Topic: The Yankee Express, a Vermont Rat.

[Ghostridersixseven]

Welcome to my madness, thanks for stopping by!
The Yankee Express is a 1967 Dodge Coronet 500 grandma's grocery go getter, turned freak-a-zoid monster street roller.
During my 30 years of military service around the globe I had ample opportunity to imagine what sort of changes I could make to this B Body example. It's a long and strange list.
To begin this story I'll say that after being forced to medically retire from the US Army National Guard after 30 years, 13 of them active duty Army, I was underfoot while waiting on 100% disability to be approved from the VA. My dear wife decided that I needed to get off my ass and get busy elsewhere with a hobby. Anywhere else. lol.
She saw this car pop up for sale on NY Craig's list about 20 minutes after the lady posted it and showed the ad to me. I immediately called her and said, " Please don't sell it, i'm on my way from VT with cash and a trailer."
She agreed and away I went with my pal Rick and his trailer.
We got it home to his place and unloaded my prize to begin poking around and snapping pics.
He asked me, " So, what are you gonna do with it?"
I just looked at him with a wide smile. He said, " Oh dear Lord....." 

[Ghostridersixseven]

The reason he was worried is because this is what I decided to do....


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 elec 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 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 he 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.

Sooo...just a FEW changes...lol!
Fast forward six+ years and all of the above has been completed.  Here are the photos from the beginning on day zero. I'll go through this build in posts, in order, explaining my thinking and what had to be done in more detail.
So from day zero......

[Ghostridersixseven]

After looking it over and basking in the MOPAR glory of it all He said, " Now get it off of MY lawn."
So I drove it home and parked it in the garage.
It was a 100% complete example, running and drivable. Cream colored exterior and black/black interior, an A/C car with factory tinted glass all around, 318 small block V 8 with 727 automatic, column shift, buddy seat, factory wheel covers. Even the Cert-i-Card was intact on the radiator support.
I could have simply upgraded the brakes and fuel, put new shocks on it and drove it, but, that's just not me.
I sat around on various chairs and overturned buckets staring at the car and wondering what it would look like if I did X-Y- or Z to it.  My plan was to make the changes that I wanted but do so in a manner that caused them to NOT be obvious to the average onlooker. I wanted to make people wonder what had been done.

I hope that I have achieved this.
So deconstruction went pretty smoothly overall with only a few small incidents. lol. They always do come apart faster than going back together.
It turned out that the car was NOT in as great of shape as I initially thought it was. Paint and Bondo covers a lot of bad stuff.
It had been smacked on both front corners and the right end of the cowl had been crunched by a falling tree or something similar. The right rear lower quarter panel had also been smacked. The trunk lid surface was badly covered in surface rust.
No major rot though thank goodness.
I made a list of the parts of the car that I would never need again and planned to sell. Much like invading armies would burn their ships in the harbor to prevent retreat, I sold off so many parts, there was no going back.


I took it apart down to the last bolt and nut, bagging and tagging everything along the way for reassembly.
The only real issue cropped up when I pulled the last bolt from the K Frame while dropping it and the motor together out from under the front of the car, because that's how they are assembled at the factory. That bolt came out and the entire shell tipped up to the ceiling, the rear bumper resting on the garage floor. Boy, was I surprised! And Lucky.
As it turned out, I had accidentally placed the rear jack stands in the exact pivot point for the shell without the motor & K Frame holding the front down. It could have gone horribly wrong just then but it didn't.
I slid the engine out from under the lower radiator support and pushed down on the front of car returning it to the jack stands under the front frame rails. easy. But, Now I couldn't let go of the damn car because it would tip BACK UP! lol.  I
I had not yet destroyed anything and I was taking no chances by letting it flop back up. I had the four wheels with tires on, sitting by the garage wall and could just reach them with an outstretched right foot. I flopped them down one at a time and dragged them over with my heel then picking them up and placing them on the front corners of the car as ballast. It worked.

Here's some pics of the deconstruction and the ballast...lol.

[Ghostridersixseven]

Here's a few more....

[Ghostridersixseven]

The few rusted and banged up sections were both front corners and the right rear plus the passenger side floor pan. I cut out the floor pan and fabricated new ones and welded them into the car. The right rear got hammered out and the lower section replaced with a fabricated section. The front corners got some hammer and dolly action too and also modified.

[Ghostridersixseven]

Beginning from the front I sectioned the front bumper into five pieces. The idea was to remove the curves on either end and to reimagine the ends to match the newly modified front fender noses.
Let me back up, the fenders had been both hit at some point and while looking them over initially I tried to think of ways to turn that to my advantage. I never liked the way the front corners angled forwards so the contour line angling across the hood to each corner would flow out to the point. I decided to sweep those back to 90* with the hood front lip. Much like the look of a 1970 Plymouth Road Runner front end. This solved both issues nicely.
So, having done this the front bumper ends now were hanging out in thin air. The pocket on each fender front lower section that the bumper end is supposed to set next to were now different. The bumper would need surgery to correct this mismatch. In addition to these reasons there was also the mod where the front Coronet grill and headlights would be swapped for a 67 Charger grill and revolving headlight buckets which also had the turn signals up on either end above the bumper rather than in the bumper face, as the 67Coronet has them. So those rectangular turn signal mounting holes would need to be 'shaved'.
The front bumper mounting brackets would also need to be modifies to make the newly positioned outer two mounting holes line up. So I sectioned those as well.
I had discovered a set of pictures on line of a 1967 Coronet that had been massaged to within an inch of it's life that I really liked and it had the same things done to it as far as the front bumper and the rear corners. It was inspiration.
 I trimmed and cut and 'pasted' steel for a few days till I got the shape close to what I needed over all and tacked up what I had to see where I was. I needed to fit the ends together still and that was intricate. I had rebent the bumper body a bit to get it straight and now needed to position the ends rear edges close to the pockets in the fender sheet metal. It all came together with a little fooling around and I trimmed the trailing edges to mirror those pockets.

Pictures, or it didn't happen...

[Ghostridersixseven]

A few more....plus another small mod where I widened and increased the height of the front license pate holder opening, turning it into a ram air duct. Here's a few pics of the inspiration car.  Very tidy and tasty.

[Ghostridersixseven]

Cut & paste, cut & paste...lol.

Next up on the chopping block was the set of fender top mounted turn signal indicators, Grandma may of needed them but I did not. The radio antenna also was shaved.  Following those I turned my attention to the engine bay. I wanted a smooth firewall and inner fenders. The firewall has a windshield wiper mounted in a big divot along the top left edge. The divot needed shaving. I cut away all of the firewall portions that extended forward of the base plane. This left as much as possible still attached with factory welds. I fabricated a one piece panel with the correct contour bends and fitted it in front of the remaining bits and welded it in. I fabricated a patch piece for the divot and welded that in. While I was up there I cut out the bumpy surface of the cowl front on each corner and replaced with smooth metal. Then I made templates for each side inner fender and cut them out of 18 ga sheet metal and bent on the brake to fit snug. They sit 1/4" up off the fender surface so I can hide stuff underneath them.
Once the the fenders are on again I'll fab a radiator/ front grill top cover that looks trick. The inner panels are bolted on with chrome Allen head bolts down through the panels and through hard nylon bushings for spacers.
The front clip is painted in these pictures.

[Ghostridersixseven]

  Backing up again.... The 67 Charger grill & headlights swap.  The 67 Coronets sold in Mexico came with the Charger front end from the factory. Weird. So, I knew it was a simple swap. The lower grill support bar was different due to different trim and the Coronet headlight mounts would need to go. The wiring was different too. But the biggest deal for me was the desire to NOT use the big clunky bucket drive motors from 54 years ago. I searched around for awhile before finding a set of 12 V motors with three point mounting bosses to counteract the rotational torque of the heavy headlight buckets. I had to fool around a bit to fabricate mounting plates and positioning of the motors on the plates so that the drive shafts would align with the buckets center axis AND the motor bodies would not rub against the support bar OR the transmission cooler on the front of the radiator.
Next up was connecting the two foreign bodies together so they would play nice. I had only a few inches of space to work with too. The buckets have a circular plate with a post in the center, with a 3/8" set pin hole through them, that protrudes through a captured metal 'donut' that the old clunky motors mounted onto. Those motors have a 'neck' that enclosed the drive shaft and had a corresponding hole through for the locking pin. Absent those motors there was now no way to keep the rotating axis centered up. I needed to fabricate a connection that fit over the electric motors small D shaped shaft, have a threaded hole for a set screw to lock it down, have the other end fit over the post coming from the buckets center axle plate and have a hole for a set pin to lock THEM together.  I didn't have the technology to make this in one piece so I also needed the two to have an ability to have the center ends slide within each other with a threaded hole aligned in both to lock them together as well. Whew!

I like to try to use what I have in the shop rather than buy more crap. So, I looked around and found two pipes that slid within each other and were thick enough to drill out the centers to fit. I cut them and drilled and tapped them and then kept trimming until the length over all was correct to connect without binding either end. Next up was finding a way to keep the bucket posts aligned with the rotational axis. I decided on using hard nylon bushings for this. They are easy to drill out for ID and easy to trim for thickness. One sits around the center post between the bucket inside face and the side of the 'donut' to establish the distance between them so that once assembled the bucket face contours would align seamlessly with the grill ends and be spaced correctly. Another was hammered into the center of the donuts and drilled to allow the post to go through smoothly but not wiggle. Solved. The Charger set up is a pain to align properly to get that 'One Piece" look though.

[Ghostridersixseven]

More of that subject....

[Ghostridersixseven]

Another mod I wanted was front disc brakes. With the addition of a built 440 big block I would be needing the stopping power later.
After some research I learned that many late model MOPAR cars had units that would bolt right on. I asked around and found that my pal Gary had a set of 1976 Aspen front spindles hanging around that he agreed to sell to me. I got them home and doused them in break free and let them set for a couple days. I only needed the spindles and brake caliper mounting brackets.
I bought new rotors, bearings, powder coated calipers, pads and clips, hoses. I replaced the upper and lower control arm bushings and hardware as well. New shocks and rubber bumpers all around. The wiper motor now lives under the dash on the firewall in a fabricated bracket. I drilled for the master cylinder mounts and bought a new dual chamber M/C and a proportioning valve. I cleaned up the old brake lines, the car only had 69,000 miles on it. That took care of the front clip mods. I did a little body work there and put on three coats of primer and two of color, Starfire Chestnut Brown Metallic single stage urethane. I will clear coat it all later. The K Frame got paint too. The color has a nice flop in the sun too.

[Ghostridersixseven]

Moving rearward on the car, the interior is next.
I ripped the entire interior out of the car and sold it. I was determined to install a modern dash and console, so I could swap to floor shift, modern steering, heat/A/C, center pull E brake etc...
I took down the measurements of the dash to tunnel height, the distance between A pillars, and dash depth. Armed with these I scoured web pages for donors that were close and that I could live with. Found nothing, but gained a few ideas.  1964 Buick Riv's were a candidate because I liked the look of the dash, some others were found in various models from the sixties. I wanted a more modern unit.
I went to many salvage yards poking around in hundreds of vehicles. Nothing really caught my eye though.
While I was talking to my pal Rick one day about my tours in West Germany in the service and how I bought a new Audi 5000 Quattro from a German dealership. Wonderful car. That got me thinking about Audi's for a donor. But, I thought they would be too narrow. In my local salvage yard, just a couple miles away there sat a 2004 Audi A6 Quattro wagon, windows up, dry, complete and in great condition.
After some haggling I bought the insides of the car. I stripped it bare of all but the seats which were too small.

The measurements were dead on. All except the front to back depth which was much wider that the Coronet dash and the curve of the windshield was a lot tighter on the Audi. It had a lot of real estate that could be cut away to make it match the Coronet windshield curve so I cut it off
I mocked up the Audi dash in place and discovered that while the dash body was the right length, the aluminum skeleton the dash body mounted to, and which itself mounted to the car, was 4 inches short from each A pillar. I had to devise mounting plates that came up and out from the pillars to meet the mount pads of the skeleton. Two hunks of 3/16" plate later and it was bolted up in place. I made that sound simpler than it was, there were several factors that had to be considered like centering the dash, having the front lower portion in the center at the correct height to mate up to the console center tower to screw into place and for the dash contour lines to meet up with the door elements, so the lines could continue through the door panels evenly. The dash has been in and out dozens of times. lol. 

The Coronet brake pedal mounting frame/ steering column frame had to be massaged a little for the Audi steering wheel assembly to mount up cleanly. New mounts had to be fabricated for the console body to set on at the correct height to not bind at the attachment points on the dash body and also not be sloping downward along the length of the console. The E Brake center pull handle had to be located in the correct spot at the correct height to fit within the console body and trim and so needed it's own mounts, and to be mechanically assembled to work,..
Also The Audi console being a floor shift model I needed to buy and weld into place a Coronet B Body shift lever base and linkages within the body of the console. . But, it would have to be placed rearward about 9" because the Audi dash is so deep. Ditto the seats. So all of those items had to be figured out for placement and mounts fabricated & welded in place.  I wanted a short throw 1970's era MOPAR pistol grip shifter but was not about to pay $250 bucks for one. I cut the lever out of 3/16" plate steel and bent it to the angles that made it comfortable to use from the drivers seat. Then, I walked out into my woods and picked up a black walnut tree limb and dragged it back to the shop and hacked off a section for the handle. I studied pictures of the real deal handles and made scale drawings until i was ultimately familiar with the shape and contours of it. I then got out the tools and cut my limb down to a rough size and began carving slowly to bring out the shapes and grain. Lots of sanding later it was perfect. I sliced it in half and having pre drilled three small holes in the handle blank I bolted the wood halves to the plate and began trimming the plate to match the handle contours. Once it was close it became a tedious affair to get it perfect. Once it was I unbolted the wood pieces and polished the steel to a shine where it met with wood and painted the rest flat black. The wood got stained and then sealed with a spar varnish clear coat. The connecting linkages had to be cut in half and lengthened to meet the stock shift shaft coming up from the tranny.
The reverse lock out was another issue that needed solving. My plate steel handle had no provision for a spring loaded reverse release. I bought an 'Inland Shift' assembly for a B Body and disassembled it into it's constituent pieces. After mocking up several versions using various bits I hit upon a working piece that I could make. It was made up of modified bits of the Inland unit attached to the side of the plate steel lever body in a way that allowed me to use the heel of my right hand on the pistol grip to push a length of door lock knob down slightly to release the spring loaded part on the bottom and let the tooth move onwards to the Park or Drive positions. It's cool looking as well...lol. I had a left over 4x4 shift lever boot from a Dodge PowerRam truck and it just happened to be the right shape to go right in place of the Audi metal shift gate plate. So now it looks to the casual onlooker that it's a 4 speed but it's not.
I have removed the heat and A/C unit from behind the dash face for now. There's tons of room for it but I have enough stuff to get together without that headache. I'm setting 9" rearward in the drivers seat as well which puts my foot that far from the gas pedal. I bought Volvo XC-70 front heated , power, leather bucket seats. To correct the distance I just ran it forward on the rails to a comfy place. The Audi steering wheel is telescoping and tilts. lol.  The Audi dash tower has a Bose Symphony Stereo digital climate control and the E brake flasher button. The Audi steering wheel shaft was mated to the 67 Coronet gear via a Borgeson knuckle and a Flaming River D shaft and connecter. The Audi center mounted armrest flips up and back and is large enough to hide 4 analog gauges inside it.
Some photos.......I included one of the Audi interior as it looks when all assembled..

[Ghostridersixseven]

Nothing like getting a 160MPH speedometer in the deal too...lol. Th Coronet doors are huge dead flat rectangles where the Audi doors are weird shaped and the door panels are sculpted plastic. The Audi Quattro rear door panels have a longer trim piece across the top than the fronts and I needed the fronts because they had to mate up with the incoming dash curves. So I cut them up and married the two together in the right proportions to use the longer rear trim on the front door section. This got the door element to extend all the way along the longer Coronet door to the lock knob hole. Now I had to figure out how to make that all meet up with the dash ends. I ended up deconstructing the Audi plastic door panels of each element  and using the separate pieces on a new Coronet door card. The top element curves out from the door to meet the dash end. I cut small lengths of plastic tubing to make the piece stand off from the door face at the correct distance for the two to meet. Then I sunk 4" long drywall screws down through the piece into the door metal through the tubes to lock it down to the door face. This allowed me to place expanding construction foam behind it all and it could expand without moving the piece, and fill all cavities and spaces. After letting it dry for three days I trimmed the excess away and laid on body filler over the foam and the rest and let that dry. Then I sanded and shaped for days to get it ready to be covered with vinyl. This piece also has the door release pull lever, a small Tweeter speaker and the trim panel.  This placed the door latch release in the opposite corner of the damn door. So, I had to fabricate a rod that was reliable and shaped correctly to operate the latch smoothly and not interfere with the window or the window crank body. Easy.  I had to allow for the Coronet upper door card chrome trim channel to be used in places where it would show in order to capture the top edge of the door card also the door card and padding had to slide under the bodywork of the piece as well.
Next the combo armrest base/window power switches/door pull/ power door lock  had to be located in an attractive way. The Audi door panel had a swoopy contour on it that the forward end of the handle attached to and now that end was hanging in midair 1 3/4" from connecting with the Coronet door card. what to do? It would need to be ultimately attached to the door card as well. I cut another hunk of wood and shaped it into a sort of teardrop shape and carved a hole in it for the handle end to set into. I ran a screw in from the back to attach it. The rear of the base was another curve thanks to the swoopy Audi plastic panel it USED to set in. I cut a piece of metal and fabricated a 'shoe' to set under it and screwed that down. Then I needed a new hole through the card and the panel metal for the wiring to the switches. I cut slots into the edges of the card to match a template I made of the door card push clips to hold it onto the door panel. Along the bottoms of the doors sits a tilt out 'cubby' with a row of seat position memory buttons. And a BOSE speaker. The Audi had these cool rubber wiring harness pass through boots with snap in collars they mounted on. I cut into the A pillar and the door side for these. Also it had these little rectangular lights, one on the door bottom facing down for a clear puddle light and one on the rear edge to face the rear and it was red to be a marker light when the door was open. These snapped into the sheet metal so I cut them in as well.

Pictures......

[Blackwater]

Really nice work and great documentation!!  I've done one rat this way so's others could see all the steps and get ideas of their own for THEIR projects!!

Doing another one now!!

Keep up the good work and keep on posting your progress!!

[Ghostridersixseven]

Really nice work and great documentation!!  I've done one rat this way so's others could see all the steps and get ideas of their own for THEIR projects!!

Doing another one now!!

Keep up the good work and keep on posting your progress!!

Thanks!  My thoughts as well, forge a trail and leave bread crumbs for others to follow. Much of what I've done here is translatable to any vehicle platform. It's really just having the fortitude to dive in and go with it, learning skills along the way and not being upset about making mistakes. The fun is in DOING something instead of sitting on your ass and dreaming about doing something. Buy a heap and dig in! I'm about half way through the build so far here and more to come today so stay tuned... the 'big mod' is coming up!

By the way, what are you working on now?

[Ghostridersixseven]

Next up was the 'Roadster ' panels mod.
Every Coronet I have ever seen at shows has the exact same interior, boring back seat. Few ever carry passengers around so why keep the damn thing? I resolved to find a solution and thought about what could be done with that space instead of having the back seat sitting there gathering dust.
After awhile I started thinking about what if's. What if I put the spare tire back there? That lead to "well, I cant have the tire just sitting there in plain sight. So how can I cover it?"
That brought to mind the 1950's Corvettes with the roadster panels behind the seats and flowing down between the buckets to a console. I played around with some cardboard and wasn't happy with the look. I was perusing the for sale section of a MOPAR forum I belong to and saw where a fella was selling his rear seat 'topper' from his 1967 Plymouth Sport Fury back seat.
This piece looks like a set of outspread wings. In THAT car it hugs the top of two faux bucket seat tops. I imagined how it would look behind actual front bucket seats! Very cool.
So I bought the thing and because it's also a B Body MOPAR the width is the same. I mocked it up behind my seats by resting it on a cardboard tube I had laying around, it looked like a million bucks, perfect! I cut and fixed a steel angle bar to bolt up between the two sides below the quarter windows and mounted her up. Now what to do to make panels. The way the piece is shaped it has a 12" wide 'valley' in the center that makes a perfect trough between the curving panels. So I cut up some cardboard for templates and bought some 20ga sheet metal. I cut and trimmed until the pieces all fit snugly together for welding later. The whole panel set will get covered in vinyl later. I put the curves into the panels by bending them carefully against the top of the rear quarter panels edge...lol.

The seat topper has small bolts that hang down underneath to fasten it to the package shelf on the Fury but i used those to fasten the panels to the bottom of them. I put together some wood pieces to make close out panels for the vertical space just behind the seats but I think I'll use black fabric, and Velcro to keep it in place. The Racing Battery Box will go behind the passenger seat in the footwell, the spare tire on a mount in the center of where the rear seat would set, and a box behind the driver seat to hold cleaning and detailing supplies. Jumper cables etc will also find a home back there.

There is also a steel close out panel across the entire space where the rear seat back rests as a fire barrier between cab and trunk because of the fuel cell.
I kept the rear seat side panels from the Coronet and they go back on. When driving I need to run the seat forward on it's base rails to reach the gas pedal but I'll run them both back to have the seat back tops close to the wings behind them when i'm out of the car at shows. I'm thinking about something trick to put on the center face of the seat topper where the Satellite script was before...

Pictures.....

[Blackwater]

See Nas-T and Blackwater's Coupe in the build section. 

The coupe is getting a new engine soon.  All but a set of pushrods is collected and ready for assembly.

Nas-T is getting my major attention right now.  I'm kinda concentrating on it to get all the stuff spread around the shop gathered up and fitted.

I just got back from Texas where I was involved in a shooting contest and doing a show with my band.  I'm also recovering from several surgeries on my foot that have slowed me down for a couple of years.  Fabricating chassis parts and building hotrods is really different when you do it from the seat of an office chair or stool, but nothing will stop you if you really want to do something!!

[Ghostridersixseven]

See Nas-T and Blackwater's Coupe in the build section. 

The coupe is getting a new engine soon.  All but a set of pushrods is collected and ready for assembly.

Nas-T is getting my major attention right now.  I'm kinda concentrating on it to get all the stuff spread around the shop gathered up and fitted.

I just got back from Texas where I was involved in a shooting contest and doing a show with my band.  I'm also recovering from several surgeries on my foot that have slowed me down for a couple of years.  Fabricating chassis parts and building hotrods is really different when you do it from the seat of an office chair or stool, but nothing will stop you if you really want to do something!!

Are you welding up the frames from scratch as well? Those are dynamite looking cars pal! Very cool. You must have mad skills as a fabricator.
I agree on the idea that you cant let stuff stop, you. I don't know if you caught it in my intro that i'm 100% disabled due to TBI & PTSD from combat duty. I have some physical injuries as well. If I were whole this project would have been done years and years ago but I also am not letting anything stop me either!

[Ghostridersixseven]

Another mod that I wanted to try involved making those fake side scoops look more functional. If they have to be stuck on there by Ma Mopar they might as well be useful from a design standpoint. After some thought about how to proceed I took a thin kerf wheel of death  and sliced along the side lines of the scoop inlet portions and carefully bent them over into the door recess. I cut out slivers of steel to place along the ends and edges to fill in and after wards some small amounts of filler up against smooth plastic backers held in place against the insides of the openings to make the upper and lower transitions flat. The smooth plastic doesn't stick to the dry filler and pops off once the filler is dry leaving the flat backside and the front side can be shaped and sanded to perfection. Perforated mesh will go on the inside of each opening backed by flat black painted small panels.

Pictures.....

[Ghostridersixseven]

Next up the gas filler door had to go. Why did the factory put that huge square flap right in the middle of a beautiful flowing Coke Bottle shaped quarter panel. It's like they got together and the designers said, " Well, we did a great job on those quarters, really cool looking. Lets slap a clunky square flap right on the ass end of that one so we can make it ugly again."
It just doesn't make any sense. They should have asked me first...lol.

So, I shaved that off, removed the tube from inside the trunk and the return lines etc. The gas tank had to go because I removed the spare tire well that protected it, because I changed the rear bumper, because I wanted the exhaust to exit in a different place , because that would be trick and cool looking....lol.
 
So, where to put the tank, how to fill it? I bought a 17 gallon aluminum fuel cell with baffles, A/N fittings, and a rollover valve. This sits nicely at the front of the trunk space up against the axle hump. The filler was on the left side just forward of the trunk hinge. This led to an idea that I had percolating in my head for some time, about using a 69 Charger type filler cap that flips open and sits atop the quarter panel next to the trunk lid edge. I got a used one to try out and it looked hideous up there. Too big and clunky. what to do?? I watched a car show about that time, Texas Metal or maybe Kindig, where they put a filler cap on a 1953 Pontiac rear corner that used the medallion as the cap. It was a motorcycle type pop up cap. Weld in.
I researched those caps and bought one that welded in. I had never done one before but it turned out to be simple. I cut a round template the same size as the cap and placed it in various positions around the quarter and trunk lid to find the most desirable appearance. I also wanted to see what each position would bring in the way of obstacles underneath the quarter inside the trunk. It's tight under there but doable so I settled on a spot up next to the trunk lid corner. A rubber gas hose goes form the cap filler bottom and angles down to the end of a 8 1/2" long pipe, the other end of the pipe gets another section of hose that bends down to the filler neck. The pipe passes through the trunk gas lift mounts. trick. lol.

I had this all finished for a couple of years before my pal Rick and I were looking at the rear of the car one day and he says, " You know what?" " What" " Something doesn't look right back here, not sure what though..."
We looked dat it for a bit before I said, " I know what it is. The single gas filler cap on the left looks odd without something on the right too to balance it out." He agreed that it was exactly that. So, he says, " Well, why don't you stick another cap over there and a filler neck on the right side of the fuel cell too?"
I looked at him........" Why don't YOU do the work smart guy?" We laughed.
So I bought another cap and stuck it on the right side, in a mirror position of the left one and bought a second filler neck for the right end of the tank and cut that into the fuel cell top. Now I can fill the tank from either side of the pump!

Pictures.....

[Ghostridersixseven]

As can be seen in the previous photos I'm using modern style trunk close out panels . The trunk lid is now on modern gas lifts and the torsion bars have been tossed out. When I tubbed the rear wheel wells they were in the way so I tossed them. The trunk floor spare tire well got shaved too. I hated seeing it hanging under there like a boil on the backside of the car. Plus, I had a mod in mind where I would replace the Coronet rear bumper with a 1970 Road Runner one so the exhaust could exit out of the back up light holes in the bumper face. The well would be in the way of the pipes. As I mentioned, without the well hanging down behind the gas tank it was now vulnerable to being hit.
Anyway, I got another sheet of 20ga steel and fabricated a flat trunk floor and welded it in place. I went underneath and welded in two braces across the bottom for rigidity too.  The next mod was the " BIG ONE".....lol.

pictures....

[McLovin]

Well documented build! Looks great. I took a ton of pictures but none are as following detailed as yours. I'd do a bunch and forget to take the pictures.

[Ghostridersixseven]

Having worked all of that out I moved on to the big job. I wanted to install 1966 Thunderbird sequential blinking tail lights in the rear face of the Coronet.....yes, you read that right.
Little did I know that doing so would open up a can of worms that would only get worse as I went along. If I hadn't already sold off the tail lights and bezels I would have stopped and kept it stock, but, "burning the boats in the harbor so you cant turn back", had come around to bite me on my stupid ass.

There are so many downstream issues when you make a major body change like this. For instance:
Wiring, modifying the trunk lid, modifying the quarter tail extensions, cutting away the entire structure of the rear face of the car and redesigning it from scratch, closing out the backside inside the trunk, water proofing it all, structural support across the trunk seal rail, trunk lock placement and operation, fabrication of trunk seal corners and side walls, rebuilding the underside of the trunk lid to match whatever I fabricate on the rail seal. etc............appearance of the finished modification, overall operation of the finished product. and more...where to place the trunk lock, how to operate that lock..........mounting method of the light bar, sheet metal surrounding the bar, trim surrounding the lights, hardware......

It snowballed quickly.
From the beginning then,......

I sat and looked at the rear of the car and didn't like it much. I did like that the lights were made to appear to go all of the way across the back. But the middle portion was just an overblown chrome bedazzled bezel. The actual lights were hidden under an equally over blown bezel and hard to see. They had to go, but, what to replace them with?
my 1985 Audi 5000 Quattro came to mind again because I had purchased the optional center orange plastic light section so that those lights would appear to go all of the way across. It was the '80's...lol.

The 66/67 Chargers had the lights all of the way across the tail end so I bought a set of tail light bases from a 67 and mocked them up on the back of the Coronet. No-go, too short by several inches. And the trim would be a bitch to get to work. I scoured the wrecking yard again for lights that I liked and found a set of 1968 Cougar lights and tried them. Too clunky and over blown with chrome. I remembered there were a couple of T Birds sitting in a salvage yard up state so Rick and I saddled up and drove up there for a look see. Sure enough there were several different year models sitting around in the woods. I had discounted the 66 Birds because the aluminum trim around the lights made them seem to be huge and two sections. After looking at all the others we took in the rear end and discovered that it's actually a one piece bar and the trim is several layers that once you disassemble them it's a straight bar and looks great!

I pulled the whole thing apart and got the sequential blinker relays too. as well as all of the screws and all of the trim. It was a convoluted mess to get apart.
We got it all home and mocked it up on the rear. Looked bitchin.
It was short on either end by a few inches and taller than the tail extension cut outs by an inch or less but those were not insurmountable obstacles by any means. I had found my light system.

After some more thinking I dove in and got out the "Wheel of Death" again and cut shit up.
]The trunk lid on the Coronet flows down over the rear to nearly the bumper level. I sliced that whole face away leaving some extra meat along the cut line so I had something to meet up with when I later rebuilt the trunk underside seal.
I set the bar back up in there to make some cut lines on the tail extensions where the bar was too tall/wide vertically.
These cuts would open up another modification issue with the extensions being made of pot metal.
I left the extensions issue for a later date and concentrated on the metal face the bar would set into. I fabricated a section out of 18ga steel that went from the end of the floor pan up to the level that would be above the light bar top edge.
I set the bar up in place and traced around the perimeter onto the metal. The bar has a 3/8" lip all around the edge that allows the bar to 'inset' against the metal and that registers it in place.
I learned that this left precious little real estate to sink fasteners into to mount the damn thing to.
There just was not enough room vertically before running into the level of the trunk seal base. Above which the trunk lid edge would interfere. Not to mention where to put the trim round the outer edges of the bar and the lenses. This required more thought.
I did think for about 3 weeks before deciding to make the fastening strip for the light bar be part of the base above it. IOW I put a piece of sheet metal in my brake and 90* angled it and set it up there where the trunk seal lip would have to be and trimmed it until the part hanging down was short enough to slide the bar in under it. It ended up being EXACTLY the same width as the red plastic light lens edges and trim width over those. Like it was preordained. Wow. What blind luck.
So that eliminated one issue. Ha, Ha.
I set the bar up there and screwed it down to a new base angled piece I made full width across the rear and that platform became the base upon which the trunk seal rail would attach.
I bought a 67 Charger rear section from a dismantler to get  a clean rail and corners to work with.
I cut them out after drilling out the spot welds and had pieces that I could no manipulate to get the arrangement I needed. Many spot welds later I had the seal rail in place and moved on to the corners and side walls. The rails turns up and curves around at the corners to meet the seal rail from around the sides of the trunk,  It looks simple but it's a compound curve of thin metal. I fooled around with those bastards for weeks before I got it right. I needed to incorporate the side walls in there as well and THOSE had to attach to the other bits.
In with all of this the trunk lid had to close over the finished sections and latch.
 After fooling around with these bits I moved on to the trunk latch issue. The stock latch hung down from the trunk lid bottom and clasped a "U" bar to latch. The trunk lid no longer had the real estate to mount the latch. Or so I thought initially. I tried to put it together the opposite way but didn't meet with much success. After some more trial and error I got the latch mounted to the under side of the lid and now had to devise a way to place the "U" bar up above the light bar and rail base level to meet the latch ears. There was a 'mount' inside the trunk that used to be the base the "U" bar bolted to. It had to be raised up 9". But it had to miss the backside of the light bar and the protruding bulb sockets and wiring harness too. Those items stuck out about 3 1/2". I ended up welding together a "
"C" shaped affair out of 3/16" plate that put the bar latch up where it needed to be and had to cut a small section out of one side to miss a  bulb socket. I cut into my rail base so the bar would be in the right position to catch the downward moving latch.
After working all of that out over several months I dove into closing out the inside of the trunk behind the lights. I bought a piece of 20ga and had them put bends in it to my designs and it was 71" long. I got it home and it wouldn't go in the space, too long to go in one piece. So, I shortened it a little and got it in there, it needed trimming in several spots to miss this that and the other obstacle. Once in place though it was smooth. It provided a channel of sorts for the wiring harness to run through and a way to keep the trunk free of the wiring and to protect the bulb sockets from stuff banging around in the trunk.
The tail extensions ultimately had to be glassed on. I cut and bent caps to fit around the tail light lens ends and taped them in place in the extensions. I then moved them back a fraction to allow for the fiberglass build up. Then I glassed in the voids to the new shapes. I went over that with filler too. The trim was another issue in that it had no narrow sections for the center parts. I had to buy two replacement end sections to get four pieces to complete the outer trim.

Pictures.....

[Ghostridersixseven]

Well documented build! Looks great. I took a ton of pictures but none are as following detailed as yours. I'd do a bunch and forget to take the pictures.

Ha!...Me too!  I'm fortunate that I belong to another B Body forum and they have every picture I have ever posted since October 2014. Otherwise I would be shit out of luck. I keep my phone in my pocket now all of the time as I work. This build is so complex that without adequate explanation it wouldn't make sense.
Thanks for the kind words!
Ghost.

[Ghostridersixseven]

More pics......