Bodywork Challenge and ’70 Cuda!

Today on muscle car, the Camaro gets on its wheel. The Challenger gets more work done then without a surprise.

Hey, everybody, you're back in the shop with me and Jared. Now we got a lot of stuff going on,

but we're gonna get back to our hardcore projects.

Oh, yeah, like the Challenger here is gonna need some serious help in the structural department

and you're gonna get to see what that Camaro looks like on its wheels and tires. You ready to do that, man? What are we waiting on? Let's go.

We've got most of the sheet metal work on the rear in pretty good shape.

And since you saw it last, we put a new quarter on the driver's side, fix the roof and we ran ad a over the whole thing to send out the primer and give it a uniform look.

Now, as you can see, we have some issues with the gaps in the front, but this problem goes way deeper than just a bad fender.

Yeah, you can tell him one time it's like this baby was punched in the nose.

We're gonna have to remove the fenders and the hood to fix the things underneath like the inner fenders and the firewall. You can't repair the outer panels till these areas are taken care of

something. You guys gotta remember with a car this old, wherever the battery is located, you're gonna have rust

and we're gonna cut that out

and with the inter fender out of the way,

it's gonna make it a lot easier to fix the firewall

and we found more damage right here caused by a crash. Not only is it ugly but it's gonna keep our fender from fitting right too. So we're gonna cut it up

LA on.

Now. You're probably wondering why I'm playing with fire. Well, when this thing was punched in the nose, there's a high spot here

and it's so high we can't beat it out because of the location. So,

what I'm gonna do is heat it up nice and cherry red. Even though the metal is gonna stretch, we're gonna fix this.

That's nice.

Get ready

action.

This isn't good on mom's kitchen towel

ad like this took thousands of pounds of pressure because, you know, this car weighed around 4000 pounds and when it hits something that's a ton of force, actually, two tons of force and all we have is a two pound hammer. So sometimes you got to super heat the metal, so it's a little easier to work with.

All right, with everything out of the way now is the best time to turn our attention to fixing the firewall area.

And since we're not really worried about a factory looking restoration, we're gonna clean this up by fixing the rust and getting rid of these factory holes. That's gonna give us a really killer look in the engine compartment.

Let's see what's underneath. Shall we

more rust? Yay

using metal from around his shop, we'll recreate the pieces. We can't save

the best way to get rid of the larger holes is make a patch panel,

then replace the area with the new piece.

I need some theme music

that

for us.

One,

check it out. Got a tip for you. We're gonna fill all these little holes. Right? You take a piece of aluminum or copper

and you, when you weld on it,

it doesn't stick to the copper but it'll stick to the steel.

Hit it. My strong,

let's get the rest of them.

Not for nothing.

All the holes are gone and it's about time we're finally ready to move on to some new sheet metal. We got rid of all the unnecessary holes and kept the ones we're gonna use. So let's get to it.

Interfer.

Well, yes, sir. Ok.

Oh, yeah.

Well, you have masterful penmanship. Mr Liu.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Sounded really nice. Luke

bring in the fender cam.

Sweet.

When you come back.

We knew this thing was hurt

but we didn't know how much

it's gonna be there. Might be some real crazy fabrication ahead.

What do you think if you had to make an educated guess,

do we need to pull the frame on it?

I'm looking for a spot that's got damage.

There's got there, there's gotta be

somewhere in this car it has to be buckled.

There's a dip here and then there's a high here and then also you can see where these two pieces separated here

when this went in. You know, that pulled down. Everything is cause and effect on a car like that.

It is a good,

all right. Now, this is the reason for test fitting. We know this thing had been damaged, but now it's pretty apparent, it's been jumped and we know this because the gaps at the tops of the fenders on both sides is tight and at the bottom it's huge. So it

would lead me to believe this thing's landed on its nose at one point in its life.

Another thing that leads us to believe that this thing has seen the kind of air time that Tony Hawk would be proud of.

You got a dent right up in here and the door is actually rolled under the fender. Now over here probably is what happened was the tire was driven up in the defender causing all this damage. Looks like it's time for plan B. Oh, yeah.

All right. Here's the deal. We have figured out. This thing's done some aerobatic maneuvers at some point in time. So to fix it, we got to get the nose back down and to do that, we're gonna utilize the Z joint in this area and it's actually gonna make it stronger than stock.

I'll mark out the cuts

and then match it up on the other side

because what I'm gonna do is cut a couple of pieces and one by one. So we can make a brace for the front sub frame.

Tell me when you're crappy, I'm crappy. Ok, let's go.

Yeah, that should do it.

The reason why you wanna put this brace in is so when you cut the frame rails, everything stays nice and square

and you don't have any problems,

but we gotta get the nose down. So we're gonna cut the frame.

We chose a Z cut because it'll give us more surface area to weld when we put this thing back together

before we finish the frame, we're gonna hang these new fenders from Good Mark to make sure that all of our body lines are straight now. These are really cool because they're prototypes

and yeah, we got them because we're on TV. But don't worry the real one should be available soon. So keep checking your parts suppliers.

Yeah. At least we don't have to repair this piece of garbage. That is true, but we do have to worry about a couple of things that you guys at home don't like transplanting this headlight area. From our old fender to our new one. It's a case

to make our patches.

I'll cut out pieces from an extra framer.

Hello. Y

let's see how it fits.

Keep your fingers crossed.

Mhm.

All right, man. If we can, uh, go ahead and throw all the shims and all the bolts in it, just get it where it belongs. It'd be gold. Yeah.

And we can start tacking the frame in place. Cool.

There you go.

Yeah, it's definitely better, better.

It's better. But, uh,

how much better?

Now what we're doing here is we, you saw us make the Z cut, then

I'm gonna take this plate,

put it over the, over the weld like that,

clamp it and then I'll weld all these little holes in and weld it all the way around. This thing will be so strong. It won't even be funny.

Well, ah,

I'm going to say in all the primer out the front fenders just like I did in the back for several reasons. One, it's going to give me a better line of sight on all of my body lines. Two, I'm going to do when I get the body work anyway.

And plus it just looks cool.

I got the good feeling, man. The good vibrations. No, everything feels like it's supposed to and it looks good. It does, it looks great. You know why?

Because nothing's out of whack, nothing's whacked because it's just like building a house. If your foundation is out of whack. That house is out of whack. Our frame was out of whack. It's straight now. It's no longer in whack, it's out of whack, something's wacky. Coming up. This week's muscle car flashback,

tricky dick wasn't the only one fighting a war in 1970. The big three were fighting their own war for years when Plymouth launched a massive offensive with the C

A

and then they dropped

the atomic bomb by adding the

hemi

muscle car flashback this week, the 70 Dodge 4, 26 hemi

CDA

in the sixties, Ford and GM had the pony car market cornered with their wildly popular mustangs and Camaros.

But by 1970 Chrysler wanted a piece of the action

so to get it, they uncorked a serious can of whoop ass

called the

Hemuda built on Plymouth's macho Eba.

The 70 Barracuda sports a thin front bumper fog lamps and a deep set grill, a shaker scoop in the long pin hood lets the Ka

gulp massive amounts of cold air.

Its profile is clean with rally wheels wrapped in

fat f 60 tread fishkill rocker moldings. And of course, those flat black hockey stick stripes out back.

The Ka sported a short deck recess tail lights and that four letter word that stands for one of the fastest rarest and coolest muscle cars ever built

wider, longer and stronger to hold the massive

hemi. The Ka

is an adrenaline rush not available in mere mortal muscle cars.

Plymouth's smallest car got its biggest engine under the shake of hood. The legendary Big Boar 426 Street

hemi,

2650 Carter cars, a dual plane aluminum intake and a hydraulic cam help to generate 425 horse and 490 ft pounds of torque. That's according to the factory.

In reality, the

hemi makes 500 plus horsepower.

The high performance theme carries over inside with optional high back leather buckets, sports steering wheel, padded dash

rally gauges with 100 and 50 mile an hour. Speedo and co

the door badges.

A unique hears, pistol grip four speed just begs you to punish the tires. The

hemi a day of 60

a four speed were good for 13 and a quarter at 100 and seven miles an hour.

It was definitely a kick ass ride but the coa

wasn't cheap. The

hemi

added a whopping 1227 to the base price bringing the total to over four grand. That's big bucks in 1970.

As a result, Plymouth only built 666 Hemm

Kotas in 1970

only 14 of them were convertible.

That low production. A rake is design in America's most infamous V8 combined to drive demand.

Recently, a restored drop top

heavy, sold for over a million bucks establishing this awesome mot car as the most valuable muscle car Honda Planet.

Now that we've got that Challenger looking good. We got one more thing that we gotta do today and let's get this Camaro on its wheels.

Now we call curry enterprises for a nine inch Ford housing for our rate. Camaro. The beautiful thing about this is new housing, new center section, new axles. All you gotta do is call them bolts right in.

Now, normally Camaros were mono leaf, but we're using these multi leaf springs from Detroit speed. The cool thing about them, they lower the car two inches.

Now, I know some of you guys are probably wondering why did I mount the front of the Lee springs first. Real simple reason.

It makes it easier. You don't have to wrestle with the leaf springs bolted to the rear end.

You just have to wrestle with the rear end

stay.

You got a unibody car, right? That thing's flexing all over the place when you're stabbing it. What you do is put in a set of these babies frame connectors, ties the front sub frame to the rear Subra

makes it nice and rigid

bolton frame connectors are cool, but I really prefer to weld mine in

the reason why I'm grinding that primer off the car is to get a nice clean surface to weld to take those sparks like a man

like a band.

You're gonna have to do a little modification on these frame connectors to get them in there where they need to be. But that's OK, because in the long run it's well worth it.

B I NGO she's in

oh hey, Lou.

Uh

not to suggest anything but hey, quit lollygagging. I'm almost done here. Get the bag.

Hey guys, our Craig Camaro is gonna have a wicked stance in these classic looking billets from wheel antiques. They're wrapped in G Force tas from BFG.

And personally I think the tread patterns ass kicked,

man. I am liking it. The body is good. The engine's good. I'm liking it, man. It's going together. Yeah, this thing is looking so tough and it's only gonna get better as time goes on.

And you guys, if you're anything like me, you're probably wishing this sucker was filling a spot in your garage, but it's not going to your garage now, is it? You know why? Because it's going to one of you guys out there. That's right. We're gonna give this thing away. Well, you heard him and on that note, I'm gonna go home and fill my garage floor with tears.

I wish I had it. I don't blame you later. See you guys later.