Work on Dad's 1970 Challenger R/T

We finally got a chance to make it down to my parents' house and I got to wrench on my dad's Challenger. Not a whole lot of progress, but progress none the less. I started off by trying to remove the brake drums. The front ones were stubborn, refusing to come off. The rears on the other hand, I had removed shortly after I had purchased the car, and had replaced the axle seals. Surprisingly, it also seems that the rear brakes must have been rebuilt at some point shortly prior to my purchase of the car.




With the rear drums removed, I moved on to removal off all the steel brake lines. Whoever ran the brake lines last time obviously weren't concerned about fit & finish, as the lines were anything but straight. I was surprised on how easy I was able to break loose all the fittings, aside from the fittings going into the rear t-block on the axle, which refused to let the lines go.




With the brakes removed, I decided to move under the hood...or, where the hood use to reside. I worked on removing everything from the firewall, since the engine compartment would be getting stripped and repainted as well.

Here we have the ignition components and wiper motor removed.

Since we would be going with a full Wilwood manual brake setup, we had no need for the stock master cylinder and brake booster, so those were next to go. Mopar did things a bit differently, and it took me a minute to figure out how the booster came off. For whatever reason, they found it necessary to bolt the booster/master cylinder to the firewall from under the dash. After getting the four nuts removed, I still needed to remove the cotter pin from the brake rod. I fought with that damn cotter pin for a good hour. I am determined to find an easier way to install the new hardware.

The brake booster and master cylinder are removed.

It doesn't feel like I accomplished much, and to be realistic, I didn't. Still, every little bit counts, as it all needs to get accomplished before the car will see new parts, and the road for that matter. I'm somewhat back to the drawing board regarding the engine. While we were fairly deadset on a 500 ci stroker crate engine, I'm somewhat reluctant with rising gas prices. I'm back to debating whether or not to build up the 383 into a healthy 450 hp engine that would both cost less, and likely be more efficient when combined with a 5 speed out back.