With the rebirth of the “Musclecar era” and the new Mustang, Camaro and Challenger’s ruling the showrooms and roads across America. There is also renewed interest in the vintage musclecars from the 70’s.
Dave Gibbs lives in Spokane, Washington and in spite of the 5-6 hour drive from Spokane to Ron Pircey Enterprises in Federal Way, WA.; Dave chose Ron to handle the “challenge” of heavily modifying his vintage 1970 Challenger. Upon arrival, the car was rolled into the shop and a ”plan of attack” was formulated. Notice the clean and rust free nature of the 40+ year old body!

The plan included:

• Mounting of the racing bucket seats.
• Installation of an eight point 4130 roll cage.
• Installation of the brake and clutch pedals and corresponding master cylinders.
• Installation of the steering column and linkage.

Our project begins with the installation of the Roll Cage. 1 5/8” 4130 Chrome Moly Tubing was chosen for its strength and lighter weight when compared to regular Mild Steel Tubing. The first three photos show the tight fit of the custom bent tubes that follow the windshield pillar.

The next photos shows the back area of the cage and the close fit of the Roll Cage Main Hoop and rear supports.

The next shot shows a view looking through the rear window into the driver’s compartment.

The cage is engineered to tie into the aftermarket front subframe that was already installed before the car arrived at Ron’s shop and to provide adequate mounting and support for the Wilwood Clutch and Brake Pedal Assembly and the matching Wilwood Master and Clutch Cylinders, as the plan is to use a hydraulic clutch.

These next shots show the mount that Ron fabricated to mount the Steering Column and Pedal Assemblies.

Steering Column installed.

Engineering the steering linkage can be tricky, but Ron’s experience and skill resulted in a simple and clean linkage from the steering column to the rack and pinion steering unit as shown in the next two shots.

The final step in this first chapter of our Challenger build; is to install the Corbeau brand Bucket Seats. In order to utilize the sliding adjustable seat mounts, some fabrication was necessary and is shown in the next couple of photos along with a shot of one of the seats installed as the third and final photo in this installment.

You may have noticed if you looked at the photos closely up to this point; that there are no “door bars” installed as part of the cage and no passenger seat shown in the pictures up to this point. That is because they will be part of the final chapter of our Challenger build along with the installation of “mini tubs” to allow use of wider rear wheels and tires!

Stay Tuned!