New Build... 2015 Dodge Charger R/T Widebody Pickup

Show off your work! Anything from final results to full start-to-finish project journals.

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PostPosted: Tue Mar 28, 2023 8:42 am
Man, I still miss Pontiac. I owned 5 Fieros and a "last of it's breed" Grand Prix GT with that 3800 SC motor. I had that same motor in two of those Fieros. So, who does GM keep?....Buick.... seriously...... :cry:
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PostPosted: Sun Apr 02, 2023 4:33 pm
Gentlemen, start your engines!....... I spent an hour or so this week cleaning up our work area for our project. After that it was "fingers crossed" time for a shake out cruise with our new pickup truck... I am a firm believer in test drives for the ol' shake, rattle, and roll listen long before you get into final body work and paint. So, it was marvelous! Every single system we had relocated worked! Full back up alerts, blind spot detection, great camera view for hitching up, etc. It was all there and sync.ed as it should be. We had all operating lights as well. Even without insulation the car was very quiet. We had removed the large rear exhaust resonators expecting too much bark in the system. Looks like we'll just be able to straight pipe those and simply add resonator tips. Now we have moved into the body work stages of shaping the raw fiberglass. We like to use epoxy based fillers down low for attachment then move up into the more flexible fillers over top of that. We actually got almost all of that body work done today. We should be doing a tape out and shooting high build epoxy primer at our next meeting.... Today was weekend 5. Oh, and Mark said my fender flares should be in some time this week! Yipeee..... Oh, and make sure you look at the pic.s. I now have a color.....
Attachments
Week 5 a.jpg
So lots of green tape and a Sharpie keep the guys on track. We all do a piece, I approve everyone's work, and then we throw that tape/task away.
Week 5 b.jpg
Chinese reproduction tail gates.... I had 7 hits/bends just from shipping. I am thinking I might get an old OEM from a pick and pull later...
Week 5 c.jpg
And the road map of "to do" continues...
Week 5 d.jpg
Oh, we just had to get these things off again...
Week 5 e.jpg
So this is just shop lighting as we have had little sun lately. This looks on fire in bright sun. So the colors are, purple, ruby red, root beer, bronze, kinda brassy, and tangerine..... and this is just ONE coat of this color mixed at 3/4s of a gram per ounce of intercoat....
Week 5 f.jpg
As light and angles increase we go into the bronze rising to a brass....
Week 5 g.jpg
So finally in subdued light this goes into a deep purple similar to the old Dodge Plum Crazy.
Metal, wood, fiberglass, we work it all... www.furniturephysicians.com We can restore the irreplaceable!

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PostPosted: Sun Apr 02, 2023 5:53 pm
Wow, I am starting to feel like I'm moving at a turtle's pace. You'll have 5 of these done before I get my car even close to finished. :worthy: :worthy: :worthy:
1968 Coronet R/T


ACTS 16:31

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PostPosted: Sun Apr 02, 2023 6:22 pm
But, I see you doing classic restoration work and I'm like, man, that's take some patience, metal work, and paint skills. Fiberglass?, ahhh, hack it, move it, add on to it, rinse and repeat..... we have no classic body lines, we don't even have a script! We can just make stuff up as we go..... :rotfl:
Metal, wood, fiberglass, we work it all... www.furniturephysicians.com We can restore the irreplaceable!



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PostPosted: Mon Apr 03, 2023 3:22 am
DarrelK wrote:Man, I still miss Pontiac. I owned 5 Fieros and a "last of it's breed" Grand Prix GT with that 3800 SC motor. I had that same motor in two of those Fieros. So, who does GM keep?....Buick.... seriously...... :cry:


i guess they decided to cater to old farts. :happy:

the 3800 has been a dam good engine. my '08 non SC hit 200k miles last week and it is still running strong- of course with proper paintenance and tuneups.

ive watched a couple of videos of 3800 swapped fieros. pontiac should have dropped those in there in the first place.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NacB47T21OA

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PostPosted: Mon Apr 03, 2023 10:32 am
Yeah, the 3800 non boosted and boosted were so tough with good "reliable" torque and horsepower. They were both on the list for best v6 designs of all time. They were perfect in the Fiero.... fast, quiet, super fuel economy. Wife and I did one final trip through the Smokies in my last one before I sold it. I was at 80mph speeds, air on, and we averaged 32 mpg for the whole trip mountains and all...... We ran max. boost on that motor of about 10 psi. I owned it for a couple of years and ended up selling it for $3000 more than I paid for it....
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IMG_20201002_110308027.jpg
3800 SC in my last Fiero....
IMG_20201002_110232605_HDR.jpg
This was my last one.
SDC10042.JPG
Loved this motor....
SDC10019.JPG
This was my Finale body conversion on a Fiero frame. The motor was under glass....
Metal, wood, fiberglass, we work it all... www.furniturephysicians.com We can restore the irreplaceable!



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PostPosted: Wed Apr 05, 2023 5:53 am
those fieros are sweet!
the only downfall to the 3800 was the transmission they hooked up. the 4t65e is in millions of vehicles and notorious for issues. one is the input shaft. the car is pretty good off the line but sooner than later the input shaft will snap because it isnt hardened.
a trans go shift kit is a good thing,too. there are a few other things that could make a helluva lot better trans. GM could have spent another $200 and had a dam good trans.
when i was lookin for a new ride 6 years ago i wanted something that would get up and go- something that when i entered an expressway i would be going as fast or faster than the traffic on the expressway... and not have the engine screaming for mercy. if i want to pass someone on a 2 lane road i wanted to get the job done quick. i test drove quite a few different 4 popper and v6's and none of them fit the bill until i got into this '08. a couple of the 4 poppers were screamin for mercy just tryin to get up to 45mph!
at 75mph on the expressway the engines runnin about 2500 rpm and i get 27mpg on the e way, too.
GM FINALLY solved the intake gasket problem by going to aluminum intake, then said "were done with this one." WTH!?!?!?!

last summer i was next to a supercharge GP at a stop light. he revved up eggin me on. i didnt hole shot but once we were rollin i hammered it. he pulled away pretty dam quick!

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PostPosted: Wed Apr 05, 2023 7:12 am
I was lucky on my trannies.... we did have an upgraded set of internals on both of them which included the hardened shaft. Ha, ha....yeah, that's the thing with the SC models, instant boost when you need and just the way that torque curve comes on the cars can really hook. Guy in a souped up Ford Probe v6 tried to chase me down in my red car there on a highway ramp. I nailed it and had him by at least 6 car lengths when we got on the highway.....
Metal, wood, fiberglass, we work it all... www.furniturephysicians.com We can restore the irreplaceable!

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PostPosted: Tue Apr 11, 2023 10:05 pm
So a belated Easter to all.... The guys and myself did get together for about 6 hours today (Saturday). We did another round of "creaming" out our body filler. This time we do a full round of addressing minor defects with Body Icing. Body Icing is a thinned down flowable version of a bondo type fller. It forms a more flexible surface which lends itself to feathering with finer grit sandpapers. After doing that we did a half car tape out and final scuff sanding of the gel coat surface. We then moved on spraying the Tamco high build epoxy primer. You are looking at 1/2 gallon sprayed using our 6 stage turbine system and Sprayfine gun. Just did minor reduction of this stuff but still had 10 inch wide fan shooting with a 1.5 tip. This did not include the bed at this time. Just a few pic.s....
Attachments
Week 6 d.jpg
So I found a set of four Scat Pack wheels on Marketplace.... minor touch-up
Week 6 a.jpg
So we took it outside for an inspection in the sun.....uhhh, sun, uhhh, what sun...
Week 6 b.jpg
All taped out and sanded up....
Week 6 c.jpg
I love this stuff, a lot harder surface, but sands easily...
Metal, wood, fiberglass, we work it all... www.furniturephysicians.com We can restore the irreplaceable!

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PostPosted: Sun Apr 16, 2023 10:13 pm
So today was the "big day" in seeing if all of our body work and manipulating paid off. Paint, doesn't matter about color or finish, will show EVERYTHING wrong that you did in your process. We got out body all sanded up, cleaned it down with anti-stat and proceeded to spray some colorless intercoat just to check our black color foundation. You see since I am doing another color shifter again it must be sprayed over a black ground coat. I like to make sure that our black is an even black and has hidden any breakthrus to filler or worse fiberglass. So, our first coat showed some problems here and there like some contamination, possible fisheye, etc. I even got some minor dye back of the intercoat which I finally attributed to a temperature surface differential. So this is FUNNY.... I went in and got on the internet just to make sure I was remembering right about handling a few things. I pulled up an extensive well written thread from a forum that covered everything I was running into especially related to fiberglass. I looked over to the left and the author of the thread was ME! It was dated about 10 years ago... So I shot for 7 hours straight today. We did 2 intercoat clears, did a high grit de nib, laid down 1 more intercoat clear, laid down 2 chameleon pearl coats, and 3 final matt clear coats.

Okay, so we got some partial sunshine today before the shower came today on Sunday. Take a look, I am really over the moon about how this turned out. The clear coat feels like a velveteen or micro-fiber surface..... Tamco's matt clear does it again. The problem with matt clears is many fold. Most are just the usual flattening compound which settles, chunks, and even worse crystalizes in the bottom of the can. These flattening agents can also make the final clear film soft and not as durable. Not this stuff, it uses an imported silica agent that stays 100% dispersed top to bottom in the can. And it's resin base is the same as their 2104 Euro clear which is a top notch high solids clear. It lays down just like conventional clears but flats out to this really stunning satin sheen...
Attachments
Week 7 I.jpg
So purple going into almost black on the sides in lower outside light....
Week 7 j.jpg
Outside root beer going into bronze then brass from the dark puple.
Week 7 e.jpg
So brass going so bright it almost hit tangerine in this pic. Just sun coming into the garage at a low angle...
Week 7 l.jpg
Purple going into the gold in a little bit of sunshine. We will be doing a texture black on the nose, with that tied into the flares, rocker, and back to the lower bumper.
Week 7 n.jpg
This is the rose going into purple, very hard to capture with a pic.
Metal, wood, fiberglass, we work it all... www.furniturephysicians.com We can restore the irreplaceable!
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