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.

Brake Upgrade - Right side

Even though I got a late start today, I was able to get some work done on the Aspen. I was able to complete the budget big brake upgrade on the right side.

Budget Big Brake Upgrade

A little bit about the Budget Big Brake upgrade. The Aspen came from the factory with 10.87" front disc brakes. These were essentially the same brakes available on A-bodies (Duster, Dart, Valiant), and earlier B- and E-bodies as well as M- and J-bodies (Diplomat, Fifth Avenue, Cordoba, Imperial, Mirada) through the 80s. In the mid 70s, Chrysler's larger cars received larger 11.75" rotors. These included B- , C- and R-bodies. These 11.75" rotors are very easy to swap over to the Aspen.

From the junkyard, I snagged a pair of caliper mounting brackets from a 1980 Dodge St. Regis. I also ordered new rotors for the same car. Those are the only extra parts needed for the swap. Everything else (caliper & pads) are the same between the St. Regis and the Aspen, so I am able to reuse those parts.

Front wheel removed. Here you can see the aluminum spacer that I run to mount up the 17x8" Mustang Bullitt rims.


A straight-on shot of the stock brake rotor.


Here is a comparison shot of the 11.75" rotor from the Dodge St. Regis (left) and the 10.87" rotor from the Aspen (right).


New 11.75" rotor installed. Also replaced the wheel bearings with new.


Stock Aspen caliper and pads installed on the new 11.75" rotor.



BEFORE: Stock 10.87 rotors:

AFTER: New 11.75" rotors:


The new rotors fill out the 17" rims a little better, and should provide some additional stopping power. Tomorrow after softball I'll do the left side.

The Mailman Delivers

Much to my surprise this afternoon, the new brake rotors that I ordered arrived via UPS today. I wasn't expecting them until next Monday, so I was pleasently surprised. This means that I get to do my brake upgrade this weekend.

Here is a photo of one of the shiny new rotors:



As I get the brakes installed, I will do a more thorough write up of the modification.

Right Side Sport Mirror - Installed

Last weekend the passenger's side mirror didn't get installed because I couldn't find the drill. I realized much later that night that I had loaned it to a friend and hadn't gotten it back yet. The drill has returned, and I was able to finish the mirror installation.

I used the gasket as a template to mark and drill the holes. I used one of those stepped drill bits to get the holes drilled.


Taped off the holes to put some primer down on the exposed metal to keep the rust at bay.




And viola... installed. Looks real nice with the matching one on now.

Junkyard Finds

This morning I went hunting through the Junkyards and ran across these two wagons.

#1 - 1978 Chrysler LeBaron Town & Country



This one might look familiar to reader's of the blog. It's my old parts car wagon. It was actually the reason I went to the junkyard, to see if it was put out for parts or already sent to the crusher. It's a wierd feeling to see a car that had your name on the title in a junkyard.

#2 - 1976 Dodge Aspen



I found this one odd due to the position of the luggage rack. It is the factory luggage rack, matches the one on the Aspen (and on every F & M Wagon I've seen). But it is placed to far forward. Mine (and every other one I've seen) lines up with the rear of the car, and the front posts are above the rear door. But this one lined up with the windshield, leaving alot of space towards the rear of hte car. There were no other holes in the rear of the car (to indicate someone moved it forward after the fact). All the proper gaskets were there as well. Factory screw up?

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.

Junkyard Hunting

Well, softball season is offically over now. I should have some time to dedicate to working on the car now. I decided that this past weekend was a good time to go and roam through the junkyards to see what's out there.

I hit pay dirt!!

I have been searching and searching for a set of the 11.75" brake caliper mounts, so that I can upgrade the front disc brakes to the larger 11.75" brakes. The caliper mounts can be found in B-body Cordobas, Chargers, etc, as well as the even larger R-body Chrysler New Yorker, Dodge St. Regis, etc. All the Cordobas that I have seen, all had the older pin-style calipers (not the slider type likeon the Aspen). I found one R-body, and the bolts were so rusted that I was unable to break them loose with the tools I had.

Sunday, I found 4 sets(!!!) of the caliper mounts. A 78 Dodge Magnum, a 78 Cordoba, an 80 New Yorker and an 80 St. Regis. I pulled the mounts from the New Yorker, cuz it was the first one I saw. They came off with very little effort. Score one for budget big brake upgrade.

The second score was the 1982 Imperial in the second yard. This car still had the complete rear sway bar. I've already purchased a sway bar and a set of custom made brackets to weld to the spring caps, but I still needed the frame mounts. I picked up the entire bar, frame mounts, and end links for next to nothing!

The parts are home now, and after my trip to North Carolina I'm going to start ordering parts. Coming up I'll be doing the following:

- Replacing suspension: front and rear shocks, rear springs, rear sway bar, possible cop-size front bar.

- Upgrading brakes: budget big-brake (11.75") upgrade in the front, replacement of shoes in the rear, new master cylinder.

- Upgrading steering: new steering box (firm feel unit), new tie rod ends, and new steerign wheel (tuff-wheel lookalike).

Stay tuned.

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.