2019 Dodge Charger

[MostMint]

I laughed at the third thumbnail, thinking something was gonna be Saturn Teal. That's B5 Blue?

Yes. B5 was the paint code back in the day. Now it's PQD, or FQD, or Surf Blue Pearl. There is another name for it also I can't locate at the moment.

[MostMint]

Yesterday the car made its maiden voyage post repair to the license bureau for VIN verification and issuance of Ohio salvage title. Other than the multi color paint scheme, cracked windshield and the steering wheel being off a little it's a normal car.

All the panels up front are now reasonably well aligned. I had to fabricate some supports to get the top of the bumper cover in vertical alignment with the top of the hood. Don't have pics of alignment after this was done, and I will paint those brackets. Also note the front bumper cover (came off the 2017) was made in 2020.

We also learned that the 2019 Charger Pursuit, or any V8 AWD Charger, is not listed on KBB or Edmunds. This makes guesswork on valuing the car, as there are very few of these available with low miles.

Now its time for bodywork

[MostMint]

Updates:

* was able to push the dings out of the decklid and fill the remainder with glazing putty

* finished up the bodywork on the A-pillar with glazing putty
* there were two 3/8" holes in the rear bumper cover from police lights - plastic welded in some plugs
* also applied glazing putty to small ding in driver door and LR quarter panel. there were some gouges in the bumper cover and I'm risking it filling them with the glazing putty too.
* got busy cleaning the surfaces - removing bugs and tar and any wax residue
* removed door handles, rear taillights
* Spent a lot of time figuring out how much paint I would need. based on the square feet and consumption for bottom of hood I used 1.3 oz sprayable per square foot. I then measured each panel and estimated its size - coming up with 155 square feet for the car. Well this ended up being 202 ounces sprayable (over 1.5 gallons!).
* Good paint is very expensive so I spent way too much time figuring out what paint to get. The paint I got for the bottom of the hood went down real nice, but was concerned about its durability. In the end I chose PPG Omni base/clear over BASF and Sikkens.

* lots of sanding. The police decals left a mark and I literally had to sand off the clear to eliminate it. Also sanded off the overspray from painting the bottom of hood and fenders, feathered out many spots with nicks and scratches. Finish sanded hood, frt fenders and driver side doors with 400.

every one of these pieces of tape was a scratch that needed feathered out

[MostMint]

updates:

* Lots of sanding followed by cleaning and masking in order to paint top part of the door jambs. One of the challenges was sanding past the residual of the police decals - see below

* Paint the tops of the door jambs, followed by unmasking all that

* More sanding - getting the finish in order for primer. Had to clean up overspray from door jambs - also sand missed spots found after cleaning
* Mask off everything

* Apply primer

* Windshield is scheduled for 3/20 and safety inspection on 3/21

[MostMint]

Paint is on and car is reassembled. Windshield coming tomorrow and off to inspection on Tuesday

[wxo]

Outstanding work, Andy! when will Rachel get to see it in person?

[GMJohnny]

Does the paint look as good up close as it does in the pics? From the pics it
looks like it laid down nicely!

GM

[Fred32v]

Wow! It's come a long way. Pretty amazing. Great result!

[Basement Paul]

I think the wheels that are on it actually look really cool with the paint color. I wouldn't change them... Paint turned out really well.

-BP

[TireSmoker]

I agree with John -- it looks like it laid down really nice. It really looks great!!

[MostMint]

The clear coat laid down quite nice so it shines really well. By no means is it perfect though. There are several runs in the clear that can be fixed with some fine grit sanding followed by polishing. There are several other problems but I'm going to have Rachel look at it and decide if it needs rework.

Rachel will be here on Sunday to see it.

She definitely wants some aluminum wheels. I really wanted to paint the wheels B5 blue to match - very retro - but she doesn't seem too excited about that either.

[GMJohnny]

I think that somehow ( pinstripe maybe ) you should incorporate red or
maybe hugger orange as an accent color. Just a thought.

GM

[Basement Paul]

Please don't pinstripe any car from 2019. But maybe a Hemi or R/T badge on the fenders (in color for GM). Is there a spoiler for that car too?

-BP

[MostMint]

There is a rear wing that was purchased pre-painted - however it does not match well, so there will be a small project to paint it to match.

Charger AWD emblem still to be installed also, after the wet sand and polish. It'll just be easier to not have to work around it. From the factory that is the only badging other than "Dodge" on the trunk center light, grille and headlights and that is how it will stay.

Notice the stripes in the grille Dodge emblem. I did the same inside the headlights

[MostMint]

Overdue for updates:

• Took the car for inspection

I drove the car same day as last post up to State Highway Patrol for inspection. It took them a while but it passed with no issues. On the way home I took it to echeck and it passed that as well. It was 75 miles of driving and the car ran fine. A week or so later we went to the title and license bureau to get the rebuilt title and plates. She put a few hundred miles on it after that.

• Moved/adapted Flowmaster exhaust from 2013 to this car

Up next was getting the exhaust from the 2013 moved over - already posted on the exhaust remove and the bodywork repair in the other Charger thread. Getting this Flowmaster American Thunder series required some fabrication. Flowmaster had a different part # for the 2019. I figured if the old one would didn't fit we could sell it. Removing the exhaust was fairly easy - everything was clean and new with not a spec of rust. Getting the hangers off the exhaust took some work - ended up using a 3 jaw puller to remove them.

Once the exhaust was off I compared it with the Flowmaster. The most obvious issue was the first tailpipe hanger behind the muffler was pointing inward but the hanger was expecting them to point outward. I was able to bend these with the vice, a deepwell socket and 1/2" extension. The next issue was the tailpipes were too short, as the rear bumper design is slightly different. I ended up solving this by cutting off the Flowmaster tips and having Kurt weld on a new set of 8" tips trimmed to like 7 1/2".

Fitting the exhaust in the car found the mufflers close to the differential yoke. This was similar to the 2013 so I didn't worry about it. The first movement of the car uncovered the mufflers were hitting. Well I ended up cutting a small portion off the end, pounding the main case down and having Kurt weld it together.

Second test found them to still hit. I tried sliding the mufflers forward on the pipes to no avail as they still hit. There was clearly space between them and the yoke bolts but driving the car was causing the diff to move or the whole exhaust move back just a bit. I ended up cutting about 3/4" inch off each pipe to move the mufflers forward, and that worked.

Lots of time lost trying to get the first pipe back off the stock pipes after the cat, and multiple assemble/disassemble. Also found some damage under the car which I attribute to the forklift, the most significant was one of the cross braces under the exhaust - the mounting locations were pushed up a bit which left not enough clearance for the main twin pipe. Well I ended up using that brace from the silver car since I had bent it down slightly for clearance when I had put this exhaust in that car.

• Cleaning up the paint

Painting with no spray both invites a lot of dust, and inexperience created some runs in the clear. I was mentally prepared for this based on what I had seen in so many videos. Created a plan, ordered/purchased some stuff. Plan was to scrape the runs and dust nibs off with a razor blade, sand the high spots with 1000 grit, then use 3” DA to sand with 2000, 3000, 5000 and buff our the last of the scratches.

Good plan, however I ran into trouble with the paper, and trying to buff out the last of the sanding marks. I could get a decent shine but there was still a haze to it. I wet sanded almost all the flaws with a 2000 grit disc, only to find the eBay cheap discs wear out quickly. Adjusted to 1 disc per 1-2 panels and it worked much better. The 3000 and 5000 grit discs I had seemed to wear out much more quickly so I ordered some 3M Trizact discs in 3000, 5000, 8000 (6 discs total = $45). These have a built in sponge backing and are great for wet sanding. Results were better but still not right in a lot of places. I got some Meguiars medium cut and tried that – also tried the old Ditzler DRX-16 sandpaper in a buffing compound, and neither would cut the haze. At this point I tried to really slow things down – picked a small section, redid the 3000, 5000, 8000 cycle then hit it with the buffing compound. That seemed to work. There were several pitfalls along the way as the result would look good but then if you got it in the right light you could see the difference in how clear it is. Grrr. This is going to take a while to finish but more practice will no doubt help me find a more efficient way to do it

• Interior: dash vents and window tint

Rachel had the car for over a week and was driving it. She reported the rear window tint to be dark and ask for it to be removed. She also reported the dash vents would not adjust.
The rear tint came off easy. Since there was no tint at the bottom where the light bar was, I just peeled it back from there. Bad news is the adhesive still stuck to it. It was at this point I started watching videos and realized there are different steps I should have taken to remove the adhesive with the tint. There are ways to remove that adhesive so that is still on the to do list
To address the vents, I removed the bezel, and soaked these vents in warm water. More coffee came out (water was brown). Let them dry a few days but they were still sticking so they got soaked again. After a few more days they seem fine and were reinstalled.