1972 Road Runner/GTX restoration

[ct71rr]

Awesome!!!!!!!!!!!

[mopar71]

Great Job on your car, now can you come over and help me with mine!

[72RoadRunnerGTX]

Since the last posting I've been concentrating on completing dash and interior details. Pulled the dash back out to finish up restoring electrical functions, all buzzers and warning lights. Replaced the dash mounted heat generating map light bulb, that seems to melt all surrounding plastics, with an LED array. Cleaned and restored all the A/C ductwork, installed a compressor cycling switch on the evaporator housing for the R134 conversion.
Ran the wiring looms for the power windows and door locks, installed the carpeting. Hope to have the custom A/C lines here soon to complete the under hood pluming and get the system charged. A functional A/C system would complete the mechanical restoration of this car leaving only trim and final paint work to be done. Racked up 500 miles on it now wearing primer grey, what a fun car to drive.

[rr6pak]

Where did you get the LED for the map light? Looks good in there. The whole car looks good, keep us posted

[bruce]

Wow that thing is GORGEOUS!

[72RoadRunnerGTX]

I was unable to locate any LED lighting premade that would fit so with about $10 worth of Radio Shack parts I built a small array. Pulls about 75ma of current and no heat, more than enough light output although whiter than the rest of the conventional lighting.
My next electrical challenge will be updating the radio and keeping the original appearance. I had forgotten how antiquated radio/audio technology was in the early seventies until I pulled the cover off one of these radios.

[Serious Satellite]

Nice interior work. . .the led readout thing on the map light is a great idea. . .I noticed mine was burned and melted and was thinkin' about what to do with that thing as well. ..

antiquated radios in the seventies did inspire Steely Dan to write F.M . . . .I don't know of anybody that's written a song lately about an MP3. . ..

[1971SSP]

wow that thing looks nice!

[71440 gtx]

that is a nice looking 72 rr gtx

[72RoadRunnerGTX]

Air conditioning system complete just in time for fall.

[72RoadRunnerGTX]

A little more progress; have completed wiring for the power windows after finally working out a solution to the door jamb wiring boots.



Installed the headliner and recovered the rear seat.



Finished speaker installation, mounted up two 3½" speakers in the center dash location slightly angled, attempting to get some separation using the original speaker frame. One of the first mods completed when the body was on the rotisserie was grafting in a 6x9" speaker mount, removed from one of the donor cars, in the left rear package tray. Replacing the 5X7" opening originally located there.




Finally sorted the MP oil pan part numbers. I was hoping to use a 7-quart "Hemi" e-body pan from the start. Ended up with the 971 pan for the initial build. When changing out the pan there appeared to be a slight leak at the rear main seal, changed it out as well. Sealed the inside of my porosity problem block at the same time.

[landon1]

a few things i'm wondering about for future reference.....

in another posting you mentioned updating the original radio, now you have 4 speakers to hook up, so i'm wondering on what you're doing to the radio to get the power up and be able to use the 4 speakers.

for the a/c system...i believe eariler you mentioned using bouchillon for parts....did you end up using the e-body under hood kit? it would appear that that set-up would work, so i was just curious what parts you used to complete the installation. my car came with a/c but currently everyhting is missing (other than the control panel, heater/evaporator box, and the firewall connections - i believe i have an aftermarket heater valve, but still an a/c one, un-operational)

EDIT: sorry, that's a classic auto air package - bouchillon has a condenser kit with hoses, etc. Is that the setup you used?

what paint did you use on your motor? the paint i've used in the past seems to only last for a few years, then starts flaking off.

thanks

[72RoadRunnerGTX]

Radio; in a past professional life, I had a small high end car stereo shop. I have cut into some pretty nice/expensive dash boards to install a stereo that didn't originally belong there. After what it took to collect rallye dash parts for this project, I can't seem to bring myself to cut this one. It would be so easy to cut out a DIN opening and stick a 120 watt CD player receiver with an IPod interface and XM radio.
I am currently gutting one of my old radios and working at retrofitting into its chassis the innards of a later model mopar electronic am/fm cassette deck, leaving out the tape transport. This radio has an IC based "high power" audio section, about 20x4 watts or something like that. I plan to wait to hear what it sounds like; if it's really underpowered I will install an amp. I still remember a time when if my trunk wasn't full of amplifiers then it was underpowered.


A/C; I purchased the bulk of the under hood components from Bouchillon Performance. Pretty pleased with their compressor mounting hardware and being able to fit under the Air grabber/six pack air cleaner. What I didn't care for was the bulk rubber hoses and generic hose fittings that came with the kit. When I called them to inquire about factory looking replacement lines they didn't seem to get it. Ended up working with Classic Auto Air on the lines, sent them one of my lines to be reworked and had other lines made up. Purchased some strait hard lines I bent myself. I am pleased with the end result but working with Classic was not painless, took 3 months, 3 shipments back and forth across the county, numerous phone calls and emails to get what I requested from them in the first phone call.

I used paint from Mopar Performance, original Chrysler engine paint in rattle cans. Some of the cans looked like they have been sitting around a while. Had a lot of problems with clogged nozzles and such, had to return several of them. I did very carefully clean and prep everything prior to the use self-etching primer under the paint.

[72RoadRunnerGTX]

Anybody know what the option code was for this radio?


Finally getting somewhere with the radio mod. It does sound pretty good on the bench, can't wait hear it in the car. It will have to wait a bit longer, currently prepping the car to go back to the body shop for final paint, should be done about this time next mouth.

[landon1]

i wish i had the knowledge to transform my 2 watt music master into something like that...sweet