Rebuilding a 1968 Dodge Coronet 500
I bought my first car my senior year in high school. It was an AWESOME car that was the source (or contributing factor) to many wonderful memories — cruising Main Street, dates, dances, and just having fun. In 2022 I decided to recreate that car and — along the way — acquire skills I didn’t have: welding, metal fabrication, body work, painting, etc. These pages document the work I’ve done – and am currently doing – and the lessons I’ve learned along the way.
Back in the day
Here are some pictures of my first car.
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Fast Forward to 2022 – New Beginnings
Here’s what I bought on eBay from a guy in College Station, TX. I purposely purchased a car with lots of special needs which would allow/require me to learn some things about auto restoration
Let’s start at the end (the tail end)
I thought I’d eat this elephant of a project by starting in the rear, which has most of the problem. I figured I’d start here because I really can’t make things any worse than they already are!
With the frame rail replaced, I turned my attention to the rusted out parts of the quarterpanels.
By now I’m getting more comfortable with my welding (knowing how easy it is to grind away bad welds!)
With this optional work out of the way, it was time to quit procrastinating and get to the biggest bodywork challenge: the rear window. The rear window was SO bad that there was no way to repair it; I could only replace it. Unlike trunk pans and floor pans and fenders, no one manufactures replacement rear windows. So, I reached out to my friends at Desert Valley Auto Parts in Arizona, who cut a rear window out of a donor car and shipped it up to New Hampshire.
Another challenge was the tail panel. It was in pretty rough shape:
There are two types of work with the tail panel: the trim (see the top picture) and the metal (the bottom picture); both needed significant attention.
Okay! We’re getting there with the back half. We replaced the rotted frame section. We replaced the rear window with a donor. We mini-tubbed the wheel wells. And we repaired the tail panel. Now let’s complete the back half.
In order to make sure the bare metal didn’t start rusting, I decided to finish the rear by using some bondo where necessary and to spray epoxy primer on any exposed surfaces.
Although I work in the garage most of the time, when it gets bitter cold — or I want something else to do — I can work in the basement of my house. One of the more significant basement projects was recovering my front bucket seats and the rear seat and back.
Another basement project was the center console. This car is an automatic with the shifter on the floor encased in a very cool console that has a lockable storage area and floor lights. Unfortunately, the plastic part of the console was so brittle that it disintegrated when I tried to work on it. And the metal parts weren’t much better.
Another basement project was the heater box. There was no heater box when I bought the car, so my buddy Randy found one for me at Chryslers in Carlisle (PA). It looked pretty good. Until …
One of the optional things I did was inspired by Chris Birdsong’s video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qOeqMfMKV0) on subframe connectors. While I don’t envision my Coronet creating the torque that would require stiffening the frame, I thought it would be fun and — with the floor pan out — relatively easy to do.
And still another basement project was refinishing the glovebox lid and the lower dash pad. I had an extra set of each so I could select the best after my refinishing.
Okay, let’s get back to the car and do some more bodywork. I had purchased floor pans for the trunk and the front of the car, but the back seat floor pans needed quite a bit of work. As you recall from the original photos, some rodents had made a home in the back seat and their nesting material — over decades — had rusted areas of the back seat floor.
Meanwhile, back in the basement, I worked on the instrument panel and switch panel.
