Ok, so I posted a while back about looking at a junk yard 73 Charger. I found the car and absolutely fell in love, but I'm a Chevy guy and Hemi's are expensive, especially for a college student. The car is pretty trashed, and not worth a restoration anyway. Just, look at it[1] . As much as I love the car, I don't think anyone else would. The car was originally vinyl top, poorly bondo'd over. The rocker panels are rusting out, as well as some of the body. The interior is trashed, hood rusted in place, trunk lid and windshield both missing. It does have on thing going for it, which is the larger more beefy 8 3/4" rear end, though I don't know the current gear ratio.
All that said, I still want the car and I want to make it drive. So here is where the sins start. I want to drop in... a 5.3 LS engine and manual transmission (NV4500?) with a cam and a port/polish on the heads. Go carb'd with the edelbrock kit, long tube headers to glasspacks with 3" mandrel bent pipe dumped out the sides. The only electronics would be an electric radiator fan, an old radio, ignition box, fuel pump, and oil pressure/coolant temp gauges. Maybe electric power steering from a Saturn depending on how hard it would be to mate the traditional power steering.
The car is going to be very basic. I'll go through and replace all the suspension/brakes/steering components as well as wheel bearings and new hubs all the way around. I want the car to be reliable, but also fun. It will not need A/C, but I'll run a heater core with a cheap electric fan to blow heat into the cabin for when it's cold. I'll weld sheet metal over any holes I find. The interior will be gutted bare with nothing but a dash, steering wheel, and two (probably racing) seats.
Ok, I'm going to sin a little more here. I want to build it to be a desert racer, so it will need just a little bit of lift. Nothing insane, just enough for some more ground clearance and slightly larger A/T tires. For the front, it's looking like a monte carlo bar and custom control arms in the front. I'd like to stick with the control arms that are there to keep cost down, but I think it needs 3-4" lift in the front and I doubt that would be possible on stock arms. Thoughts? I'd like the same amount in the rear also, but I want to avoid spacers and just go with beefier springs and longer shackles. Any thoughts on what kind of vehicle would have similar springs that I could pull out of a junk yard? Or perhaps I could just add a leaf to the current leaf springs and then do longer shackles.
I would like to avoid cutting the fenders at all costs. I'll be getting five new rims with tires and all four will need to match. I'm looking at Cragar Soft 8s because of cost and availability of size/offset options. I'm thinking 15s, but what dimensions do I want? How wide, what offset? I'll do longer bump stops to make sure the tires stay out of the fenders. At stock height, what would be the largest I could fit front and rear? I'd like as wide an offset as possible too for cornering stability. Steering geometry will also need help, but I can work that out.
As for drivetrain, I'll obviously need a custom driveshaft and I would weld the spider gears in the factory rear end. Pretty simple there.
As for all the rust and reinforcement... I plan to chop out the rusted rockers and weld in 1x3" or 2x4" rectangular steel tubing similar to rock sliders on an off road vehicle. I would most likely make the monte carlo bar out of the same. Probably also reinforce the frame with some and then weld up some kind of roll cage out of 2" round tubing.
There's no gas tank, so I'd probably just drill out some holes for drainage, bolt a universal gas tank into the trunk, and then place the spare tire where the trunk would be a la trophy truck style.
I'll also weld up some tough recovery points and some tubular bumper covers (similar to this
[2] , but better looking) to mount some lights on and to protect the car from brush. And a diff guard on the rear, most definitely.
Oh, and I want to daily drive it. I'll have a backup vehicle which is my current DD 03 Land Rover Discovery, but I'd daily the Charger.
Now that I've made all the hardcore Mopar guys cry (sorry, I'd throw in a Hemi if I could afford it), can you help me? Lots of custom fab will be going on and I don't plan to even paint it. Maybe re-bondo the roof and then squirt something over that, but nothing more.



EDIT: TL;DR


1.) How much can I lift the front with stock arms?

2.) Coilovers. How about some stock F150 coilovers in the front to lift and replace the torsion bars at the same time?