How I came to buy this classic 1968 Dodge Charger big block 4spd muscle car project // Jonny Smith

Hello and welcome to Car Pervert. I'm Johnny Smith. This is the infamous

1968

Dodge Charger that I've had for almost exactly

this

month. Ten years. I've had the car on the road for nine of those years. I imported it myself. San Diego and it arrived about 36 hours before my wedding day, so it was actually our wedding car, although it didn't work and had to be taken there on a trailer, so it was like a static decoration that will be supplied new. to San Francisco in '68. I love it because obviously that's when Bullet was filmed and released in the theater, so whoever bought

this

car was driving around San Francisco in '68 when the movie Bullet was in the theater and, in fact, I made a home video on my honeymoon where we ended up going to San Francisco and I took a tour, bought a book, and took a tour of all the places that were key points in the car bullet chase.

It's a horrible old video, maybe I'll like it. Yeah, I think it could be quite embarrassing, in fact, I could show you some of it here. The Dodge Charger buckles the lap belt wrong just before they like the tires between them, they can't chase passing cars, although ahead it actually gave solar production. Steve McQueen's company, who produced the entire movie, they gave them the Mustangs for filming, they didn't give them the Dodger Dodge, they didn't give them the loads, they bought two identical black loads from our team, both of them were suddenly destroyed and it's charming.

Being here some 40 years later is interesting, but this car means a lot to me and I know quite a few people who care and asked me for more details, so today I'll show you a walkthrough. I was looking for them for over a year, once in a 68, the 68 is different than the 69. The 69 has a big chrome nose that divides the open grille in the rear. It has horizontal bar lights, not these quad circular jet taillights. Personally I think this is the best. It looks like a

charger

, but at the same time I really like the 66 and 67 and I was going to buy one of those.

This is a 383 cubic inch car, which is about 6.2 liters. This is the smallest of the big

block

. engines, so the 383 used to have 330 horsepower when it was new, it was always a four-cylinder car, it has an ADA Brock four-cylinder secondary vacuum and will bring intake. I actually have a Holley double pump. to put it in and on an Edelbrock a 383 performance manifold so I might put them in, actually Johnny will have to stop you there as since these videos were made I installed the Holley carburetor, new inlet manifold and also a starter battery top, but I'll show you all those things in another Dodge-related episode.

Yes, you've been warned there will be more Dodge episodes, the most common being the 440 and then of course the 426 Hemi. Apparently the 426 Hemi is a pig to drive on the street. because it's a slightly detuned race engine while the 440 six pack was the best huge torque really reliable it stayed in tune if it didn't match the numbers I probably would have put a 440 in it we rebuilt the original engine in the color that should. be to spec, it should be the only thing I've really done. The donors put an aluminum radiator in it for modern traffic.

We put an electronic ignition conversion on it because I do that with all the

classic

s I have because I can't stand points. and the condenser, garbage. I had it rewired, although it looks steep, they are worried, no. I need to make a little panel to put it in, but all those connectors are new, they're actually German, they're as close to the original as I could get, but the

charger

wiring is notoriously bad at corrosion and consequently tries to catch fire to the car and the problem is when you open the hood if it rains the rain runs straight onto the hood and into the wiring which is really not a good idea, it has an electric choke right now but the secondary vacuum fails a little with a manual transmission.

I've heard that's the case, so I might double pump this year. I've been promising it for three years now, so we have original exhaust headers, but then straight to this three one six stainless steel exhaust built in the UK with bespoke war technology with these beautiful active exhaust mufflers, no It's simple, cutaway valves are hard anodized aluminum mounted inside and the mufflers have a straight design. there are no chambers to reduce sound, they are beautiful, louder, interchangeability of standard exhaust manifolds. I bought this car simply because I wanted something that was fairly worn, well preserved and solid.

You can see that the car's original paint was actually this green color. Where green is visible through and under the hood, it was painted at some point. I think back in the '70s, this tan brown, which again I quite like, but I liked the fact that it was a warm tone, the paint hadn't been applied properly underneath. and it was a cheap repaint, the cards were actually repainted from the back to what Tim cleverly did at Road house retro: we scanned the original paint, the green, and had some mixed in, we scanned this weird tan brown and had some mixed in, so we shot the green and then the tan brown the same way the previous owner did and this is the result of that but we also kept a lot of the dents and chip so we could try to bring them in.

I

came

back with a few smashes here and there because we wanted it to match from here on out, which is where all the nice kinds of natural things and horrors happened and I liked the whole fact that the car

came

to me with this hood that it had had, I guess , a load. of mixed paint at some point, it was used as a workbench, so it was horrible, so in the end we decided to put it back in black on the hood, leaving all the dents, all the war scars, all of that still intact, this car I had.

It was missing a piece of grille when I bought it and I actually found another piece of original grille, but I don't think I'm going to put it in. I don't know, it's strange, but I don't think so. I'm going to do it. I recently added a gold prong to it, a real gold plated override, a bumper trim to make it look like it's a pub wrestler, it's got these little dings and dents and it's got character, so from about here, backwards, it goes has comprehensively rebuilt the rear lower quarters, the rear corners, the rear valance, the trunk floor is completely new and that's a Mopar rot spot, like you didn't know the hole in the trunk floor was gone and down here, such as, for example, the rear border.

Brand new, we tried to rescue the original real taillight panel as they call it, but unfortunately we couldn't. The front of the car almost intact. The car's defects almost intact. I think in San Francisco it had been stored in a garage with the back sticking out which would explain why the rain would maybe come down here and then get infected because this car had a vinyl roof originally, let's prime the roof with zinc before we put it on because There was no preparation on the original roofs, it completely rotted. here they rot terribly down here I still haven't found that piece of trim these new panels the part the shelf panel part has been repaired moving it has had a new windshield the doors are original in terms of floor welding it has had a piece about the size from my fist on the passenger side rear floor, from memory, so it's a mainstay, no scoop, remember the charger was one of the many cars the corporation built, which was unibody, so it had no body nor separate chassis, so it is quite modern for its At this time it has something called a transverse subframe that bolts under the car with all the things in a fairly revolutionary construction for its time, as well as restoring much of the body when Tim He put the engine back in, which was rebuilt by a really cool guy. a guy named Ricky White in the middle of the swamps, who is very good at building engines, very good.

The cars had Hemi leaf springs in the rear, they had KYB shocks everywhere, they had new torsion bars in the front, the brakes are not servo drums. It does not have power steering, this car had very few options, it was a basic car and was possibly road raced quite a bit in its day, there is a bail in a crack in the hood where we believe it was thrown quite hard. How many times who knows I could have bought it to run? I have no evidence to support that it did not, in fact, appear on any records, although I did keep in touch with the guy I bought it from, who is named Ozzy and lives in San Diego. and I was very pleased that the car was not only being cared for but was simply driving around a Victorian town in the UK with some black California plates plastered on it and speaking of plates, this is the car's registration in the UK.

I have it. on these replica California license plates for display purposes but to be honest I drive this car in the grand scheme of things very little most of the time, if a cop sees me he just wants to take a picture of it or sit in it , and that's fine. I'm talking about sitting, let's sit on the side, we have a buddy seat here in the middle, so it's two bucket seats, this particular car with a buddy seat, this is where you put your kids or use it as an armrest and my car came with a headrest and very little else came the radio that doesn't work at the moment the tachometer ticking which is the clock and tachometer combined which mine no longer works and I have put Mallory's tachometer in there but without center console, so the four-speed transmission sticks out of this little bump in the floor.

This is an original big

block

four speed, three pedal car. It's one of the reasons I love it every time I get on it and then get it. outside a hibernation like this it smells like hot oil and wax and vinyl, there's a lot of black vinyl in here, these cars weren't that well made anyway, you know they weren't made to live for 50 years and it's strange this. year I've had it 10 years this is the charger celebrates its 50th birthday

1968

of course that means the iconic movie that that car chasing it is 50 years old this year in every sense of sensible people they know the bad guys like black 68 440 Charger r/t was a superior vehicle to a 390 GT Mustang no offense, 68 Charger than 68 Mustang Fastback, whether they are beautiful, threatening, ugly there personally, for me I just think the 68 Charger is the

muscle

car with the best way it has.

Amazing coke bottle back, it's got this line that goes down here and then fades into these doors, these fake door vents that I love and then this one, the crease starts here, this front spoiler, it's hard to show on the images when you look. down here it comes out this way but it's concave down here it has a really beautiful shape. I love the fact that it doesn't have eyes. I think he looks super super threatening. Yes. I love that. The headlight doors are opened using compressed air and suction. these actually still work, believe it or not, there is an actuator switch, the headlight switch, when you turn it on you hear a sucking sound and it opens them with these bellows, those are the running lights underneath and they are the indicators, so like these holes in the hood are where they're called um hood turn signals, they should be indicators, they were an optional extra.

You can buy delete option plates that insert in there and you might get a few of them or you can buy the aftermarket gauge kit. pretty neat so when you look under the hood you can see if your gauges are on or not actually Johnny you bought some you bought some in 2019 and you need to put them on so go and put them on you didn't want to go for fancy wheels Actually , I chose a wheel called VIN teks steely wheel they are wider than normal but have the same type of steely

dodge

pattern. I'm covering myself in pollen.

I thought about doing it in a RT. yellow rapeseed field which is nice and calm against the aggressive foreground of the 68 Charger, but yes, I chose these vintage wheel rims, their steels are based on the design of the originals, but they have treads, they are certainly wider. On the back I'm going to put some redline tires on it because I really want some real red stripes. I think they look very good. There are plenty of

classic

s out there that aren't actually that nice to drive, they're cool to look at. and you just enjoy listening to them maybe this is a car that surprisingly drove so well that it's very rewarding to drive.

I'm very glad I got it. I can sit in traffic on the m25 and have it, it's okay, it's not as hard to drive as it may seem like it gets a lot of praise from other people because you think it's going to be a handful, it's actually not that much and it doesn't even weigh that much according to current standards. 330 horsepower in the past, well, yes, it is. the torque that surprises you, it will just pull and pull andit will pull and pull but yeah it's just a case of really driving it now and just making those little adjustments here and when it's an old car like when it needs some maintenance parts and bobs it needs some add-ons some trinkets cars are there to be driven Even if they are valuable, this guy has certainly increased in value in the last decade I've owned him, but I don't care because he's not for sale and I honestly hope I can always keep him.

It has actually been very reliable and is a very rewarding car to put in the miles. To be honest, it's just one of the most fun cars I've ever had to drive and enjoy. because you don't have to worry about him