SRT-8 Daytona Clone

[Stevearino]

I found a hot rod universal kit that might work for the wipers. I uses a cable and gear similar to what Mike suggested with the rack and pinion set up and Mike you are right about people saying you don't need wipers on something like this. Only one problem. This will definitely not be a trailer queen. I'm gonna drive this thing a lot.

DJ , the single wiper might be the way to go as the center mounting point for the other wiper is what is bottoming out on the under dash AC unit.
Definitely puts a stick in my spokes.

[Mike DC]

            
The next thing that occurs to me about the body/dash/cowl issues is the height of the LX dash once installed. It won't help to get the windshield wipers sorted out if the top of the LX dashboard still ends up 6 inches away from the ceiling of the old Charger body.


The LX dash already pokes up high enough to look weird on the existing LX/Charger conversions I have seen.  Those cars have the old Charger body located high on the LX chassis.  I wonder how much of an issue it will be if you get your Charger bodywork lower down on the LX chassis than they did.  

[Stevearino]

Mike , I am pretty much as low as I can go. The windshield wiper mounting location is bottomed out  and there is only about a 1/2 clearance for the engine manifold. I think I hit the bottom that everyone else did with these conversions. The ones that appear lower just made bigger rockers which it looks like what I will be forced to do. I saw one that just had a 3" pinch weld but because it was black you can only notice it from certain angles.

Yeah I am really not crazy about the dash situation. I think it will crowd the windshield but it would require a scratch build to overcome that situation which I don't really want to get into for this car. Don't get me wrong.I like the way the dash itself looks just not how it is going to fit in this project.

[Stevearino]

Well I took the day off yesterday and visited some friends in South Carolina and put some space between me and my disappointment with the body height issues. Time to make the best of things so it is as low as it is going to go which is 2" higher than I wanted it to be. I plan to blend the rocker in. It has as much front to rear rake built into the body as was possible which is none since the hood with the inner liner removed is about 1/4" away from the manifold and bottomed out on just about everything in the engine compartment. I tried setting the hood and nose in the stock location front to rear and the darn thing looked too stubby so I pulled it forward 2". I may pull it back just a bit but this is the anti F & F car right now. 2 inches longer than a stock Daytona.

[Baldwinvette77]

HOLY SHIT!!!!! 

[BigBlockSam]

wow!!

[dyslexic teddybear]

Interesting......can't wait to see it off the dollies. Looks pretty [expletive deleted] good now.....a couple of inches lower.......

Normally don't care for the big wheel/tire combo on older iron. But here, it may give a "just right" look.

As usual, great work and thanks, cuz I am learning a lot from your build.

Will continue to watch and

[Stevearino]

Interesting......can't wait to see it off the dollies. Looks pretty [expletive deleted] good now.....a couple of inches lower.......

Normally don't care for the big wheel/tire combo on older iron. But here, it may give a "just right" look.

As usual, great work and thanks, cuz I am learning a lot from your build.

Will continue to watch and '

Not the wheels I will end up with but I have to stay with 22's  because of the Brembo brakes. We will see if there is anything a little more old school. Worst case I can just go to the stock Alcola SRT wheels like the right front.

[dyslexic teddybear]

Just a

Perhaps it is the Brembos that makes it work......I know big rims and small brakes really look stupid.

Perhaps it's the length of a Daytona......plus the wing.

Likely a bit of both. For a mock-up, looks pretty good. Better then good.

[Mike DC]

Part of that stubby appearance is because of the body height & shiny metal LX rockers down below.  But another part is the visually huge size of the wheels compared to what we are used to seeing on an old Charger.





Have you considered splitting the difference on the visible rocker issue? One part extending the old Charger bodywork downwards, and one part allowing a bit of black LX rocker sheetmetal visible below it?  


After looking at some pics of stock '69 Daytonas last night, I wonder if stretching the rockers down a bit on this car might actually HELP the proportions visually.  On stock '69s the front & rear overhangs look big/heavy.  The middle of the car between the wheels seems downright slim in comparison.  


Once you pin down what you want that area to look like, you might wanna put some black tape or something over whatever portion of the LX rockers will be black/recessed during this process of evaluating the car's proportions.  Otherwise the shiny bare metal on the bottom of the rockers could actually make it more visually obvious than it will be on the end result.  

[Stevearino]

Mike,
   You pretty much read my intentions on the rocker situation. I have already clamped the remnants of the 06 rocker to the bottom of the car as a blend piece and eased it up a little and the effect seems to work. My intentions were always to black out the remaining pinch weld as I have seen it work pretty good on a 68 conversion. As to the stubby nose effect pulling the nose forward definitely helped tone down the bulkiness of the front end. This was all done hastily to finalize the body location and will all be coming back off for quite a while so there is plenty of time to sort the front end out. 
As always your suggestions are always welcome.

Steve.

[Mike DC]

  
It might be time to go back to the plastic model stage to think about the body mods.  You have made a lot of good progress but right now you don't seem to have the end result in your sights that you originally wanted.  



I looked at the pics of that dark gray '68/Magum wagon conversion that you linked to earlier the thread.  

It looks like they got that car so low with a combination of tossing the LX dashboard for a custom '68 dash + small wheels (read: losing ground clearance underneath).  It looks like there is undercarriage metal barely 4-5" off the pavement in some of those beauty shots.

I guess the LX rockers weren't an issue because they simply retained more of the '68 car in general.  What they did was more like transplanting the LX's front & rear subframes into the '68.  Whereas you are doing more like putting the '68's top half onto the LX's lower half.

So the front subframe & engine structure is still a hangup either way.  The raw distance between the bottom of the LX's front chassis and the top of the LX's motor is too tall for the car to sit really low & lean no matter how you do it.  You are looking at leaving the upper '68 body sitting higher off the ground whereas they elected to set the LX chassis lower down.





How are people putting these new motors into vintage Mopars, aside from the entire LX chassis swaps?  Wouldn't these dimensional issues with the new engine versus the old body shape be rearing their ugly heads then too?    

[Stevearino]

Mike, On the last question I guess it would be best to ask hotrod98 about how the new engines fit in to the old chassis cause I think he has some experience in this area.
On the 68/magnum project if you look at the rocker near the bottom of the front fender you will see that they had the same issues and just made a bigger rocker. The front fender does not reach the bottom of the rocker.
Smaller wheels and tires don't get me there because they do not make the distance from the top of the tire to the top of the fender smaller which is something you can see in the model  and something I wanted to achieve.
The dash on the 68 while scratch built is still somedwhat  high because of the use of the the stock gauge cluster and the necessary height of the steering column. I may end up having to do something along these lines but it just seems like it is lower because it lacks the bulge on top over the gauge cluster. The real tell on the height issue is the looking at how they had to kind of horse the front valence on and the lower radiator is still very visible.

One thing that I looked into today that might help me is that there are lowering spring kits even for the SRT-8 that can lower the front almost 1.4 inches. I would leave the rear alone as I like the relationship of the tire to the body in that area and that might get me quite a bit closer to the look I want.
Also as Dyslexic Teddy Bear mentioned the dollies that the car is on right now don't help the visual.  I think I can get closer to what I want than I first thought when I first set the body down. We will see.

Steve

[Lighthorseman]

   OutSTANDing!!   

I am loving this thread. 

[Budnicks]

  wow car is coming along great, keep up the good work... 

[Stevearino]

  OutSTANDing!!   

I am loving this thread. 

wow car is coming along great, keep up the good work... 

Thanks guys.

[Stevearino]

Well I did a little more mock up work . I made some rocker extensions and hung the left front fender to see if everything would work together. I am pretty happy with everything at the moment. The proportions don't look to bad. As for the rake angle I found some aftermarket adjustable coil over shocks that will allow me to wind the front down another 2" if I want to . This should get me pretty close to where I want to be. Well it's time to take off all the fun stuff and get back to the boring work that takes a lot of time but doesn't look like you did anything. Nature of the beast.

[JB400]

The extra width of the rocker isnt' really all that noticeable and doesn't look all that bad.  Have you considered maybe adding onto the bottom of the quarters behind the rear wheels any? Of course, you'd have to add on to the rear valance and maybe add onto (or remove) the rear bumperettes, but would allow you to exit the exhaust through the valance.  Just something to consider.

Your progress looks good, as always.

[Stevearino]

I am going to try to manipulate that quarter bottom down a little . There is nothing holding it in place right now and I am going to ease the rockers up a bit  on the final deal. Hopefully it will flow a little better. Also thinking about a change in the paint work to hide all of this too.

You know what. I was just thinking. Why the hell am I married to that stupid pinch weld flange on the bottom? That's 1 1/4" I can cut off and invert by welding a flange in the up position.   Now I can't sleep.

[Baldwinvette77]

I cant see how this can get any better 

[JB400]

Better go make another pot of coffee.  It's going to be a long night

[Mike DC]

  
Wow you are still coming along quickly.  

Have you thought about working on the lower side bodylines (The stuff around the fender pentastar emblem and the bottom of the lower door scoop) to hide the extra rocker height?  Perhaps take the line that goes from the rear wheelwell to the door scoop and just move the wheelwell crease end of it down a little.  A slight extra tilt on both the quarter line and the fender line in front might really help disguise the added rocker height.


The rear quarter overhang could probably use a little bit of extension downwards but not too much.  I dunno if you need to drop the overall bottom of the rear end of the '68 or not, but it wouldn't surprise me if you did.  

Be careful though.  The lower back end of any musclecar is a difficult spot to modify and get away with it.  From about 1975-2000 damn near every musclecar for sale in America was full of bondo and looking screwy in that area.  So most guys have developed a particularly sharp eye for spotting anything amiss there.  



IMHO that nose looks too long as it sits in the pics.  I'd vote to at least push it back the extra couple inches to stock length.  (Yes I know the nose is currently sitting that way because of the wheel location.)  


Overall it's looking really good.  
 
 

[Stevearino]

Mike,
Cutting the 1 1/4 inches off the bottom by eliminating the pinch weld flange all together will pretty much enable me to go back to an un extended rocker which will help with the blend back into the quarters. If you look a the previous pics of the car without the extension rockers on you can see that it is very close without the flange. The length of the nose is something I will have to play with. Right now it is 2 inches longer from the door to the back of the fender but because of the longer wheel base it is actually 1" shorter to the front of the tire so while the over all length of the car is greater the relationship of the nose to the wheel center is shorter than stock.

Steve

[djcarguy]

  looooking great ,the blue fender is not matching well ,haha. think it draws the view but it will all look awsum. just do what makes it correct for you.  as few of these conversions have been completed there is bound too bee surprizes an addjustments to the plans.

it will look lot different in one color or darker down on rockers. think it will bee lower with rest of glass,guts an nose and tail weight installed   ??   nose  an wing draw my eye away from lowly rockers,myself.

   doing great ,thanks for sharing an putting up with the peanut gallary. i wood like too put my name in for first test pilot,lol.. good stuff all the best on build.latter DJ out west.can allways do bigger spoiler under the nose to draw the eye down to the ground an keep more air out from under the car. i kinda like the air defuser boxes under the back but that is more gt-gts road race cars thing i guess.  will bee great,iam sure 

[djcarguy]

  HELP Any photo shop guys that could do steves daytona more like his model or just all one color to HELP visually??

       kinda think the clean shiney metal down low is drawing too much focus??  photo shop any help???