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Dirt Cheap Rat Rod! 1968 Charger Buildup and Thrash - Roadkill Ep. 23

Feb 27, 2020
It's yet another episode where we're going to dig up one of my old cars that's been there forever and do something with it this time. It's a '68 Dodge Charger that I think I bought about five years ago and actually didn't even buy. I changed it to a set of padding under the heads, go ahead and pull the cable, that's it, yes, anti-theft system. Wow, last time I was here these weeds weren't there, it's been a while, we're going to burn half the morning just to get to the Charger is better than it looks, but it's got nothing but a chassis rolling, meaning there's no engine, no transmission, no driveshaft, no wiring, no brakes, nothing that's unpleasant.
dirt cheap rat rod 1968 charger buildup and thrash   roadkill ep 23
Check it, we have to take it out because if we move it and it opens. In the car, do you see what the parts of the movie are like? This is a movie. Fast and Furious F-bomb fenders. Look at it, a touch, they destroyed like five of these cars during the 30 seconds that thing was in the movie, so we moved fried hamburgers. Real

cheap

, we need to move fried burgers, a shitty

charger

, but your shitty trailer has a winch that doesn't have a shitty battery to power it, so we'll take your shitty suburban to an auto parts store to get a battery to operate the winch. to get the

charger

out just so we can get to someone's driveways so we can start working on this massive transmission swap and he's three days, two and a half, they never host.
dirt cheap rat rod 1968 charger buildup and thrash   roadkill ep 23

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dirt cheap rat rod 1968 charger buildup and thrash roadkill ep 23...

I have a vision for this car and I don't think it's exactly what your vision is, my vision is to sail through the air and a bright orange fireball, you know, over the cannon, you want the General Lee, I know I generally want general chaos, that's what general chaos will be, general chaos man, yeah, as long as it's orange with an O, you know, the first step was to get all the rat droppings out of the charger, so we loaded it on the back of the Grande male and dragged him to the coin-operated car wash. I'll bet a dollar we're the only ones hauling a '68 Charger behind a macho Grande through Burbank California today, that makes us winners.
dirt cheap rat rod 1968 charger buildup and thrash   roadkill ep 23
I like how you haven't really asked questions about the condition of the charger. What could be missing from what I did or did. I will not order the vehicle parts. I have very low expectations for this deal. I will say that this episode won't end without us getting it up and running. What is that magical movie like? You left yourself a good size, yeah, well, it's tough Look, right now, but this car is actually full of bugs that want to kill me, so let's hose it down here at the car wash before we even think about working in this shit, yeah, you're going to get scurvy right now. look, here's a whole bag of Corona, boy, you're about to buy Ghana their Pacifica, oh, that sucks, gross, oh oh, I'm so glad this is my car, you broke the bottle, this here It is what makes the charger cool, go faster.
dirt cheap rat rod 1968 charger buildup and thrash   roadkill ep 23
Slots in the doors like that. it seems like the speed is happening there first or now. Wow, you're going crazy and everything. I think the spender is probably giving you ideas, man, telling you that it's like he already wants to be a general car talking to you right now. Look orange foam. they're coming out of this side he's telling you it's bleeding orange he's saying come on skip me skip me keep in mind I've never seen the donor vehicle oh wow this is a pretty thing and it's too pretty to destroy no one wants to dodge That's the problem esp. a 3/4 ton long bed truck, but the Mopar people are weird and will be mad that you gutted the Mopar even though it's for a better Mopar.
I didn't dare break that Dodge truck as it was. clean, so the problem was we needed to find something that was a donor with a big block Mopar that he wasn't romantically attached to and then Finnegan surfed Craigslist and came up with the cool idea of ​​what engine is in this thing. It is on fire? I really wanted a big block Mopar and one of the forum sources is old Dodge motor homes as there are billions of them that are very

cheap

. This is a Class A, meaning it's not based on a big, ugly fan. I think it's on an M 800 chassis and it has a 440 and a 727, it has a battery that we can use maybe some wiring and stuff like that and it runs fine, we picked it up, drove it three or four blocks and it's already leaking.
You know how to fix overheating, let's take off the hood. You know it as a cooling problem when it comes with the return jug that they couldn't install. Well you know they meant well, at least they didn't know it came with this thing. landscaping look at that I'm telling you, that's like a topiary, we've never bought anything so nice. I'm really surprised the brakes work so well or at least the front ones. We have the nicely faded and molded Brady Bunch edition shaggy rug, the door doesn't stay closed so it flaps in the breeze and there's a custom rope to keep it closed, but we think that's not really necessary for our purposes, seriously It's burning my eyes here, oh, too bad, I don't.
I understand why it's okay up here, I mean it's not good, it's mushrooms, but from then on it literally burns your eyes and you can't breathe. You weren't kidding, right? pot-a-porri, we have a very tight schedule to make the exchange happen. So immediately after purchasing the motorhome we headed straight to my friends at OSI driveline to replace the motorhome generator before the driveshaft. We need to connect the 440 to the Dodge Charger. I haven't really checked the engine yet, oh man. it sucks yeah this is the big block chrysler 440 you can always tell the big blocks and the small blocks because the distributor is in the front and the small block hasn't come back and there are more quads that are a Carter thermal quad the famous carburetor.
With the plastic body being cool and will work great with the charger, it's time to take off the hood

roadkill

style, oh yeah, that will be much more efficient and attractive. Next I look at the flow, yeah I think it's good, do you know what I am? However, I'm wondering if it burns your eyes that much in there. We're going to need some ventilation. You're picking up what I'm putting one on your side. If you take the engine covers off it will flow through the grille through the engine and out the back this was really unnecessary but fun yeah I want people to look at my calves while I drive this is what I was thinking ready thermocline the only carburetor that who sees you we try to go to war that's the sound of power I don't feel enough fear in all these people I don't think they know what you mean we have to show them when the rhythm arrow is capable if I can't fix the door and there's a piece of rope here, okay.
Look, worried, this thing is going to hit a divided lane motorcycle here, hold it open, ah, wait, okay, now I have the rope, you have the screen, okay, believe our temperature gauge, this thing is freezing after Upon closer inspection it is spewing coolant all over the land so I don't believe the gas gauge either so we put gas in the main tank and an auxiliary tank which didn't move the gauge at all and both only took 10 gallons, but it's working fine and I honestly think we're I'm going to do the door oh it wasn't going to come off okay it's just this ah it's just the guts with no tools at hand we decided to start ripping off the door and that just got us led until now.
I'm a human can opener, right? now when suddenly the Los Angeles Department of Transportation shows up and they have an ax that needs to take its hat off, they are perfect, thank you, the state of California saves us, we spent all day bringing the motor home here and it's on the street but It doesn't fit in the driveway and it's too late for us to cut the saws right now, so let's get to work on the charger, let's start right here and work our way back and remove everything that doesn't We just need to get it out of our way , starting with the hood.
It's a good idea how they play to make a statue. Start with a large block of stone and cut out everything other than a naked woman. Right now we are removing everything. that's not a great charger, it looks gross in here when we get back to work on the charger, it's so late at night we can't make any noise so we'll pick this up tomorrow. I raise the back of the car so I can start the gas tank because it will probably be the quietest job I can do right now and since it's 8am. in the morning, the neighbors probably don't want to listen to me. loose with a hammer and fork where they jumped him, some Luke Duke stuff leaning right there.
What I love about

roadkill

is that we're going to put nice, shiny replacement parts on that crap over there because we don't have time to make it better. and we always say oh yeah I'll take it apart and fix it later, no I never say that, I say you'll never take it apart and fix it, I always say there's no brick, Trump's and it has it, there's no Springs, there's been nothing here for a long time. Are you swapping 2 disks? Okay no I had no idea this is all a rushed aspect that will put a damper on their agenda that destroyed us at this point the episode felt like a complete disaster and it was obvious we weren't going to make it we had to get out running around and shooting something else, so I took Hulk of the Pacer, a motor home, put it back in storage, abandoned the charger at Rob's house and walked away for a month and a half before we started working on it again, This car was considered to have dust.
It's the Swiffer light, here on the dash, you can see the indicators. We do a great job keeping your area clean if you buy a Supra. no this isn't even a good Supra, people always park here and block my spots. I've had vehicles that I sold that I can't sell because there's junk in the road so we've made this guy worse since the last time we were here looks like someone messed with the spare tire let's see if whatever was there works In the back last time we drove this is gone, but I think it has been replaced by spiders and other things I don't want near me. pour a bunch of that in there so it explodes in my face, that's fine, that's enough.
Oh, I thought I'd be able to find a junkyard to take this. Turns out we'll have to pay to have it. They took it and they won't accept it in full, no one around here, so we'll have to sort out a whole body of the RV. We ordered the dumpster to throw out all its trash and then we'll have to have the frame removed separately this is a reciprocating saw and it's my friend my good friend look at that action ready on that baby he's going to turn this into butter right now look at that like butter and our warped and twisted minds we decided to rent a dumpster We cut everything ourselves in one day and threw it all away.
Oh, great, there's a guy who's okay, perfect? Oh, he's given the Supra guy at least half a day to move his junk, so sometimes he crashes at this is my level. The concern was impressive now that we have the side open. Our plan is to cut out the entire floor so we can get right to the almost freed engine. This should have been a factory option. I really thought I would come back. through all I wanted was the big block Chrysler for my charger what a fiasco this is a reverse six debacle here we just didn't even make a circle back to the beginning this is a figure eight back to the beginning but this is a 440 those other ones are just four hundred, it makes it all worth it, it's all worth it, it's all about the motorhome, so what's $1200?
Okay, I introduce myself, it's a lady and her husband and I'm driving it, it runs good, not great and I'm trying to negotiate with her and like, hey, you know, 1200 seems a little high, how about a thousand ? No, I'm pretty firm on 1200, so I drive it around the block a few times, come home, turn it off and The diesel is no joke for about 30 seconds straight and then it finally stops and I get in, so you're getting a thousand, huh , she left, yes, and what a deal you have. Look this way, I got a whole house for a $1,000 motor for the first time. for the last time, oh you knew that was going to happen, why couldn't we get a hoist with fertile hips?
This isn't going to work, it looks pretty solid to me, here we go, can you try throwing it away? It's done, yes, it was. It's a lot like an archaeological RV to get the 440 out of this thing, but we finally unleashed the glorious Mopar big block. The best thing is we found a guy who will take this thing so we don't have to cut it up. a million pieces and throw it in the trash bin. I'll be honest, we had to pay in particular, yes, but I don't care, so tomorrow I'll go get the ramp truck, load the fury into it, come here.
I'll put this in the trunk of the Fury on the ramp truck and come back to $400 with a saw. All the sheets will lead the whole mess to the loader and then, and then, we'll make a bigger mess. There they looted the Fury and the engine to load it, that's perfect for everyone. I understand that I am alreadyremoving part ah the fury my old friend I'm here collecting parts from the RV and Finnegan just showed up with the fury she's a little overloaded at the moment breaking up the floor oh I know now what we're going to do.
What we're going to do is back the fury up a few feet, lift the engine out of the motorhome in the air and put it in the trunk of the fury and then tow the whole circus to the loader, unload everything again why do we do things so tough no one I ever parked a 440 in the trunk of a fury in the back of a ramp truck and drove around Burbank let's say I start putting it down hard that could happen put a hole in the fuel cell and yeah , this is the only rear-engined 73 fury in the world, there I solved that problem.
I'm going to ask what that was. Oh, this isn't going anywhere, it probably won't come out either. Donkeys don't go to the junkyard. That's coming back to my living room. When doing the car dance right now, we had to take the charger out so we can get the fury in and be able to work on it easier to make it the charger fury and the charger fury back to the charter out of the fury into the junkyard loader. Back, I got it right, I didn't get that at all, what are we doing? Let it rip anywhere in your driveway.
We're stuck against the inside of the trunk like we're predicting what that car will do to you. Alright? pushing towards you, yeah, he'll cut those two spark plug wires, the fury will donate the transmission, the front accessories, the seats, some of the wiring, maybe the rear brakes, most of his soul, just you know, the things that We need, the little things that I thought, honestly, I'm going to be able to have this whole car up and running in three days but my three days means six. I like it when I arrive and you're already working. It's like when you come back from the bathroom in a restaurant and the food is already there.
I decided to go ahead and separate the engine from the transmission basically so as not to make a bloodbath in the messy sounding driveway. Sitting here and watching you work for a while makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside. Time to relieve the donkey of his duties, well, I can't believe I'm removing the grease from an engine so we can clean it and Freiburger can paint it, an engine that came out of a motor home we bought for $1,000 and that will go into a charger that probably cost $1,000 driven once in a roadkill and then shoved in a back lot later like everyone bought a motor home they're like wow they travel the country with our family then find out their kids hate them and they don't want to spend so much time in a car with them that the motorhome sits in the driveway and racks up a total of 38,000 miles over a span of 30 years, so I'm going to wet this thing and they had three different things on it. the original Pep Boys foamy and tough gel, so I'm going to find out which one I like best: True story when I was in high school and didn't know anything about cars, my Camaro leaked a lot of oil and my Friday night ritual was to carry my paycheck to the local auto parts store.
I bought

dirt

and cleaned my engine before leaving. Never repaired the oil leak. I just cleaned it every Friday because the road kill guy let this set dry for a couple hours and it actually came out pretty good. I think I like the gel and the foamy gunk is better than the original, they stick to the thing better and they are tough things, the rubber will see the grease fall off. I hope our guys get on me for not painting it Hemi orange or Chrysler turquoise. just rebuilt Wow Fonzie all black huh, yeah, if I had painted it orange it would have been much worse.
I think you've convinced yourself of this, yes, I think it was a valuable use of our time and resources. You know it was blue, he couldn't. be blue, it will go in a black car, so now it's black, now we have to take the fury engine out and then take the transmission out, the torque converter comes out with the engine, but now I wanted to decide where this will fit. For six years in Rob's front yard the motorhome transmission had an add-on flange on the rear instead of a slip yoke so we couldn't use it, that's why we used this transmission, how is that possible?
We just caused a bloodbath. of epic proportion here's a triple homicide under the fury this is amazing you know the thing is the ATF is mainly a detergent so we're really cleaning your driveway so in some twisted way you owe us this fury was a package model factory trailer that It's like a police car package and it has a limited slip from the factory, so we're going to take the whole center section out of this rear end and put it on the charger so we have positive and it also has 11 drum brakes from inches on the back I'm going to remove and put the charger it's back to 10 in phrase so the fury once again the gift that keeps on giving we're like the Native Americans, you know we're not We're just hunting buffalo for sport, You know we're going to eat every bit of this fury, so there's nothing left that anyone can use.
We start our morning by sending the fury to the junkyard, which is a roadkill first, we usually take cars from the junkyard or we have cars that should be there it's the opposite day but now we're going to take the crankcase off the engine, we're going to put a crankcase of new oil that fits the charger we're firing the transmission and we're going to bolt it all together and hopefully have the engine in the car in about 15 minutes then you're getting close if by magic it's like it's already done we could get started Let's drink beer now look how close we are now well I've probably had the charger for about seven years and everything has been a success the entire time so this is a pretty big moment and we've wanted this for quite some time.
Freiburger and I have been working on this car off and on for the last three months, wiring it up, hooking it up, putting the shifter in, putting in a driveshaft so it has working gauges, jeez this thing is probably better that almost anything we've had run overs just because we were the ones who worked on it, is actually wired correctly, a proper fuse block. right, if something goes wrong, the fuse blows, the car doesn't burn to the ground or once there's no danger of fire, I wouldn't go that far, this thing is finally ready to come to life and we could probably get off the road Over the next 24 hours I've been keeping it as cheap as possible by doing things like reusing the thermal quad using two sets of spark plug wires to make a good set.
This one has a fury kit and a couple of cables from the motorhome. and look at cable tie separators, which is always a good technical tip and this is where all the science happens. start button fans headlights and for Johnny law who turns off our taillights okay so we have to get away real quick push the start button he's in for a scare wow you're going to vomit liquid everywhere oh you're surprised that this piece of shit actually started up after three months oh this is the real reason to have a 68 charger is to open the gas tank.
I love this, I actually bought that new reproduction for about forty-seven dollars because I love it so much, yeah, I think Dodge Chrysler stole it off the boat. The kids don't care, it's cool. I plan to turn it on today, but we still have a few things. To do you have to make a brake line, you need to put the push rod in there, of course, Finnegans, install the tack, that's crucial. I want to hang the fender, it's also crucial to put a bumper on it and things like that, what else do we have to do?
To do that is to get on the short list, rub something awesome on it, and hit the road. I have a '69 fender that we have to modify a little to bolt on. Zero insurance and registration fact, you know, we don't even know that the car is not hot. I exchanged it for a set of cylinder heads. It may not be registrable. Yes, it may not even be your car. That's right, we may have gotten it up and running for a guy we don't even know. Now Freiburger is putting some gas in the carburetor and we're going to try to start the charger for the first time since 1983.
Stop, let me know if you have the ignition on. I did it. Can you make sure the box is turned on? The box has no light on trying to fill the carburetor float bowls by pouring gas through the breather tube. OK. Wow, it's sold. One week he ran out of gas. It weighs 75 pounds. Yes, it works, but there are just a couple of problems, one of which. Does that sound like real shit? This thing puts out two hundred or so horsepower per second, of which it hasn't picked up gas from the tank yet. I can't keep feeding the carburetor, so I think I'll fill it up. the float and see if we can get it going long enough to actually suck it out of the tank, as far as I'm concerned a charger should sound like the General Lee and this doesn't sound like that. a charger who hunts and sniffs reads a little jealous around here because I know this is temporary where I'm sitting this is big this car needs to be jumping over a river if we tried to drive it right now we might disappoint her so it's probably just a basket we have, yeah yeah that's a car on deck stands that runs and accelerates most cars on jack stands don't run or read five months later it's winter in Southern California which means it's raining and we have a the clothes in the driveway are a rainbow shade from all the fluids that fall on them and the charger is not here because Freiburger took it to an exhaust shop and an alignment shop, oh look how straight the wheels are with a kind of escape. what we did, the guy at the alignment shop said we would have died if we didn't choose it since it was fine, the wheels were like that and that's how it was.
I've only driven it two blocks, no reverse, seriously, absolutely nothing, how is that possible? He led me down the driveway and as soon as he saw you he broke down. Honestly, I'm afraid people will think we faked this for drama because it's unbelievable, but you have to see this. We don't lie about roadkill. We shoot the thing. We know. It's fluid, we turn it upside down, we know it's changing, girls, notice what, hey, I just tried to handle that card. I wouldn't move it as much as possible. He's dead again, so now he's dead on the street.
I seriously thought Freiburger was doing something sick and twisted. He joked with me when he magically made the car stop moving, so he pushed it back into the driveway, crawled under it, pulled out a transmission again, and drove it to a store down the street where we discovered he hadn't gotten the The torque converter was fully seated on the front pump when I first put the engine in the car while the transmission was on the street being rebuilt, we had plenty of time to cool the charger and even legally hung some headlights on the front. and because an original charger grill in perfect condition cost like $2,500, we ended up making this awesome Mad Max grill out of perforated steel.
We just created probably the largest grill that mankind has ever known and we don't have any beer to celebrate there. it could be a Bud Light, although you're right we haven't seen invitations to a celebration equivalent to stepping foot on the moon, that's what happened here today if I were a guy in a Prius or a Yaris and saw this in The Looking Glass rearview mirror I moved out of the way just as we were wrapping the grill, the guy called and said the transmission was finally ready so he ran over there to pick it up, slapped it on the car and then of course the trim we had. to put the hemi hood of the furies on it because the fury always brings good luck, today we are going on a road trip, that's when I called it, I declare that this charger is ready to road, that was great, I can't even believe it. we're finally going to hit the road, okay kiha, that's not as smokey as Rob our friend was, but you really need to do a Burnout on the street, oh no, it's big, that's what it was, it was in the floor, more or less, what is that noise? driveline you bought the driveshaft on, yeah it sounds like the muscle truck, well oh my god nerd what are smoke headers?
It's the

dirt

coming out of - oh, that's smoke, look at the smoke coming out, the air started to smell what's behind us, man. I'm going to see that movie Teaching John, I think we should fall, oh my God, we could be on fire, man, so we get on the highway. Things sounded amazing, literally the best exhaust note ever. It reminded me a lot of the muscle truck and then it was just James. Bond smoked the entire highway. I think we stopped three lanes of traffic just now because he's vomiting liquid everywhere. The dipstick came out.
Hey, he's gone. The transmission fluid catches fire and luckily that hasn't happened yet. We had the James Bond smoke. The screen that came on had a dipstick inside and it was supposed to fit into one of those bolts, butWe were in a hurry to leave, so I thought, "Oh, I'm just going to stick the dipstick tube in, put some martini in it, and." It'll be okay, it wasn't okay, this just eliminated my guilt, I almost burned the car to the ground, we cut out some kind of metallic noise that happens up here when it's turning, I should probably look into that while he fixes that deal, it's okay, I found it . that thud, we're fine, if the weight of the wheel just hit the upper ball joint it would fall off soon.
Daylight was waning, but we finally had this thing working again and hit the road. I can't tell you why this is so. a lifelong dream of mine, but I've always loved wrecking passenger cars in the desert and owning a '68 Charger in particular brought back vibes from Dukes of Hazzard, Dirty Murray, Crazy Larry and even Bullitt, It's just that I was raised to believe. That a 68 69 charger is the most indestructible off-road vehicle and I was willing to prove it if I close my eyes. I swear I was generally driving, it sounded like waiting for the next one, where all four wheels never left the ground.
We have too much respect for this car, but we got it sideways at every corner, we threw dirt in the air, we had a blast, this episode was a long way to go. I think about how I really thought we were. I finished this charger in three days but it turned into six months but I finally ended up with exactly what I wanted for a long time and it is the Mad Max 5 to 68 charger and in the end there is only one thing left to do. burnout what engine is in this thing it's a date okay it's a v8 let me talk to my wife here and see if she gives me some money Oh, we'll pay you to take this, we don't want it, you take it and we'll give you money, oh, They just got better, right? no, we are going to give you money

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