Well...I think I found the reason my Charger was painted...

[Triplegreen500]

So, the roads are covered in salt (and snow), so the 500 is just hangin' out in the garage...and I'm bored.

My new-to-me Charger has been painted. A while ago - it's single-stage, it has plenty of age (stains, minor surface cracks, horribly oxidized when I got the car), it's just the wrong shade of green, and I'd really love to know why it was done because all the body panels have the factory F4 light green underneath, and all the original decals. So, I took a cheesy fridge magnet to the garage - one of the black tape-looking ones, that isn't very strong. It came in the mail, on a pizza joint's coupon sheet.

I checked all the usual suspects - rockers, behind the wheel openings, bottom of the doors, lower quarters...all good metal. Then I moved to wheel openings / upper arches. Fronts are good. Passenger rear, good. Driver rear...magnet doesn't stick, directly above the wheel, where the quarter flares to its widest point. Reach up and around to the inside, through the wheel well, and it's normal-thickness metal there - not a pile of mud. I didn't see any huge wrinkles on the inside of the quarter, looking through the trunk...and it has these stupid stick-on black plastic ding guards that run down the body line, so I can't see if that body line is straight or not. My only guess is, it got a rub/ding/dent in that quarter back in the day, they filled/fixed it...and couldn't get the paint to match, so someone said "paint the whole car". Maybe that's when they added the vinyl top, too (fender tag and broadcast sheet both show painted roof).

I'm going to dig around inside the trunk a little closer next weekend - this weekend I was fixing and using my snowblower, since we had 2 days of snow and ice - and see if I can't narrow down exactly what's going on in there.
Ah...exploration. The adventure of getting to know a 50 year old car!

 

[Durandal25]

.......I've been there many times.....found all kinds of goodies in the drop downs....ammo, money......rubbers....ewwww.

 

[Triplegreen500]

...I wish I could find some ammo..!!!

Amazingly, when I pulled the interior, I didn't find much of anything. No fries, no pens, no coins. Someone actually cleaned it out pretty well before I got it. The guy I got it from had it less than a year; he got it from his brother, who'd bought it from the estate of the original owner back in '18 or '19. Maybe each new owner gave it a good cleaning when they got it, and hadn't had it out enough to get it dirty again!

 

[Durandal25]

......AC vents......lots of goodies in there......when you re-do the heater box.....oh boy!

 

[Triplegreen500]

when you re-do the heater box

Yeah, still debating on that one. Heater hoses were unhooked when I bought it (FL car, not like they need heat). Haven't decided if I'm going to hook them up and see how bad it leaks...or just leave it be. The car won't go out in winter anyway, I'm not exposing it to salt.

Maybe one day I'll be adventurous enough to get the a/c working again...but right now, I don't see myself pulling the dash out anytime soon. It was a big enough PITA just getting the cluster lights working again!

 

[Durandal25]

I scoped mine with a camera. Just to look it over.....pretty good.....we'll find out when she gets some pressure built up.....

 

[zyzzyx]

Yeah, the best thing is to go on E Bay, and buy an endoscope camera with LED lights
that works with your laptop or phone and you can explore all those deep dark places
where a rabbit couldn't go! You can capture photos for future reference too. Not too
expensive either. $12.00to $15.00?

 

[Triplegreen500]

Mine has an aftermarket control valve, outside the firewall. Not sure if that was "the" leak, or "a" leak...but even that was unhooked when I got the car, so I'm betting on Murphy's Law here, and thinking it's "a" leak.

Although, now that the carpet is out it's the perfect time to check it out. Maybe I'll pull out and hook up just the control valve and see if that leaks, then move to the core itself.