Bringing it back to factory specs

[resq302]

Back in late April of last year, we traded away our concours restored 70 El Camino SS 396 that was fully loaded, triple black, for a 1969 GTX convertible. The GTX has all of its original sheet metal, numbers matching drive train, all factory original gaskets, glass, convertible top, etc. The car is practically in survivor condition with the exception of one exterior repaint and the carpeting and seat covers replaced due to fading when we got it. While doing some research on the car, we found that a total of 701 - 1969 Plymouth GTX Convertibles were made. This was also the last year for the GTX convertible as the Roadrunner was outselling the GTX by a margin of 4:1 since the GTX was the top of the line and the Roadrunner was considerably cheaper. Of these 701 cars produced, 362 came with the 440 V-8 and Automatic trans. Out of the 701, there are 47 left known in existence as of 2/14/2002. Our goal is to bring the vehicle back to factory fresh conditions with retaining as much of the factory assembly aspects and appearance as possible. Essentially, almost an OE type of resto but the car has base/clear paint job on it (done prior to us getting it) Here are some of the photos of when we got the car.

 

[68sportsatelliteragtop]

Beautiful car!

 

[69SatelliteConvertible]

X2^^^^^^^^

 

[resq302]

Thanks! I actually have a lot more photos on the resto. Factory undercoated car and still has all of the original bushings, weather stripping, tie rods, ball joints, etc that the factory installed. Heck, when we got the car it even still had the original H pipe on it! So far, I have been able to find all of the original tags that were on the wiring. We even had a yellow crayon inspection mark on the underside of the glove box door! More pics to come! Just bear with me as I have over 442 pics compiled so far! lol

The lower part of the dash had what appeared to be sprayed a "dukes of hazzard" tan color on it if you can see in the pics.

factory fender turn signal pod car too.

keep in mind that the car no longer has these rallye rims on it as the previous owner put the original road wheels with the red line tires back on it.

 

[Snowtrooper1966]

Wow. Nice topless X!

 

[resq302]

original door panels and paint

inside of original paint on convertible top frame and inside of material on original roof

quarter emblems original and in excellent condition!

original quarter..... straight as an arrow!

tail light bezels and finish panel still in fairly nice shape.

 

[resq302]

numbers matching engine and drive train with how we got the car. A lot has been changed and still more stuff to change out to make it correct.

spark plug wires were the first thing to go! bleh.

and the same with that RED heater hose. bleh again!

engine how it is now..... so far (pie pan just not installed in these pics)

dash being torn apart to restore the padded dashes and switch assembly.

you can see the "dukes of hazzard" tan that was sprayed on the lower part of the dash. Thankfully that will be removed and the original color put back.

underside of dash/firewall. factory red oxide primer still there. Also, note the red dichromate nuts for the wiper pivot mounts.

more of the red oxide primer.

 

[tallhair]

Very nice GTX drop top and thanks for sharing .. keep em coming

 

[resq302]

some more before pics prior to us starting the resto.

44 years of grease and grime accumulation! factory undercoated car was preserved very nicely with the added grease and oil that dripped and blew under the car over the years!

factory H pipe!

ok, so someone added day 2 air shocks! They were actually made by Delco (sorry, no GM parts allowed on our Mopar!) lol

original convertible top! still in excellent condition. We have a feeling it was stored down most of its life inside a garage!

white paint dab on the rear bumper bracket

 

[resq302]

thanks. I plan on it. Plan on making this an ongoing resto documentation of the car. I'd say we are a good half of the way done with a lot of cleaning and little bit of detailing to do still! Most of the undercarriage has had the undercoating freshened up on it as we did not want to spray new over the top as that would lose the original texture so we ended up applying the 3M Bodyschutz undercoating by hand with a coarse hair brush and dabbing it on getting enough to just cover the undercoating to give it that fresh black color. This was NOT a fun job and I can feel the pain that Dave at ECS and his crew went through when they did the Valiant! At the end of the day, even after a couple of hours, all you saw on the bottom of the car was black!

orange inspection mark on the torision adjuster

factory area where tape was to block off the holes for the seat studs, typical of st. louis plant built cars. dark gray primer still there!

factory paint markings on torsion bar

to B or not to B! lol

removed the rear rubber fuel lines (KV markings) which still had the keystone clamps on them. EB fuel line was from the front line to the fuel pump.

original keystone clamps from the back rubber lines. 5/16 and 1/4 return.

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pics of when we "freshened up" the factory undercoating

as you can see, there are still some areas where we had to "touch up" the undercoating but we had to reapply the dark gray dip primer in spots due to some surface rust starting. Here you can see where we need to go back and touch up the undercoating with q tips and tooth pics.

area where gas tank would be. the flash actually made the gray look a lot lighter than what it was.

 

[roadrunnerman]

Excellent looking car. Always nice to work on something like that when the original stuff is still there and that clean.

 

[resq302]

original gas tank removed due to large dent in underside of it.

underside of trunk floor where gas tank was. original dark gray dip tank primer.

undercoating scrubbed clean and drive shaft reinstalled after it was soaked in evapo-rust. Once all of the rust was removed, a coating of RPM made by ECS was applied. Stuff works wonders!

markings we found on the axle casing after cleaning off 44 years of grease and grime!

writing in baby blue appears to have said "ebrake" ? Maybe a possible issue with the e-brake or part that was out of stock at the time?

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Excellent looking car. Always nice to work on something like that when the original stuff is still there and that clean.

Absolutely! I'm still amazed at how original this car is with very little stuff being molested with or changed out. It still has its original starter replay and horn relay too! both have the Chrysler part number and date coding that coincides with the time frame the car was built. How often do you find stuff like this?

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original door panels removed although in good shape, not perfect like we are wanting for our car. We will keep these in the event we can restore them at some point.

origininal glass that is 44 years old!

 

[69Coronetrt]

.... Out of the 701, there are 47 left known in existence as of 2/14/2002.

Beautiful car and thank you for the pictures of original components and markings. Having seen your previous work, I have no doubt that the car will be exceptional when done.

One must be cautious with using statements like the one above. You can know how many are in any one person's data base (I can account for 40 '69 RS27's. Are they the same 40 that someone else may have? Maybe. Maybe not. They may know of some I don't and I may have one or two cars they don't know about) but it is impossible to know how many of any one make and model exist. Many cars are still 'hidden' and/or never been 'registered' with anyone. Many cars exist in shell only and will never be on the streets again. Previously 'unknown' cars surface all the time.

 

[resq302]

reason why we replaced the tank.

more of the unrestored part of the car (minus the monroe shocks)

slightly faded sun visors

jambs still had the original factory applied paint on it

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69Coronetrt, very true and thank you for the compliment. but the 701 is a known number that were produced. The numbers of how many are left known in existence was taken from when Barrett Jackson sold one of these cars back in 2006. According to them (and they could be wrong) there were 47 left known in existence as of 2/14/02. Either way, total production of 701 is not that many to begin with.

I will say this. Dad's GTX vert will be the Diamond of the fleet when we are done with it. It will actually make my charger look bad! lol

 

[69Coronetrt]

but the 701 is a known number that were produced. The numbers of how many are left known in existence was taken from when Barrett Jackson sold one of these cars back in 2006. According to them (and they could be wrong) there were 47 left known in existence as of 2/14/02. Either way, total production of 701 is not that many to begin with.

No disagreement with the approximate number produced. We have the factory documents for verification. It is a low production car.

Are there 'many' out there? No. Not sure I would count BJ as a credible source as to how many exist. Most likely, they took their numbers from how many GG had on file at that time. The same rules of knowing a finite number of cars in existence includes them. No one person or source can know how many of any one thing 'exist'.

Beautiful car. Looking forward to seeing it some day.

Thanks again for the pics with documentation. I presume you are taking pictures of all date coded items.

 

[resq302]

pics of original features from the factory that is still inside our trunk! A lot of these pics were taken before I cleaned up some over spray from when they repainted the floor of the trunk when they repainted the exterior of the car.

factory runs on underside of trunk lid

original trunk weather stripping

off set seam, typical factory job

factory tire jacking decal

factory tire pressure decal

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No disagreement with the approximate number produced. We have the factory documents for verification. It is a low production car.

Are there 'many' out there? No. Not sure I would count BJ as a credible source as to how many exist. Most likely, they took their numbers from how many GG had on file at that time. The same rules of knowing a finite number of cars in existence includes them. No one person or source can know how many of any one thing 'exist'.

Beautiful car. Looking forward to seeing it some day.

Thanks again for the pics with documentation. I presume you are taking pictures of all date coded items.

Absolutely!

 

[tallhair]

I just noticed the Challenger .. pretty cool colors on that to white w/ red stripe

 

[resq302]

here are some more progress pics of our GTX "clean up". Original drive shaft was removed and soaked in a tube of evapo-rust to dissolve any rust. VERY TINY pits were left but the over all appearance and feel of the shaft was very smooth. The pitting so small, it is hard to even show up in the pics.

Last pic is of the part number that is very hard to read on the shaft. It seems like the part number is 2996 with a larger 161 to the right of it. There also appears to be just to the right of the larger 61 another set of numbers. Those numbers are 131 which could possibly be the date code of May 10th. If so, this would put this part date before any of the other date coding on our car as it has a SPO date of 10/3/68.

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I just noticed the Challenger .. pretty cool colors on that to white w/ red stripe

Yes, the Challenger is my Mom's toy. 1970 Dodge Challenger convertible. #s matching drive train, factory white car with red interior. Originally a black vinyl top but when we got it, it had a white top on it and Mom refuses to put a black top onto a car that does not have air conditioning. lol. The white paint was a little too much for Mom and Dad so they decided to break it up with the red side stripe. So, while as the red stripe is not coded for the car, it is something that can easily be changed back if we want to go all white again.

 

[69Coronetrt]

It seems like the part number is 2996 with a larger 161 to the right of it. There also appears to be just to the right of the larger 61 another set of numbers. Those numbers are 131 which could possibly be the date code of May 10th.

161 would be the proper part/assy number for a prop shaft on a 69 GTX automatic 8.75 car. 131 could be the 'day of the year' code meaning 131st day of 1968 but that seems a little early in the year for an Oct build car. They would still be building '68s at that time. It seems odd that this shaft would have sit around for five months. Plus, the 742 assembly with associated yokes would have been the predominant third member in May, not the 489 case. Hmmmmm....

 

[bigmanjbmopar]

What great car. Love that color returning mine to it's original t5 someday.