Daily Driver 71 Cuda 440+6 / Shaker / 4 speed / Dana 60

[Craig J]

From the looks of that clutch plate and those flywheel bolts it appears someone installed the clutch plate backwards.

The previous owner let the clutch disc wear down to nothing, and had cut the flywheel several times. He was not particularly transparent regarding the general condition of the vehicle..

 

[heminut]

The previous owner let the clutch disc wear down to nothing, and had cut the flywheel several times. He was not particularly transparent regarding the general condition of the vehicle..

Yeah, it seems you got a can of worms with this one but once it's sorted out I'm sure you won't be disappointed with the results.

 

[Craig J]

on the bright side, my $150 flat hood conversion seems to be turning out pretty good with help from one of my best friends over in Minnesota...

 

[Craig J]

cutting and then testing on the part removed.

 

[Craig J]

I have never done anything like this before... we decided to use the bead roller instead of the modified vise grip thing they send with the kit. Considering it was our first attempt at I am very happy with the results.

 

[pschlosser]

Thank you for sharing your journey and these pictures. This is a great deal of fun and interest to me. Many thanks.

That is a nice clean cut through the frame rail. What did you use, out of curiosity? A sawsall-type cutter?

 

[Craig J]

The only place it did not go 'good' was crossing over the centerline of the hood in the front, that area will need some hammer and mud work to look good, but considering I waited over a year for an AMD hood and it still never shipped I can't complain too much about this result.

 

[Craig J]

Thank you for sharing your journey and these pictures. This is a great deal of fun and interest to me. Many thanks.

That is a nice clean cut through the frame rail. What did you use, out of curiosity? A sawsall-type cutter?

just hacked it off with a cordless sawzall... I am now in the process of removing the spot welds from the remaining part of the frame rails under the body... I have never done this before so it is a bit of OJT...

 

[pschlosser]

I've drilled out spot welds in the past. Is there a better method to detach the co-joined sheet metals?

 

[rklein71]

Those frame rails have nice distortion in them

 

[Craig J]

Passenger side rail is out now, took longer than it probably should have, the drivers side is going much faster. Thankfully the floor does not appear to be rusty... if it had been rotten the car would have just gotten parted out.

 

[Craig J]

Drivers side ‘progress’ … if cutting off pieces is considered progress…

 

[Craig J]

For future reference the car started life some sort of tomato red

 

[Craig J]

I have been told that for export purposes I should save this part of the radiator support. Any truth to that?

 

[gzig5]

I don't know about export purposes but unless that part of the support is really bad, I'd try to keep it intact. The VIN stamped in it is important to some people for resale, even if it isn't a numbers matching car it. The VIN is only stamped two places that I know of, in the cowl and on that support. I doubt countries keep track of where VINs from every maker were stamped but you never know. Like me, you are replacing a majority of the metal on the car, but worst case I would cut that section out including the two holes and splice it into the new one if you are going to replace it. The upper support on mine is bowed, probably from a hit, but I'm going to do everything I can to make it straight.

 

[Craig J]

The cowl had some rust behind the fender aprons that I cut out, and also replaced the entire section on the right side that was damaged by a clutch failure.

Ended up cutting out a pretty big section on the right side to get back to clean metal. I suppose I could have replaced the entire cowl and firewall, but it is never going to be a show quality car and I am going to be adding the USCT kit, so nobody is going to mistake it for an all original car anyway.

 

[Cuda Hunter]

Great looking work so far.
That ride has definitely been through a lot of situations.
Definitely replace the vin number stamps in both places.
Thanks for posting up progress pictures.

 

[Craig J]

This should be interesting...

 

[Craig J]

Of course I had to 'fix' the brand new stuff because I am smarter than the engineer that probably spent 1000 hours evaluating the amount of welding needed...

 

[Craig J]