1982 Dodge Rampage w/ Shelby front end & '89 2.5L Turbo-I engine

In reply to AngryCorvair :

Yes, but technically backward progress as if I'd just gone this route in the first place I'd have had time to be working on other things over the weekend.

It's just frustrating- it's now a month out from the Challenge and I'm nowhere near where I'd wanted to be with things. And I have almost no enthusiasm for actually getting stuff done, either- and probably won't for a few more weeks- but there's a lot of things (like everything to be done to repaint it) that cannot be procrastinated on...

Fingertips on my right hand are not happy with me after spending the evening with a razor blade scraping the old baked-on painting tape off the hood and using Good-Off and a scrubber to get the residue off. This evening I hope to sand down the bits of surface rust and rough up the areas that were covered by the tape (they're WAY smoother and shinier than the rest), get it washed off, and hopefully primered. Not delusional enough to think I'll have time to get it masked and the first coats of paint on it, but that would be nice- but likely will have to wait until tomorrow.

What diameter is your exhaust?  If you might need some extra pieces, I could see what I have in my stash before driving down this weekend?

In reply to eastsideTim :

I'll double-check it this evening, but I think that the downpipe from the turbo is 2.5" (though it may be 3"). I'm still debating exactly what I want to do with the exhaust... it's tempting to throw the straight Thrush muffler I have on right after the turbo and set the 'race' exhaust up as the street as well vs. what I had been doing which was to take what I have on now (goes down to like 2" and exits all the way in the rear with a traditional muffler) and putting in an un-muffled setup that exits behind the side skirts (what Shelby apparently did with his own Charger back in the day).

Also- listing to sell the Rampage after the Challenge is now up here (correct link).

I've had (and expect to at the Challenge again this year) a lot of fun with this car, but it will be time to find a new home for it after the competition in a month- I've really got to focus my energy on getting the DMC back in running order.

Ashyukun (Robert) said:

Also- listing to sell the Rampage after the Challenge is now up _incorrect link removed by angrycorvair_

the link you posted just goes back to page 1 of this thread.

In reply to AngryCorvair :

Fixed- must have clicked on the wrong one when I copied it. Thanks!

In my opinion, if the intercooler is already there you might as well leave it. It is true that if it wasn't blowing up without an intercooler and you then install one and change nothing else,  the improvement will be marginal. But, the computer being able to adjust things isn't the real benefit of the intercooler. The intercooler simply allows you to run more boost before hitting the magic temperature in the combustion chamber where the fuel will light off from pressure spikes alone (detonation). The computer will adjust fuel primarily based on boost level and only marginally based on intake temp. A lot of people with turbo dodges have made a lot of power without the computer doing much via the charge temp sensor, or without even having one.  Now, you do have to upgrade the map sensor and rescale the computer to match if you want the computer to calculate correct fueling for any boost level over 14psi. However, even having said that, lots of people including myself have run well beyond 15psi by kludging the fueling to be 'close enough' in other ways. The turbo on the Rampage will max out at 230hp anyway which is ~18-20psi on a stock engine. I maxed it out on my van and went ~97mph in the 1/4 in a 3000lb brick. The Rampage would probably do ~101-102 with the same power. To do that you definitely need a good intercooler and high fuel octane because the turbo is practically a blow torch at that boost level. My van had a crappy intercooler and 93 in it when i ran it at the challenge. I was seeing knock sensor activity at ~13psi (i have higher compression pistons than you too) so i stopped there and ran 14.5 1/4. Van ran a best of 14.06 @20psi  on race fuel elsewhere, and i've also run it on e85.

Anyway, intercooler is necessary if you want to push the setup or go really fast. Not necessary for stock boost. If it's on there i would leave it. Even if you do decide to try and make more horsepower, i wouldn't let the lack of a charge temp sensor stop you. It's just one factor, not a dealbreaker.

In reply to Vigo :

The plan is that unless I really run into any problems with it I'm going to leave the intercooler on it. It's already there, so as long as I'm not seeing it be a detriment I'll keep it.

Haven't been keeping up with posting, but have been consistently working on things on the truck. Tracked down some scrap tractor-trailer coolant hoses that will hopefully work to tighten up the intercooler piping and am going to play with adding in a BOV to the system (testing & setting that with air the compressor should be fun).

Paint test on the hood went pretty well- I learned a good bit and though I need to go back and put another coat (at least) of both colors on it before putting on a clear I'm quite happy with how it looks overall. Does give me an indication that it's going to take more paint than I'd figured on, but it shouldn't be a problem- I am planning on not painting the bed with the body color and just using truck bed liner for it though, will save time and money.

Have gotten started on the body work to fix the rust on the body. I'd LIKE to be able to go in and lose all of the previous Bondo work on the driver's side, but honestly that looks like it would be far more extensive of a job than I'm going to have time for (and likely the skill for...) so I'm just going to try and clean it up a bit before priming and painting. I'd also like to be able to make some fender flares to fit the wide AX wheels (and cover some rust & body work), but I doubt I'll be able to pull that off.

I do need to figure out trying to create extensions for the lower Shelby trim- it's too short for the Rampage (being from, I believe, a Charger which has a shorter center body section), and to do the exhaust exit I want to I'm going to have to trim the existing one a bit on the driver's side. May see if I can make a decent-looking framework for it with sheet metal and then final shape with bondo... alternative is to try and make a mold of the existing ones and lay it up with fiberglass.

In reply to Ashyukun (Robert) :

The Shelby Charger that Carroll had used a fake exhaust tip on the passenger side.  Might make thing easier/faster, especially considering the time left before the event.

There were factory side skirts for the Rampage that are the proper length, but they are rare.

Some have cut apart two sets of Charger based ones to make one set of Rampage ones.

In reply to Stefan :

I'm debating whether to have the fake one on the passenger side or just complete out the skirt- will figure it out at some point. If I could find another Charger set that would be easiest by far- but that's unlikely (about as likely as finding Rampage ones...) though I will be doing a quick scan of nearby yards, but 80's Dodges are pretty rare around here...

So despite not having a huge amount of time yesterday I got a surprising amount actually done.

I re-masked off the the inner (silver) portion of the hood to give the outer (teal) portions a few more light coats of paint, and it seems like that was what it needed- I won't know for certain until I get it out in the sunlight this afternoon but it looked much better under all of the light that I had available. Will hopefully do the opposite and lay down a few more coats of silver this evening and pick up some clear when I'm out grabbing dinner so the hood will be finished aside for the (hopefully- it's again supposed to rain...) autocross on Sunday. Only thing to do after that will be the vinyl lettering for the 'turbo hump', which if I'm ahead of the game enough this weekend I may swing by the Makerspace to try and take care of.

Am largely done with rust removal around the body- next step is going to be a bit more sanding and then bondo. I think that's the state it will be in on Sunday for the AX since once it's masked off for priming I don't want to have to take the masking off until I've got the primary color coat down, so the plan will be to try and knock masking, priming, and basecoat painting out next week before eastsideTim will be coming down the following weekend.

Didn't just get body stuff done either- I finally got around to replacing the broken temp sender so I should now have a working temperature gauge on the dash. Unfortunately doing so required taking the cover off the dash and while extracting the old gauge I broke off the needle tip of the speedo (again)- so had to waste a good bit of time sitting there trying to hold as still as possible supergluing the tip back on. Also put the tach into its gauge pod on the dash- unfortunately I don't think that the double-stick tape that came with it really stuck very well, so I'm going to have to grab some more serious 3M double-stick to get it to stay attached. Also finally pulled out the wiring from the aborted battery relocation- need to remember to pick up a new battery tiedown since the rubber piece on the one from last year broke.

And, just checked and the BOV is out for delivery today so I can hopefully get the IC piping back together tonight as well.

So more progress yesterday. Got a few more coats of paint on the silver center part of the hood and it definitely looks better. Not perfect.. unfortunately the metallic paint is a LOT more touchy and difficult to not get 'lines' from the spray pattern- but it has a lot better coverage now. Picked up the clear yesterday so plan on putting those coats on it this afternoon so it'll be totally done and ready to put back on the car (at least temporarily) for the AX on Sunday.

The BOV did come in, so I got to getting it and the new hoses installed on the IC system. Overall it looks like it should work out pretty well- the BOV may not be completely necessary, but the pipe it mounts on helps a good bit in completing the piping system. Unfortunately, the BOV itself is still not completely mounted- you see, the bolts that they included to bolt it to the pipe adapter are not long enough- even without the gasket. So I had to swing by Lowe's when I was out yesterday and pick up bolts that are long enough (but not too long, since they have to fit between the flange and pipe too) to mount it.

Today I hope to get started on the bondo on the body- filling in the rusted-out portions and smoothing out the badly pocked plastic front bumper.

I had been planning on going up to Cinci to hit one or more of the junkyards either tomorrow or Saturday morning, but I'm a bit on the fence about it now as I'm not wholly sure it will be worth the time. I think I'm at least pushing it back to Saturday so I can do some test-fitting with the exhaust and see what I can figure out with it and with the side skirts to see whether it's really worth going.

So, this weekend didn't exactly go ideally on a number of levels... but at least I'm making forward progress.

Things that actually got done:

• Battery tie-down installed (ended up using part of a production one and fabbing a cover piece to fit the smaller battery)
• BOV is installed and confirmed to be working properly (at least as much as I can with it sitting in park)
• Tested the bed liner spray I've been thinking of using on the bed vs. painting it the teal of the rest of the truck, and am quite happy with it. Will be moving forward with using it.
• Test fit the S-10 rear sway bar... and decided it won't work. I can make it fit, but there's not anywhere at the moment that I can attach it to on the bed/frame that I consider solid enough to be useful/safe without a LOT of welding in of additional metal.
• Burned out headlight replaced.

Things that did NOT go well:

• First thing I did Friday morning was to start spraying the clear on the hood. First coat looked OK- and then on the second things went all to hell. So... it turns out that apparently the non-metallic Rustoleum 2X paint doesn't adhere well to the metallic, so where the teal went over the silver when the clear went on in a number of places it bubbled up and wrinkled- so I would potentially have been better off without using the clear. Of course, it also may have been for the better as I think that the teal on the silver would likely have been a lot more likely to come off as well so it may just have exposed the problem way sooner, but it's still frustrating. Unsure at this point if I'm going to have the time to try and fix it (i.e., sand down and repaint the whole hood) or now. It may just have to stay as it is, and I'll have a story to tell...
• The plan had been to take the truck out to the last local autocross of the season on Sunday, so with enough time before I needed to finish and get ready for what the Dancer and I had planned for the afternoon on Saturday I started cleaning things up, dropped it off the jackstands, and hooked up the battery to get it started and run it around the block to confirm everything was working right. That all went to hell when I tried starting it and was greeted with a large amount of smoke from under/behind the dash. It seems when I replaced the broken temp gauge that I had gotten something crossed up wire-wise that shorted something out and melted all the insulation off one of the wires to the switch that replaces part of the ailing ignition switch.  There was no way I was going to be able to track it down before I needed to leave, so I had to nix going to the AX (which I imagine was essentially rained out anyway...). I was able to at least figure out how to get the thing started and running on Sunday, but it was a setback I was not happy about.

Moving forward this week, I'm going to be doing a combination of prep for when eastsideTim comes down Saturday with his welder- we need to weld up the new exhaust and I want to weld a few small pieces in to allow some of the interior trim to be secured properly. I also am largely ready to put the bondo on and get it sanded to be ready to prime. First though I'm probably going to back it out of the garage and use the pressure washer to prep the bed for putting on the bed liner spray so I can do that as well. It will take some time for that to dry before I can actually spray it, so I'll likely wash and wipe down the rest of the truck so it's dry and clean for the places I need to Bondo- and then apply said Bondo. After that of course I'll need to sand it down and get it as nice and contoured as I can before starting the light sanding I'll need to give the whole vehicle before I can primer it. It's my hope that I'll be able to get it primered before the weekend so after the work over the weekend- which will hopefully be the last mechanical work to do on it- I'll have the next week and a half for the actual painting before the Challenge.

Despite the rain (ironically it made it almost easier since I was going to be wet anyway...) I got the bed pressure washed yesterday evening, and upon checking it this morning while loading up my bike it looks like it's dry so I should be able to mask off and spray the liner in this afternoon. Yesterday was also a decent test in that the truck didn't show any signs of trouble starting up when I needed to move it, so my electrical fixes seem to be working. The only thing that I can tell is different is that the seat belt buzzer doesn't come on when I flip on the power- something I can deal with.

So, I SHOULD have been able to get the bed on the Rampage masked off and sprayed with the bed liner yesterday after work- but knew that wasn’t going to get completed once I got an email from the Dancer that her SUV had a flat. Say what you will, but rescuing wife with a completely flat tire overrules working on project car regardless of how close it is to the Challenge.

Anyway, I was at least able to get some work done on it. The other inner side of the bed (they unscrew) is now coated, and the rest of the bed masked off so I can easily do the rest after work today. I’m a bit on the fence as to whether I think it’s worth doing the ENTIRE bed itself. It’s a LOT of area and will burn like $15-20 worth of bed spray itself, and it will pretty much always be covered by the heavy rubber bed mat that came with the truck. Will have to see how things go. I’d LIKE to do it, it will help keep it from rusting and just look better- but it may get only the exposed edges and some overlap sprayed.

One small annoying thing- I had hoped to take off the tiedown rails at the top of the bed for painting, but unfortunately they screw into the body and into my FAVORITE thing of all time: rivnuts. I berking hate rivnuts- they ALWAYS break loose and make it a complete pain in the ass to get the screw out. In this I’m just not going to mess with them and deal with painting around the rails. Won’t look as nice, but I worry that if I fight to extract the two that are spinning that I’ll not be able to replace them properly and the rails won’t be as secure when I put them back on.

Ended up taking 4 cans to do the whole bed of the truck- ended up deciding that it was just smarter to do the whole bed so it was at least somewhat protected. Overall it looks pretty good. Now I just have to get the rest of it looking good.

It's now 2 weeks out from when we should be on the road down to the Challenge. While I'm not thrilled with where the truck is, realistically it could be loaded up today and taken down (or loaded up and driven down, though my back would HATE me for that) and I'd be confident it would do fine. Hopefully this weekend we'll get the mechanicals tweaked and I'll have the next week and a half for paint and polish.

Haven't updated a lot on progress, which I should as there has been at least some...

With eastsideTim's help on Saturday the 'universal' exhaust system is welded together and installed. Doesn't have a rectangular tip on it like I would have preferred, but haven't been able to find one to use yet so am likely not going to worry too much about it. Also got the repair done to the floor so I can properly screw down the kickplates.

At the moment, the truck is up on jack stands with the wheels off so I can take care of all the painting. Yesterday I finally got started on the Bondo- and it's definitely more challenging than I expected. It's mostly done though and I should finish it up today, but it unsurprisingly is not likely going to look perfect. But, it should be an improvement at least. Also finally finished up getting all of the sticker gunk off of the truck and also hit the badges that I won't be removing (Dodge/Chrysler logo on front, Dodge & Rampage badges on the back) with a heavy coat of Plastidip to mask them off for painting the rest of the truck. I've also painted the tiedown rail fittings and the latch assembly on the tailgate black- need to mask off the intake portions on the nose today and get them painted so they're good to go when I start on the main painting.

So, the current plan is...

Today:

• Finish up with the Bondo on the places that still needs more
• Sand down the Bondo where yesterday's application was good enough
• Finish up the black accents
• Sand down the body in general
• Wash and start masking the areas that aren't near the areas I have to put more Bondo on (and thus will need more sanding)

Tomorrow:

• Finish up anything from the above that wasn't finished
• Sand and clean the last Bondo'd areas
• Mask off to start painting
• Start painting if there's time

Rest of weekend (I have Friday off):

• PAINT!!!

Also, when I have time I need to go through and try and put some of the spare parts from the Rampage up for sale to try and get some recoup on them...

As usual, didn't get as much done as I'd have liked yesterday, but I'm not wholly surprised- having never really done body work before, trying to sand the Bondo smooth and so it will look good is definitely a challenge. It's not going to look as good as I'd like it to, but I'm pretty sure it will at least look better than if I'd not done anything at all.

The front end is done sanding-wise except for one area where I had to really build up the filler a lot and thus needed to put in more yesterday. The repairs at the base and top of the windshield are largely done (need more sandpaper...), and those are some of the ones that I think turned out the best along with the passenger front wheel well.

So, today (hopefully):

• Last of the Bondo application
• Sanding both Bondo and general body
• Possibly see about pulling mirrors to both paint and make painting around them easier
• Finish black trim painting
• Cleaning/masking

In reply to Ashyukun (Robert) :

What was the problem with the Bondo?  I wish we had used it instead of our sandable chaulk. 

In reply to Stampie :

There's not really a problem with the Bondo, just that I have no experience at all in sanding and shaping anything...

How fine are you going?  We didn't paint until we got it multiple tires with 400. 

I think the finest I've used so far is 220. I have a lot finer (in the 1000s) but need to get basic shaping and knocking down bumps- ironically I have a LOT of fine sandpaper but very little courser that I need to start with (I need to make a run to Lowes/Walmart for some tonight).