the market now these things well you can use them for everyday use or let's say you want to carry it to the track to ring it out as for a shifter well we went with the white lightning unit from american powertrain it has 60 different positions to it so you can adjust it to whatever is comfortable for you and then the cherry on the top will be this pistol grip and i tell you what you don't get much more mopar than that right there our t56 is a little bit larger than most transmissions would be dropping into this challenger so first off we're gonna have to do some modifications to the tunnel now for mock-up purposes with our transmission we don't want to hurt the hemi so we're relying on our plastic pier block from summit now normally we just kind of whittle away at a transmission tunnel to just get that transmission to fit but this one here well let's add some modifications done to it that need to be addressed so we're just going to cut this entire thing out and start from fresh [Music] i'll start with a pilot hole to get us going then it's our good old buddy the body saw i'll be removing this metal in sections since there's a brace right below this floor fan that the body saw blade isn't long enough to cut through [Music] now that brace will have to be cut to allow clearance for the transmission but i'll be using a reciprocating saw to make that happen after the middle section is cut out the leftover edges of the brace need to be cut at an angle to keep them from interfering with the trench now we'll do the first test fitment of our bell housing if we can get it to fit then the transmission itself should be fine looks like we need to go ahead and cut all the way up to the firewall [Music] [Applause] [Music] still not enough room no problem trimming off these little ears and knocking some of the floor pan back will help make it work almost there there's a little bit left to trim on the firewall and then a little more on the floor [Music] now i can bolt it in and it has enough room to wiggle well we got our transmission in place so that means we got plenty big enough hole we got just the right amount of clearance now i need to do some tin work to patch up that hole up next we'll demystify the world of hydraulic clutches and then it's a low buck valve cover reefer [Music] with the stock tunnel whittled out to fit our six-speed we grabbed some 18-gauge steel and tossed it into the slip roller to make a new one once it was formed to the proper shape we burned it into place then we made a couple of small pieces to fill in the gaps now on to the clutch well we not only have the components we got the man who brought him gray frederick from american powertrain and hey good to see you again it's been a long time it's a cool setup let's first talk about this atomic twin clutch setup that looks pretty cool american made right yes we're having a lot of really high powered go in front of our transmissions and we have the atomic twin which is really unique it actually hits one disc at a time so it's very smooth like a single disc clutch instead of being like an on off switch it'll handle an awful lot of power and with the engine that's going in this car we felt like this was the appropriate clutch for the job yes 558 horsepower yeah now we won't be installing the clutch right away of course but we will be mocking up the pedals and of course this hydramax now i guess you have a lot of questions about what this thing really is man we actually do probably 60 or 70 percent hydraulic clutch systems now a lot of guys are getting away from the mechanical systems and there are a lot of questions about them but they're really pretty simple you got a master cylinder and this part actually just goes on the firewall you have a hose going down to this thing this is the hydraulic slave or hydraulic throw out bearing and it works a lot like a brake caliper just fill it with fluid push on the master cylinder and it pushes on the fingers of the clutch very simple and of course you guys also finish the pedals which is pretty handy for a mopar guy in his project yeah we actually make these e-body pedals along with b and a body pedals when people call us for a transmission we pretty much have to be able to provide everything or they can't put a transmission in so we try to fill the market with anything that the market has run out of like original mopar pedals i know you're using these on your coronet project how's that coming oh man it's coming great we've got the paint on we got the transmission in the suspension one of the things that's handy about having my own mopar we like to do a lot of testing on our own cars before we send parts out to customers well that makes us feel better let's get these things mocked up all right with the pedals installed in the stock pedal box it's a simple matter of slipping them into place under the dash hey gray i got a question for you all right you pull this little pin out of the pedal assembly before you put them in why well this thing actually would be where the original clutch rod would go but since we're using hydraulics we get rid of that and put the hydraulic rod there don't need it nope gone all right next question the master cylinder itself this bracketry something you guys came up with what's the deal on that yeah we call this hydramax bracket and it's actually patented this thing does two things really well number one it gives you the same clutch rod angle as your original clutch rod so all the ratios between your pedal and the rod stay the same gives you a very comfortable clutch the other thing that this does is keep this rod here going straight into the master cylinder so it doesn't scrub the seals and ruin the master saw that would ruin it well let's put it in all right there's a little bit of clearancing that needs to happen with the carbide bit to make the master cylinder fit but it's really pretty negligible two bolts will hold it in place once it's installed then a hole needs to be drilled on the lever part of the clutch pedal there's a threaded piece of steel that attaches to the master cylinder then a heim joint attaches to that hole we just drilled and voila a working clutch pedal well mock-up mission is complete won't be long before we're ready for a paint and final assembly i bet you could help us with that i'd be glad to come back okay i'm gonna count a classy set of valve covers goes a long way toward dressing up your engine bay now you can buy a new set of these wrinkle finish retro mt's for 150 bucks but guess what this one's not new in fact it looked just like this one when we picked them both up for 25 bucks at a swap beat now the best part is you can pull this trick off yourself in your own home shop watch first thing to do is get the valve cover free of dirt any loose paint and grease we're blasting ours at low pressure in the cabinet but a wire brush and some elbow grease also works now we're going to apply some degreaser which not only removes the grease it helps the paint adhere a lot better to get a wrinkle finish that we can see and feel we're going to use some of vht's wrinkle plus you can also use this stuff on accessory brackets and air cleaner housings and such but the main thing is to lay it down in a cross hatch pattern first we'll spray it vertically now you want all the coats to be even and pretty heavy after five minutes we laid down the next coat in a horizontal pattern and after another five minutes we laid down a third coat this time diagonally again each coat needs to be relatively heavy to get the wrinkle effect now don't expect to see wrinkles right away this stuff is very slow drying and takes about two hours of air dry now you can hurry up the curing though by putting it in the oven at 200 degrees we've heard of guys using hair dryers but we're going to try the old heat gun [Music] make sure you're moving the gun around and heating the surface evenly after a couple of minutes the wrinkles will start to spread across the surface finally it's time for the artistic icing on the cake take a sharp blade and carefully scrape away the paint on top of the pins lengthwise use the same technique on the letters follow that with some 120 grit sandpaper and use a hard block to make sure you stay on top of the surface this will give the fins and letters a machine look well what do you think not too shabby now bht recommends you wait 48 hours before reinstalling the part meanwhile you got the satisfaction of saving some money and coming up with your own custom creation that's double good the shaker hood is synonymous with mopar performance and today on detroit muscle we'll show you how to custom build one for our highly modified challenger then we'll show you how to install a retrofit steering column [Music] in the glory days of detroit muscle hoods not only covered high performance engines they made a statement a functional one when they scooped up cold air this amc had a massive ram air scoop mounted to its hood that was pretty efficient and we assume the built-in tack was too and this scrambler scoop well never mind how about this road rudder a fairly plain hood till you flip the switch to reveal a mean air grabber with teeth but by far the most iconic hood belonged to cudas and challengers that sported the functional and famous shaker as for our own mopar project ultraviolet a 1970 challenger that we've been giving the hemi treatment well we said from the start it's been destined to have a shaker of its own like the one sitting on this challenger's 446-pack of all the four hood options in 1970 no doubt about it shaker takes the cool factor cake just in case you've been living up under a rock and don't know why that scoop has got the name shaker this is why now since we want our challenger hood to shake like that and shaker hood parts are kind of hard to find we hear we figured ted stevens would be the man to help out we ought to be able to fill in the blanks on some of the missing parts here and we'll have a little lesson on how to this thing works man i'm excited steven's performance in anderson alabama is an all mopar restoration resource that deals in re-pot pieces as well as new old stock if you need a piece for your plymouth dodge or chrysler they've got it because in addition to remand parts they also operate the world's largest mopar salvage yard with 60 acres of cars to resource from we've switched cars on you guys to this yet to be restored cuda and this thing being a hemi well it's a pretty close representation of what we're going to be doing on ultraviolet the shaker hood was uh optional on the challenger with uh the hemi standard on the kudo with the hemi the flaps inside the shaker scoop which allow the cold air in are operated by a cable that has a handle inside the pasture compartment we're going to show you how this thing operates it's a simple cable operated system pull the cable from inside the car is connected to this cable with a bell crank on the side of the adapter ring you pull this this is actually in the hot position here or with the cold door closed then when you pull the cable it switches it closes the hot door opens the cold door so what do you mean by hot door well the hot door is where it breathes when the shaker scoop is closed it works off of a cable opens that flap up breathes through a hole in the adapter ring so this is just a big flap for the fresh air side correct that's called a cold door there's a couple of holes in the bottom of the shaker scoop that where the water collects drains through these holes out these drain hoses regardless of the car wrapped around at the standard hemi carve equipment was this dual quad carter setup the trick is that the throats on these are smaller than the ones on our dual throttle bodies and our engines been moved back so we'll have to modify an aftermarket base plate to make it work well during the shaker sermon i was busy back in the steven performance inventory and check out what i got hard to find backseat for the challenger refurbished hood hinges side mirrors and hey what do you got buddy i got one of those sweet shakers that everybody wants so i've been busy too so get off my back okay well let's load this stuff up and hit them on and get them out yes sir where are we going i'm going this way yeah these are going to work fine well our challenger now has hinges for the hood as far as the shaker goes well that's going to be a lot more complex especially considering our engine and intake combination yeah we've got a couple pretty big problems one of them well the throttle bodies are too far apart to fit this stock looking base plate and the engine's been moved back and down to make the car handle better but what that did is change the location of the shaker so that's going to be a pretty big task making all this stuff work now bottom line is it's all got to fit in here this is a reproduction hood from classic industries with the shaker hole already cut out along with bolt holes [Music] now for the moment of truth we need to use the hood to position the shaker assembly on the top of the engine once we get everything in place it will tell us just how extensively we need to modify the base plate to make everything work and on another note remember this is just an aftermarket base plate there's no way in heck you'd want to modify an original hemi piece to make it work so hey don't send us any emails yelling at us all right well let's see how far off we are joe all right here we go that's a pretty decent amount i'd say so still ahead it's modifying that shaker base plate to work with all those custom components to make sure it looks good and works great we are back tommy's getting ready to fab up a solution to our shaker fitment issues first i'm going to do a little tweaking on our base plate that'll help us out now and down the road this thing is actually two plates in one the inner plate is stationary but we can move the outer plate around in different directions that's all thanks to this crazy long washer here and the square hole now the idea is to get about a quarter inch of room all around the stud that will maximize our adjustment potential and once you've got enough all the way around you can go ahead and tighten down the nuts we still have to tie this shaker well to the throttle bodies and the way we're going to do that we're going to make a couple of sheet metal rings cut a big hole right here where it needs to go put the rings in place tack weld the base plate to the rings and fill up all of our big gaps it's that simple simple not that simple with a couple of strips cut out each around three inches wide by about 17 inches long we can begin using the slip roller to shape them into rings that will serve as throttle body mounts we'll make several passes through the roller tightening it down a little each time to make the curve on the steel sharper you don't have access to a slip roller you can use something round like a coffee can or shoot one of those christmas cookie tins to form the shape of your rings we just about got our rings made and what you're looking for is a five and eighth inch diameter now if you get them close that's cool you can just bend that thing up put your clamp on it measure it and see how much more you need to go if any now we're right at five and three sixteenths so we need to tighten it up about a sixteenth and you want to make sure to measure this on the inside not the out [Music] that's here slicing through both layers like this allows you to butt up the ends of the ring and weld them together be sure to clamp them together so your ring stays in proper shape while you weld [Music] with it welded together we can go ahead and dress it up real quick like with a grinder [Music] get it lined back up yes indeed let's trade all right now if we take these and line them up over the throttle bodies and make marks we'll know exactly where to cut [Music] joe got exactly where we need to cut all mapped out now we just need to grab his body saw get the cut now cutting out a big chunk will be easier and faster in the long run you could whittle at it in small pieces but since you're not skipping around any braces or anything like that you can just chop it out the spot welds that hold on these brackets need to be drilled out since they'll be relocated to hold the plate in place [Music] there's going to be some welding involved so knock the paint off the area that's getting welded oh and don't forget the back side now we can take the plate and check it to see how well it fits to the throttle body turns out we're in good shape left to right front to back but vertically well she needs a little more work well we're definitely getting closer but the shaker still needs to come up just a little bit about a half inch in the front and three quarters in the back because originally it's got a weather strip that goes around that base and we want it to seal off properly [Music] we'll use some wooden blocks to shim the assembly up to the proper height [Music] then we can tack the rings we made to the base once we know the placement is correct with our rings tacked into position i need to fill this big hole in the way i'm going to do that is i fabbed up this little piece of metal it's simply going to slide over top of the ring and be welded into place on the back side here a couple of pieces will fill in the gaps that the big one didn't quite cover with everything burned in the tops of the rings can be cut off to bring them down level with the plate then we'll grind down everything nice and flat so that we don't interrupt the airflow into the throttle bodies a couple of washers will act as shims for the crossbar which we need to bring up just a bit so the lip on the throttle bodies can be inserted into the tubes and seat correctly that pretty much takes care of the base plate what do you think joe excellent work my man excellent work now you might have noticed in the past few minutes the steering column poking out on the firewall when we come back we'll backtrack and show you how we made it happen hey we got one more component to mock up on our challenger and it's this retrofit steering column from i did it now it requires no modification to install in fact it bolts up to a manual power or rack and pinion now it comes with their easy effort keyed ignition all the wiring we need and all the underdash hardware starting with this mounting plate it bolts to the firewall with the lip of the plate facing the engine side here's a little tip for you it's always a good idea to kind of cover up your shaft before you stick it through the wall you don't want it to get in those boogered up spots or scarred up or anything [Music] if you lay down about a foot of tape just above the bottom that should be enough to protect the column from scuffing [Music] next slide the load plate onto the column with the lip facing the wheel side and slip the o-ring up against the load plate this will hold the load plate up out of the way while we slide the column [Music] in then we can attach the column onto the dash using a couple of bolts and washers from the kit after sliding the load plate down to the mounting plate on the firewall we use a couple more bolts and washers to cinch it down [Music] well alrighty guys we've got the steering column installed without a hitch now i need to order up a set of headers so i can finish making that steering shaft you're right we're on our way of course when we install this thing for real we'll wire it up and oh we got to get our noses into the catalog and find a steering wheel for it catalog really online catalog okay okay buddy okay geez today on detroit muscle we've got to plant over 550 hemi-powered ponies to the pavement and our ultraviolet challenger so we're going to show you how to make some big tubs to contain some serious rubber [Music] hey guys we're back on our 70 challenger hemi car project ultraviolet now we're getting close to the end of the road as far as sheet metal fabrication but there is one more task that we're going to do and that is widen out those wheel tubs the reason we got to do that well the tires that we're planning to put under this thing are considerably bigger than stock let me show you now these are a set of nitto invo's and with about 13 inches of rubber touching the ground well it should give us plenty of traction and these are considered to be a high performance tire but they have been engineered to cut down on the road noise and what that means when you stretch this dude out on interstate it's still going to be a nice comfortable ride in order to make them fit under the dodge out back we're going to have to fab up our own version of mini tubs we'll start with these factory replacement inner wheel housings from classic industries and use them in conjunction with what's already under the car the result will be plenty of clearance for the new meats and a modification that looks fairly neat so our plan is to cut out some of this original tub we're going to slice it somewhere right through here and then come and slice it under here as well that way when we install that new tub we can slide it in close to that inner rail get us that clearance that we're looking for of course that revolves around the size of the wheels tires and the offset of the wheels our challenger wheels aren't in yet but we can keep trucking because we already know they're offset now that term offset can be a little confusing at first but here's something to clear the air a little bit one thing to know is that a manufacturer might say a wheel is 12 inches wide but that measurement is from the inside of the lips so from outside to outside it'll be closer to 13 inches then you have to account for the offset if it mounts in line with the center line it's zero offset to move the wheel outward you want negative offset to move it inward positive offset you won't find a bigger example of negative offset than this monster truck wheel about two feet of on the other hand this wheel we got from the storage room has positive offset which creates backspace backspace is the distance from the back lip to the mounting flange the guys at schwartz performance have already done some of the homework for us and i tell you that's one nice thing about having a prefab chassis they told us that a 19 by 12 inch wheel with a six and a half inch back spacing will fit under here with a slight mini tub so i had to do that measurement just to see how slight that mini tub was really going to be so when we move this closer to that that should give us about an inch clearance like we said the plan here is to use as much metal as we can from both the stock tubs and the replacement tubs to widen the compartment out to the frame rail the stock ones are spot welded in so a few pilot holes will get us started on drilling those out then we can move on to the spot weld cutter and begin detaching it from the car [Music] after that an air hammer is the tool of choice for removing the metal [Music] then we can grab the body saw and cut along the line that we drew earlier there's a brace behind part of the tub where it connects to what would be the back seat and package tray we don't want to cut that so we'll buzz around then be sure to hit your cameraman with a piece of metal oh sorry ken after you get him a bandage continue cutting around the brace to free up the inner part of the tub a cutting wheel can make a shallow enough cut to let you stay out of the brace looks like we need the air hammer again we're ready to start trimming on the lip to install that wider tub we're going to move this in about an inch and a half or so now we are going to have to cut into that sub rail just a bit so we need to make sure that we come back and weld that trunk floor to the side of that rail because you don't want to compromise any of the structure that this car's got built into it [Music] this frame rail angles outward as it extends toward the rear so the cut we're making won't follow the same line when we left you we had just cut off the lip that we'll use to attach the new tub on our challenger but before we can do that we need to make sure this section of the floor is still well attached to the car so we'll burn it down to the frame rail for good measure a little cleanup work and she's good to go well we're getting close to welding in our tub but we have to have something to attach it to so i'm going to use this old piece that i removed trim it back a little bit so that i can use the tab back on the car that way we can kind of recycle and i don't have to make another one [Music] well i got both my pieces all ground down and dressed up went ahead and put on some welding paper to keep from burning up or melting any of those pretty parts and what my plan is lay this thing into here use a welder sew it back together the nice thing about doing it this way whenever i drill in a few holes into that tub i can spot weld them back and it'll look very similar to the stock [Music] we've got a gap to fill between the two pieces but a small piece of steel inserted between them will do the job nicely with the strips tacked in we'll go ahead and weld them solid all the way across then clean everything up with a little bit of grinding [Music] all right guys it's time for some more spot well drilling so you're probably pretty excited well maybe not so much what we've got to do is remove this small bracket because it's in the way of that wheel tub but you want to save it because you're going to have to reattach it make sure those hinges work properly [Music] [Applause] [Music] okay now the next thing we need to do is cut this lip off now originally the two tubs spot welded together right here at this lip but it's kind of in the way for what we're doing so it's time to make some [Music] racket [Music] well let's see how close we really are a little clamp here well this thing fits nice we just have to do a little bit of trimming here on this front edge and back here on the it's kind of the dog leg if you will the lip is a little bit excessive so we're going to trim it back because we don't want that much hanging off for the new spot wells that we'll be using to hold the tub on a hole punch is super handy to get the piece ready for installation [Music] a few click hoes are also a great way to hold the tub in place until we get it permanently attached [Music] oh and be sure to use a body hammer to close that gap between the pieces one last thing that we need to do is reattach this bracket that we removed from the trunk hinge that attaches it to the wheel tub a few marks will show where the brace's footprint is on the top of the new tub then we'll knock off the paint in preparation for welding some holes for some spot welds and a couple of clamps and then we can weld it down [Music] side by side well you can see that our new tubs add just enough width to let the wheels work yet it will look a lot closer to factory than a set of fabricated ones well that pretty much does it for the passenger side but i still have a little bit of work to do i've got to tackle the driver's side now having those original style replacement tubs sure did save me a bold load of time because otherwise i've been making them things out of flat stock today on detroit muscle it's time for project ultraviolet to live up to its name learn how one of the top painters in the nation lays out some mopar graphics [Music] so far on our 70 challenger project ultraviolet we've brought in some real heavy hitters like jeff course from schwartz performance who helped us install one of their g machine chassis then russ flagle from indy cylinder head built us an all-aluminum hemi for the old dodge so in keeping with that spirit we're turning the body and paintwork over to one of the best in the business you've seen us work with chris ryan before he's the guy that built this incredible 53 cadillac root beer float along with his team at ryan's rod and custom in 96 south carolina he also lent us a hand on our giveaway monte carlo as well as our giveaway bandit style trans am what we're gonna do is take the body back to the shop uh we're gonna evaluate the metal work that's been done to it straighten up anything that needs to be done turn it back i think the stripes gonna be the most difficult part to lay out of it uh we've kind of got some open rain to lay out the stripe oh it's gonna be an awesome car i mean a 70s mopar with a with a 426 in it's iconic welcome to south carolina home of ryan's rod and custom these guys work on everything from pre-war restorations to muscle cars and street rides the team has been real busy getting the challenger prep for the paintwork that's soon to come the metal work was pretty well done we straightened it up a little bit and any other imperfections we coated it with four coats of poly primer and continued more block sanding and blocked sanded and block sanded and block sanded what we have here is a copy of the rendering you can see the white graphics on the side of the car so our first step of this process is to spray this whole section here with the white base the paint scheme for this car was designed by dale swanson at dale swanson artworks and he really knocked it out of the park for us incorporating classic mopar styling cues with a custom touch this is the mid coat this really doesn't have a lot of pigment into it it's just basically an inner coat clear that's carrying the pearl itself this is what's going to give it to pop the pizzazz on top of that white [Music] the next thing we're going to do is mix up our dbc 500 which is basically just a clear base a base with no pigment in it now this isn't clear coat there is a difference between the two the reason for using this clear base is because it will function to protect the pearl coat from the tape that's going to be used to mask off the white then we gotta wait for it to cure so we can tape it [Music] what we're gonna do is set the hood on the car right now it's important when you're painting pearls or metallics that you have the piece oriented as it would be sitting on the car now we're raising it up slightly just so we can get good coverage on the edge we're getting ready to lay down the graphics on project ultraviolet we're going to use this yellow tape here it's more of a measuring device as we lay it on the body line it'll give us perfect three quarters distance to lay off our actual strike [Music] tape get the bottom done [Music] this green masking tape gives a sharper paint line than the yellow tape does so that's what gets used to create the graphic once the edge is laid down the yellow tape can go away another piece of the yellow tape is used to make a three-quarter inch split in the graphic creating the two lines chris is measuring to make sure that the lines will be even after all you can't be too particular when it comes to paint an alternative way to do these graphics is to paint the car purple first then mask the whole thing off leaving the stripe area bare and spraying it white but that involves a lot more taping as we look back at our rendering we can see that they put a detroit muscle logo on the quarter panel we wanted to replicate that on our graphics so we went to our local vinyl guy and we had him cut out an exact duplicate of that rendering what we're going to do is position our graphic on the quarter panel we're going to stand back to make sure we're all straight pull back the covering and we're just going to hold this out of the way temporarily we're going to cut the backing with the razor and apply this half of the graphic once we have that half securely fastened we can pull back the tape and expose the other side [Music] and easily remove the backing on this side [Music] all right we're getting ready to prep the carolina violet paint that was custom mixed by our friends at single source in nashville we considered a few different names for the shade of purple which is a much more metallic and slightly more vibrant variation on the classic mopar color plum crazy purple we decided on carolina violet because hey it's getting painted in south carolina so why not after multiple coats the base has to dry just a bit before the tape can be pulled so it's time for another break this is the big reveal where we get to see how the graphics turned out [Music] looking pretty good now the clear coat can be laid down and after three coats voila we get this thing out in the sun and that carolina violet really pops and those graphics that we duplicate the rendering they look like they could have came straight out of a 70s mopar with just a little bit of a twist i think the car came out awesome i love the updated look of a classic mopar stick around and learn the a to z on rebuilding a hot rod royalty transmission today on detroit muscle we're gonna break it down to the basics as we show you how to do a grill rescue on a 45 year old mopar then we'll do some sound deadening along with finally revealing all of ultraviolet's bling after loads of metal work and a g machine chassis our 550 horsepower hemi challenger project ultraviolet is wearing its awesome new carolina violet tank they got sprayed on at ryan's rod and custom and we got our aluminum hemi and six speed transmission dropped back into our old dodge now it's time to be looking at some of the pieces that we're gonna have to reinstall onto it yeah we can't wait to see it with goodies like the grill back in place bumpers maybe some badges and even wheels and tires but we can't get ahead of ourselves some of these pieces need a little bit more love before they can be installed onto the car case in point this grill we've got to do a little bit of repair work now there are companies out there that offer a brand new grill for a 70 challenger but repairing hours well it's going to save us a boatload of cash the main problem we have on this one is someone upgraded to one of those fog lights from back in the day but now we've got a big hole we got to fix and these bolts are metric on a 70 challenger now this old grill it's made out of aluminum and this hole could be welded up but a lot of you guys probably don't have access to a tig welder or one just shoved off into the corner so i'm going to show you a way to make the repair that's strong and durable so what we're going to do is use some of this metal binding adhesive and one of these small aluminum discs put some of that goop on it and then glue it to the bottom side then come back and fill over top of it the surface where we'll be planting the adhesive has to first be prepared with a grinder to give the adhesive some good mechanical tooth to grab onto this stuff is for panel binding which means that it's a slow curing variety but because of that we can count on it having a lot of strength we'll place our patch panel over the hole then work it around a little bit to get it to latch onto the surface really well clean up any extra adhesive around the panel [Music] then on the top side we want to get rid of any excess that's sticking out of the hole [Music] well we've let our epoxy cure for a bit and we need to go back in and grind out the excess with this little carbide bit now you don't want to use the epoxy itself as the filler because what happens is that stuff will shrink and it will create a divot and your repair will show back up once the bulk of it is ground out we'll switch to a square edged bit which will allow us to create a 90 degree angle against the patch panel [Music] then we'll use the grinder to prep the surface for some body work [Applause] with that taken care of the next thing we're going to do is disassemble this grill [Music] we'll turn the pressure way down on our blasting cabinet and get to work cleaning up the surface this soft aluminum doesn't require a ton of pressure to get it debris free all right guys we're ready to start the body work process or applying some filler now one thing you want to keep in mind is choose the correct filler for the application meaning with us we want to make sure that it adhered to aluminum and we're in good shape [Music] next up is some epoxy sealer primer which will get sprayed onto the entirety of the grill pieces after that you can spot prime the repaired bits with some filler primer why would you do that well we'll show you [Music] all right guys we got our primer sprayed on and i noticed we have a few small imperfections that need a little bit of putty it's no big deal that's what that stuff's for then we can sand this thing and be ready for some color some duplicolor guide coat will help us finish up the bodywork on this thing then we'll grab a bucket block and some 500 grit to wet sand it down to absolute perfection [Music] then another pass where that sealer primer will give us a uniform coat to keep the paint looking good still ahead we finished the grill rebuild and then get to work putting the shiny bits back on the challenger stick around all right guys our sealer's all flashed off and we're ready to spray on our first coat of paint what we're going to start with is kind of a platinum silver because we're trying to duplicate that anodized aluminum that this grille came with from the factory it's especially important when spraying high metallic colors like this to have a nice uniform coat underneath to prevent the paint from looking strappy or splotchy that's why we laid down that sealer primer next up we're planning on two-toning this grill [Music] with the color break right along the same line as what they used in the factory a little bit of masking is all it takes then we'll bust out a coat of argent gray which is a factory mopar medium gray color the contrast between this and that sparkly silver is going to look good when it's all done with our two colors applied we need to remove this tape so that we can spray on some clear [Music] pulling the tape low and away from the tape line helps keep the uppermost layer of paint from lifting [Music] we're going to use a flat clear coat on this piece which will look great once it's mounted on the front of that challenger after a fresh coat of paint and some elbow grease this thing turned out pretty sweet man i'd say so too it looks as good as original maybe better you know it's always great when you got the time and talent to restore something like this but there are other situations to deal with come on let me show you something well we all know how bumpers say beating and if yours need a lot of metal work to get them back into shape probably better off going the replacement route these replacements come from classic industries and well they're made just like the originals down to the thickness of the metal and test fitted so we know that they work now we'll get to work installing ours after that grill goes in we've been waiting for this moment for quite a while we're gonna get to see what this big bad mopar looks like with some of its eye candy attached we've sprayed the headlight vessels with the same two-tone color scheme as the grille and we can also set the shaker in place along with the hood to get a look at the front of the car which is looking pretty good this is also a good time to do the same thing to the back bumper as well as the tail lights now that's a nice looking rear right there tell you what [Music] after the break it's time to quiet this mopar down well only in the right ways anyway okey doke we're ready to move on to our next project on ultraviolet now we've got most of the big shinies bolted on this thing but now our next step is going to be putting in some sound and temperature control well we've showed you several different ways to accomplish that from using a spray to a good old jute mat well this time we're taking a different route you see dei offers a complete thermal acoustic kit for small to medium interiors and one for full size cars each kit comes with some of this new lighter boom matte damping material a can of boom matte spray on for those hard to reach places and this under carpet light that you use with the other two now in case you're asking yourself how do i know that stuff really works well i am not a professional drummer but i'm playing one on tv with two symbols same size same sound now i'm going to put a small piece of boom mat on this symbol let's check the difference you won't make much music with this symbol but it does make a difference in sound didn't he now here's a little tip for you guys this stuff right here will just about stick to anything as long as it's clean and dust free now it may not look like it but we've washed this floor with some hot soapy water and let it dry so now we're ready to put this stuff on [Music] be sure to push it down into the crevices on the floorboard to maximize the effect typically 35 to 50 percent coverage of a given area is adequate to achieve the desired effect and keep your car nice and quiet we're also using this handy roller we got from dei to help get the mat laid down as nicely as possible be sure to cut out the holes for things like mounting seats while you're at it [Music] it can also be a big help to put some on the roof a couple of sheets will go a long way in preventing noise from the top side [Music] with our boom mat laid down on the inside we're going to move on to the more difficult to reach areas like the inside of this door and we're going to use their spray-on material a few other good places to use the spray-on boom mat are trunk interiors fender wells quarter panels and under the package tray it makes taking care of those areas a lot easier finally we can lie down this under carpet light material it covers the boom mat and the entire floor and it's the last thing to go in before the carpeting there it is ready to do some slicing sure why not we're going to make some relief cuts in this under carpet light in order to allow it to lay down against the floor in a more uniform manner it'll still do the job just fine but fitting it like this is essential for a nice looking interior [Music] later down the road we also will be using some a dei silicone coated header wrap to control the temperatures under the hood and there's a pretty good chance we'll be using some of their speaker baffles these things protect the speakers and also improve the sound by eliminating any unwanted vibrations coming up we'll finally pull the curtain to reveal the mopar's wheels okay our old challenger's really starting to come together with the grill bumper and a lot of trim in place well now it's time to consider something that probably defines the styling and personality of a car more than anything wheels and tires when we set out to find the right wheels for this car we talked to our chassis builder jeff schwartz at schwartz performance about what would work best with the brakes that he incorporated into his chassis with massive six-piston calipers and 14-inch rotors all the way around we've got some serious stopping power but that means we needed some serious wheels to fit them originally we set out to find oversized rally-style wheels but we've decided to take a cue from our chassis and move on to something a little more modern after a good deal of scouring on the internet we came across a wheel designer and manufacturer that had just the thing to meet our needs amani forged is based in tampa florida and they offer dozens of awesome designs all available in multiple color configurations they've got 10 sizes available from 19 inch all the way up to the 34 inch range so they can hook you up with the perfect wheel no matter what project you're building even off-road well here's what we came up with for the mopar check it out 19-inch amante tremendo concave fancy name but it's a three-piece forging that should work perfectly with those big breaks on our dodge now these things measured nine inches wide up front 12 inches out back to create quite a footprint lay down a ton of rubber to give us traction we've wrapped them in nitto infos that we showed you while back which is a luxury sport ultra high performance tire that blends performance and comfort into one outstanding package with a combination of that chassis those brakes and these tires we should be able to put plenty of that mopar power to the ground and that old car should drive like it's on rails only thing we need to do now is plug it in the hole and see what it looks like [Music] no doubt about it these wheels were a good choice for the dodge and check out that footprint our challenger show has made one heck of a visual transformation today been a good day indeed tom and we still have a few things left on our punch list but you know what we're getting darn close today on detroit muscle project ultraviolet is ready for a fully custom fuel system installation as well as a shiny front assembly and cooling setup we'll take a look at another less appreciated mopar geared more towards distinguished tastes and how to paint in custom logos for that extra touch how do you feed a hungry hemi that's the question we answered today for our 70 challenger and we'll show you how to install a high-end fuel system on your street machine from the get-go we decided there was only one way to push our dodge down the road with hemi power of course our all-aluminum power plant needs some juice to fire those 556 ponies we're running a dual throttle body setup on this engine so we've decided to employ a dynamic fuel system now that's just a fancy name for a system with a bypass regulator and a return feed traditionally muscle cars had what's known as a deadhead system which means that a mechanical fuel pump pulled the fuel from the tank which fed the carburetor with 7 to 10 pounds of pressure problem with this setup is that the original style mechanical pump will never produce the pressure required for a fuel injection system in our challenger we need a good 60 psi at all times to feed that dual injector setup so we're switching to an in-tank electric pump which feeds the two fuel rails that supply the throttle bodies in addition employing a return feed back to the tank keeps the pump from being under a high constant rate of pressure in addition to keeping the fuel cool it helps extend the life of the pump here's a cool way to keep your stock appearance while still meeting the needs of modernized power plants it's from the resto mod line at bricks tanks and well here's rick himself to tell us why it's a good one this tank is a direct fit application based off of stock dimensions with a couple of added in features one of them being the notched front corners for extra exhaust clearance when you're running the bigger exhaust tube diameters and the other one is the ability to incorporate an in-tank fuel pump well like this one you brought in this is our new billet in-tank pump module it's got an integrated baffle reservoir it has a return line provision which always keeps the baffle reservoir full a main pump provision and also a port for an auxiliary pump should you decide to fuel high horsepower applications or just simply have a redundant pump well a lot of guys rick are running a newer style crate engine more like the ls3 that doesn't require a return line yeah that's right joe in fact this setup right here is an oe style module which is set up for a single line feed commonly referred to as a deadhead system this module right here is internally regulated we have various regulators for various pressures this particular regulator is a constant 58 psi one cool thing about this pump right here joe is the ability to adapt these corner pickups hold those that you simply connect it with the push lock fitting as such then what you do is you take these corner pickups and you insert them to the left and right corner pickup brackets so with the pickups installed you simply place the module down in there one of the advantages of the fuel pickups in the corner is the zero starved situation they actually open and close depending on the presence of fuel which is really great on the autocross course good point rick's tanks has been working on the resto mod line for applications of the most popular of the big three problem is is this big old sway bar here it's not in the same location as in stock form so we had to come up with a different solution well here's our very shiny solution and rick i know you guys have been hand making custom tanks like this since day one what was your approach to this deal basically working with tommy in conjunction with tommy we designed a tank that was off of the stock dimensions front to back side to side and even the depth the only difference is that we swept the front corner back about six and a half inches to clear the sway bar tube this tank has two baffles that go front to back and two that go side to side what happens is you have a fuel pump reservoir in a dynamic system when you're returning fuel back you keep a column height to fuel higher than the rest of the level of tank when the level gets low this by the way is the same fuel pump you saw earlier minus the baffle can which you don't need with the internal baffling right that's correct joe you'll also notice that there's a provision here for a second fuel pump should you need to support a high horsepower level above 900 i think tommy's trying to tell us something we better get this thing under the car sounds good the fuel pump install starts with a rubber o-ring then you drop the pump in place and install the retainer ring which needs to be tightened clockwise we can also tie in the output line as well as the return feed with some number six and fittings from earl a transmission jack by explaining the tank of snap then the two retainer straps that came with the tank can be bolted in using the factory locations that shiny tank looks absolutely great under the old dodge but there's more to be done including plumbing the lines up to the engine more a.n fittings screw into our hose ends we'll use some earl's assembly lube to ease the insulation as well as preventing the marring of those aluminum threads then the feed line from the pump is attached to the fuel rail for the injectors [Music] downstream from the rail our regulator which is attached to the frame rail gets tied into the system well man it looks like you've finished up our fuel system for us yeah all you got to do is put some gas in it well we got a little bit more that we're going to have to do before that humming makes some noise well i'll let you get after it after the break we've got some more pretty stuff to plug into our purple hemi-powered challenger including the pulley setup and cooling system we've got our fuel system buttoned up on our hemi and we're ready to move on to what keeps this thing cool and what drives the accessories now originally this thing would have came with a v-belt setup but these things require some maintenance and they're very prone to being thrown off because they don't run the tensioner that the later model serpentine belts have we're going to give our challenger some 21st century accessory drive science with a setup we got from summit racing it not only looks fantastic it's designed to be efficient as well here's some of what it includes a reverse rotation water pump from edelbrock 105 amp one wire alternator and a power steering pump it comes with arp hardware and get this all the bracketry and pulleys are polished billet aluminum finally to spin those components a six rib serpentine belt first up is to install and correctly position the water pump studs we'll dab them with some loctite silicone sealant as insurance against any water seeping past the threads then we need to see how much each stud sticks out past the pump and adjust them accordingly perfect then we can place the gaskets for the pump and slide it on for good since we're poking steel boats into an aluminum block some anti-seize is a good idea to prevent any calling the kit comes with a few of these threaded spacers that position the brackets the first one goes in place as the guts of the water pump are also installed be sure that you go over and tighten all of your fasteners to spec this is the support bracket for your tensioner and it gets installed next with another one of those threaded spacers and a bolt then our power steering bracket can go into place with another bolt up top as well as one of those spacers well mr joe you're doing one fine job but if you don't mind i'd like to do the honors of bolton on this ginormous shiny piece okay you don't mind no let's see how many fingerprints you can get on i bet i can get more than one there's a myriad of bolts that hold this main bracket on install them loosely for now to allow wiggle room for installing the alternator leaving them a little loose also helps you get the power steering pump installed now the tensioner itself can go to its home on the bracket that we install as well as the tensioner pulley with the main bracket bolts now tightened down we can install the rest of the pulleys including the one that bolts up front to our balancer the last big shiny piece the water pump pulley now for a serpentine belt you know how this goes loop it like the diagram in the kit shows use the tensioner to seat it there you go [Applause] well with that shiny serpentine system in place we can move forward in the engine bay to handle our cooling needs for the hemi summit racing sent us this direct fit aluminum radiator that comes with all the mounting brackets we're going to need plus a pair of 13-inch puller fans a couple of wiring harnesses with 40 amp relays what you got to do is loosely install these brackets onto the fan now i say loosely because you have to leave room for them to be draped over the radiator they have a lot of adjustability just get your fans placed how you want them and cinch everything down with that it's ready to be mounted in the car almost now originally our car would have came with a downflow style radiator but this upgraded unit has the cross flow and with that being said they changed up the mounting locations on the radiator this thing is actually supposed to sit on top of the frame rail and us having that aftermarket chassis we had to back up and re-punt just a little won't you show them what you did the new radiator was designed to mount in this area at a 90 degree angle but our new frame horn well it's more closer to a 45 so our solution was to take one of these urethane bushings kind of cut it up a bit and then simply slide all this stuff back together getting us back to 90 degrees and that also gave us an isolator to mount the radiator on it's a simple matter of slipping the radiator down into place and bolting it to those pedestals we just showed you with that done we'll use these brackets provided in the kit to fasten down the top of the radiator and keep everything where it's supposed to be the attention the detail one gives to a vehicle well it can determine how nice it is so we're always trying to go above and beyond with the stuff that we build kind of like our purple mopar for example whenever we got our chassis from schwartz performance it came with the red brake calipers on it but that red color doesn't really go with anything on this old car so we went the next step further what we did was spray on some of that carolina violet that we put on the body that purple paint turned out great but we wanted to carry our detail even further if you notice on the brake caliper there's an engraving of schwartz performance and we thought if we painted that silver man it'd be great looking so you could do this with some tape and a razor blade but that's a whole lot of time or you could even do a paint brush but my big fat fingers don't really work that well there is another option though what we're going to use to get us there is this dupli-color scratch fix all in one now obviously this thing's for fixing nicks and scratches and that kind of thing but it's going to work great for our application this white tip is actually an abrasive prep tip you use it to roughen up the surface that you're going to be painting which allows the paint to get good adhesion to the surface then we'll go over it with some wax and grease remover to make sure we're working with a clean canvas now with it sanded we're ready to start painting and we're going to use this little part of the tip that's a lot like a fountain pen the paint comes out as soon as you apply pressure to the tip the harder you push the faster it flows out go nice and slow and remember how your kindergarten teacher told you to color inside the lines well that's all it is to it and it only took about five minutes now on the other end of this pin they do have some clear coat just in case you wanted to top coat it but for the effect that we're going for don't really need it so now all we have to do is let that thing dry well needless to say getting glass in our 49.4 today was a good piece of progress you could say though that we saved the real pain in the glass for last talking about our challenger of course and starting with the doors here these are a special challenge considering the shape of the glass and the design of the mechanism working with door glass can be pretty intimidating because there's a whole lot of little bitty pieces to it not to mention the regulator the brackets and all that adjustment that goes on so we cut up this old junk door to show you guys how it all has to play together yeah we're going to try to reuse most of these larger components but there are scores of little plastic pieces for hardware that are just too brittle and old to reuse so in addition to providing the old demo door here steven's performance turned us on to these replacement pieces we'll need to install all of our glass beginning with this rear quarter piece first order of business we have to get these metal pieces off [Music] [Applause] the chrome trim comes off first which consists of removing these two screws and a spring now the bottom piece of hardware is held in place with some 45 year old adhesive so it takes a little more persuasion we've marked where it was to replicate the placement on the new glass we'll be saving the screw but chucking the old plastic hardware we'll use those marks on the old piece now to locate where the bracket goes then put just a bit of loctite weatherstrip adhesive into the channel once the window is attached some acetone will remove the extra adherent [Music] well before we can put the glass back in this stock molding we're going to add a piece of replacement seal to it now the tendency first time you do this is to kind of poke it in like this but you'll never get there doesn't matter if it's a ford gm or mopar you got to thread it in sort of like you would a windshield wiper blade [Music] these also have a couple of tabs to keep the seal from sliding out which you use to pierce it and then fold the tabs down [Music] no need for sticky stuff to attach this if you remember it used screws now be sure to reinstall that spring which keeps the seal tensioned against the glass we got some replacement plastic pieces but this particular one is in pretty good shape and it's riveted on so it's really not worth the investment to replace it however this one has a bolt just simply attaching it so we'll go ahead and swap it around [Music] well we got our quarter window installed and it kind of just fell into place and oftentimes it doesn't happen that way but we had to go ahead and get it in because it kind of determines where that other one has to be now we need to move on to the regulator to the door because that's what's going to hold the glass well we've got most of the hardware cleaned up in the blaster and here's a tip for you if you do a window project like this yourself this channel gets lubricated at the factory which is all well and good but over time that grease collects dirt and grime and well it hardens up and before you know it one of these guides gets bound up and well makes for a bad winter deal another problem like joe was just telling you guys about well the roller itself is either damaged broken or missing off the regulator luckily for us they make a replacement but it comes with the ball stud already installed and this particular one requires a special tool to install it into the regulator so what we did was remove that ball stud so we're going to use the existing stud on the regulator so a tip for you is to simply boil them what that does it makes the plastic a little more pliable and reduces the chances of damaging or breaking it [Music] okay you ready yes sir it's a little warm up next it's the joy of making that window mechanism actually work you might need some bandages well now the question is will the challenger's glass go in as easily as the fords did it's a totally different kind of challenge and well let's see if tommy's up to it [Music] one of the toughest parts of this install is getting the regulator into the door and all the pieces in position and ready to receive the window the feet for the vertical channels have to be installed separately then the channel toward the front of the door we'll roll the regulator down and start slipping the glass into place the roller has to be slipped into the channel we installed then we can fasten the channel itself down now the other channel can go in sliding the roller at the rear of the window into place as it goes it then attaches from the bottom of the door then we can marry the guide to the rear glass bracket and roll the regulator down to attach the front of it a little wd-40 white lithium grease on these guides as they go in will help keep them working smoothly and attaching the hardware somewhat loosely will allow everything to be adjusted lastly a fastener at the top of the window for the rear channel finally we got the last piece in and i want to warn you expect a few nicks and cuts and maybe some bruises because inside of this door there's a whole bunch of sharp spots birds and that kind of thing and if you get frustrated don't be afraid to walk away and just cool down i need a break now often times whenever doing a job like this actually installing the glass inside the door can be the easy part adjusting the glass so that it seals properly well that can be the real pain in the tail and this door it's got about five different ways it can be adjusted so this is how you would do it one of the adjustments you can do is slide these feet in or out and that adjusts the top of the glass another one of the adjustments can be these little pads now what this can do is make the glass a little closer to the door skin or pull it away and it also can work as a pivot depending on how the feet are adjusted and then you have these little stops in here which adjust how high you can roll up the glass there is a front and rear stop to this thing so just in case you needed to pitch the glass one way or the other now this type of adjustment can be very complicated so just keep adjusting and you'll finally get it that's what i do hey glad you joined us i think you will agree our 70 hemi challenger project ultraviolet here is looking well ultra pretty but it's a classic case of beauty being skinned deep literally you see we got the paint and most of the trim taken care of but the interior well in a word it's looking bare we had to wait until we had our wiring all squared away and we're pretty much there but before we can throw in all that carpet and other upholstery there's one more issue that we have to address we had to widen out our tubs to accommodate our larger wheels and tires and in doing so we may have invaded the space normally reserved for the rear seat so what we need to do is set the seat frame inside of the car and just see if they simply fit if they do great we can send them out and have them recovered if they don't well i guess we're going to cut them up a bit here you go big guy okay let's see what we got here what do you think it's too early jail yeah the only problem is here on the corner where it hits the well a little cutting required i'm gonna get cutting required let's see about the bottom all right okay maybe we'll get lucky i think we did what do you think that's better than the top one for sure yep here we go so what we're going to do is pretty straightforward we're going to make us a relief cut right about here and another one up top and then just bend this over weld it back together [Music] the good old body saw is a fine choice to make these mods starting with a couple relief cuts to allow the metal to bend then we'll chomp through this spot to detach we'll torque this tab out of the way then we can start pushing the corner in a little more trimming to allow for another bend and we can straighten out the curve a little then get it clamped down a few hammer blows will allow us to really move that metal into position now a smaller set of locking pliers will hold the corner in place while we move over to the other side this one is a repeat of the procedure we showed you the first time around you'll want to do that so your frame maintains symmetry no need for a wonky looking seat here of course before you weld you'll want to test fit your modifications that'll do it once you're happy burn it all back together with the rear seats all taken care of it's time for us to move to the front well for the front seats we wanted a little bit more support comfort and well racy styling so we opted for these bucket seats from classic industries that are a universal design and of course they come with their own slider assemblies now they work with some cars but as is the case with a lot of older aftermarket applications well gonna take some modifications to work with our mopar whenever mounting a set of seats there's a few things that you want to keep in mind one of them is placement you don't want the seat sitting up way too high and you don't want it sitting way too low second thing you don't want the top of the seats to be leaning in or out because looking front to rear of the car well it just looks plain right silly the third thing is safety you'll be mounting it to the floor and we all hope that nothing ever bad happens but if you're involved in an accident and the seat comes out oh that's gonna be really bad our aftermarket seat brackets are made completely opposite than what originally came in our mopar the bracket tab on the front is vertical where the floor of our car well it's all horizontal but to get there from here what we're going to use is a couple of these angle iron pieces a little bit of welding and grinding we'll have it fixed up in a jiffy well we're going to set the seat just flat on the floor and i'm going to try it on to see how it fits well it feels like we're at the right height we just need to get it all leveled out and we'll be good to go [Music] let's start by leveling it out once we have a good idea of how it needs to sit the first bracket can go into a front mounting hole on the floor then working off that we can level it again and insert the bracket into the other front hole we'll clamp that into place now and onto the rear since the seat is already leveled the back brackets will be easier to deal with we'll just need to make sure it's still where it's supposed to be when they're bolted on since it looks good we can go ahead and tack the mounts to the existing seat brackets one last thing that we're going to do is connect the front and rear l brackets with this flat bar that we fashioned up that's just eighth inch thick by three quarter flat bar and once we weld them in place it'll give those l brackets a little bit more [Music] structure [Music] after the break we'll show you a secret trick for cleaning corroded copper contacts stick around hey we are back and ready to get busy on the centerpiece of our challenger's interior the dash now we are replacing the stock panel with this six gauge setup we got from summit racing now classic thunder road makes these things with three different finishes matte black carbon fiber and this brushed aluminum like we got now of course you get the six custom gauges with this thing and a wiring harness to make everything work one cool thing about this setup is the ease of installation the gauges bolt into place very easily just make sure they're straight in the housing then the harness comes with pre-labeled wires that takes the guesswork out of getting it plugged all together well it goes without saying installing the wires on the gauges here on the bench makes life a lot easier now all we have to do is plug the harness in under the dash once we get this thing in the car well from new parts to old parts these are some we salvaged off the challenger to reuse things like well this little trim piece and remember ashtrays first of all though we got to get them cleaned up [Music] we like to use some dupli-color wax and grease remover for this type of project because it removes the grime without being too harsh if you get too aggressive with your cleaning agent it can actually eat into the plastic a small brush is also handy for the tiny crevices like you see on this knob [Music] the metal pieces specifically the ashtray can be tossed in the blasting cabinet and blasted clean well i guess these things are clean enough for some paint work and speaking of that could you help out i believe i can handle that mr joe okay i gotta clean up this old dash all righty well the first thing what we're gonna do is start spraying it's okay i'm all right to rejuvenate our old pieces we're going to be using some of this dupli-color trim paint now it'll give us that nice even semi-gloss black that a lot of those components came with this trim paint works on both plastic and metal which is good because it will keep our pieces looking the same now while all that stuff is drying we're going to move on to our electrical components one thing that's not too cool about our old mopar is you can't buy replacement switches unless you find new old stock and whenever you work with these old ones and the car's been sitting for a while we know that then things corrode and kind of tarnish and they don't work properly but there is a way to save these old jewels using a simple meter turning it to the continuity setting we can test the switch now i don't know what position the switch is in at the moment but we ought to have some form of some type of beeping right now recycle the switch see if anything changes make sure that works yep we're supposed to have more of those terminals hot than what we got so it needs to come apart [Music] this can be the scary part but with a little patience and finesse you can get it apart without breaking it take a look at that nasty old grease on those contacts we'll need to clean these little copper dudes up too [Applause] well our contacts definitely don't look the greatest the brass ones are all gooey and these copper ones well they are far from a new bright shiny penny now to clean all this stuff up i'm going to use something that you can find in your refrigerator probably and that is some lemon juice we're going to wipe off all this old dielectric grease to get it out of the way so it'll clean up a lot better our two copper contacts and for fun we're going to see how it cleans up these old pennies [Music] it doesn't take long for the pieces to start bubbling in our juicy solution after about four hours we'll see how well this idea works after letting it sit for just a bit let's pour it out and see what it looks [Music] like well you can see they look a whole lot better than they did before now we're just going to take a little bit of dielectric grease from lock tight and reapply it to the contacts all right let's see if it works there must be parking light the headlight circuit that fixed it well fixing that switch wasn't that big of a deal and it probably saved us 50 or maybe even 100 bucks in all reality only thing it cost us was the lemon juice and now the wife's yelling because i used it all up [Music] today on detroit muscle it's a big day for our purple hemi-powered challenger project ultraviolet she's out for a maiden voyage and we're taking her straight to the track where we'll show you how to set up g machine suspension [Music] when we started to work on our 1970 dodge challenger it was barely more than a rusty shell she had to take a trip to the blaster so we could start from absolute zero [Music] and the first thing to be replaced was the roof which was the first of many sheet metal panels [Music] for a chassis it was one of the best a schwarz performance g-machine platform that would completely revolutionize the way this car handles [Music] [Applause] after that there were a lot more panels to replace meanwhile in indianapolis a monster heming was being brought to life and we backed it up with a six speed along with a dry shaft from dan's driveline and with some modification the shaker became the next piece to fit in the puzzle then we had to make room for some huge new wheels and tires by altering the rear tubs in south carolina she got the paint job of a lifetime in a tribute to plum crazy purple we call carolina violet [Music] there were still lots of pieces that had to be fixed or replaced like the grill and bumpers [Music] finally she was ready for wheels and tires so we could get a look at the stance [Music] then a custom fuel system to light a fire in that big hemi [Music] a few more custom touches to set it apart from the crowd along with replacing and rebuilding the entire interior one piece at a time dag gum ultraviolet is ready [Music] hey guys we took us a field trip up to bowling green kentucky to the ncm motorsports park it's a beautiful new track and they're finishing up the final touches as we speak that's right and the weather's so beautiful today we figured we'd do this challenger some justice with some track time [Music] time to do a little shakedown run just to get her broken in right [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] even with completely unadjusted suspension she's already light years ahead of where the handling would have ever been on this car from the factory all right guys we got our cone set up we've got some pretty big plans for today so we brought in a guest brian finch you all have seen him on the show before he's helped out a lot with our projects brian first thing today what should we do well with any new build the first thing we want to do is baseline this car right go out put some lap down take some times take some measurements and start adjusting see if we can make it faster you've seen him on our shows before but just in case you forgot let me tell you about brian finch he's a professional auto crosser from tennessee that knows exactly what it takes to push one of these cars to the limit he's also the owner of finch performance offering a variety of speed parts to get the maximum out of a car's capabilities the next one you're always you know you're always wanting to look at turning to a head to put your car in position he's going to give us a rundown of how to handle this course stay nice and tight there you go another 180 back around this way he's also gauging the performance of the car for example he noticed our front tires are pushing in the corners a bit there you go straight ahead straight ahead up [Music] go here short shift in a second back and forth oh that jam huh [Music] a course like this takes a little getting used to but after a couple of laps of grind [Music] you get a lot more confidence as well as a better feel for the car [Music] so that includes brian too he takes a couple of spins to get the feel for what the car is doing and for what we'll need to do to improve it after everybody had some seat time it gives us a picture of what the car is doing [Music] while it's fresh off the course the first thing to do is check the tire temperatures in a few key spots and once that's all done we're headed to the pits coming up we're gonna dive under that purple mopar and get to work setting up the suspension check out how a few tweaks can make a huge difference hey we're back with our challenger at ncm motorsports park in bowling green and we're going to take the data we gathered on the autocross course and use that to make some adjustments to our chassis we're going to put her on the scales first thing we want to do before we scale the car is make sure the tires are all the same pressure all the way around because uh so much as a half a pound difference in a tire can really affect the scale readings how much can it affect it um i've seen you know worth a half a pound you can be 20 30 pounds more pressure forcing down on the scale in that corner all right looks like uh 3 530 pounds what do these numbers mean and how is this going to help us well what we're looking at right now is we're going to check the corner weights of the car right so we've got on the scales we're going to look at the front to rear bias we're going to look at each corner bias ideally what we want to get is a true 50 50 corner weight cross weights on the car and we want it with the driver in the car because that's the way it's going to be out there on the track running all right so what we're looking at here right we've got our left front right front right rear left rear etc the weights are just being displayed right now we're showing that we're 54.7 54.8 roughly uh weight to the front that leaves us of course you know 45 roughly in the rear so we know we got a lot of front end weight when we start looking at the actual corners we started looking under cross weights so now we know we're we're uh 47 53 so our cross weights are a little bit off we're going to go and make some adjustments to the corners and get this thing 50 50. now where the car was driving out there it was pushing in the corners so we measured the temperature of the tires and on the outside they were higher or hotter so that means our camber is off yeah it looks like we're about one degree positive camber so tires tilted out we need to get it tilted in among the three most popular alignment terms is camber the angle of the wheel when viewed from the front of the car if the top leans out from the center the camber's positive and from the center that's negative now caster is the angle of the steering pivot when viewed from the side if the top of the pivot leans toward the rear caster's positive towards the front it's negative toe-in is the difference between the front and back of the tires measured in fractions of an inch toe-in means the front tires are actually closer to each other toe out means just the opposite making camber adjustments on this schwarz chassis is super easy you back out this bolt connected to a rod that goes to the bottom of the spindle then undo the connecting rod on the sway bar to free it up then you turn this eyelet out for more negative camber and in for more positive normally the adjustments have to be made up here by shimming the control arms but this setup makes it a lot easier well we've swung her two degrees so we took out that degree of positive and put a degree of negative in so good starting point now before we can put the final touches on adjusting our suspension we need to account for the driver that's tommy's job so now we can go back set our corner weights check that off our list you keep up the good work so what we're looking at here is the four corners of the vehicle you can see by the right rear and the left front that we've kind of jacked the car it's kind of pivoting on those two so first thing we're going to do is go to the lowest weight which is the left rear start adjusting that up we should put more load on the right front balance out the car the way we're going to make these changes is with the adjusting rings on the shock bodies this changes the spring tension which adjusts the amount of load on each corner the problem that we've got is these two corners are carrying a smaller percentage of the car's weight than these two are so we'll adjust them accordingly that's i mean it's 39.40 now we'll reduce the spring tension a little on the corners that carry more of the load and tighten them on the lighter ones after a series of tweaks on each wheel we're able to balance it out to right at 50 split across each side now we can go ahead and get the scales out from under the car and move on to the next adjustment which will be toe in 71 and three quarters [Music] you can tell that we're towed in a ton so after we've adjusted the camber we got the suspension sitting right we need to get the tow back out we're going to put about 16th toe out helps the turn in and we'll go out there and make some runs we'll make this adjustment on the tie rod and we're in good shape now one last thing that we noticed while we were driving it is that the rear brakes were kicking in too hard we can easily adjust that right here on the brake bias knob after the break come along for another ride as we find out if those tweaks [Music] helped welcome back guys we've got ultraviolet out on our maiden voyage at ncm motorsports park all right so we made our adjustments we made a camber adjustment toe adjustment set our corner weights uh made a brake bias adjustment and set the tire pressure you think we're ready to go yeah cars cars ready so let's go out and put on the track all right cool [Music] already you can tell that there's a big difference in the way the car takes these corners less lean no tire push and now we can put that big hemming to way more use we've easily cut a few seconds off the time it takes to make it around the course [Music] it actually handles so much differently from before that driving it takes a little getting used to again looks like tom got a little excited [Music] we'll let him take another stab at it [Music] this time he's looking a lot better [Music] the clock doesn't lie and what it's telling us is that those adjustments made all the difference in running the course faster with more time we could keep whittling it down even further but this will do it for now the dodge ran pretty good and it ran even better with the help of our buddy brian finch i want to say thank you again anytime tom my pleasure we'll let him finish up yeah yeah

Channel: POWERNATION

Views: 362,477

Rating: 4.8580375 out of 5

Keywords: Car, PowerNation, howto, how-to, diy, automotive, cars, trucks, automobile, do it yourself, automobiles, auto, mopar, ultraviolet, detroit muscle, muscle car, restoration, fabrication, car restore, car restoration, challenger, dodge challenger, restomod, classic car restoration, american muscle car, muscle cars, 1970 dodge challenger

Id: ZmEuHGKJu3E

Length: 170min 31sec (10231 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 21 2021