Restoration question

71ChargerRT

71ChargerRT

Well-known member
At what point in body panel replacement does it go from restoration to re-body?

I ask ask because after studying pics of my Rallye Challenger it seems to me the only OE body panels I'll have left are tail panel, roof skin, cowl/firewall, inner fenders and radiator support.
 
lol, its all in the eye of the owner honestly

look at it this way, your doing repairs, your not going out and putting panels over a tag just to sell it

is it a rebody..sorta, it really depends on who you ask, how much of the inner structure will remain, how much of the panels will be NEW not cut off a donor

from where i sit, i intentionaly rebody so im probably not the best answer, but i rebody onto things they never were intended for, but my view is simple, if the majority of the parts are new not hacks, and you retain atleast 75% of the original inner structure(all that shit behind the panels) then you are just doing a re-skin not a re-body , in the end tho if your building YOUR CAR for YOURSELF with zero intention of resale then who cares
 
69 is pretty much on point. We all know about the different number locations on Mopars, if you repair/reskin without disturbing these, it's not really a "re-body".

The central shell, i.e. roof, cowl & floor supports are like the main torso. Everything else are like appendages. As long as you retain the main torso, it's not a re-body. A re-body usually pertains to when someone takes the tags & numbers from a rusted hulk and grafts them onto a completely different car.
 
When I restored my rust coronet convertible I had to replace the rad support, inner fenders, parts of the floors, complete quarters, wheel tubs, trunk extensions, trunk floor, tail panel, dutchman panel...etc. I never considered that it was a re-body. ;)
 
71ChargerRT said:
At what point in body panel replacement does it go from restoration to re-body?

I ask ask because after studying pics of my Rallye Challenger it seems to me the only OE body panels I'll have left are tail panel, roof skin, cowl/firewall, inner fenders and radiator support.
Click to expand...
Who cares? Re-body is really just a moniker thought up by someone wanting to make themselves appear knowledgeable and used non-stop in the "My car is better than your car" world.
In fact, even the term "restoration" is over-used today. Perfect paint work, components fully painted, aftermarket tires and rims, wrinkle-free seats and carpet... disqualifies the car as a "restoration".
Jacking up the VIN tag and running another car under it is the closest thing to a re-body that exists with our unitized-construction Mopars, where just about every panel is considered part of the structure/body.
Best to just stick with "body work" or "repaired". :)
 
i think the rebody came about when hacking a car in half and taking a good back/front half and welding it back together was more common
 
I was just curious of your opinions.

I know what my car started as and will end up. Mine will not be restored, as it's considered these days. I want mine as it would be after I've owned it a couple years, aftermarket wheels, suspension, exhaust, engine mods, etc.

I do believe it would be pretty close to what I would've ordered had I sat down in '74 and checked off the option boxes on my own. Quick run down, 1974 Challenger Rallye, B5 blue, black stripe, black bucket seat interior, 360 auto, front and rear sway bars, Rallye dash, Rallye wheels. I will NOT be putting the vinyl top back on.

This is what it would've looked like new.
 

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sounds like something i would have ordered, except give me the white buckets with an otehrwise black gut...as i know how stunning it looks, and of course slapstick...i had a 74, and while it was nice, i never was a fan of driving it, it felt like a slower slightly smaller version of my caddy with 1/4 the comfort..made my lil abody fish feel like rocket ships...but i do miss its amc pink metalic..that car was STUNNING(think panther pink crossed with plum crazy with extra metal flake) oh and id delete the stripes after the fender gills unless the roof was painted to match them...hmm i wonder if a vynle DECAL for a roof would keep the rust out while giving the look ...it just kinda hit me..cause at any point you peal off the giant sticker and slap a new one down why the hell has the site deleted the "shift enter" functionality...i got into that habit decades ago..... course enter of any kind is beign deleted!?!?!?!?!?!?!?
 
I wouldn't be terribly concerned about the "rebody" issue. Kevin's car is far, far worse than yours and has no redeeming value other than being his first car. Yes, it's a '68 Charger but it's a triple-green 318 column-shift with few options (full wheelcovers, AM radio, and buddy seat). He'll only have the roof and glass frames, a relatively-small segment of cowl, very little of the rockers, and the rear-seat bulkhead and package tray left from the original car. The side skeletal structures are still OK except for the aforementioned rockers. Literally tearing the car in half has been a major concern each time it's had to be moved, since the major structural components on the bottom of the car are the sketchy remains of the rockers and transmission tunnel. Regardless of replacing damned near everything, somewhere down in the cockels of the structure it's still the car he bought when he was 14 or 15, so he's not concerned about the enormous amount of panel replacement. His motto: "Anything that can be built can be rebuilt." Most of it won't be what he had 30 years ago, but all that remains of what was will be a part of the car. That's all that matters to him, and make no mistake, Kevin's a resto/rebody Nazi.

I would suggest you pop the coin for the right VIN rivets. Don't drill out the old ones! Grind them away from the back side. If you drill 'em, they'll spin and leave the telltale scratches. For those of you following along at home, E-body VIN tags are riveted only to the dash pad. When I worked at Year One, there was a pile of E-body dash pads above the R&D department with VIN tags still on them that had been sent in for refurbishing. Federal law prohibits both the refurbisher removing them and Year One from returning them to the owner. There was a nearly-half-page warning about this in the catalog, but people don't bother to read. Sad, because many of them were high-perf tags including 340, 383HP, and 440 engine codes. Some of the owners hired attorneys, etc. only to find out that they were, in fact, screwed. At least Year One didn't report the VIN numbers, which would've put them into the federal database as stolen or salvage. There was enough grey area to get away with that.
 
Around here, there is a long, involved process for VIN tag moving, and it essentially has to be thoroughly documented and witnessed by law enforcement, preferably the RCMP though city or municipal officers will do if Mounties aren't available.
There were a lot of hoops to jump through... to do it legally.
I had a customer with a 69 GTO (talk about re-body! It had MAJOR corrective surgery long before I got it!) that wanted me to switch tags for him. He called the car a GTO, the firewall tag called it a LeMans, the ownership called it a LeMans but had a different VIN. He had a plate and ownership and other documentation off of a GTO and wanted it all switched. I looked into how to do it, and backed away from the deal. Quickly.
Funny thing: Mid-way through the body work he took the car to have the front suspension re-done and when it came back, the VIN on the car didn't match the one on my repair order or estimate... Damn good thing I had taken pictures of it before it left. I could imagine getting caught up in that shit show! Luckily, I was under no obligation to report it to anyone, but it did cost me $200 to visit a lawyer and have my statement notarized, just to cover my ass.
 
No long, drawn-out ordeal here in the U.S. Moving a VIN number is illegal, period. If you buy a car without a VIN, then the state can issue one for you, but it won't bear any resemblance to a factory VIN. That's how kit cars often get titled.
 
I have the dash pad and VIN tag, so no worries there.

My issue, besides the body, is a completely rotted out fender tag that I'll need to have replaced.
 
I moved a VIN tag once, on an '86 D50.. I'd owned it, sold it, and found it abandoned in a parking lot two years later.. My copy of the key, and a battery drove it home after a two week surveillance period. I tossed the 8ball of crack I found in it, and got a tag off of my buddy's truck he'd run over with a bulldozer (Mine were drilled out). Drove it for another six months until I sent the battery into the plastic fan on the side of a mountain, and overheated it.. blew the head gasket and sold it for $50.

Maybe it was an '84.. not sure, four square headlights.
 
I still want the tag on the Challenger, I'm sure the build sheet is non-existant so I'd like to have a little documentation. My Valiant on the other hand, no tag no problem.

If it comes a day where I might have, against my will, to sell the Challenger I want as much paperwork on that car as possible. Hell, it's still a numbers matching Rallye.
 
Fair enough. Mine's originally a brown 318 car with a vinyl top (probably that awful beige), so literally anything's an improvement. :dance:

I may go the route Nodda did, and put a data tag from something totally unrelated under the hood. I'd go with something '81 or newer, though, where the codes and the 17-digit VIN would completely perplex any peanut gallery denizen. :D
 
Dr.Jass said:
Fair enough. Mine's originally a brown 318 car with a vinyl top (probably that awful beige), so literally anything's an improvement. :dance:

I may go the route Nodda did, and put a data tag from something totally unrelated under the hood. I'd go with something '81 or newer, though, where the codes and the 17-digit VIN would completely perplex any peanut gallery denizen. :D
Click to expand...

Forgot about Nodda doing that....yeah that would be hilarious! :D

Can you make out the codes on the tag, or is it rusted too badly? I have read about a couple sources that can reproduce a damaged/rusty/missing tag.....although I believe you have to prove ownership and pics of the car etc.
 
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