Welcome to the future home of the restoration of my 1969 Dodge Charger R/T

In the next few months I hope to begin the log process of restoration and document every step of the way with photos, illustrations and articles to help fellow charger owners.

My Charger today

Here is a history of my Charger;
I bought my Charger here in Phoenix Arizona in 1979, I found it sitting a driveway off I-17 neglected and just waiting to be worked on. After driving by for months I thought I would stop by and check it out. First thing I saw that it was a 4 speed, and looking under the charger I saw it had a Dana, I then popped the hood and saw the engine with the 440 sitting there, now back in 1979 I did not know much about decoding Chargers so numbers and fender tags did not mean much then so I did not pay much attention to that, all that mattered was I found a 4spd Charger R/T. As I talked to the owner he said the transmission was dead so I worked out a deal to by the Charger, I gave him $700 for it and went home to get the tow truck and tow it back home.

Once I got the Charger home I quickly discovered the only problem was the throw out bearing was toast, I also discovered it was an 18-spline Hemi transmission, so I looked closer at the Dana inspection cover and discovered the 4:10 tag. I got the bearing replaced and put the transmission back in and then moved on to tuning up the engine, once I inspected the engine, I discovered the original 440 had been replaced by a 383, I was a little disappointed but luckily I had a spare 69 440 sitting around and got to the task of rebuilding the 440. The 383 was very powerful so I left it in the car until the 440 was done.

I drove and raced my Charger for 5 more years. I always stored my Charger at my parents house since I was in college and had no place to park my Charger, so one day I was going to take my Charger to the track to race, so the day before, I went to my parents house to prep the car, put slicks on and uncap the headers and tune it for the race. Once that was none I moved the Charger to the driveway so I would not wake my parents up the next morning when I came to take it to the track. The next morning I arrived at my parents with the trailer, and noticed that the Charger was not in the driveway, so I figured maybe my dad moved it back in the garage, I opened the door and it wan not there so I looked around back where we had another parking pad and again it was not there, my heart sank as I realized that someone had just stolen my pride and joy.

A few days passed then I got a call from the Police department that they had found my car, visions of it burnt out and stripped popped in my head, the police gave me the location of car so I could meet them there and get it, to my amazement it was parked in the next subdivision, so I go there quickly. Once I got there the car looked for the most part in good shape, but gone was all the steel braded lines and the tunnel ram with both Holly 660’s. The most important thing was that the car was there and not stripped, who ever took the car (I had a good idea but could not prove it) pushed the car to where it was, so at least the motor was mostly intact. I got the car home so I thought it be best that I pull the motor to make sure they did not drop any nuts or bolts in the engine and I dropped the gas tank to flush gas out also incase they did anything to the fuel. The great thing as I said I did get the car back, I had invested so much into the engine and it was there. Since the engine was out I thought it might be a good thing to do the bodywork and get the car painted. So just as I was planning on doing that my Plymouth Trail Duster’s engine decided to give out and the money I had planned on the bodywork went into rebuilding the engine, and since I was doing that, I thought I would do the transmission and transfer case, well to make a long story short my Charger took a back seat for a while and other priorities became more important, then I got married and all my funds went to buying a house, and of course everything else that goes into it, at least I still had the car and I had a new place to keep it.

My wife and I agreed that once all the landscaping and everything was done I could get back to restoring my Charger, but that never came to be while I was married to her.

I got divorced from her in January of 2005 and I finally had the funds to start the restoration, things were going well then 2 months after the divorce I was taken out on my Harley by a bad driver and broke my tib/fib and femur, so I had a long recovery. Since then I have had numerous surgeries on my knee and have been on long term disability, but I have been slowly collecting parts for the restoration. Things are getting better but I’m still not back to work yet but hopefully I will soon and be able to get back to the restoration of my Charger sometime soon but given the state of the economy I'm not sure how soon I'll have the funds, so my Charger sits.