1969 Dodge Daytona Project Car; Project Nuremberg Daytona, Part 10
This is Part 10 of our ongoing story of the Restoration of our 1969 Dodge Nuremberg Daytona Project Car. (Start with Part 1)
Our first efforts on the restoration focused on the need to get the unique Daytona nose cone restored. Unfortunately, over the years our car’s front end had more than one “nose job” and not all the “doctors” did a great job. Our first step was to media blast the nose to get down to the bare metal. What we found in the process was that someone had done a great sculpture in bondo. I had used the badly damaged nose as a platform to sculpt a nose out of bondo.
Our evaluation of the existing nose and the alternatives for its salvation went on for some time. The first efforts were to reassemble it and fit it to the front end of the Daytona; test fit it and note areas that needed to be tweaked. I also had a wooden buck built to help provide a template to rework the nose on. There was a very strong likelihood that at least portions of the nose may need to be completely replaced.
The next step was locating a terrific local sheet metal fabricator to do the work. In addition to the required work on the nose was the repair or replacement of the items that bolt onto the nose. The nose rebuild turned out to be the biggest challenge in the car’s restoration.
While this work was going on in one corner of the shop, we also began stripping paint from the car to determine what was underneath and if there would be any surprises. Unfortunately, there were! We will tell you more about this and an update on the nose in Part 11.
