A Busy Saturday

Today was a busy Saturday. The weather turned really nice, and I had some good quality time to spend with the car. First up was continuing to tear down the interior.

Removed the back seat, and this is the buried treasure that I found. All sorts of crap that had built up over the past several years.


After removing the rear seat, I removed the rear carpet. Found a little bit of surface rust, but not too bad. The floor boards were still solid.


Set the console brackets up to figure out where they needed to be welded at. Removed all the remnants of carpet glue and crap to prep for the welding. After this photo was taken, I shot the bare spots with some primer until I can get to the welding. The center console I got from an eBay auction.

Went up under the car and "sorta" installed the rear anti-sway bar. I installed the frame brackets, attached the bar, and mocked up where the spring pad brackets are to go. Those also need to be welded up. In this shot, you can also see the HD Police shocks that I installed a while back. The sway bar itself came from the junkyard, out of a 1981 Chrysler Imperial. The brackets for the spring perch I purchased off of a member of one of the forums that I frequent.

Here is a shot of the brackets installed on the frame.


Here is another shot of the anti-sway bar and the brackets installed on the frame.


Here is another angle of the anti-sway bar. You can see it snake it's way over the pumpkin in the rear end.

Trans linkage installed

Tonight I was able to take advantage of some of the extra daylight and worked on the car. I got the hole cut in the floor to allow the linkage to go through, and mounted up the linkage pivot to the floor pan. Next up; welding up the center console brackets, installing the floor shifter, connecting the shift linkage to the transmission, and disconnecting the column shifter from the trans.

Center Console Mock Up

On Saturday, the weather turned really nice so I decided to start with one of the projects, installing the center console (picked up from eBay) and converting the car from a column-shift to a console-shift. First, out came the front bucket seats and the console my dad made for me many years ago. Then, some of the interior trim came off to gain access to the carpet. With the carpet removed, I was able to get a view into the 30+ year old floor boards.



Being a daily driver for so long, and only sitting in the arid desert climate has been good to the Party Wagon. The floor boards are in great condition. I've seen some F-bodies where the carpet was the only thing holding the floor boards together. There is just a little bit of surface rust on the passenger side floorboard, but nothing major.





I put the console in for the first mock up . I realized that I'm going to have to pull the rear portion of the carpet too, which means more interior trim will have to come out and the rear lower seat cushion will also have to come out. I'll try and get to that tomorrow, if the weather cooperates. Supposed to be light showers tomorrow. Fingers crossed.

Hot B-Body Wagon

This was linked off of a MoparStyle, it was an eBay auction. This B-Body wagon is pretty frickin slick, very similar to how I want the wagon to end up. The copper color is pretty close to what I want on the Aspen, not sure yet about just the roof as a two-tone or the color of the two tone. Still, this is one hot wagon.

Samples ordered

Today I placed an order for some carpet and headliner samples. I'm going to work hard over the winter time to replace the entire interior and convert it over from red to a more modern looking dark gray/gray theme. The carpet and headliner samples will help me to choose the right color to match the trim that i'm already painting.

Pedal Dress Up installed

Another of my junkyard finds was a pedal dress up kit. Basically amounts to aluminum trim around the basic black pedals. I snagged mine out of the junkyard off of a 75 Chrysler Cordoba.

Before:


After:


Matches very well with the black/aluminum trim Big Foot gas pedal. :)

Also spent some time today reattaching the driver's door weatherstripping. It had come loose again, so a quick fix with some weatherstripping adhesive and almost good as new.

Rear Speaker Liftgate Wiring

Someone on a message board asked me how I ran the wire for the rear liftgate speakers, so reposting for anyone else that wants to know.

The below photo is taken from the right side of the car, but the wiring is run down the left side of the liftgate, this is just to help explain.



I followed how the speakers were wired up in the T&C for this, with one exception. There is a small cavity just underneath and towards the edge of the rear trim panel (red arrow, there is one on each side). The wiring for both speakers enters into the cavity of the liftgate formed by the inner and outer shell. It runs along the edge of the window (inside the liftgate) just like the yellow line in the photo (except on the other side). The wiring exits out the top of the liftgate through a small hole in the upper window area.

On the T&C, there was a grommet and a hole on the upper roof area that my Aspen did not have. For the T&C, this was for the rear speaker wiring, the rear taillight wiring (for the lights on the liftgate) and for a power liftgate relase (if so equipped, mine wasn't). Instead of drilling the hole, I just ran the speaker wire up underneath the rear trim piece that holds up the headliner. You can see the wire in the red box in the photo.

I hope that this information is useful to anyone else.

New Color For Interior

It's been almost a month since my last post, but I actually have been working a little bit on the Party Wagon. I've read up online about what is the best way to change over the color of your interior. The first article I read was hosted on the AllPar.com website (http://www.allpar.com/fix/holler/inside-secrets.html), but it mainly dealt with restoring the original color (or close to it). The article talked about using Vinyl dye to bring life back to your interior.

I searched some more, and several internet forums also posted about using Vinyl/Plastic dye to change the color of your interior. So, I figured I would give it a try. The interior trim pieces from the Town & Country are in much better shape than those in the Aspen, so I started to dye those to the new color I want the interior to be. I am using SEM Vinyl/Plastic dye, graphite in color. I chose graphite because it isn't quite black, it will go with the exterior plans that I have for the car, and it isn't something that I'll see anytime soon (another Aspen/Volare with a graphite interior).

Here is a comparison of the original color of the Town & Country interior and the new graphite color. You can see from the close up shot that the grain is still visible. It appears to be very durable, and it is very easy to apply.

Here are some other pieces that I have already done. I also used the stuff on the metal trim that holds the headliner in, as well as the dash top. I'm installing the dashtop from the Town & Country into the Aspen, as it has the factory holes for the two dash top speakers. The Aspen's dash top only has factory holes for the single, center mounted 4x10" speaker as well as some holes my pops punched into the sides for the additional two dash top speakers. Spraying it on metal is also very easy. The dash top looks very smooth, and the molded grain pattern in the headliner trim also shows through very well.

I Finally Found It

Yesterday being Tax Day, I was working late to support the biggest day of the year for my company. Before I went into work, I decided to make a quick junkyard run to see if there was anything new. The first yard I went to, I had almost given up when I saw the front fender peeking at me from the end of the last row of Chrysler cars. It ended up being a 1978 Dodge Aspen Custom 4-door sedan, green exterior with a green interior (how 70s).

The first thing that caught my eye was the chrome trim wrapped around the front marker light, which meant that this car had the same side trim. But would any of the pieces be usable. As I got closer, i saw a perfect passenger door piece. I quickly snagged it off the door. The vinyl trim is green, but now that I have the piece I will be redying all of the pieces to match (since mine is faded). The only question, redye it red or dye it a different color? The trim is supposed to match the interior, but I'm also about to start changing over the interior, so I may dye it a different color. Heck, if I don't like it I can just redye it back to red.

After getting over my initial excitement of the trim, I looked the car over for some other usable parts. The interior had a dash cap that was in pristine condition, with no cracks. I carefully removed it to take with me. I also removed the speedometer and took that with me. I needed the circuit board (the one in the wagon is cracked) for the back of the cluster. There were some other parts, but I did'nt really need them so I left with my three finds.

Pictures to come later.

New Dash Bezel

After obtaining a silver dash bezel that had a radio delete, I found out that there are 8 different dash bezels. The following are the four types, and each is avaiable in the wood trim or the silver.

• Without A/C, with radio delete
• With A/C, with radio delete
• Without A/C, with radio
• With A/C, with radio

I continued my search for a silver, with A/C, with radio bezel. I found one on eBay, and snagged it. I've already installed it, but I have not yet had time to take photos of it to post up.

A/C Heater Control Replacement

On one of my recent junkyard runs, I pulled a pair some parts from a 1991 Dodge Daytona. One of the pieces that I pulled was the A/C Heater control. Looking at the vacuum hookup on the back, it looked like it would connect right up to the Aspen, so I snagged it to see if it would work. Here's the piece on my workbench.



Here's the backside of the unit, with the wires unbundled and stripped.



After consulting the wiring diagrams for both the Aspen and a Daytona, and some good ol' fashion jumpering wires, this is how far I was able to get it to work.

The Aspen has 4 fan speed settings (Low, Med-Lo, Med-Hi, and High) and the Daytona has 5 fan speed settings (Off, Low, Med-Lo, Med-Hi, and High). I was able to get 4 of them working, sort of. When the unit was set to Off, the fan would be on Low. Set to Low, the fan would be on Med-Lo, on Med-Lo, the fan would be on Med-Hi. When it was set on Med-Hi, I got nothing. When it was on High, the fan blew High. For the most part, I could live with that.

The vacuum workings was another story. The vacuum port did hook up just like I thought, but it didn't work with the right settings. When the floor button was pushed, the air came through the dash vents. When bi-level was pushed, it came through the defroster vents. When the defroster button was pushed, air came out of the floor vents. That part I couldn't live with, so I put that project on hold and installed the unit from the Town & Country.

Instrument Cluster Refresh

While I had the dash apart, I also took some time to freshen up the instrument cluster. The clear plastic cover was scratched and the inside of the cluster had gathered up some dirt and dust over the years. I had purchased another cluster from eBay a while back, and used it for parts to fix it up.



The clear plastic cover was cleaned and polished with Meguiar's Plastic Polish. I wiped down all the dirt and dust from the gauge faces. I also discovered why the coolant gauge doesn't work. The printed circuit board is cracked at the left connector, and the contacts for the coolant gauge are busted. Time to get a new circuit board. I'll be on the look out for one of those.



The last piece of the Instrument Cluster refresh was to be the installation of the silver faced dashboard (to replace the scratched wood grain dash). Here's why I still have the wood grained dash.

I previously ordered a radio delete plate for an Aspen/Volare/Diplomat police package. The plate is a bolt in piece that replaced the radio. I bought it in the event I ever wanted to install it to mount some gauges where the radio goes.



I then saw a silver faced dashboard on eBay. It said that it came with the radio delete as well, so I assumed it was a second version of the piece I already had. Imagine my surprise when it showed up and the radio delete was an integral part of the dash piece.





I didn't install it yet, because I would have to cut out the piece and I'm not sure if I want to actually cut up the piece. Stay tuned...

Shelby Charger Bucket Seats

These seats were actually installed by me about 8 years ago. They are bucket seats out of an L-Body Shelby Charger. I'm not sure what year they were out of, when I found them at the junkyard they were already out of the car. The bucket seats mounted up perfectly to the seat tracks out of the Aspen. The center console in the photo is a custom unit that my dad built to fit in between the seats (It will be replaced with a factory R/T floor console and floor shifter for the automatic soon). The seats were covered by some generic maroon colored seat covers that had gotten pretty tattered, they'll be replaced soon.

Also to note, I assumed that since the L-Body buckets would mount up that any mid-80s Chrysler bucket would also mount up. I purchased a set of buckets from a G-body Daytona (1991). The mounting holes on those bucket seats were too wide for the Aspen/L-Body seat frames.

New Stereo Installed

It's been awhile since I have put any work into the wagon, but this last week I was on vacation and I did spend some quality time with it. The engine is still in the Town and Country, so there was no work done with regards to the engine swap. But, I did install some of the donor parts during my projects last week.

Before I got the car from my dad, it was broken into and the tape deck that was in it was stolen. Nothing else but the tape deck was taken, probably some sort of gang initiation. :)

For the year that I've had it, it has been without tunes. This week I fixed that problem. Here are the components that I installed into the car.

• Panasonic AM/FM/CD/MP3 Player
• Blaupunkt 3.5" 2-way speakers (front)
• Blaupunkt 6x9" 3-way speakers (rear)

Initially, I wanted to install larger speakers in the doors of the wagon. I used the Town & Country to compare, and there is a cavity in the door for the speakers to mount. I pulled the door panel off of the Aspen, and sure enough the same cavity was there. However, since the Aspen didn't have any power options, there is no wiring routed to the doors and thus, none of the panels were punched out to run the wiring through the door jam. I could have mounted the speakers and routed the wires, but that would have required removing the doors completely to gain access to drill some holes to run the wiring. Too much work for what I wanted to do this week.

So, I mounted the speakers in the upper dash area in the factory location. That meant taking the entire dash top and front off to get everything mounted.



Here are the 3.5" speakers mounted in the factory location.



The first part that the Town & Country gave up were the rear speaker mounting brackets that mount the speakers to the tailgate. Here you can see the speakers mounted in the brackets.



The Aspen did not have rear speakers installed from the factory so I had to fish speaker wire through the cavity in the tailgate. Then I had to remove the entire left side interior trim to route the speakers up through to the head unit.



The next part that the Town & Country donated to the Aspen was the rear tailgate trim with the speaker cutouts. The piece is still the tan color that it was in the Town & Country, and it will get dyed when I complete the interior color change over.





Here are a couple of photos of the new head unit installed. It also has an AUX plug on the front, which will allow me to hook up my iPod to it. You can also see the cracked heater control unit in this photo. It was secured with thin wire to keep it attached to the dash.

This was the next part that the Town & Country has donated, a non cracked A/C - Heater control. You can see the replacement in the last photo.

Interior Is Almost Gone

Spent some more time this evening pulling parts off of the T&C. I removed as much as I could that was left of the dash. The lower right side dash I managed to crack while trying to take it off, so that part is now unusuable. I removed all the rest of the interior trim. This includes the header panel, A-pillar trim, upper door trim, B-pillar trim, and lower door trim pieces. I also removed the left side door panels, both front and rear. Here's a few photos of the current state of deconstruction.

All that I have left to pull from the interior is the right side door panels, and all 4 power window motors. Then comes the fun of removing the interior wiring harness. Who knows what I will need from it. And I still haven't decided if I want to keep the tilt steering column or not.

More parts coming off

Yesterday, I had a few moments to spare after work and dinner, so I pulled a few more parts off of the T&C. This was just the radio, HVAC controls, and the intrument cluster support structure.

I did have a revelation. A couple of months ago, while in the junkyard I swiped the HVAC control unit from a 1981 Chrysler Cordoba. I got it because the control unit looked to be a bit more upscale, it had fake chrome buttons on it and a nifty temperature scale (vs. the cool ---> warm of the Aspen). The HVAC control unit in the T&C is the same one as in the Aspen.

When I pulled the one out of the T&C, I noticed that the temperature control arm moved a lever on the opposite side of the unit compared to the one I had from the Cordoba. I compared the two, and that is when I noticed the letters "ATC" stamped on the top of the Cordoba's control unit. I managed to swipe out the Automatic Temperature Control unit. It doesn't look like it would work for the Aspen, unless I snagged the full heater box unit out from a similar ATC car.

Stripping The T&C

Today, I spent the morning cleaning up and organizing the garage to make room for the T&C. Once I got the T&C into the garage, I started pulling parts off of it.

I started at the rear, and pulled the taillights off (they will go to eBay).


I pulled all of the interior pieces out from the rear cargo area. Trim panels, the carpeted areas on the cargo floor, weatherstripping aroudn the tailgate opening, etc.


I then moved to the front seat area. I pulled the Instrument cluster, instrument panel, and dash pad and top.


At that point, it was getting to hot and sweaty in the garage and that became a stopping point. More disassembly coming soon.

Pictures Of The Town & Country

The previous photos I've posted of the Town & Country were from the original web posting that Nick had to sell the T&C. Now that I've gotten it home, and things have slowed down a little bit, I have finally gotten a chance to snap a few photos of the car. I haven't yet started parting it out, that will begin shortly. Here she is in all her glory.

Here are a couple of shots of both wagons in the driveway. These photos show that the Town & Country is essentially a luxury version of the Dodge Aspen (even though Chrysler called the Aspen & Volare an "F-Body" and the Chrysler was called an "M-Body"). On the outside, the roof, doors, tailgate, rear quarter panels and all glass are completely interchangeable between the two.

In this photo, you can compare the rear side windows. The Town & Coutnry has a small vinyl trim piece that is attached to the D-pillar. This effectively makes the rear window shorter in length than the Aspen, but if I had to guess there is window buried under there.

Here are some photos of just the Town & Country.

A neighbor of Nick's backed her car into the driver's door of the Town & Country. Here you can see the damage left behind. This causes the lock mechanism in this door to always be locked, so you either have to keep the window rolled down, unlock it with the key all the time, or climb in another door.

The vinyl top is coming off.

Here's a closeup of the taillight area. You can see that the taillgate has the same cut around where the Aspen taillights went. Also, you can see below the taillight a filler piece that was poorly installed to fill the gap where the Aspen's taillights should have gone.

The main reason for this parts car, the 318 4V V8 engine. The engine in this car is actually a cop motor out of a 1989 Dodge Diplomat police car, so it makes a bit more power than the 318 that would have been in this car in 1978. Runs real nice. Once the engine is out, I'll do a mild rebuild on it.

A few shots of the interior. Tan & Brown, to match the exterior. The leather front seats are torn up, but the driver's seat is a power seat. The back seat is in suprisingly good condition for it's age.

Power windows too. I think I may transfer these parts to the Aspen, to give it some new features it never had.

Here are a few shots of the dash and gauges. I'm still contemplating moving these parts also over to the Aspen. One part that makes the Aspen an Aspen is the square speedometer and instrument cluster. However, most of the mid 60's and early 70's Chrylser products had a standard dash and a Rallye dash. The standard dash was very plain looking, typically square or rectangle in shape (of the instrument cluster). The Rallye dash had round gauges, and more of them. There never was a Rallye dash for the Aspen, but I'm thinking I'm going to create one. Just have to see how that works out.

This is definitely more luxurious than the Aspen. The entire cargo area is carpeted. These parts are definitely coming over to the wagon. The rear tailgate even has speakers (the Aspen came from the factory with one speaker in the dash).