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Rebirth of my 1970 GTX!

More pics...

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I like the green and black...very striking combo.

I remember doing the vinyl top on my GTX....an upholsterer friend of mine did the job with me being the glue gun lackie. :)

Take it slow, and don't try and rush things. The car will come together before you know it. :thumbsup:
 
I like the green and black...very striking combo.

I remember doing the vinyl top on my GTX....an upholsterer friend of mine did the job with me being the glue gun lackie. :)

Take it slow, and don't try and rush things. The car will come together before you know it. :thumbsup:
Thanks, Kiwi! I feel like slow has definitely been the name of the game here. But, The ball is rolling!
 
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Love that gator grain stuff! :thumbsup:
Think of the car as an oversized model kit now - it's going to be so much fun putting it together. :)
 
Those gator grain roofs are very cool! Your car is coming along nicely!!
 
Love that gator grain stuff! :thumbsup:
Think of the car as an oversized model kit now - it's going to be so much fun putting it together. :)
Yes, and then I'll get to drive it! I can't wait! A friend let me drive his 'cuda a bit ago and it brought back that great feeling of cruising around town in an awesome car!
 
Those gator grain roofs are very cool! Your car is coming along nicely!!
Yes, cool indeed! I don't think they sell very many of them. The lady at Legendary was pretty surprised when I said, "No, not the boar-grain, the gator-grain." She said, "Oh, wow! You're really going for it, huh?" Boar-grain is $300, gator-grain is $1,300. That thousand dollars is long forgotten and I'm super happy!
 
Well, it seems things are going slow. Summer hit and I got busy doing other crap! But, here is one project that was easy enough to get done. The trunk weather strip is glued in! I used the 3M yellow super weatherstrip and gasket adhesive. It worked great and the clothes pins helped keep it in place nice. I spread a thin layer on the car and weatherstrip and let it tack up. Then, another very thin layer on that and pressed them together.

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Yes, I know it is supposed to be offset from the latch but I didn't have enough material to work with. This strip came back with my car from the bodyshop and it looks like real nice stuff so I used it.
 
So, I haven't posted much lately but that doesn't mean I haven't been busy. Here are a couple easy enough things that I got done. I ordered front and rear hood seals from Detroit Muscle. I never had the rear one to compare to but the front one looks very close to the original as do the clips. Snap the clips in and you're done. Easy, and I have a bit more shelf space!

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The dash light found its way to my bench so I figured I'd put some work into it. The hardest part was getting the clip that holds the plastic in place off with out breaking the plastic. The chrome is not perfect but I felt it was good enough to bypass a trip to the chrome shop. You could say I cheated by painting the clip rather than get it plated. Oh, well... I polished the chrome, plastic and the electrical contacts. I have a blackening product from Caswell that seems to work pretty good. I'll put the screws in there when I have more hardware to blacken.

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Here is a teaser of things to come! I found a 1970 service block that spent about 9 months at the machine shop but it is back in my garage! No numbers on it! Also I scored a 1970 18-spline 4-speed and a 1970 Track-Pak Dana 60 with 3.54 gears. The motor is first on my list. Here is the set up so far: 512 stroker kit from 440 source as well as their Stealth heads. I'm going for a stock looking engine compartment. The cam is from Bob K. (Mr. Six-Pack) The rockers are 1:6 from Harland Sharp.
 
These guys have been my friends the last couple weeks! The bore gauge is super cool! This is my first motor build so I want to have some fun with it! I've been checking clearances to verify the machine work done. So far, it's spot on! Everything is close to the 0.0025 area.

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I've been checking clearances to verify the machine work done.
Excellent. You don't want to hope that the clearances are right, you want to know that they are right. Check especially the mains, both size and taper. You want absolute max taper of .0005"

Enjoy the build. It is really cool when you get an engine running that you have built - very satisfying!
 
I built race engines for a living for years. I also built restored mopar engines before that. With that being said, setting that dial bore gauge to the desired test setting is a challenge. It is an art that takes a lot of patience and practice to get it right. I bought a bunch of sunnen dial bore gauges and their set up fixtures so I could be absolutely certain the measurements I was getting were correct. I used one like yours for years, my machinist still does, lol, I just double check it all with my stuff. It is 1000 times more accurate than plastigauge. I commend you on trying to do it correctly.
Do yourself a favor and set oil clearance targets for rod bearings, main bearings, pistons, etc. I begin by labeling every piston and rod A through H with a sharpie. Then I mic the crank and record those measurements to the .0001". Next, I install all the rod bearings into the rods and torque them to spec. Then I take the median of the rod journal measurements and check the clearance measurement on each rod and record it next to the letter. Then you go back and move the rods to whichever journal gives that rod the closest to your target clearance, then assign that rod the cylinder number. I use an engraver to mark the cap on the side, top and bottom. Pistons are similar. Takes me 8 to 24 hours to assemble and blueprint an engine this way. There's a lot more to it but this will help you get started. Good luck!
 
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