MotorTrend

This 1970 Dodge Challenger Was Resurrected After Sitting Lifeless for 30+ Years

Looking at how Roadkill Garage’s Vanishing Paint Challenger was transformed from derelict to driveable.
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Roadkillsuperfans have seenRoadkill Garageon the MotorTrend App, during which David Freiburger and I (Steve Dulcich) mess around with cars in my shop. My favoriteRoadkill Garageepisode so far is No. 4, the one when we transform Freiburger's 1970 Dodge Challenger into tire-burning greatness. But wait! How did he end up with what is now known as the Vanishing Paint Challenger?

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Revisit the pilot episode ofRoadkill Garageand witness us suffering through a weekend rebuild of the 351 Cleveland in Freiburger's '67 Cougar. In the end, I liked the Cougar more than Freiburger did. As the Cougar video shoot was wrapping up, the bench racing was just getting started. Freiburger had been shopping for a cheap muscle-car-era Mopar project for months and had little luck with the "cheap" part of the plan—or with finding a Mopar body style he hadn't already owned twice.

I had a Challenger and no intention of ever doing anything with it. The outcome was an on-the-spot trade: the Cougar for an unloved Dodge Challenger. Details were worked out, and the cars changed hands. Freiburger's new Challenger is a base-model V-8 car with the light-duty A904 automatic transmission, lighter-duty 7-1/4 rearend, and multiple layers of peeling paint in a palette of shades of green.

The Case of the Stolen Right Front Fender

There's a story behind every neglected old muscle car, and this one's begins in the '90s with another Challenger of mine, a '71 R/T model. I'd disassembled it for restoration, and then the right front fender was stolen. At the time, Challenger body panels were not yet being reproduced, and the '80s days of grabbing a nice fender from the local wrecking yard were gone. The easiest way to find stuff was to buy from regional parts hustlers who worked the salvage yards and classifieds and stockpiled parts and parts cars, selling the goods for cash at a healthy premium. I found a guy who had an impressive collection, including a row of Challenger fenders. Mint ones seemed rich for the time at five or six bills. Desperate but tight on cash, I bought a rough repainted one for half that. Turned out, under the paint it was Bondo and rust from end to end.

Overcome by disgust at the garbage fender, I couldn't stop picturing the flawless one that was swiped from my Challenger. I only knew one local guy who had a Challenger, and he became my prime suspect in the heist. I stewed on it long enough to build up the nerve for a confrontation, even though years had passed since the theft. The outcome was that he didn't do it, and I ended up buying a complete '70 Challenger from the guy for just $300. In the end, I decided the car was too good to part out for the fender and just parked it waiting for something good to do with it. That day finally came when I swapped it to Freiburger for his '67 Cougar.

1970 Dodge Challenger Status: Below Average

Despite being a desirable Mopar E-body, the '70 looked pretty bad. It was below the average of what you would have found for scrap in the boneyards of the '80s and '90s. The 318 engine had blown up sometime around 1989, throwing a pair of connecting rods through the oil pan. The body looked rough, the leading edge of the hood was smashed, valances front and rear wrinkled to ruin, and no decklid. The interior was stripped. On the plus side, the floors and trunk were solid, and the door panels were in place—indeed, attached to mint doors. Most of the body was pin straight with no structural rust. Good rails, floors, doors, quarters, and fenders.

It was a typical candidate for sitting for years, only to be traded back later in some other Freiburger-Dulcich scheme. Instead,Roadkill Garagehappened, and we decided to jam for a solid weekend to reanimate the Challenger. The project that would become known as Vanishing Paint had begun. It wasn't going to be pretty. The important thing was to just start working on it and hit the road.

'72 Fleetside Shortbed Donates Vital Organs

An old Dodge parts truck was at the ready to donate its 360 engine and 727 trans—a process that becameRoadkill Garageepisode 3. The '70s Dodge trucks share much of the DNA of the Mopar muscle cars, and a surprising number of parts interchange. A few years back, I assembled a '72 fleetside shortbed with a screaming, 7,000-rpm, 360ci small-block backed by an A518 four-speed automatic. It was a daily driver until I was in a hit-and-run with a Ford Taurus. The Taurus did the hitting and running—not me. The truck was a total loss, with liability insurance only.

The damage was not fatal. A local Mopar guy I knew had just the right parts donor: a '75 D100 with a DMV rap sheet a mile long. It owed a fortune in back fees and had an ancient lien that pushed the ante up several thousand more. The owner was grateful to trade the truck for a set of cylinder heads, and I was grateful for perfect front sheetmetal and a rust-free shortbed box. The 360ci engine and 727 automatic transmission combination were of unknown condition, but like all the rest of the parts, they were just a bonus. After filleting the sheetmetal I needed, the D100 was abandoned in my equipment yard.

The truck's engine and trans are bolt-in replacements for the Challenger's stock 318 and 904 transmission, so we figured the Vanishing Paint Challenger could be on the road in no time. Success hinged on whether the truck engine would even run and whether its transmission would even shift. It only took a day of makeshift rigging to not only get the engine running but to actually drive the carcass of the truck. The engine and trans were validated. Of course, the two-barrel carb on the truck engine would not make it in a performance car like a Challenger, and the rear-sump truck oil pan would need a swap to the center-sump version to fit the car.

We opened the top end of the engine for an intake-manifold swap and had our first look inside. The sludge was pretty thick. We were not concerned. A broken stud on the exhaust flange of a cylinder head was more of a problem. This led to what in our world is the logical conclusion: We needed to change to some high-performance cylinder heads we had sitting around—ported iron units that were also milled to increase the compression ratio. Connecting the dots in the car-guy universe, the heads we used had been done for Freiburger back in the '90s when he was editingCar Craftmagazine and when he first built the orange '70 Duster that I later painted for him before he sold me the car to pay for an engagement ring. The Duster had a 360 in it that pushed the car to 12-second quarter-mile times until oil starvation killed it, and I took the engine apart, stashing the best leftovers in my parts room. Freiburger always ends up recollecting his stuff somehow.

Don't Get It Right—Just Get It Running

Stabbing the drivetrain into the Challenger was just nuts and bolts, though a stripped extension housing meant the transmission mount wouldn't bolt on. Heavy-duty zip ties were the problem solver until we could revisit the trans and fix or replace the extension. We even found an old driveshaft that fit reasonably well. (The 727 trans is longer than the stock 904, requiring a shorter driveshaft.) We didn't waste time on things like a fuel system or a functional electrical system, just rigging the bare-bones basics to make it drive under its own power without having to buy any replacement parts. A paint-thinner can and rubber hose replaced the entire fuel system. A couple of wires routed inside from the ignition and starter handled the electrical system. For luxury, though, we plumbed the power steering, and it came back to life, adding effortless steering control. The braking system was a little trickier. We replaced the master cylinder with a new one and bolted on a used set of calipers and pads when we found there was none on the car. Safety first.

What we learned is that an old, worn-out engine is better than no engine—and that a worn-out engine can actually run pretty well. We knew the 360 would have to be rebuilt, but surprisingly it could smoke the tires with ease. After being off the road since 1989—more than 30 years!—the Vanishing Paint Challenger drove pretty nicely with an engine that probably hadn't made heat in a dozen years. We call that recycling.

In a little more than two days, a popular old Mopar went from a derelict field car to doing burnouts on deserted backroads. Is it done? Nope. What we did here is mostly a mental exercise to animate a machine that had been sitting for decades, thereby leading to motivation. The status of "driveable" frames it as a real car instead of cool backyard junk. Freiburger has long said that running garbage is better than rotting garbage and that many good cars end up sinking into the ground because the owner envisions perfection. It's a burden I know well. In this case, we knew that just about everything we did to get the Challenger back on the road would have to be redone. But that didn't matter. It's all about the process of getting it there, wherever there is.

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