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Thread: The Yankee Express restomod build thread.

  1. #1
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    The Yankee Express restomod build thread.

    Hello all.

    This thread is about my build journey with this project. It's a 1967 Dodge Coronet 500 that I bought from a Craig's List ad out of NY State about 20 minutes after the woman placed the ad. She was divorcing her husband because he left her, too bad he didn't take the Coronet with him. lol. She posted it up and I called her moments later and said, " Don't sell it, I'm on my way from Vermont with a trailer and cash money." She agreed and my pal Rick and I hooked up the trailer and hauled ass North.
    The car is/was a 100% complete example, running and driving. Two owner, titled, Cert-i-card intact, A/C car with factory tinted glass, crème colored body, black/black interior with Bench/buddy front seat, no console, column shift, 318 V8, 727 auto, 8 3/4 non sure grip rear, drum/drum, PS/MB with 69,000 original miles on it. Built in Canada, sold in NC, moved to TX and back to NY, then I bought it for $3750.00

    Rick and I pulled her all of the way back to VT and unloaded it at his pad and took some pictures. Fall of 2014.
    I drove it the few miles down the road to my place and rolled it into the garage where it stayed until rolling back out as a rolling shell in the fall of 2019.

    I had been awaiting medical retirement, after 30 years of service, from the US Army since the fall of 2013, it would be official in spring of 2015, five years after returning from Iraq. I needed a hobby and had been dreaming of what I would do to a classic once i had my hands on it. It's difficult to resto mod a classic car when you move to far flung locations every two or three years.
    By the time you get your shop all set up you have to pack it all up to move across the planet.

    So, now that I had the victim in my grasp, time to begin surgery...lol.

    I sat around for a few days just looking at it and poking around to familiarize myself with this PARTICULAR car and to try to get together a preliminary idea/list of things I wanted to do to customize it. My direction would be to make the changes that I wanted but also to ensure that those changes would be harmonious with the original design AND that would be hard to notice unless you were looking for them. A casual look from a show attendee in passing should alert that person that there's something different about the car, but not be able to discern exactly what had been done to it.
    I hope that I have achieved this.
    Here's the list of mods that have BEEN done, so far...lol....

    Front to back------ Front bumper sectioned, shortened, turn signal rectangular holes filled, recurved to fit the new fender noses and to hug the sheet metal. Also enlarged the center license plate cut out into a ram airduct.
    1967 Charger grill and revolving headlights. Custom electric motors, mounts and linkages.
    Front fender noses swept back to a 90* angle ( Think 70 Road Runner).
    Front disc brakes swap from a 76 Aspen.
    All rubber bumpers and bearings replaced.
    Inner fender close out smooth panels to hide wiring etc.
    Smooth firewall with relocated wiper motor to under dash as is everything previously on the firewall.
    Battery to box behind passenger seat.
    Wiring pass through tubes running along outside of inner fender just below the fender mounting flanges and into the cab through the firewall.
    Wiring passthrough boots in the door frames.
    2004 Audi A6 Quattro dash/console /steering and center pull E Brake. And everything in/on the dash console too.
    Audi door panel elements fabricated into new panels that align with the Audi dash.
    Puddle lights and rear facing red marker light on the rear face of the inner door surface so it can be seen when the door is opened.
    Power everything.
    Custom steering linkages.
    Dual M/C and new hoses/lines.
    10 way, power/heated bucket seats leather.
    1967 Plymouth Sport Fury rear seat topper mounted just behind bucket seat tops and close out roadster type panels from there to the back glass. (Think 59 Corvette)
    Audi armrest with 4 analog gauges hidden inside.
    GPS speedo
    Spare tire under the roadster panels in what would have been the center of the rear seat. Close out panel between cab and trunk.
    Fabricated shift linkage and lever. Hand made pistol grip and reverse lock out.
    Fake quarter panel side scoops opened up.
    Dual motorcycle pop up gas filler caps, one on top of each quarter near the trunk lid front corners.
    Fabricate the entire rear face of the car to accept 1966 Thunder Bird tail lights.
    Trunk lid on gas lifts
    17 gallon fuel cell with dual filler necks.
    Trunk close out panels
    Rear wells tubbed
    Leaf springs relocated to under frame.
    Center pull E Brake cables
    Move spring perches
    Remove spare tire well
    1970 Road Runner rear bumper lengthened 4 5/8" and recurved to hug the sheet metal. TTI exhaust to exit through those back up light holes.
    Remote trunk release.
    Shave gas filler door
    Ditch the 318 in favor of a built 440 Magnum, and build a 727.

    I'm sure there is more but this is what I can think off as the major items. Lots of little things had to be made and figured out to make many of these mods a reality.

    In subsequent posts i'll, go into detail about each mod and what had to be done to achieve it. I will also try to keep the photos in chronological order...lol.
    Last edited by Ghostrider 67; 09-25-2021 at 05:53 PM.

  2. #2
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    Here's some photos...
    Attached Images Attached Images
    Last edited by Ghostrider 67; 09-26-2021 at 06:52 AM.

  3. #3
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    Starting from front to back....the front bumper was sectioned into five hunks. I needed to remove the curve on either end because I had swept back the fender noses and the bumper ends now were hanging in mid air. I also needed to flatten the ends in line with the rest of the bumper and also recurve the very ends to hug the fender pockets. So I sliced it up and trimmed and ground till I had it where it needed to be length wise over all and then trimmed and ground it to get the ends to be close to the fender pockets. I also ground down the edge at the very tip to make the profile mirror the fender pocket outline on either end.
    Once that all looked good I welded it back together and then shaved the turn signal mount rectangular holes and welded them closed.
    Bodywork was next to get her all smoothed out and ready for primer and body color.

  4. #4
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    Once the front bumper was done I began tackling the 1967 Charger grill and rotating headlight buckets & frame. I searched for awhile for this unit and bought it finally almost a year after I got the car. The 66/67 Chargers and Coronets share the same body other than rear roofline.
    Anyway, I was not a fan of the clunky 54 year old headlight rotating bucket motors and resolved to find a way to eliminate them. I searched online and did a heap of research into turning speed, rpm, torque values etc before buying two Chineseium 12Volt motors with tripod mounting bosses. The three point mounting bolt configuration was needed to hold them firm against the heavy headlight buckets rotational mass.
    Once I had them in hand I could set about figuring out mounting flanges and drive shaft connections.
    The OEM motors have a female coupler that a pin slides through to connect to the bucket center drive shaft and also keeps the bucket centered in the frame. Absent the clunky motors I now had to devise a different method of keeping everything rotating on center.
    After much head scratching and seeking of opinions I decided to use hard nylon bushings for the task. I bought a handful at a local hardware store and began shaving them down and drilling out the centers to fit snugly. I made sure to hammer in the centering bushings so they would stay put. The others are spacers that keep the rotating mass of the buckets positioned left to right so that the bucket faces align with the grill ends with the correct spacing so the entire front face is one seamless look. It was a lot of fooling around and trial and error but it works and looks trick as well.
    Connecting the motors tiny D shaped shaft to the rounded nub with the pin hole that is the drive end of the bucket shaft was the next problem.
    The connection had to slip over the nub, and have a pin hole in it, and the other end had to be small enough to slid over the D shaft and have a threaded hole for a set screw. All of this within a few short inches. I don't have the technology to make it in one piece so I also needed the two middle ends to slide within each other and have a set of holes that also aligned with the inside hole being threaded and the outside one smooth.
    I like to use what I have if I can so I searched around the garage for some lengths of steel pipe. I found some 6" long pipes with threads on the ends and a length of pipe that was the right diameter to slide inside those AND over the D shaft too. Lucky day. lol.
    I spent several hours messing around with these little pieces getting the overall length correct and drilling and tapping them. I used whatever bolts were laying around but will use nice set screws when I assemble them. I will also clean up the pieces to make them nice before assembly. This was just a proof of concept and fabrication exercise.
    Attached Images Attached Images

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    more photos of the headlight motor hardware..

  6. #6
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    Having worked all of that out it was time to work on the restoration of the bucket faces and the grill bars. Not to mention the rusty crusty headlight mounts and adjusters and the lights themselves. I stripped down the faces to the chromed surface and sanded in between every little slot for hours and hours by hand. I then primered them and wiped off the chrome narrow divider bars, leaving the primer in between. Then I sprayed them black, three coats, wiping off the bars each time. The last coat I let dry and then used a straight razor blade to detail all of the many edges and ends to perfection. Four bucket faces and four headlight bucket faces plus the turn signal housings and the grill bars. My fingers are tired! But, they look great! I also had to dig through all of my bagged and tagged parts bins for the correct framework mounting bolts and nuts. They are location specific due to the tight clearance between the rotating bucket and the frame work that holds them.
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    More photos....
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    The front fenders had both been hit at some point in the cars past and then covered up in layers of filler. Once I saw the extent of the damage I made the decision to solve another thing I never liked about these cars, the way the fender front nose angled forward to carry the hood 45* contour line out to a point across the end of the fender top. I decided to sweep the nose angle back to 90* with the front of the car. Think 1970 Road Runner.
    I bought a nose section from a guy and had some new metal with the correct contours for the left side which was hit pretty hard. Trial and error later I had them tacked together for mock up. It would require some fancy bodywork to get it to look right but I dug in and got 'er done. I also took this opportunity to shave the fender mounted turn signal indicators, this is not yer mothers Coronet.
    The radio antenna also was shaved.
    Another item on my list was front disc brakes. With a 484 HP 440 big block under the hood I wanted to be able to STOP this train once it was rolling.
    My pal Gary who is a MOPAR collector had a set of 1976 Aspen front disc brakes laying around and agreed to sell them to me. They bolt right up to the 67, Ma MOPAR didn't like to retool....
    They were rusty and the only thing i really needed were the spindles and caliper mount brackets anyway. New rotors and calipers were a must.
    New shocks and hoses, lines and bumpers as well. New bearings and pads too.
    Last edited by Ghostrider 67; 09-25-2021 at 04:19 PM.

  9. #9
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    The next issue that I thought about changing was the firewall into a smooth one and also shave the wiper motor mounting alcove from the top of the firewall along the cowl. The wiper motor is now under the dash. The shaving of that indent was easy, minor fabrication and bodywork. I cut out all of the firewall sections that protruded out past the base level surface.
    I wanted to leave as much as I could still factory connected for stability of the cowl section and windshield. I fabricated a one piece sheet of 18ga metal and hand formed the bends before trimming slowly to get it to fit tightly. After welding it up I moved on to the problem of what to do about the inner fender surfaces that were wrinkled a little from being hit. I had watched a car show, probably Texas Metal, where they fashioned these 'close out' panels. I got some more sheet metal out and cut to fit and bent on my sheet metal brake to the correct angle. Cut out for the shock towers and Bobs yer Uncle. The front clip is painted at the moment but the panels are not. These are simply mock ups, I'll cut new ones and do a better job trimming and bending. Those will be painted and installed, These will be scrap. The panels will be mounted on 1/4" hard nylon bushings with chrome fasteners Allen bolts so I can hide stuff under them.

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    more photos....
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    More photos....
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    Next up were the wire passthroughs in the doors and along the fenders.
    The Audi doors have these little plastic collars that the rubber boots snap onto. The collars snap into the cut out in the A Pillar and one on each door frame. Neat little system. So, all I had to do was cut out the opening for the collars and snap on the boots. Also cutting an opening on the inside of the pillar into the cab.
    The fenders took some thought. I ended up using left over CPAp air hoses and connectors! LOL!
    The swivel boot goes through the firewall, the hose end slides onto the boot and the hose passes through a metal tube just under the fender flange. The holes for the collars are the oval shaped ones. The smaller rectangular holes on the bottom of the door and the rear are for the puddle lights and marker lights. The puddle lights on the bottoms sit in a conveniently provided rectangular depression left there by the factory in 1967.
    Attached Images Attached Images
    Last edited by Ghostrider 67; 09-25-2021 at 04:34 PM.

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    Following the passthroughs it was time to deal with the Audi interior, including complete dash, tower, console and steering.
    I wanted this to be a centerpiece mod for the Express.
    I searched several salvage yards , with a tape measure and the Coronet measurements in hand, for anything that would fit, was modern enough, and that I could live with. &23 cars and trucks later I stumbled on a lone Audi Quattro wagon in the last yard. I almost passed by it, thinking it would be to narrow. I had already passed by dozens of Audis. But, I was tired of looking so I thought, what the hell.
    I got the doors open and it was dry and in great shape inside. Not a scratch on anything. The ass end of the car was totaled. I needed the inside front.
    Put the tape to it and wouldn't you know it, it was dead on balls perfect. lol. To borrow a phrase from a movie.
    I even liked the set up. And the color. It had four doors so I took all four door panels, the complete dash with all wiring and computers, the HVAC, climate controls and Bose Symphony Stereo and speakers, the center E Brake assembly and the toer & console. The puddle lights and rear door marker lights, door wiring harnesses, and wiring pass throughs, and a ton of fasteners. I left the seats, they were too small.
    Once I got it all back to the garage I found out a few things, non of them good.
    First off the Audi dash front edge curvature was nothing like the 67 Coronet. The Audi windshield was more curved. So, fortunately the Audi dash is deep and had a lot of real estate to trim off without interfering with anything important. This deep dash, combined with the Coronet indented firewall means there is a ton of space under there to hide things BONUS!
    So, after trimming the dash pad /body to fit the 67 windshield curve I set the dash shell up in place where it looked right and took a look at the mounting points. The Audi dash has an aluminum skeleton that it bolts to. This frame has three bolt holes on pads at each end that bolted to a corresponding pad off of the A pillars. These pads were setting away from MY a pillars by about 4 1/2". The dash body was the RIGHT LENGTH but, the frame was not. So, I fabricated a couple of plates to weld to the A pillars and set them up to meet up with the skeleton ends. Done. While doing that I had to mock up the center tower & console because they bolt to the front the dash and have to be at the correct height and angle. So it was a juggling act. Also there was the issue of the door elements that had to meet up with the dash ends because the dash lines flowed across onto the doors in the Audi A6. Put the dash angled up too high and the doors and console wont meet up right, too low same deal. Plus it had to be positioned left to right correctly to meet the floor hump and the door elements.
    The Audi door cards are plastic and curved for appearance. The 67 Coronet doors are dead flat rectangles. These wont work together.
    So, after scratching my head for a few days I decided to try removing the elements that made up the Audi door panels. The upper section with the door handle, a speaker and the long hunk of wood grain trim. The armrest/window switch/door pull piece, and the tip out cubby with the seat memory buttons. As you can see by looking at the stock door it's NOT rectangular at all. The top section isn't long enough by itself for the 67 door. BUT, the rear doors on the Audi are longer. SO I split the two sections on each door and married them up into one section on the 67 door.
    After clamping it all in place to look at it I placed pieces of plastic tube behind the sections in several spots and drove 4" long drywall screws down the center of the tubes into the door steel to hold them stationary for the spray foam application so they wouldn't swell out as the foam expanded. Worked a treat.
    Once the foam was dry and hard I trimmed the excess and sanded it all down before coating it with filler in prep for vinyl later. Nice and solid. The armrest assembly was a different issue because the forward tip of the pull handle was short from meeting the surface of the 67 door because the Audi had a curved piece there that I no longer had. SO I cut a hunk of 2x4 wood and made a small teardrop platform to be the landing place for that end which i could sink a screw up through from the backside to anchor it later. The rear end of the armrest had another curve that no longer was there. So I made a metal base for it to rest against and for screws to pass up through from the back anchoring THAT end.
    I had to carefully locate a small odd shaped hole under the center window switch area for the wiring to pass through inside of the door shell.
    Now the cubby need to be located on the door too. I was worried it would extend into the door cavity too far and interfere with the window but it doesn't. The door panels will be made of 3/16" hard board covered with 1/4 foam rubber mat that has a channel carved into it and a spot for a medallion. The covering of pleather vinyl with be glued to this. Once the door card mock up was set i went on to the puddle lights and rear face markers. These little gems are just plastic lenses that snap into place in the cut out of the door metal body. I had only one chance to get the shape right of the cut out, before having to weld back material to fix a mistake. I got them all on the first try though. They snap right in. Red facing the rear when the door is open and clear lens facing down to light up the ground by the door. Neat, and trick, on a 67 dodge.
    Next up was connecting the door latch handle, up in the front corner of the door now, to the latch mechanism on the rear of the door, down lower.
    I cut the old arm in half and welded on a length of steel rod between them at the right length to make the thing operate smoothly, done. The rest is only wiring harnesses and the power lock actuator when I get to it.
    All in all a fun project to figure out and do.
    Last edited by Ghostrider 67; 09-25-2021 at 05:28 PM.

  14. #14
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    More photos....I included a photo of what the Audi interior looks like when it's all together. Also a shot of a car interior with the same sort of look i'll be going for when I assemble the interior.
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  15. #15
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    more photos....including an Audi door panel to see the way the panel curves around.
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