70 Coronet - Rebuild

[EJL]

Hello FBBO. I've been a member for a while now and thought it was time for me to share rather than only consume all the cool information on this site.

I've always been a Mopar fan and I caught the bug from my oldest brother. He's always had a few and I even bought one from him when I was younger. It was a 70 Charger R/T that I mostly restored and sold just before I got married. I was without any classic Mopars since I was married 16 years ago, but always dreamed I would again some day.

A few years back my "boss" agreed that it was time for me to find a car and start bringing it back to life. My brother and I searched for a while until I came across something I hadn't seen before. It was a 70 Coronet Wagon 440. It was a solid car from New Mexico and the uniqueness of it caught my attention. When I said I wanted to buy it my brother questioned, "really, a wagon?" I thought of all the possibilities and the fact you wouldn't probably see another one unless you went to Mopar Nationals or similar show, so I bought it. Needless to say, I don't think the "boss" saw the possibilities either when I brought her home.

Two weeks later my brother called me about going to look at 70 Coronet as a project car to rebuild together. We ended up buying that car as well and when I brought it home the "boss" told me to pump the brakes on buying cars. LOL

Anyway, the Wagon was put on the back burner and we slowly started to tear down the Coronet. It wasn't till a little over a year ago we really got to work on it and I thought I'd share some photos. Here's a few pics of what the car looked like when we brought it home.

I'll keep uploading pics of the progress we've made the past year.

Thanks,
Eric

 

[super-bee_ski]

Hi Eric!
Welcome aboard and thanks for joining the forum!
Great story...

 

[EJL]

 

[polywideblock]

welcome

 

[Budnicks]

Welcome to FBBO

good luck with the 70 Coronet Build

 

[EJL]

Thanks Super-Bee Ski and polywideblock.

As you can tell, the car was in rough shape. Previous owner started to work on it and either lost interest or didn't have the time. Car was in an open barn when we bought it. My brother and I tore down to shell and found all the areas needing major repairs.

 

[dla4567]

Doesn't look to bad. What are your plans?

 

[EJL]

Our plans are for a full restoration on the body. I built a soft wall room in my barn with plastic walls to control the dust as much as possible. Then we proceeded to cut out the trunk floor. We found that a portion of the frame rail needed repair.

 

[EJL]

We cut out and replaced the rotted sections on the frame rail and welded back on the car.

 

[EJL]

Frame rails were then blasted and primed in preparation for the new trunk floor. We even coated the inside of the rails with POR-15 for extra protection.

 

[EJL]

Installed new trunk floor and reattached tail panel.

 

[EJL]

Next we had to cut out and replace rotted out corners in rear window frame.

 

[Greg Ducato]

Looking good!

 

[EJL]

Moved on to passenger side quarter and extension replacement last September. Had to repair outer wheel tub flange. Shocker, right? Once repaired, blasted entire area and epoxy primed before welding on.

 

[EJL]

Moved over to driver side quarter and did the same work. It had an ugly patch job done at some point in her life.

 

[EJL]

Had an area on the cowl that didn't look right so I started sanding only to find a large area that had bondo that was about half inch thick. Decided to replace it.

 

[EJL]

Now that all the major steel has been replaced, we were able to mount the shell on the rotisserie. Allowed me to get everything scraped and blasted. Then touched up a few pin holes in the floor pans before epoxy priming.

 

[kiwigtx]

Very nice work on the car so far.

 

[EJL]

After countless hours of blasting it was nice to see some color on the car other than rust color. If I ever go this far on another car, I will bite the bullet and just pay to have the car dipped rather than blasting. Anyone out there know of a reason not to go that route?

Last week after the epoxy primer was put on, we seam sealed everything before shooting the undercoating. I bought the tintable Rockit liner kit from SEM. Turned out really nice for belly of car and inside quarters and outside of inner fenders to replicate factory coating.

Soon after the undercoating was sprayed, I shot finished color over it along with spraying the passenger and engine compartments.

 

[kiwigtx]

Wow!! That's looking sharp now.