Rocky's Road Runner

[hemi*guy]

Hood is fitted up now and also the grille. Blackout stripes done. Another thing to watch for with these repop hoods is the inserts do not fit right, they need to be whittled on a little bit. The mount holes for the Plymouth emblem are crooked too.
Found some nice tail light bezels on EBAY and buffed out the lenses, they look pretty good.
So I am going to quit staring at the body now for awhile, and restore the wiring, dash, steering column and HVAC box.

View attachment 1644837View attachment 1644838

Great work and i like your wall art!

 

[ckessel]

if you end up wanting an oe hood.
1969 - 1970 Plymouth Roadrunner Air Grabber hoods -very good original - auto parts - by owner - vehicle automotive...

 

[RJ Squirrel]

Finished up rebuilding/restoring the electrical system and dash this weekend. Main modifications done were removing the charging system loop through the bulkhead and replacing the ammeter with a voltmeter. I connected the alternator B lead directly to the starter relay battery post. Power to the dash harness (old ammeter black wire) is connected to the same post as well as the power to the headlight relays.
The goal of course is to have minimal current flow through the bulkhead connector. The old wiring was pretty melty.
For the engine harness I made a completely new one and added ecu, solid state adjustable voltage regulator and proper wiring for newer 2 field alternator. Headlight harness is mostly new with relay wiring and re-used headlight socket wiring. Tail light harness needed only connectors cleaned and new wire loom.

 

[RJ Squirrel]

The voltmeter conversion was pretty easy, I followed a write up I found on the net using a cheap Bosch gauge for a donor and attaching it to your existing faceplate. The new gauge centers up pretty good at 14.5 volts. The old ammeter feed wire was used to connect it via an inline fuse.

The connector pins on the cluster circuit board were falling out, so I soldered a 10 pin connector to it and the corresponding wiring in the harness.
I disassembled all the switches, cleaned and greased. These old switches are pretty simple and easy to take apart. I cleaned all the connectors in the harness by soaking them in water/muratic acid solution for a couple hours, then neutralized and greased.

 

[RJ Squirrel]

And as we all know, you cant just work on wiring only for weeks without going nuts, so I did all the new plumbing for the brakes and installed the headliner too


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[JJ383RR]

Beautiful work!

 

[RJ Squirrel]

The primer I used on the interior is a good oil based product thinned with VMP/naptha and applied with a long skinny brush that can put paint in areas that spraying can not do. I reached my long skinny arms in and got as much as I could inside the wheel well area too. Did the same with the Corroseal rust converter before priming and after wire brushing the surface rust off.
Too bad nobody makes a redlead primer anymore.

 

[RJ Squirrel]

I found a great epoxy for repairing plastic parts, PC products PC-7. Working time is several hours, and the next day till it is sandable. It stays somewhat pliable after it cures. I repaired some holes in the lower dash pad and restored my steering wheel that was cracked/deteriorated with it and had very good results. The wheel is painted with SPI epoxy, and the center piece SEM Landau black.

 

[RJ Squirrel]

Heater and vents rebuilt and installed along with wiper parts, parking brake, kilmat, and console brackets

 

[RJ Squirrel]

Worth mentioning that the parking brake goes back in so much easier with the cable already attached- compared to the way I took it apart! Must have fought it and cussed for an hour trying to get that cable off in the car.

 

[RJ Squirrel]

I figured out the console brackets were easiest to install by drawing a centerline on the tunnel first, put the brackets on the console, then tack them on. The left edge of the shifter bracket is the center of the console.

 

[RJ Squirrel]

Glad that console bracket was there- with a board on top of it made a perfect table to set the dash on to get it ready to tip up into place

 

[RJ Squirrel]

Dash in and connected up, plugged in the steering column, put a battery in and some temp alligator clip jumpers to test all I could. Wiper motor, blower, tail lights dash lights dome light etc all A-OK. The cheapo stereo I put in works.

 

[RJ Squirrel]

So put all the electrical stuff away, gonna do something different for awhile. The next goal is to get some wheels under it, just need something to bolt them to. I have most of the parts rounded up and painted. Going to use this 440/727 for now and rebuild the original 383 later on. The 440 is from a 78 truck, it was rebuilt in the late 90’s and has been sitting.

 

[RJ Squirrel]

The HP exhaust manifolds are in the molasses tank, ordered some Hi-Temp gray POR-15 paint to put on them, and some street hemi orange for the engine. The shell has been sitting on the stands/skates all through the body work and paint process, rolled it in and out of the paint jail a few times, but now that it is all painted purty I have to admit the setup is making me a little nervous. So now I want it on its own wheels!

 

[RJ Squirrel]

View attachment 1564667

Pretty funny, a friend of mine has an in-law with heavy Russian accent. I asked her to say "Moose and Squirrel"
She did not know what was so funny, just thought I was nuts!

 

[moparedtn]

Pretty funny, a friend of mine has an in-law with heavy Russian accent. I asked her to say "Moose and Squirrel"
She did not know what was so funny, just thought I was nuts!

 

[RJ Squirrel]

Making good progress with the 440, the numbers show it to have been built in 1974 and most likely from a passenger car, the dipstick hole in the block was filled with RTV. I have the receipts from the rebuild done in 1999 by a machine shop that did it right with new stuff. Did not have many miles put on it looked pretty new inside except for the bores being crudded up from sitting 20+- years. Luckily turned out to be just surface rust and cleaned up with a good hone job. Not trying to build a hotrod with this motor since it will be temporary so putting it back together with the new silvolite 8-1 pistons that were in it along with new cast rings. The heads look great and cleaned up like new. Also installing a new Summit 6400 cam since the one in it was fairly small and set up for a truck.

 

[RJ Squirrel]

It had a new Edelbrock performer 440 intake and new carb put on it during the rebuild, the carb is only a 600 though so will need to buy a 750.
I found a nice set of OEM rocker covers locally so the old finned ones will be tossed.
Ordered non-AC crank and water pump pulleys from 440source along with their motor mounts.
New oil pan from Summit, 5 inch deep hemi pan, and pickup tube from 440source.
This all should convert it back to a B-body car application.

 

[RJ Squirrel]

Got it all ready to slip under the Roadrunner. The crank, water pump and steering pump pulleys from 440 source worked great and lined up well. Motor mounts and brackets are 440 source as well, they are the "2250 HEAVY" mounts that fit well. The oil pan and windage tray/ gasket from Summit fit good too with a 440 source pickup tube. I filled all the dimples in the pan flange with JB weld for a nice flat surface. That nice little chrome dipstick and tube is from Mr Gasket, it fit perfect too. The clutch fan I had was a 20 inch, I found this year correct unit locally, same guy I bought the OEM valve covers from. The manifolds turned out great too, after a molasses soak, pressure wash, a little wire brush scrub and 2 coats of the POR-15 high heat gray paint. I put them in my oven at 400 degrees for an hour and a half after they dried in the sun for 2 days. Nothing special, it is a basically stock 1974 440, but it will look good under my hood.
So all in all, I got lucky rounding up the parts to make this work, they all fit. Thank you 440 Source!