Don's 1969 Charger Restoration

[Don selleck]

that turned out good.

 

[mopar4don]

Thank you sir

 

[r4sedan]

You did a great job on your gauges.

 

[mopar4don]

Thanks!

 

[QOTHL]

I painted the headliner bows and headlight vacuum canister

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Switches
I disassembled, cleaned and tested the switches and chrome knobs.

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Here is a pic of the dimmer switch
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Because the spring was binding I wanted someone to rebuild it that had more experience. I found this guy on ebay. All he does is rebuild switches so I sent it to him. Here is a link to his ebay store
https://www.ebay.com/str/devinism

Then I applied the decals to the gauge faces following the instructions from Premium Dash Decals. They were not my 1st choice but performance car graphics were out of stock and they were not sure when they would have more. It all worked out, as I am extremely happy with there decals!
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I installed the odometer decals as per the instructions
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I found a video that showed how to reset the odometer to zero's
This video is for a mustang, but the odometer mechanism is identical
and works perfectly for my odometer

I'm a puke - I sent my gauges out and had them restored and repainted. I thought it was pretty reasonable cause I've never done it and didn't want to screw it up! You've got guts!

 

[QOTHL]

Now you need to polish all your stainless trim, redo the seats, and hopefully your interior panels are in good shape so you can just clean them up and put them back in.

Great job! You're inspirational! How are you going to do the wood grain plates for the dash?

 

[mopar4don]

That's why I love this forum. A bunch of guys that help each other out by posting what they are working on. And how they work on it. I know it inspires me to get out and get it done!

 

[mopar4don]

Now you need to polish all your stainless trim, redo the seats, and hopefully your interior panels are in good shape so you can just clean them up and put them back in.

Great job! You're inspirational! How are you going to do the wood grain plates for the dash?

A lot of interior work to do in the future. The wood grain plates are coming up.
Stay tuned

 

[The Rebel]

Nice job on the chrome, gotta save $ for the big ticket items!

 

[QOTHL]

I had a circuit board pin that was broke, and after a lot
of researching how to fix them, I ended up getting it turned on a lathe
and running a 1-64 screw thru the back of the board to hold the pin.
In this pic you can see the pin that I replaced (on the left)

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In my research I found a thread where a guy had done a similar repair and almost caught his charger on fire. Turned out that the circuit board was grounding out on the housing.
Of course this freaked me out a bit! After checking it out I found that there is a channel in the housing that is right behind the pins. This channel should clear any contact, but because I had modified the board with my pin repair
(I had the head of a tiny screw protruding on the back side) I decided to add
a little more protection so I applied some electrical insulating coating which is kinda like liquid electrical tape.

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Here I assembled all of the switches and gauges back in the housing except for the clock

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I got the bezels painted and "chromed" with the Molotow chrome pen.
I know it's not the best, but for what it cost to re-chrome, I'll try the pens!

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So I had just had to see how it looked with the freshly painted bezel on.
I am impressed. Now to get the clock rebuilt.

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Are you going to rebuild the clock yourself?
I used an Argent paint pen for my AC vents. Looks ok. I don't think it's supposed to have a high chrome look like the dash.
I checked out a video on the Molotow chrome pens. I'm sure you looked up these pens too. I was curious to see if they are any better than the paint pens I have. The thing this guy Pattison concludes is that the finish is not very durable on either of the two pens he tested so just be aware that touching the "chrome" will rub it off.
Before:

One side done:

 

[QOTHL]

A lot of interior work to do in the future. The wood grain plates are coming up.
Stay tuned

Your wood grain doesn't look to bad from what I can see in the photo. I had some that were pretty badly worn and faded. I'll be interested to see what you do for them.

 

[SGTPaul]

Nice stuff Don! When can I drop mine off for you to spiff up?

 

[91r/t]

Man just caught up on this thread and must say nice work man! Doing my 68 Runner now and thank god its solid as alot of that tedious metal work can take forever. Keep it up and thanks for taking the time to document alot of the hard stuff!

 

[QOTHL]

A lot of interior work to do in the future. The wood grain plates are coming up.
Stay tuned

Are you a body man? You say you are a beginner but just wondered if you've done
work on cars before this project.

 

[mopar4don]

Just getting back to this thread, as I was on vacation

Nice job on the chrome, gotta save $ for the big ticket items!

$$ not a cheap car to redo, but then again its not a chevy

Are you going to rebuild the clock yourself?
I used an Argent paint pen for my AC vents. Looks ok. I don't think it's supposed to have a high chrome look like the dash.
I checked out a video on the Molotow chrome pens. I'm sure you looked up these pens too. I was curious to see if they are any better than the paint pens I have. The thing this guy Pattison concludes is that the finish is not very durable on either of the two pens he tested so just be aware that touching the "chrome" will rub it off.

Clock is done. I will get this thread updated soon.
And yes the finish of those chrome pens are not very durable, but it will do for now

Nice stuff Don! When can I drop mine off for you to spiff up?

Hey Paul, swing by anytime!

Man just caught up on this thread and must say nice work man! Doing my 68 Runner now and thank god its solid as alot of that tedious metal work can take forever. Keep it up and thanks for taking the time to document alot of the hard stuff!

Like they say at one of my favorite restaurants... It's my pleasure

Are you a body man? You say you are a beginner but just wondered if you've done
work on cars before this project.

Not a body man! No I have NEVER done anything like this before!!!
So as far as restoring a car, I am a beginner!

 

[mopar4don]

So the original finish of the clock looked pretty good. But since I restored every other gauge I did not want any differences so I got the clock decals.
The 1st step with restoring the clock is to remove the clock hands and second hand.

Then I removed the outer clock bezel ring

there is this little black foam pad (clock stem gasket) that fell apart after I
removed it. I ended up making one, But if I would have know I would have ordered one with my decal kit from Premium Dash Decals

Then I removed the inner clock face and got ready to remove the internals
I purchased the DIY quartz conversion kit from Instrument Services (S-3015)

And as per there video instructions I disassembled

and assembled there quartz movement into my housing. Here you can see the outer clock face (with its new decal) is back on the housing. And you see the blue foam gasket I made. Now don't judge me because I did trim it up better than in this pic.
The foam gasket is not seen as the outer clock face covers it

Final assembly done

Hmmm now that I am looking at the pics, I can see that blue foam gasket

AHH

O well I will have to look at it in final assembly to see if I need to fix it

My grandson approves!

 

[mopar4don]

And if anyone knows were to buy that small chrome nut on the end of the time adjust shaft, let me know as I misplaced mine!

 

[mopar4don]

So here is the cluster completely assembled and the bezel and the woodgrain overlay

And the cluster assembly with the woodgrain overlays assembled into there
respective bezels

And the completed cluster assembly

Here are a few pics with the cluster and bezels installed into the dash frame

And here the dash frame is back into its storage frame and wrapped up for safe keeping

 

[BDF6]

WOW! I am viewing this for the first time right now and must say "BRAVO SIR!"
You are doing a fantastic job.
Thank you for sharing your love of these cars with us.

 

[coronet68mx]

That looks INCREDIBLE !!! CONGRATULATIONS
Inspiring job Don