My 1968 Coronet 500 Convertible Story...Past...Present...future...

[Thrashingcows]

Well time to get started on the history of my car, I'll be going back a couple years and explain how I ended up with the coronet.

So it was around 1990 and I had just got my driver license and my brother was working a Ford Dealership called William Clark Ford. I was looking to buy an old car to drive as my daily, I had not developed any affinity for one brand or another yet, and one day I get a phone call from my brother telling me that a car just got traded in and I should come down and check it out. Car was a 1966 Ford Falcon Futura with a 289/2V and a 2spd transmission. Well I bought the car for I think around $1800 and started driving it.

Well it had old bias ply tires on it were a bit squirrely in the rain so I was making a trip a couple towns over to get some new radial tires for it. Well traffic had slowed because a car ahead of me was making a left across a busy road but the guy following me in a 78 Chevy Caprice didn't see it slowing because he was busy looking at a garage sale...well he ended up hitting me doing about 80 KPH (50 MPH)....I was at a dead stop.

Needless to say the old Ford didn't fair to well....

So I ended up getting a little over $2000 from insurance and started looking for another car.

 

[Thrashingcows]

I knew about a 69 Charger sitting in a barn out in the country side so I made a trip out and was able to buy it for $2K.

Pic from when he rolled it out of the barn...

I had to take the car without the rims or I wouldn't have been able to afford it. ;)

It was a 1969 Charger, with a 400/4bbl in it but was originaly a 383/2V, auto with green/black interior, buckets, console originally an EW1 car with a green vinyl top but was Hemi orange and they had dyed the top black.

Sitting one winter..

Then about a year after getting the car I was leaving a friends house late one night, but the roads had froze up and were a sheet of black ice. I pulled out on to the road and 1st gear was fine but when it shifted to second the back end lost traction, it spun and slid into the ditch.

I had bought all the part to repair it so started to tear it down for the resto..

It was during the tear down that I decided I wanted to convert it to a 4spd, so the hunt for a 4sod conversion started. I was visiting a local mopar guy who bought and sold cars and parts and I asked about a 4spd conversion, he mentioned he had a 68 Coronet convertible with a 4 spd in it....I was very intrigued by the car and we went to check it out.

 

[Thrashingcows]

Well after seeing the convertible I decided that this would be a way cooler car then my Charger so the charger went up for sale and I bought the coronet.

I made the purchase of the car Aug 21/1993 and paid $3K for it...yeah it was probably way to much but was young and had big dreams!

Can't believe I saved the Bill of Sale...found it the other day!

Here are the 4 pictures that came with the car, some time in the 80's...

When I looked at the car it had the lift off hood, side scoops, motor but the seller wanted to keep all that...as noted on the bill of sale.

 

[Thrashingcows]

So here is the excited and happy 19 year old owner of this cool old 4spd convertible!

And pics the day it got home...

It had 69 fenders that were converted to 68's, and it had been in a couple accidents as you can see the rad support was cut out and mostly missing...no numbers there! It was rusty but I had no idea how bad it was....I would soon discover!

That's it for today...more to come...

 

[MarPar]

 

[Thrashingcows]

Then the disassembly began....

Rusty conv top header...both sides were about the same....

Floor didn't look to bad...

Poor rad support...

Bad pics but the drivers side entire quarter was very poorly replaced from a donor car....held with rivets, screws, brazed wires and nails, and lots of roofing tar!

Getting closer to total tear down...

 

[Thrashingcows]

During this time I was hunting down parts and came across a 1968 Coronet 440, 4dr 383/2V car in the wreckers. It had suffered a bulkhead and electrical fire so I was able to buy the complete car for $200 and another $25 for them to deliver it to my house!

Car was completely rust free, but the fenders were a little dented up so they were kept as spares and I sourced nice clean straight originals, but other then that I used almost the entire car as the main donor for the convertible and it probably saved me thousands of dollars in rust repairs, parts etc...

Heading off to get media blasted and then dropped off at the restoration shop....man that rental trailer was sketchy as all frick!

My Father was always there to lend a helping had...Miss you Dad!

Parts...fenders, trunk lid...

I spent hours drilling out all the spot welds from the inner fenders and rad support to get the damaged originals out of the way, then the same again for the inner fenders from the parts car...was going to use the rad support as well but the only time I've had a chain break when pulling a motor was when the 383 was coming out over the rad support on the parts car and it crushed it!

Rad support came from another 68 B-body....

 

[Thrashingcows]

So I don't have any more pics of the car once it got blasted and then all the metal, bodywork and paint done because I'd purchased a VHS camcorder so I was using that to record everything. I thought I had sent all the tapes I had to Wally when I sold the car, and we looked and hunted for them when I was there and only found the photos so I assumed they were lost. But digging through my boxes of hoarded stuff I've found at least one tape! So I'm going to be sending that out to get it transfered to a CD/DVD/memory stick or ??? so I can capture images to share.

So might be a few weeks before I get the media back and can start updating this again. I do have quite a few photos of the car painted and taken during the assembly but want to keep things chronological if I can. ;)