I Rescued an Abandoned Dodge Charger after 35 Years

guys today i'm going to tell you the story on how i took this 1968 dodge charger that's been sitting with no engine or transmission in it for 35 years and got it back on the road ready to run and drive and do burnouts before we do that we got to get you back to the beginning of the story roll the clip yeah here she is we can roll her out if you want to really look take a look at her thanks pretty solid for what it is what was the story on it when you got it you know it was a one-owner vehicle and uh it was in the family since they bought it brand new and it's set in a shed like the rest of them always do for 20 30 years and then uh one of my buddies bought it from his co-worker so it's probably not been on the road since like 70s it really hasn't been on the road since yeah the 70s well besides the rest in the back it don't seem bad i've really always wanted a 6869 charger so i'm like dude i always gotta come look at this thing so oh yeah it's definitely just a life experience just being able to see one gosh nice she looks good dude that car looks so cool it's so bad when you look at the back of it and there's like 15 inches of bondo on it but i still love it so much all right we ready how's the brakes they're horrible i turn it a little bit straight turn to the passenger side it's the passenger side faster side passenger side all right straight straight it's in here all we got to do now is make a game plan on how we're going to make it run let me grab the sharpie bam sharpie step one engine good news is i know where we can get one as you can see behind me is the standard of luxury in 1979 this is an old-ass winnebago this is a walter white mobile a crack shack but you want to know something this winnebago is special and this winnebago is special because that bad boy right there because that is a big block mopar engine now we gotta take the engine out i've got an idea though it's gonna be great this right here is the perfect disassembly tool 95 horsepower of disassembly you got it you got it baby you got it oh love this so much i messed up the wiring dude this is the expert way to remove the motorhome hey you think i tear the size off of it well i thought hello sweetheart how are you doing today oh yeah five minutes i've had this entire motorhome destroyed basically all we're gonna do now is take the sides off scoot everything back a little bit and bam just pull the engine right on out dude a tornado came over and flipped over my rv damn that's gonna suck what am i gonna live in now let's see what we got to do here so we flipped the rv over all we got to do now is take off exhaust driveline got a cooler okay take training cooler out motor mounts training out and i think we got it so we're going to go ahead and pull all that stuff out and then we'll hook a chain to this engine see if we can yank it out of here [Music] this time boys we are getting ready to pull the engine oh yeah that's gonna work is the stuck on something hang on hear that that's the greatest sound in the world of zozoblast you either hear that when you're doing really awesome things or somebody's stealing your cadillac converter hey give her a tug i can do that i told you look at that that's a brand new engine just ready for horsepower is that a crack yeah that's correct is it cracked or does it just look that way that's why i thought it was staring at me super hard too i'm like yeah that's cracked but we've got an engine now we don't have a that probably from me jerking on it with the skid loader dang it i can't believe i did that shouldn't have been jerking on it that hard but i was trying to get it out and i didn't figure it would do that never cracked one from ripping it out with a skid loader but i guess today's the first day so that just sucks because now we got to find a 727 somewhat well we got an engine at least it's good news but we don't have a training so we can make the car make noises but we can't drive it that's where we're at right now [Music] you want to sit rep on exactly what's going on we have taken three million parts off of that pallet over there a whole extra engine like two extra transmissions four different cylinder heads 35 extra carburetors and we've made this and this right here is a 440 big block that is going to be ready to go into our 68 charger to make horsepower smoke and burnouts happen you know how long it's been since i heard a 440 big block roar to life and do burnouts [Music] like two weeks [Music] oh damn dude this is like the sketchiest thing we've done in about today oh get in there oh yeah so look at that i know you want to get in there this is oh i did it what did i tell you handle drop let this bad boy run about 30 minutes all right we had to make a new list because our old list got destroyed by a gallon of oil over there so we've got a lot of stuff done to it first off the engine is done it's in there trans is behind it cooling system done suspension done brakes are done batteries installed alternators hooked up carby which is a new word for carburetor i heard an australian say it one time and i love it fuel system we'll cross that off it's it's mostly done whites no dipstick no alignment no spark plugs wires yes starter yes wiring kinda uh fuel pump yes switch panel no we don't need that drive shaft shift one could so get rid of the lift we're getting really close to the point where we start throwing power at it fuel and spark and see if we can get this old motor home engine to fire up one bad starter later we're ready to crank this bad boy up what do you give the chances that we got the timing right and don't blow a big fireball in our face 13 that's some pretty good odds you ready that's fine they're supposed to do that okay turn it too much back a little it was blowing flames out the front [Music] 180 out so let's pull that we'll rotate it real quick we can weave everything else oh my god it runs it's not even missing we fired it right like it's not missing it runs good it idles it runs smooth it's not knocking and look it makes so much oil pressure the gauge is leaking that's pretty good for an engine that we tore out of a motor home now as we got to see if it will move it might not the transmission i bought like a 1am in the middle of missouri but it'll probably work all right go ahead ignition [Music] [Music] she's gonna move all right shut up dude you should have felt it i felt the ground shake the building wobble the lift shudder everything was just having a good time peace card it's been in three weeks we've been with this car there's just been so much everything on this car has not worked right just everything that we've tried to do just has not worked until now let's not get ahead of ourselves no no it's still on the lift no it's it's going to run i feel it i don't even care if i crash that door on the way out because it has no brakes i'm going to drive it today [Music] dude this is the first time in 35 years that this car has ever moved ready [Music] uh [Music] oh [Music] oh that's a good noise dude i've got a burnout i've seen these cars all the time when i was a kid i never thought my wildest dreams that i would ever own one person wherever this car has been setting for the last 35 years and never thought that some redneck was going to get a hold of it pull an engine out of a motorhome and start cruising it through the flint hills of kansas she needs a good name since 35 years she has had a chance to show her greatness she looks like a bad potato so i'm named entertainer it took a lot of work a lot of time a lot of driving a lot of chasing down parts but we finally made this car run and drive and it was worth every single second of working on it oh stop car that's the story on the 1968 dodge charger i think she needs more horsepower but that's that's for next time

Channel: Westen Champlin

Views: 1,741,037

Rating: 4.9579811 out of 5

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Id: 8abCVcJkOb0

Length: 12min 7sec (727 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 29 2021