Tazet's 69 Dodge Charger.

[flc]

It maybe the way to go andy, if you can build a frame, you should be able to sort some body pannels out, ive watched people do this kind of work and its not that hard with the correct tools,pull it back in line with the old pannels then cut out and fit new, has it really been 8 months? times is flying by.

[Manky Monkey]

Ain't it just! 
We could actually buy new chassis legs from the States, but they're expensive. It's a monocoque shell -the body is actually a part of the chassis, rather than being a seperate unit that bolts to seperate chassis rails, & provides some of it's structural strength.
There's a box section cross member running across the front of the car under the bulkhead, & a pair of chassis legs literally butt welded to the face of that & extending into the engine bay to hold the motor & the front body panels. Looks like the car's had a thump on the left front corner that's pushed those chassis legs over & twisted the cross member. That means the front panels won't fit properly & the left door only shuts with a good hard slam. The entire front steering/suspension assembly is held with just 4 bolts in slotted holes, so is adjustable to help with alignment & may have already been replaced cos it doesn't look damaged. We're pretty sure the car's actually been driven in it's current state at some point.
STOP PRESS
While I've been writing this, forum member Big John's been on the phone & may have come up trumps for us, with a word in the ear of one of the guys we've already spoken to. Speaking as one restorer to another, he may possibly have got us a more realistic price.
Watch this space! 

[InsolentMinx]

oooh how exciting! ...
i'll be keeping my eye on this thread 

[Hillbilly Deluxe]

and.......................all that BUBBLE WRAP too 

[Manky Monkey]

D'oh. Another dead end.
A minimum of 4 thousand pounds for the absolute minimum work required. That's assuming there's no problems at all, so you can guarantee that's gonna rise to 6 by the time they're done, which is what we originally paid for the shed car, (Taz sold her beloved BMW to finance it). We just can't afford that kind of price, bearing in mind we've still got to rebuild the rest of the car afterwards.
Looking more & more likely we'll be tackling this ourselves.

[panthershaun]

let me know if you need a hand mate I'm good a brewing tea

[Manky Monkey]

  Might just take you up on that Shaun!
Marcus, ("Lunatic"), seems quite confident he could handle it, but then I don't think he's ever taken on a project quite that big. Saying it's easy isn't quite the same as doing it.  Don't mean to put him down, just worried we'd wade in & pull it all apart, then find we're out of our depth & end up with 6 grand's worth of scrap metal.
Having said that, he's currently prepping a VW camper van for painting. He's completely removed & replaced the entire front of the cab. If he can do that, the Charger's just the same kinda thing, on a bigger scale. His plan would be to start at the back, plasma-cutting off the crappy rear quarter panels & replacing them with fresh steel, replacing the boot trunk floor with something a little stronger than the fibreglass that's currently holding it together, then working our way forward, straightening & repairing as we go. At 17 feet long & 7 feet wide, it's bigger than loony's spraybooth & would mean our two vehicles, (Taz's Dodge & my Pop), would have to be Loony's sole customers for a while. He's looking to move away from mundane repair & respray jobs & take on more custom stuff, so a big Yank would be a nice addition to his CV.
Would make sense to build it in the barn it lives in at the moment, with the aid of our 2 post lift & no need to move it to make room for other stuff, but that would mean the same 30 mile each way commute for Loony that I do to go to work every day. Probably more sensible to cart it over to Loony Central where he can work on it at his own pace & we can provide a second & third pair of hands as often as possible.   

[tbone]

7 feet wide! i could lay accross the bonnet, sorry, hood and be used as a hood ornimant 
Not meaning to sound toooo basic cos bodywork aint my thing but, isn`t bodywork bodywork? admittidly this would be on a larger scale but it sounds like Lunatic has a plan and even fearing the worst and you cant quite do it all, you might be able to achive enough between you that wotever is left to do by a custom restorer is affordable.

[tazet]

The biggest problem is getting it straight and as Manky has said there are not a lot of people willing to take on a job like this and there are even less who have a jig big enough. Big John has said he will do the rear end and some body stuff for us already but I still need to make a few more calls yet so nothing set in stone.

[Manky Monkey]

Well, 8 months on from buying this beastie & we're still no further with the straightening. A chink of light in the seemingly endless tunnel tonight though. Taz & I visited Tino of Tino's rod & custom in Mitcham, Surrey. We went to see him about a stainless exhaust system for my trike, but it turned out he's a bit of an expert at building roll cages & space frame chassis too. He had several projects on the go in his workshop, including a Pop that Taz & I saw on our rounds of the shows last year. When we described the curly wurly Charger to him he seemed quite unfazed & confident he could slice the entire front off "just in front of the tax disc" & replace the frame work with a tubular frame. He can also upgrade the entire suspension/brake set-up to just about anything we fancy. We looked through his photo album of past projects & recognised several of the cars we regularly see on our travels around the rod shows, so we'd be happy for him to take on the Charger.
With luck, he'll come out & take a look at it next weekend.

[SteveRedd]

It'll make it a beter car too...result




better start getting some overtime in 

[VALLEYSBOY]

some hope then maybe you orter knock up some of yer trike frames"frame only" and sell them here and on ebay @ £500 a pop, theres a guy on ebay doing the same sorta thing but i dont think there a patch on yers, only a thought take care

[Manky Monkey]

The problem's not so much the money -Taz sold her car to fund this project & there's just enough left to get the front sorted out -it's trying to find someone who'll actually take the job on.
We're not bothered about keeping it 100% original, we just want a good solid, safe, straight, drivable car. So slicing the whole front off & starting again's probably the easiest & quickest solution & looking at the projects in his workshop, Tino seems quite capable of doing it.
He can also build us any front suspension/brake set-up we like, which is handy cos we want to convert the front to disc brakes. He showed us a wishbone front end he's made, with fully adjustable stainless wishbones & adjustable coil-over shocks. Or we could have McPherson struts etc. Chargers aren't known for being the best handling cars in the World, so worth looking into.

[panthershaun]

Aren't those custom front ends nice almost too good to stick under a car me thinks

[Manky Monkey]

Too good for the likes of us!