Lookie what $5000 buys you....

On another note, I'm using this car as a test mule for a rear shoulder belt project.

Rear shoulder belts in a 1970 Charger

I'm also planning on installing rear shoulder belts in my red car, Ginger.



The seat belts will replace the lap belts in the left and right rear seat passengers but not the center. Those will remain stock.
@CoronetDarter is also installing shoulder belts in his 69 Coronet.

Kern Dog said:

The Polara axle has been stripped down and the perches are now 44" apart to fit in Jigsaw....

View attachment 1939164

I was 1/16" off from left to right.

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6 5/16" to the backing plate on the left, 6 3/8" on the right. (Don't tell the car show judges)

View attachment 1939165

I may look for some used tires to put on these wheels just to have something to roll on. The RF 15" tire on the car now drains flat in 3 days.
The front wheels are 16 x 7 and measure 1/2" further inboard and outboard of the 15 x 6 wheels I have on the car now. The 16s clear by a mile.
These 16s are custom from Stockton Wheel around 2017 or thereabouts. I know, they are an odd size and quite heavy but I don't see them at risk of bending, that is for sure.

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One thing you might want to consider... Sometimes having the axle perfectly centered over the springs doesn't mean they are perfectly centered in the car... I prefer to have the tires/wheels bolted to the axle, the perches set on the locator pins & the housing cradled in the perches... Now center the tires in the wheel wells as best you can.. The springs may or may not be perfectly positioned side to side but you can center the tires as well as possible....

Stuff gets welded but it can be cut off and moved a bit too.
I may swap axles tomorrow. Maybe I'll trial fit the huge rear tires to see how the clearance is.
The 68-70 Chargers have wide hips and a lot of body overhang at the rear tires.





Those wheels are 15 x 7 with an unknown amount of back spacing. I always thought that the stock width rear tires in the Chargers and Dusters look way too tucked in. I like a tire and wheel pushed out as wide as it can go.

Kern Dog said:

I'm not sure if I will stick with these wheels or not. It might make more sense to step back to a 15 or up to a 17. The 16" diameter size seems to be an orphan.

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I'm blessed/cursed with a need to avoid waste, to try to make do with what I have rather than throwing out stuff that still has value.

1 Wild R/T said:

16" was the first "Big" wheel tire, but it was being phased out by the mid 90's... And I doubt that situation is gonna improve...

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That sure does seem to be the case. I was at 4 used tire stores today looking for some trade-in tires in the 245-50-16 and 255-50-16 size. Not ONE in the four shops that I visited.

1 Wild R/T said:

Yeah, IMO 16" is a dead option...

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I keep seeing dead ends yet my stubborn nature soldiers on...

ckessel said:

16's are in the soon to be Dodo class like 14's.

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I should just put them up for sale or give them away. They do carry a lot of negatives.
The availability is limited. Sizes are limited. The wheels themselves are HEAVY. If I were to put this wider Polara axle in Jigsaw, I'd not be able to put any other wide rear wheels on it later unless they had the same 6" backspacing. I'd think that most aftermarket wheels don't go that deep.

I got the rear shoulder belts mocked up and fitted.
Also, I was finally able to get an accurate result from an AI image request. I wanted to see what a reverse color scheme would look like on the car, reverse from my red car....





I think it would be cool to have two cars with colors so different.