So this thing started out as what was going to be a daily driver with mild work to make it reliable. A buddy of mine had it sitting in his garage for the past 12 years. He bought it to restore with is girlfriend. She left, he freaked and parked it. LOL Poor guy! So anyway, what was described as "ran when parked" turned out to be "may have ran but leaked like a sieve from every orifice and was 100lbs lighter from the rust". I did get it running and actually drove it a bit. Second trip out, every single freeze plug was pissing water out of them. That made my mind up for me! RACE CAR!
So, my background with race cars. I started racing before I had a drivers license. Later on, I married into a racing family and my father in law built chassis for the old Grand National series. I worked with him as an apprentice and learned quite a bit. Fast forward 20 years, divorced, remarried, race cars sold and here we are starting over.
First, here's my inspiration for this build:
Your inspiration is solid stuff. I had a 1974 Charger SE in "Burnt Sienna" back in the mid-80s before they all turned to dust. It was a great car thru the rose colored glasses of my memory. Since you don't have access to my memory, here is a grainy photo to make it come to life for you 
And here's the raw canvas:
The damn thing is too long for my garage because I have a work bench in the end. So...camp canopy up on the RV parking pad!
All I can hear when I see this is that song... "I like big butts"!
Sweet. And props for skipping the obvious "Petty scheme".
So I have more or less gutted this thing. The summer was hard for me to get too much done. 120 degree days and long work hours. So... I started ordering parts. I have everything to rebuild the entire front end. Everything from the steering box down. All new brakes, hoses, etc. I elected to go with a stroked 360 small block. It was an easy choice that kept me from doing even more work on a big block conversion.
Donor 360 getting ready to be torn down:
Every couple weeks I'll order up a batch of parts.
I've stripped out the wiring and built my own harness. (my aviation background came in handy here! )
In reply to kazoospec :
hahaha! YES! It was going to be Vandiver (this car) or the Olympia Charger!
So did I mention it was rusted all to hell?
The roof was made of bondo and newspaper:
Cut that right out!
Both quarters were cancer ridden so I had to brush up on my fab skills. I hand hammered the new metal for this section over a wooden form:
Still had some clean up to do here but you get the idea:
Anyone who has spools of wire hanging neatly like that in the background is OK by me.
This is going to be cool.
I have installed a fuel cell cage and fuel cell:
I still have to go back and box in the cage with some sheet metal.
Getting my real fab skills back out to cut a pattern for the dash and get that all fitted up:
Yep, I'll be pulling the hush mat back out now that it's going all race car.
I did manage to find a donor car to snag a roof skin from
And I bought a tubing bender. What a workout!
So I'll add some more later. I have the main hoop and cross bar done I had to have some plate built for the roll cage mounts. I'm just kind of jumping around on the build as I can. We're waiting on my job to hand us papers to transfer back to Florida so I don't want to drop the front end out just yet so I can still load it on a trailer!
MoPar? Epic wiring job?
Only thing missing is Dusterbd13!
Love where this is going!
You rang???
If you aren't already a member, join up on mopax.
Tomorrow when I get a chance, id love to discuss your suspension plans. May be able to help.
Also, stitch weld this thing before paint if you actually plan to race. Id suggest before the cage goes any further. It makes the old mopars monumentally better in every regard.
Fuselage B-bodies and old nascar.
In reply to Dusterbd13 :
Sweet man! I'd love to hear what you have! I worked for Dodge but it was in 1986. All these beautiful cars were replaced by the 2.5 baby Chargers then. All of my former race cars were GM platforms, so I'm really open to suggestions. I do want to stay with the torsion bars, just for nostalgia sake if possible.
Sweet........so a pursuit 440 is still outa the question? 
This thing is going to be so cool! What rules are you building it to meet? Where do you intend to race it? Will it still be street legal?
In reply to ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ :
I've tried to stick with a combo of Lemons and Chump car rules. I'm pretty sure it will meet SCCA spec as well.
I am keeping it street legal. It will be tagged/insured/registered.
