‘Death Metal’ 1968 Dodge Charger Prepares for Roadkill 2019
Crudely modified 1968 Dodge Charger has to ship out in less than 24 hours and it doesn’t run.
The fifth annual Motor Trend Roadkill Nights by Dodge event will be held at the M1 Concourse in Pontiac, Michigan later this month and one of the featured vehicles will be the 1968 Charger known as “Death Metal”. The Finnegan’s Garage YouTube channel recently reintroduced viewers to this classic Mopar muscle car after roughly a year of downtime and when the video was filmed, the team had just 24 hours to get the Charger running well enough to drive onto the Pilot Transportation truck to ship to the Motor City.
What seemed like a simple distributor swap turned into a fairly elaborate engine project, but Mike Finnegan and Dave Newburn spend all night wrenching on the 1968 Dodge Charger with success.
Meet the ‘Death Metal’ Charger
The video begins with Finnegan standing in front of the rough 1968 Dodge Charger, explaining how he came to own the car. This Mopar muscle car was discovered in a barn where it had been sitting for nearly 50 years when it was rescued as part of a Roadkill show shoot. They got the car running and drove it to Indianapolis, where it was shown to the guy who initially built the car. He grew to hate the car over the years, so he wasn’t too happy to see it up and running, but that is neither here nor there.
Finnegan goes on to explain that when it was last driven by Newburn, it was taken to a car show and on the way home, the 1968 Charger quit and hasn’t run since then. They estimate that the car hadn’t run in about a year, but in less than 24 hours from filming this video, it had to be running to load into a truck to head to Roadkill Nights 2019.
Distributor Issues
Finnegan explains that the Mallory distributor was the cause for the Charger dying when coming home from the car show, so they ordered a new unit, but when it arrived, it also had a problem. In need of a solution to this problem, Finnegan and Newburn overnighted an MSD distributor to install in their big block V8. Problem solved, right?
Wrong.
It turns out that the new MSD unit hits the Edelbrock cylinder heads, so the corner of the head has to be shaved down for the distributor to sit down properly in the engine. However, once the new distributor was installed correctly, the car still won’t fire. It cranks and cranks, but it will not fire.
Hunting for the Problem
When the Charger won’t start, Finnegan and Newburn test to see if the gasoline is good by dumping it in the driveway and setting it on fire. It burns just fine, so the fuel seems to be good enough.
Next, we are treated to a musical time lapse segment of the two working on the Death Metal Charger, checking the valves, removing the intake manifold and inspecting the top end of the engine. When this sped-up video ends, they have an update and it isn’t good.
It turns out that the camshaft timing in their big block Mopar V8 is off and upon further inspection of the camshaft, they find that the dowel pin that keeps the cam and cam gear lined up has broken off and the cam timing has jumped, explaining why the engine won’t fire.
With the problem diagnosed and new parts in hand, Finnegan, Newburn and a third person begin putting everything back together, which we watch in another time lapse segment with a musical accompaniment. Finally, after many hours, the engine is back together and with a little priming, the Dodge Charger roars to life. It sounds terrible due to the hydraulic lifters not building pressure, but after Newburn takes a spin around the block, the engine sounds much better.
The two were happy enough to move onto the next phase of the project, which is lowering the Death Metal Charger before the shipping truck arrives. This video doesn’t show the lowering portion of the project, but we know that this car ran well enough to head to Detroit for Roadkill Nights 2019.
Crank up your speakers and enjoy!
Join the Dodge Forums now!
