Well I just made the old wallet a little sadder. Not really ready for any color yet but I decided to get what I need. Turns out that is a lot of stuff these days.

I know it looks like I am posting the same pictures I just did but a lot has gone on since I last posted. I have blocked the entire car and polyester filled a ton of imperfections. So that took forever as I can only stand about 5 to 6 hours of that kind of workout.  So I re primed the car and put another guide coat on. Time to block again. Hopefully I won't be finding to many more low spots.  I have been looking at a bunch of colors out in the wild but until you spray out a large sample it is hard to tell if they will work well together. I wanted to stay with Dodge late model colors but that did not work out. The sides will be an 04 Dodge Stratus color which is Graphite Metallic. The top will end up being a 2014 GM Color called Ashen Grey. It is near impossible to see from the pictures but the first two work pretty well with each other and the Graphite color is darker than it appears in the picture. I really wanted to use the third color down as it is a 2013 Dodge Challenger color but while it looks blackish /grey when it stands alone it appears dark reddish /brown next to the Graphite Metallic. The last color which was a Toyota color called Magnetic Gray Metallic has a lot of red in it too so it did not work.

I wanted to put some side markers in so I got the 06 side markers and worked them around so that I could fit them into the sides of the front air dam. At work we use .060 Carbon fiber panels and I got some cut off pieces and epoxied them together to built the front air dam.
I got the first coat of primer on the car and it showed up a lot of my body work short comings. I have a bit more work to do than I thought but it is getting there.

So I am down to finishing out the fit of the nose and the headlight doors and such. Hopefully I will be moving on to some primer soon but I can't say when as I will be entertaining family next week so this goes on a little vacation for a while. After that it will be time to tear it down again and prep and paint the door jambs, the under side of the trunk lid and hood, the insides of the fenders and the back side of the nose.

I have gotten to a point where I have to put the nose back on the car to do the bondo work up front so I took a break from working over the rest of the car to clean up the bottom of the nose while it is still off the car. Also I had to finish fabricating the grill.
I used some 1/2"x 1/8" hot rolled flat steel to build the perimeter. I then took some 1/4" x  1/4" stainless steel screen and welded it to the back side of the grill surround. Finally I secured it into the opening with some stainless oval head screws.

Haven't been posting because there is not much to see. Just a bunch of bondo work. Most of it is on the floor. Been at it every weekend though. I am not a pro so this will take a good bit longer than most folks here could do. Plus old muscles don't like to block for very long.

Nothing really exciting to report here. Just bondo work. I needed a little inspiration so I mounted the wing to make sure there was a good fit to the quarter tops.
I also had to stop and deal with something that I had been kicking down the road. Turns out the Dodge Daytona is a very long car so I had to add a 3 foot bump out to my makeshift spraybooth. I had also been putting off working on finishing the closeout doors but the Bondo is everywhere now so I had to stop working on the car and get this handled.

It feels good after staring at this car in bare metal for so long to be finally mudding in the transitions.

Well I had just a few small fabrication jobs to take care of. I did not like the fit of the rear of the trunk lid to the tail panel so I cut the back of the trunk lid off and replaced it with a piece that blended out a little better. I also reworked the top of the tail panel to even out the seam. I had to make some transition pieces from the inner sill plate to blend into the 06 kick panels. I also filled in the signal lights on the hood. Since I am not going to run active signals I did not see the point in putting in the dummy pieces.  It took me a while to move the car into my home made  paint booth and I found out that I will have to build a 3 foot bump out to be able to work around the car with the nose on it . What's one more project? Time to sling some bondo.

So I guess I am officially sliding into the body work here. Last week end  I finished bondo work and blocking on the center section that I made for the wing. While I was bolting it to the uprights I realized that having been a one piece wing originally there was not a whole lot of strength to the area where the wing bolts together.
So I stopped what I was doing to work on a plan to reinforce that area.  I cut the area out so that I had a clear shot through the wing to the base. I drilled a half inch hole in the base and ran some 1/2 x .049 wall steel tubing through. At the top of the tubing I welded a seat for the bolt made from some .083 1" tubing and a .090 plate for the wing bolt to pass through.

I used some Fusor brand panel bond adhesive to epoxy the assembly in place and then did a little bondo work to clean it up. I purchased some 5/16-18 shoulder bolts with 3/8" x 1" shoulder to attach the center section to the uprights. I also threaded some pins into the side of the center section of the wing to keep it from rotating. Once everything was assembled I did some bondo work to blend everything together. I thought about leaving the rods long to go down into the trunk but that's would be a little over kill. It would also be a bit of a rat's nest in there if I did that.

Another little project I did was to epoxy the side mirrors to the custom steel door mounts that I had made. I did a little bondo work to them to blend the mount to the mirror housing.

In between things I worked on extending the tailpipes back to the exhaust tips mounted under the roll pan. The 2 3/4" SRT tubing proved a little hard to get a hold of so I just stepped it up to some 3" and mashed on. I eliminated the rear mufflers as there really wasn't any way to tuck them in the space under the quarters so I hope it doesn't sound funny.

Well I am at the point where I am going back through the car and tackling all the little projects left to fabricate. The first issue was to build a prop rod for the hood. While the gas shocks lift the hood just fine they were designed to hold up a light weight aluminum hood and even with the inner liner removed this old Charger hood weighs a few pounds more. So just to be safe. I used some 3/8" .049 wall DOM steel tubing to make the rod itself. I made a double sheer bracket to attach the rod to the radiator core support. At the opposite end I modified a rubberized "P" clip to secure the end when stowed. I drilled a hole in the hood latch bracket to catch the rod and welded a washer on it at the same angle as the hood latch bracket.

Another small project was to locate the windshield washer nozzles  in the hood and also locate the lines under the hood.

One of the issues that has had me worried since I first installed it was how I was going to keep rain water from pouring into the trunk around the gas fill I put into the top of  the quarter panel. Since the enclosure was meant to be mounted on the side of the car I had to come up with a way to keep the water from collecting in the enclosure and then leaking in around the rubber gasket that the fill neck comes through. I stared at it for quite a while. The first thing I did was to install a small aluminum drain in the bottom of the enclosure. A bit of plastic tubing will drain water out through the bottom of the quarter panel closure.

Next was the tricky part. Since the rubber gasket around the fill tube is not a water tight seal I had to figure out a way to isolate it from any water that would make it's way into the enclosure. I decided to modify the gas door assembly by first creating a flat ring at the base which later will seal against the bottom of the enclosure around the fill neck. Next I fabricated a vertical ring to act as a dam against the water that might get in. Finally I made a larger overlapping vertical ring which I attached to the door itself. This will hopefully cover the lower ring enough to prevent water from driving in over the lower ring.

Well I am rounding third base and heading for home on the interior panels. I finished fabricating the right side back door panel and also bondoed and covered the left side. While the front door panels were way more complex I was able to work on them with the door on saw horses. These had to be made in the car sitting kind of twisted. I am pretty happy with the results thus far. I have some little do-dads to attend to once I get done with the interior panels before I move into the body work. I have timed it just right because it is getting nice and hot here so as you know that is the best time to be covered in bondo.

 I finished covering the over head console and the two halves of the head liner and fit them up into the car. They will have to come back out because I don't want to expose them to the bondo/ paint mess. Also I need to put some sound deadener on the bottom side of the roof skin. Besides checking them for fit I needed to install the head liner so that I could fabricate the rear door panels which over lap and capture the bottom of the head liner.

Since the chassis was a 4 door and I had to remove the "B" pillar hinge post I knew the stock carpet would have issues in that area. Luckily all I had to do was to make an inner threshold cover to deal with the transition. I made this out of .045 steel and it will be painted out with some trim black.

The last of the head scratching scratch fabrication jobs on this car is the rear door panel covering the seatbelt reel and the window motor. As with the front door panels I went at it piecemeal . Kind of sneaking up on it if you will . I have it mostly worked out. All I lack now is finishing.