Steve got Joe’s bottom line on the Hemi and got back to Don saying they should fly up to Appleton and check it out. Don rented a jet and he and the Gemza clan flew up. Joe had a 6-pack Challenger and 3 SuperBirds in his garage. The Hemi bird was an all-original 48K mile car that had been sold new in Oklahoma City, OK and had a repaint in the ’70s. It showed some nose damage from a front-end hit. Joe had picked up the car with 42K miles and just drove it occasionally. The engine had never been out of the car and the engine bay, door jambs and trunk and undercarriage paint were still factory. An agreement was concluded.
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Back at the shop. The Gemza crew media blasted the body and found it very solid. The nose damage was worse than expected and they gave Don a choice for an NOS steel nose (about 12 grand) or they could restore the original using an English wheel—a time consuming process. Don chose the latter. The other time consuming repair was the hood – someone had fired a .22 slug through the center of it (probably some disgruntled Chevy fan). The Hemi went out to Gemza’s engine man, Tom Ghent at XRE Performance. Tom found a crack in the head and a hairline crack in the block. He repaired both keeping the car numbers-matching. Tom also stroked the Hemi to 473 cubes. Dyno figures showed 594 HP @ 6 grand and 574.9 TQ @ 4700. The 4-speed was treated to a slick-shift kit by Val Dasilva at Valtech Transmissions in Monroe N. Carolina while the 3.54 Dana remained stock.
Don wanted the exterior as nice as Gemza could get it, so that meant a flawless clearcoat job. The Gemzas dipped the T-bars and hung ’em on their neighbor’s clothes line (between the underwear and socks) so they show the famous drip marks. They also reproduced all the factory markings that were visible when they took the bird apart.
All the original metal would be restored by Gemza or sent out by them to be restored. What couldn’t be restored was replaced by NOS. Frank Badalson came through with a treasure trove of NOS parts plus advice on how Chrysler (and Creative) put these cars together. The Gemzas duplicated as close as possible the procedure Chrysler used in assembling these cars, even duplicating the primer dip lines.
While the alternator and distributor are rebuilt originals, the voltage regulator is a repop, and the wiring harness is new from M&H Electrical Fabricators in Santa Fe Springs, California.
It’s all in the interest of giving Don a worry-free driving experience.
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