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.

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.

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.

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.

78 Aspen SuperCoupe Sedan Delivery

Sometimes you see the strangest things on eBay. I found a listing that was labeled 1978 Aspen SuperCoupe Sedan Delivery, and of course that caught my eye. The auction was for a 1978 Aspen wagon that has been converted to a 2 door Sedan Delivery, and then done up Aspen Super Coupe style. It looks like the rear doors have been welded shut and sheetmetal has been used to cover over the rear door windows and the rear wagon windows.

As far as the SuperCoupe pieces, it looks pretty close to having all the right parts. I'm not sure about the sweep of the dark maroon up the rear of the wagon, but that's keeping the paint job inline with the SuperCoupe.

1980 Aspen SportWagon

I was cruising around eBay today looking for parts and cool things, and I stumbled across this: http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/Dodge-Aspen-wagon-sport-1980-Dodge-Aspen-Sport-wagon-possible-1-of-54_W0QQitemZ300169768085QQihZ020

It's rough looking, but it is an ultra-rare 1980 Dodge Aspen Sport Wagon. The Sport Wagon's were only available in 1979 and 1980, for both the Volare and the Aspen. I believe that if you total up both years of production from both lines, there were less than 1,000 built.

It is essentially the R/T (Road Runner) type of add ons, done to a station wagon. Front spoiler and wheel flares, 15" wheels, sport suspension, etc. Some of them had bucket seats and the floor mounted shifter as well.

There used to be a bit more information out on the web for them, but it's since disappeared. I'm gonna have to do some digging to revive that information and put it up on my own website.

This would be a cool car to own. Maybe someday.