Saturday, October 25, 2014

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



Sunday, October 5, 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.