2016 Challenger Shakedown build!!!

[DMZ73]

Friends, these are the pictures of the Challenger Shakedown we built for SEMA this year. Time from start to finish is @2years.
The idea was to create the ultimate expression of a vintage Challenger with all modern drivetrain and components. (crate 392!) grille, tail lamps, headlamps, suspension, wheels, tires..
I am pretty sure that the idea was spawned from checking out all the resto mods and the Optima Challenge cars..
The build was handled locally here in Detroit.
Shop name upon request. (I have to scrub this with our PR team)

I'll try to explain as much as I can along the way.
Enjoy!
What we started with

Basically at this point, it was a body in white.
We adapted the modern Shaker cover to a vintage hood, and had our way with it.
All the bumpers were heavily shaved and brought back to the body. (Sectioned two or more inches per side, moved rearward to the body at least 2".
I think we started with 70 bumper brackets, (but I'm not sure)

I'm not sure what sheetmetal they had to replace, but I think they started out with a pretty solid car.
More to come!
Dan


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[DMZ73]

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[JpRngr]

Sweet! Looking forward to seeing more!

[soundcontrol]

Nice! Extreme inspiration, I foresee my -73 project getting very expensive....   
Nice hood hinges, what is the bulge behind the back seat for? Was the heavy reinforcement in the doors taken out?

[DMZ73]

Nice! Extreme inspiration, I foresee my -73 project getting very expensive....   
Nice hood hinges, what is the bulge behind the back seat for? Was the heavy reinforcement in the doors taken out?

Technically it was for the rear suspension frame x member.
As far as I know, the door reinforcement stayed.
I'm not sure which hood hinges we used- Ring Bros, or?

So a few details worth mentioning here:
The frame we used might have been a Schwartz Performance muscle car chassis.
Also take Note of the solid mount through-frame exhaust.
Another noteworthy detail is how we did our wheels and brakes.
You see that 1/4 wheel section?
That is a solid grey SLA (Stereolithography) check the clearance- 5mm. Talk about tight!!!
Not everyone has this luxury- most people use a wheel plane tool/calculator to help decide what offset and width they can handle on the car.
We used math- lots of it.
In fact, we laser scanned the whole car before we really got cooking.
It sure makes it easier to build things for a car when you have the whole thing in data!

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[Rdchallenger12]

Keep them coming!!!!!

[RCCDrew]

Nice!!

[dave73chally]

Cool...was this the black car with the 2015+ tail lights and grill grafted in?

[DMZ73]

Cool...was this the black car with the 2015+ tail lights and grill grafted in?

Yep. I wouldn't say it was grafted.... more like recreated to look like they were grafted...


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[DMZ73]

Here the chassis and the car are mated together

The modern Shaker baseplate is set on the hood for location based on the engine location (I'll see what I can find out on this)
We adapted the modern Shaker trim ring to the old hood- I believe we cut new data for this-



Forgive me if some of the order is jumbled... I received a bulk of these images WAY out of sequence, and I'm doing my best to get them back into a sequence to tell a story...

Fitting a splitter
Any interest in this part? Obviously we have molds...


Fitting the custom made modern spoiler

These are the stock  tail lights..notice the seam between the deck lid and the fixed tail light... that won't do...

First milling of the grille and light assembly.
I kid you not- there is a ridiculous amount of work within this part. We just had to make it look easy!!!
Better view of the whole car





I'll update more tonight!
Dan


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[Archialfa]

The bumpers are custom made? Or de-chromed?

Fantastic thread, please send more... :-)


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[soundcontrol]

The grill is very interesting, can you explain the process of making it?

[WildJones]

Thanks for posting the pictures of this project - it's incredible! Do you have any information about where the wheels were sourced? Are they direct from Dodge or?

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[ChallengerHK]

Mark me down for interest in the splitter

[DMZ73]

The bumpers are custom made? Or de-chromed?

Fantastic thread, please send more... :-)


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The bumpers started out as originals.. then were cut down, sectioned, and fabbed to fit the body. The body was also modified to accept the bumpers.
Basically the designer wanted the bumpers to look more like a front fascia, and drew it the way he wanted it to appear. Then the shop fabbed it up with nothing less than perfect gaps..


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