The bad part of working on a car is there is two of everything. I worked my way down the left side of the car and posted all of that and have been playing with the nose to avoid starting on the right side. I finally got going on that but rather than post a bunch of pictures of a process you have already seen I decided to just stop posting until I had something a little more interesting to post. I estimated I had about 100 or so hours in the left side door and I am about half way through that process on the right side now. (rinse and repeat). Here are a couple of pictures of how that is going. The glass has already been fit up with the regulators. The door latch has already been cut in and the lock and door handle rods have all been modified.

This weekend I decided to work out the wiring to actuate the headlight doors by turning on the headlights. I have tried to draw up a simple diagram to show how I ended up working it out. I hope it can be helpful to someone else who might want to convert to electric door motors.
As you know I was content to use just one motor to operate my doors so I just purchased one rebuilt second generations Pontiac Fiero headlight door motor. Along with that I purchased a control module that only the left half worked so I got it for a good price. I also bought a standard Bosch style 5 pin relay. The diagram below shows how I ended up wiring it. It turns out to be pretty simple as the module is always hot so power is available to the motor in both the up and down modes. I picked up the power to run the relay right off of the headlight wires so that when the lights are off and the relay is in the resting position it makes contact to send power to the close mode. When the lights turn on the relay activates and swaps over to send power to the open mode. The control module senses the increased amperage draw on the motor when it hits a physical stop and cuts power to the motor in both the up and down positions.  Clear as mud?    

One of the negative aspects of installing fixed headlights in the nose is the fact that they loose the ability to cast light to the side of the road due to being buried in the nose. I decided to see if I could install the driving lights from the 06 at the split where the chin spoiler and the lower nose meet. I found that a piece of 4" PVC was a near perfect fit to fashion a housing for the light module.
using  some scrap I worked out the cut pattern for the under side of the nose. I then fit up the housing in the whole. The nose was set level up so that I could also level the housings.

I slotted the top of the PVC so that the leveling adjustment screw on the fixture could be used. Once I could slide the unit into place I made the back of the housing out of some lexan cutting out the back to clearance for the bulb and enable the plastic clips to hold the unit in place. 

After gluing the back on the housing I fused the housing to the nose.

I mocked up a chin spoiler out of sheetmetal to look at the proportions. The lens on my camera is kind of a fish eye or wide angle so although the chin spoiler is big it looks a lot bigger in this picture than is really looks in person. Be that as it may I have to tweek on the spoiler a bit yet to get it where I want it.

Because of issues with the wipers and the AC ect. I decided to create a modern looking cowl arrangement which includes a sunken blackout area just behind the hood for the wiper motor and the fresh air inlets. This will allow the wiper motor and arms to be serviced from the outside top as it is in the 06 Charger as opposed to the under dash set up on the original B body. I had always thought these cars might look a little better with a hood similar to the 71 B bodies. So this was my chance to fool with that idea. The only difference is the wipers won't be buried like the older cars but more exposed like a modern car (just a matter of practicality and space).

I fabricated the headlight mounts this weekend. Here is how they look with and without the nose.

I got the hood all put together and stripped the paint off it so I got that going for me now.

So I decided to take apart my headlight doors and mechanism to refine some stuff I didn't like. I had re hinged the doors to the front of the opening so that the sweep of the door would be minimized in order to push the headlights as far forward as possible but I did it with some stainless steel piano hinge. It worked but was a little crappy looking and didn't work as freely as I would like. So I went ahead and redesigned the hinge using a piece of 3/8 tubing with  threaded inserts in the ends and used some stainless steel shoulder bolts to secure the tube to a pivot plate.  I secured the doors on the same plate I had already fused to just under the front of the headlight door where the piano hinge was fixed to 10/24 threaded inserts along the plate.

When I first mocked up the mechanism for the headlight doors I was determined to use the window motor left over from the rear doors of the 06. It worked o.k. but was a little to quick. Swampwing2 convinced me to head in the direction of using a gen 2 Fiero headlight motor. Since I was only using one motor I was able to score a control module from the motor re-builder that was dead on one side for $25.00  The beauty of the control module is it removes the need for any limit switches because it senses the increased amperage draw when the doors hit a mechanical stop and it cuts power to the motor. It took a while to get the arms to the right lengths in order for the motor to run at a slower speed even though the motor is geared lower than the window motor. I put some adjustable arms to the doors in order to allow me to tighten up the doors to the nose.

Here is a link to a video of the doors in operation. 

This video shows how I rigged up the drop down doors for the head lights on the Daytona project.
Posted by Steve Mirabelli on Sunday, November 9, 2014

After messing with the headlight doors I decided to tackle the signal light housings.  I started by working out the pattern for how the housing would fit the nose and cutting out the openings.
Next I fabricated the housing out of .021 steel and cut an opening to fit the 06 signal housing. This way the existing 06 bulbs fit right into the back of the housing.

The way I had to cut the 06 housing out of the rest of the headlight assembly meant that it wasn't a complete surround for my purposes so  the first thing I did was to make a complete back to the housing out of 3/16 plastic. I then wrapped the outside with .040 aluminum. This will allow me to seal the entire housing.

With the housing painted out satin black I cut some adhesive backed reflective foil the shape of the signal lense and stuck it to the back of the housing.
The last two pictures show the lense in place and then set into the nose with clecos.

One of the things I decided to re do was the third tail light up in the back of the roof. The way I had enclosed it was a little too bulky so I cut all that out and cut the LED fixture down to a minimal size. Then when I was looking for a way to make a softer cover because of it being overhead I found an old plastic ice bucket from an old refrigerator. The contours of the bottom were pretty much what I was looking for so I cut it to fit a mock up of the rear window center section. My previous housing did not have a light dam to the glass.

Finally I painted it out matte black.

Also here is a picture of the quarter window motor. These are some after market universal window motors that I was surprised to find out worked really well. The are a very small motor that mounts remotely through a geared strap to the window crank stud with custom delran fittings. Two motors and the wiring kit were just  $80.00. Not bad for the work they saved. Since they mount on the outside they would not work with stock interior panels as the motor protrudes.

Been going over a tone of piddly little projects like some wiring and other such nonsense so while it doesn't seem like I have gotten much done I have been at it steadily. Here is a video of the wiper situation. I finally got the motor wired back to the car. After that I had to get the main pivot arm located so that the wipers would cycle back to the back to the base of the windshield when coming to rest.  I modified the passenger side arm and set it on the driver side. The driver side arm was way to long to modify so I got another passenger side arm on line. When I first fired it up with the arms on the driver side swept past the "A" post. I took the motor out for the umpteenth  time and shortened the center pivot arm by 1/8". I re assembled it and then the arms would only come half way up the glass. I took it apart again and lengthened the arm by 1/16" of an inch and ended up with this. It is not perfect but I think I will leave it alone and stay away from torrential down pours.  Man this 68 Charger windshield is dinky. Like looking out of a pill box.

Using the old windshield to map out the sweep of the wipers worked out great because it was scratched in the wiper pattern. Whoever owned it must have let the wiper blades wear out.

Here's a video:

Been circling back trying to finish some of the many projects on the car that were started. This video is of the windshield wipers. After hard wiring the motor I cut down the passenger side wiper arm and fit it up. The driver side was way to long to modify so I got another passenger arm on line. The first time I checked the sweep the left side blade swept past the A post. I shortened the center pivot by 1/8 inch and then it only swept up half way on the glass. I cut it apart and moved it back 1/16" and I got this range. Not perfect but I am not going to mess with it any more.
Posted by Steve Mirabelli on Saturday, October 25, 2014

The newer cars don't seem to have as many places to jack the car up safely as in the old days. In fact just about anyplace you put a floor jack under this 06 Charger other that the 4 designated lift points will immediately start to cave in. Problem is it is very difficult t jack the car up and then get a jack stand under the same spot. I decided to take some 3/16 steel and cap over the overlap area that is the jack point to extend it. This allowed me to comfortably get a jack stand in place with the floor jack still under the lift point. I guess these cars were only meant to be worked on with a lift.

I wanted to drop the car to the floor to get the weight on it so that I might figure out what to do with the front fender and wheel opening. Since there is a 3 inch difference in the wheel base I knew I would have to add some material to the back half of the lower fender. Since this side was rusted out in this area I decided to cut the fender from about an inch below the body line down and replace it with new metal. There was not enough room to accommodate the fender brace at the back of the fender so I cut it out and replaced it with a 1" x 1" L shaped  piece of .060 steel.

After hanging the fender back on the car I rough cut the added metal to generally clear around the tire. Next I  used a home made wheel compass to mark out the semi-final wheel opening. After trimming it out I hung the nose back on the car and added the lower portion of the front of the fender that extends the nose. I was pretty worried about how this was all going to look proportionally  but I am pretty happy with the way it all ended up looking.