This is my Y8 1972 Dodge Charger SE Brougham (production date 7-71) that I purchased from Nigel at National Moparts it was a rust-free North Carolina car that was parked due to a bad transmission and brought to Canada. To keep it running and because it was also a 318 car I swapped in my old 318 & TorqueFlite 727 from my first SE and drove it for about 5 years. It was last registered and on the road in 1992. It's traveled with me from place to place waiting for a restoration. I am not a mechanic (or a body guy) but I have enjoyed working on my cars since I was young. I learned a lot early on from not having a lot of money to pay someone else to do the work for me.
This is basically how I bought it in August of 1992, I put on my Western Turbine rims that I had on my previous SE. It did come with 14" Rallye's which I sold to a guy with a Challenger. Then I bought a set of 15x7 Rallyes from Motor City Originals. Shortly after getting it home I added the Year One front spoiler, I also added the dual cut-out exhaust rear valence from a '74, it was pretty rusted, I cleaned it up and painted it, thought it looked cool even though my exhaust was nowhere near the openings. I never would have thought that many years later there would be new ones being produced, thanks AMD.
Those are P275/60R15's on the rear and up front P255/60R15's.
Rattle-can WAL-Mart black primer:
Yes it has the rear spoiler decklid cut-outs and yes it is the original '72 decklid.
Here she sits, March 2007 just after me moved to the new house, double-car garage... finally, now I'll have some room to work on it. Don't really have a budget, I'll probably fund some of it by selling some of my extra "back-up" pieces (yes still have a few). This will be a slow restoration that's for sure, I'll be doing as much as I can.
Removed the hood, decklid, fenders, doors, etc.
Not too bad behind the fenders:
Quite a bit of undercoating.
Some rear shots:
The car is pretty much fully covered with factory undercoating:
Couple of my 318 from my previous 72 that I installed in this car:
Rented an engine hoist from my local Stephenson's Rental, took me about two hours by myself (I did take my time) to get it out, as you can see I left the tranny attached and pulled it out as a unit. I had to let the air out of the two front tires to give me enough clearance over the radiator frame. Maybe I could have gone higher with the jack but was a bit fearful that my anchoring bolts on the engine may give way.
Transmission separated:
After 18 years the 318 is out again.
Rolled it outside, you definitely don't see anything like this in my neighbourhood.
Removed the torsion bars, wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, really had to whack them though.
Then I removed the 4 bolts for the K-Frame and dropped the whole assembly on to some blocks temporarily.
Here's the front suspension:
