Most folks think of automobiles comprised of parts that are fitted together with no imperfections or miscarved lines to ruin the illusion of perfection. While this may be somewhat true of a car or truck made in the last ten years or so, it is certainly not the case of an automobile manufactured as recently as the eighties. Dip back into the sixties and things get even more agricultural. Getting a car straight at the robot-free factory circa 1969 meant people using hammers, shims, and spreaders full of molten lead. Bringing a fusty old Mopar that rolled off the assembly line fortysomething years ago back into line again after an accident involves drastic measures.
This 1969 Dodge Charger owned and maintained by Frank Kozik of the Chiselers SF needed its coke bottle curves smoothed back to jet age perfection after getting rear-ended. While some of us might be able to fashion up some sort of near facsimile of a Dodge body panel with a gallon of Bondo and a potato masher, the end result won’t look better than it did when it came from the factory. Kozik decided new rear quarter panels were the way to go. Ace custom and body man Rolfe Brittain took on the job, and let us peer into the process from the first cut. Slicing through forty years of Mopar is not a task for the ill-equipped. Check out the gallery for the beginning of the work. Head on over to Rolfe’s for the ongoing saga of getting the lead out and put back in again.