The Yankee Express.

[Ghostrider 67]

Pictures of firewall and brakes.

[Ghostrider 67]

Upgrade the brakes equals upgrade the Master Cylinder too. I got a dual chamber unit so it will supply enough pressure to use those discs. Also I placed a proportioning valve down on the frame. The rear axle got a complete overhaul and new drums, shoes, cylinders bearings, springs and retainers and painted. Also new lines and fittings.
Moving along on the mods list the entire interior of the car got sold off. I wanted to do a modern dash/console as well as 59 Corvette style roadster panels behind the bucket seats. No rear seat IOW.
So...once I made up my mind to do this I needed to figure out what car would be the donor of an interior. I took measurements of the Coronet cab between the A pillars and floor to dash top height etc and took them along with me on a search through several salvage yards around the area. I looked at hundreds of cars and trucks. Nothing really caught my eye although there were a few candidates that would work. While I was thinking it over I made a list of cars that I had owned over the years, figuring that if I liked them enough to buy them once, perhaps I would like them again for this.
One that got my attention was a 1985 Audi 5000 Quattro that I bought from a West German dealership while stationed there. It was a very good car. This jogged my memory about an Audi that I had ignored, thinking it was too small, sitting in a yard close by. I went back and low and behold there it was, windows up, doors closed and complete. The tape measure came out and it was a match! Go figure. 2004 Audi A6 Quatto All Road wagon.
I even liked the color.
So after haggling a great price for the parts I came back with my pickup and some tools to spend a day disassembling it. I took it all from the rear seats forward. It had longer trim panels on the rear doors so I took those too thinking about how BIG the Coronet doors were compared to these.
I took the wiring and harness hardware, door wiring pass through boots and hardware, puddle lights and marker lights from the doors, steering column, power windows and locks, console tower and rear console with center pull E Brake, floor shift and the heat and A/C unit. I left the seats because they were too small.
Once I had it all home I began the mock up process.
Right away a whole list of problems cropped up. It's never as easy as it seems at first.
To begin with, the windshield on the Audi is smaller and the curve at the lower edge is much tighter. So this dash needed to be trimmed to fit the wider/slower curve of the 67 Coronet windshield. Fortunately the Audi dash is deep front to back. There was lots of extra along the front edge to cut away without causing any issues. Once that was done, and the dash mocked up into place, more issues became apparent.....lol.
The dash itself was the right width but the SKELETON the dash is mounted on isn't, by a long shot. The Audi dash is mounted to an aluminum skeleton that in turn bolts to attachment points coming off of the A pillars. Those attachment points didn't exist on my car. The pads on either end, where they bolted up, were hanging in space about 5' away from the pillars. Dang it.
Additionally there needed to be consideration of where exactly the dash ends would sit in relation to the door panels because the panel elements flowed across from the doors into the dash contours. This meant they had to line up perfectly, spatially.
Also the console center tower had to bolt onto the main dash body at the correct height so as to not bind or hang up AND the rear console portion had to mount up to the tower at the correct angle for the trim and panels to align. Whew! " Leg bone connected to the hip bone etc..."
Burned some more brain cells on this deal....lol. After much fooling around with juggling all the elements I found the optimal position for everything to come together. I fabricated a couple of brackets out of 3/16" steel plate that I welded to the A pillars at the right spots to meet the skeleton ends and bolted the dash main body into place.
The tower came next and then the rear console. The console needed mounting points fabricated to the trans tunnel in a couple of spots as well as a mount for the center pull E Brake handle assembly to pull from. Lots more juggling and scrutiny later those were fabricated and welded into place.
One of the issues that cropped up here was that the very deep Audi dash made the console set rearward about 13" from where it would be on a Coronet floor console. This meant the shifter base and linkages were also this far out of place. As were the bucket seat bases. I solved the shifter issue by building my own pistol grip shifter and marrying it to an Inland Shifter base out of another B Body. The linkages were simply an issue of lengthening the connecting rod to land at the right spot to catch the torque shaft to the tranny coming up through the floor in the stock location..
The seats are not an issue as I can just run them forward to a comfortable place to reach the gas pedal. The steering wheel telescope's too so...plus I'm six foot one tall with long legs,,,,..
The Audi dash is nearly twice as deep as the Coronet stock dash so there was a lot of room under there to hide other stuff from the engine bay.

[Ghostrider 67]

The main issues were with the doors. The Coronet doors are huge rectangles and as flat as Kansas. The Audi doors are small and the panels are curved and contoured plastic. They had a weird shape too. The panels would not simply bolt up to the Coronet doors and align. Never.
So I ruined a set of door panels trying to cut and fit them to make the dash contours flow correctly into the door panels. It became frustratingly clear that this approach wasn't going to do it.
My pal Rick said, " Hey? Why don't you just cut those elements off of the Audi door panels and figure out how to mount them to a door card that fits the Coronet door shape?" That way you can customize them to fit perfectly."
I looked at him and said, " Just exactly who do you think I am? Chip Foose?" lol.
He was right though, I bought another set of identical door panels to slice up.
Once the elements were separated from the Audi panel I could hold them up to the dash ends in the correct position and at the needed angles so I could see what needed to be done to make them live there permanently. The part that meets the dash ends has the door pull release handle, a speaker and the trim piece on it. The door pull handle to pull the heavy door closed has the power windows and door locks on it.
The dash flows onto the doors at a compound angle. Never thought I would use that Algebra and Geometry I learned in high school. lol.
I determined the most low tech method of making those pieces stay in place would be to run 4 1/2" drywall screws down through them into plastic tubes that were cut to make them stand off of the door metal at the correct distances and angles thereby locking them down. THEN I could backfill with expanding construction foam. The screws would keep the pieces from moving because of pressure from the expanding foam and the foam would in turn fill in every cavity.
After it was all dry I shaped the foam to match the outline of the piece and coated it with filler to harden it up for vinyl later to cover it. The vinyl will also cover the screw heads. The pull handles were set in different spots on the card while I stood back and considered how they looked. I also sat in the seats and placed them in spots where they were comfortable to use as well as not interfering with the power seats.
Then came the issue of how to fasten that arm to the card and the card to the door. There's a sequence there. It has to be in order so the card, WITH everything mounted securely to it can be taken off and on the door panel later. And upholstered too.
There's also a 'cubby' that lives along the bottom of the door panel that tips out and also houses the power seat memory buttons. I have not decided for sure yet If I will use them. I cut the doors to use them but am still waffling about it.
The Audi doors had these little rectangular lights, one red and one clear, the clear one pointed down towards the ground as a 'puddle' light and the red one facing rearward as a marker light to show the door as being open for anyone looking from the rear. They are just little plastic lenses that pop into a rectangular cut out in the sheet metal so I placed the same cut outs on my doors and popped them on. Coolness. The wiring for all of the door stuff passes through he A pillars into the door cavity via a rubber boot that snaps onto these little plastic collars that, again, snap into oval holes in the sheet metal. Easy,. I cut the same holes in the right spots and put them together. Worked like a charm. I transferred the door card clips to the new cards so I could attach them to the Coronet doors and cut a slot for the power window harness to come through.
Another issue was the release handle for the door latch was now in the opposite corner of the door from the latch. I had to fabricate a linkage to connect them that wouldn't interfere with the window glass or the crank assembly. ' The seats are from a late model Volvo, 10 way power . heated. leather buckets.

[Ghostrider 67]

Pictures of the dash and doors..

[Ghostrider 67]

more interior pictures.

[Ghostrider 67]

Nice to have a 160mph speedometer too!

The roadster panels were fun to figure out. I got the idea from seeing a classified ad on another car forum for a rear seat topper from a 1967 Plymouth Sport Fury. The thing looks like a set of wings and is designed to hug the tops of two faux bucket rear seats. Being out of another B Body car it was the right width too.
I envisioned it setting directly behind my FRONT bucket seats in the same way. That left filling in behind them.
I bought a 6' length of 3/16" angle and trimmed it to fit between the sides under the quarter glass. I drilled it for the mounting pins of the seat topper. I fabricated three pieces of sheet metal to be the panels behind it to the rear glass. I put the bows in them by carefully bending them against the upper edge of the front fender...lol. The center trough I bent up on a sheet metal brake. and curved it the same way. They will be stitched together and covered with vinyl. I toyed around with a center down panel between the seat backs but it interfered with my elbow when sitting in the seat and served no purpose other than appearance,.
The center trough just happens to mimic perfectly the contour lines down the centers of the hood and the trunk lid. Bonus!
Once the glass is tinted limo black it will a surprise for those who look inside. Underneath the panels will be a plate separating the cab from the trunk, carpet, a spare tire mount and the battery box. I'll hang black fabric down from underneath the topper to the floor to close it out. I will also place a couple of small dome lights under there with a switch located just under the edge of the seat topper.

[Ghostrider 67]

The only other thing in the interior was the E Brake linkages and cables coming through the rear seat floor hump. I used two left hand cables of equal length.

here's some pictures of what the Audi interior looks like when all complete and also a few cars from which I drew inspiration for interior colors.

[Ghostrider 67]

two more...

[Ghostrider 67]

The car body color is Starfire Chestnut Brown Metallic single stage acrylic urethane. The interior will be complementing brown and black colors.
Along the way I shaved all of the body side 500 trim.
The next mod was opening up the fake side scoops on the front of the quarters. I got this idea from Chip Foose's "Imposter Impala" 1965 Impala that won the 2015 Riddler Award.
He put a set just behind the front wheel well openings. I had often asked myself why would Dodge put fake scoops on the side of the car? What if they were opened up?
I sliced along the incoming scoop side lines and carefully bowed the sheet metal inward until it was about 1 1/4" deep. Then I made a few small pieces to fill in the connecting areas back to the outer rims. Grinding and filler, shaping by hand and primer and Bob's Yer Uncle.

They will be filled by black fine mesh stainless steel. Next was shaving off the gas filler door. I felt that Dodge made a huge blunder in designing the graceful Coke Bottle shape of the body lines along those big quarter panels and then slap a huge clunky filler door smack in the middle of all of that fabulousness. What the hell were they thinking of?
So it had to go.
I tore out the in trunk tube cover as well and patched the resulting hole in the drop off panel. This meant that I now had to place the gas filler somewhere else. Hmmm...where?

I had always liked the 68/69/70 Charger gas cap up on the top of the quarter panel. However one of those on the Coronet would look like a big ole bunion stuck up there. lol. I still like the location but not the flip up cap.
Wouldn't you know it that at that time I happened to watch an episode of Kindig-It Design? They were doing their thing to a 53 Pontiac cruiser and were hiding the gas filler behind one of the Pontiac Indian head medallions on the end of the rear fender. The medallion was turned into a gas filler cap that popped out and spun out of the filler hole. They used a motorcycle pop up gas cap. i sat back and said, " Oh HELL YES, I'm so doing that!"
I ordered the weld in cap and installed it near the trunk lid front left corner. It looks bitchin!! But...wrong. lol It took me a minute to realize what was wrong too.
It needed another one on the other side of the car for symmetry! Just the one cap looked out of place. So, I ordered another and put it on the other side. Now it looks right and I can fill from either side! Bonus! The caps lay down flush with the sheet metal and are hard to see unless you know they are there. Very cool.

I got a 17 gallon fuel cell for inside the trunk and cut in second filler neck on it. The trunk lid is on gas filled lift arms and the mounts for these have holes in them for the gas filler lines to pass through, Very trick.

[Ghostrider 67]

more pics...

[Ghostrider 67]

Now you see why I placed a steel barrier between the cab and trunk....lol.

The trunk lid comes with stock torsion bars to lift the lid. When I tubbed the wells they had to go. Gas lifts seemed to be the answer and were easy to install. I cut out the floor entirely and welded in braces across the space and a flat sheet metal floor on top of them.

Another mod on the list was leaf spring relocation to under the frame rails. This gets me 15 3/4" of space for tires in each well. lol.
I bought a kit from Mancini Racing and installed them. It's not difficult but it needs to be done with care as one mistake will ruin the geometry and the frame rails. The directions are straight forward and I did some research with others who had also done this mod.
Next up was the big mac daddy of mods that I had planned for this car.
Reimagining the rear face of the car. ALL of it.
I liked nothing about the rear look of the car except that the lights pretended to extend all of the way across the rear.
The stock Coronet has a deck lid that curves down to the rear bumper. My ambitious plan would see me slicing that vertical portion of the lid away entirely. Other problems flowed from this.
Now I would need to design and fabricate a new trunk seal rail across the back at a new location higher up. I would need to locate and buy a light set up that extended across the rear face for real.
I would need to fabricate the mounting surround and method for this fictional light set up. I would have to work out placement so the trunk lid, the tail extensions, the bumper, the lights, the trim and the inside of the trunk rear face would all work together harmoniously. just like it was designed. It had to look good too. Like it belonged there.
No easy task.

I thought about using 67 Charger tail lights. I bought a set of housings and mocked them up. too short by about 3". Plus I just didn't like them on there. So, i looked around for something else. I tried 68 mercury Cougar lights. No go.
I considered 2017 Dodge Charger tail lights. No go.
I went back to one of the larger salvage yards and sloped around for a while looking at tail lights until I happened upon a 1966 Ford Thunderbird. At first I didn't think they would work because the trim was hiding the true shape of the tail lights. After poking around in the trunk and removing the trim around the lights I found that it was indeed a single long bar of lights. It was also short by the same amount but in this case I actually liked the look. I pulled the whole shebang and bought it. I didn't at the time remember that those lights were the sequential blinking type and had to drive back up there later to pull the controller out of the trunk.
Once back at home I mocked up the light bar base on the car. Loved them.
One element down.
I also needed to source the 1970 road Runner rear bumper still. My pal Gary happened to have one he would sell. I bought it.
I hung that thing up on there under the t bird lights. Loved it.
Two down.
I hung the tail extensions on each side and saw where the they would need to be modified to work. Three down.
The trunk lid would have to wait until the rest was fabricated and in place so that I could then determine how to fabricate the back edge of it and the underside for the seal rail.
Lots of other issues cropped up as I went along. My first design was great until I got to the issue of the trunk latch and the inside of the trunk area behind the lights. I couldn't make it work.
Scratch that.
After some thought and scribbling, I figured out a simpler design that would work. I bought a rear section from a dismantler and cut out parts that I would need for my design.
Honestly, the most difficult part was the trunk seal rail where it curves down in each rear corner and crosses the rear of the car. Those compound curves were a bitch. The placement of the light base left almost no vertical space remaining to place the rail.
My thought was to divide the rear face into two sections, nearly equal in height. The bumper and the lights with the thin trunk lid end.
Symmetry above all.
The outer quarter tail extension profiles had to match the upsweep of the rear bumper end profiles. I wanted one smooth curve up each side.
This meant the bumper needed to be stretched 4 5/8" in the center.

[Ghostrider 67]

These pictures show the progression of the rear face mods. Notice how the outer edges of the rear are a smooth upsweep....

[Ghostrider 67]

After completing all of the fabrication and putting the car in epoxy green primer I moved on the engine.
I had a 74 440, from a motor home that had low miles, sitting on an engine stand but came across an 86 Power Ram 4x4 that had a 72 440 in it from out of a Charger. It had been built in the recent past with some go fast parts and was a runner, $700 for the entire truck. I bought it and parted out everything but the engine and tranny.
Upon disassembly of the motor I learned that it had a bad lifter and the Crane cam was shot. I took the thing apart and set aside the parts that I would reuse and tossed everything else. I sent the bare block off to RPM Racing Engines here in Vermont for clean up and machining. It was already 0.30 over and we took it to 0.40. Squared up the cylinders, honed them, decked it and did a clean up pass. New Speed Pro's and pins, Melling HV oil pump, new moly rings and seals, had new cam bearings installed using my Comp 21-306-4 cam for fitment, new push rods, new Viton Teflon valve seals, forged steel crank polished and new mains and rods. I did the assembly myself. Weiand single plane powder coated in Alien Silver and Black, Holley dual feed 750 cfm, Mallory Unilite dizzy with electronic module, Taylor 8mm racing plug wires, 346 heads fully ported and polished, port matched, valves unshrouded and ground, titanium retainers and 10* locks. Dual springs Comp Cams. March polished aluminum pulley's, MH water pump for increased cooling capacity, 26" radiator and 26"x 16" trans cooler. Mini starter & factory exhaust manifolds. Wrinkle black valve covers PS pump & water pump, 7 quart Hemi deep sump 971 oil pan with integral baffle and a separate windage tray. The block is painted in VHT High Temp Hemi Orange and the heads in Alien silver. Oil pan is black. Chrome plated timing cover and timing tab over billet aluminum Mancini Racing dual chain timing chain and gears. Also Mancini Racing billet polished aluminum rear main seal tower. Custom coil mount bracket. Chrome plated fuel feed rail with integral liquid filled fuel pressure gauge.
This motor should produce nearly 480 HP and torque.

[Ghostrider 67]

Good looking engine...am I right?? huh?
lol. The rear bumper being stretched doesn't tell the whole story. I also had to bend them differently on the ends in order to hug the quarter skins. This placed the bumper contour lines at an odd angle versus the quarter panel lines and needed to be corrected. I did so by grinding down the old bumper lines and adding back metal to match the quarter panel incoming lines. I also cut out the panel indents and fabricated new panel patches that mimicked the new end profiles on each side.
I found another 67 Coronet custom online by accident while searching for something else and it became the inspiration for the bumper mods.
The 3" exhaust from TTI will exit through those two back up light holes in the rear bumper. The T Bird lights have a center oval section that's clear and is the back up light. Inside there are also a couple of bulbs with red plastic lenses covering them so when i have the lights on after dark they show out as being red.

[Ghostrider 67]

Hello there.....
Yes, i'm speaking to YOU, the one reading these words right now.
Just a short note here, addressing the lack of participation on these and other forums.
These resources only survive if they get participation on a daily basis. You have to do more than browse and leave.
How about taking 5 minutes out of your busy life and post up a reply to a thread?
Even if it's to say that you came, you read, you saw and didn't like any of it!
If readers never engage with thread starters then this and other forums like it will dry up and then where will you be?
You wont be able to ask questions about cars, and get an answer, that's where.
The car hobbies will dry up and blow away.
So, stop in to read but please say something too. What have you got to lose, besides a few minutes?
Cheers!

Ghost.