OK, Car is now unveiled, here in Finland.

We did it at the best show in the country, the X-Treme Show.

And guess what, me and my garage won Best Builder of 2017! And as if that was not good enough, MOPAR USA awarded us best Mopar for the 80th Anniversary!

SO to say I am happy is a major understatement.

I am dead tired now..The last few weeks were immensely hard work with little sleep. But it paid off BIG TIME!

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SO for those that are interested..

I have read comments on facebook etc. about how 'easy' this build must have been. Nothing could be further from the truth on this car. As most car guys know the rule is NEVER BUY SOMEONE ELSE'S PROJECT! I wished I had heeded that advice many times through this project. It was a nightmare car.

FIrstly I bought this unseen, well I did send the guy who transported it to the harbor for shipping down to pay for it and inspect it first..But it checked out according to him and I pulled the trigger. When the car arrived she was a mess. So much missing trim and other parts that I had some hard choices to make. Of course I started to search for parts but as you all know they are either so expensive or impossible to get. Plus I knew I was keeping the trim black so buying mint condition expensive trim was out of the question.

Next thing..the whole front end was damaged. All lower panels, bumper was bent badly, and frame was all banged up. Apparently the shippers did not bother to tell their unloaders in Finland that the car needed to have the front airbags inflated to get it out of the container..So..they dragged it out. Which would not have been a terrible thing..IF the car had shock absorbers installed...Which it DIDN'T!

The bumper was so bad there was a difference side to side of about 6 inches..I am not even sure how they managed that.

Then the messed up Mercedes E90 lights! Oh my god..I knew they were going to go before I bought the car, but I had no idea how the guy had built that area..If I had known I would have passed on the car. I will attach photos of what we found below. But basically the light area was made in steel....kind of..And done like you would for any custom car. The big problem is instead of carrying on with steel, he decided to shortcut the process and slap in HUGE amounts of bondo! Honestly we were laughing and crying at times. I have a piece of the headlight surrounding area that looks like it was once part of a very thick homemade piece of pottery! I started to grind the bondo away and was covered in yellow dust for days. Eventually I thought EFF IT! And we made a new plan to cut the entire area out, put in steel and do it properly. The resulting area is NOT like in the factory car. There is NO flat wall behind the lights now. It is still curved. The stone deflectors and fender are ONE piece now. We made a few carefully chosen spot welds to align the new steel and then GLUED the rest in using the 3M stuff they use in modern cars to 'chemical weld' in firewalls. It is super strong now and because it is not a load bearing surface it is totally strong enough for the long term.

At that point all the front end pieces were at the painters. I had purchased a grille from a '58, so that we could put back the original look grille. The one that I got with the car was cut off where the Merc lights began. It looked stupid. Plus I wanted dual headlights again and kind of create a  modern update to the original look using LED's and RGB halos etc. Once we had the steel done in the fenders we sent the car off to the painter. At this point we had also found the rear lower panel that is partially covered by the rear bumper was totally rusted out. And again filled with bondo and painted over. So that was cut out and repaired then repainted too.

The door jambs had massive paint problems, so we sanded back and had to re do those as well. The clear coat had kind of shrunk away from the paint, we think he must have painted over the color coat that was not quite dry enough. We also redid the hood and trunk. The problem with those areas was that he had painted over wet skim coat of bondo, so the bondo shrank away from the color layer but he had already clear coated over the color! So it was FLAT, but had craters in the color layer..Bloody amatuer!

The roof will eventually be repainted black. For the show we just sanded it back and wrapped it in vinyl. I simply ran out of time to make the show deadline. And even then we rolled Twistine into the show at 9am, with doors opening to the public at 10AM! The roof was painted in what we think is plastidip type paint..It was awful. Huge canyon like cracks in the sub surface. I sanded them back to flatten it out, then we painted 2 stage black gloss so it would not show through the vinyl. But before I sell her I am painting that correctly.

Then it was on to the interior. We had a blank slate with the interior, so I designed the floating seat concept, and had custom seats and front mounting system made from scratch. Everything was going fine until we put the window and side glass back in..The car has electric windows from factory, so what could go wrong? Well the rear window motors were FORD! And the mopar gear was tack welded onto the a cut-down Ford gear! Nightmare! Not to mention both rear motors were mounted onto literally swiss cheese. We found about 20 or 30 'test' holes drilled into the inner door panels. I guess they could not get the geometry right and kept drilling holes and moving the motor until the windows kind of worked..They DIDN'T work! We spent a huge amount of time to get these to work. We even found that during the gear 'grafting' attempt that they had let some weld fill up half of one of the gear grooves, so the drivers side rear window would skip that tooth and that was causing more issues.

We took out all factory wiring, and rewired the entire car. Using brand new Mercedes fuse blocks, and top quality wiring. Most of the fuse blocks and wiring center is in the trunk now hidden behind the trim. Up front the 5.7 Hemi wiring loom was broken down to only what we needed, then rebuilt into a loom again, which was grafted back into our new wiring. All the modules needed for the 5.7 to work are hidden either under the dash or under the passenger side front fender. The engine bay is clean of most wiring. Also the brake booster was already under the dash, which was good. But for some reason ALL of the area under the front cowl area was cut away. Right now it is a hole going straight into the car..We have a new cowl trim that we custom made to cover that area and it is sealed with a custom made gasket. And the only thing left to do now is to put the wipers back on. We did not use them for the show. But I want the car road registered and it needs them by law here in Finland.

The Hemi fits like a glove...After cutting the front k frame away! We sliced that frame, cut off the existing engine mounts and recreated the whole area in thick steel. The frame now has a U shape, allowing the sump of the 5.7 to clear. And we created a new type of rear mount to locate the transmission. The whole drivetrain fits so nicely that even when we dump the car to the lowest level the sump or trans does not protrude past the frame. Theoretically you could drive the car at the lowest level!. The frame is notched for the steering components, so there is no binding, and the wheels would still be able to turn unobstructed.

Exhaust is the only thing missing now. We did not hook the engine up for the show. Since we went down to the wire we decided it would not be great if fuel or coolant started to leak at the show. Since we did not have time to add all the fluids and test all the fittings. Fuel tank is brand new and we also made new brake lines as well. It is all very neat under the car now.

Twistine has a Ford 9 inch. The center is open. I have my mechanic looking for a locker center now, so we will change that this week or next week.

Anyway, that is more about the saga which is Twistine..There was a lot more drama of course but this was the main stuff.

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I have to post again! This just arrived in Finland! I am so honored to have MOPAR actually award this to Twistine. Like her or hate her, when MOPAR acknowledges a car like this then I am satisfied.

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