Joined: Wed Dec 30 2009, 05:24AM
Location: Finland
Posts: 7
Hello everybody, i'm doing policecar clone for my 4 door sedan 76 Gran Fury. I heard that orginal police package cars had reinforcement weldings somewhere in the body and the roof had also somekind of reinforcement for lightbar? Does anyone have any pictures or information?
I will post some pics from my project here in near future...but now i go to the garage and try to connect subframes together.
Joined: Sun Oct 04 2009, 08:05AM
Location: Lockport New York
Posts: 70
If your serious about restoring a police car and doing it 100% authentic then you need to go here..http://www.copcar.com/ These guys are serious about cop cars and have a wealth of knowledge but if you are not commited to doing it 100% accurate then dont bother, you will get little help and lots of crap-trust me i know. I am starting a rubuild of a 70 Fury police persuit car as soon as it warms up. Its a pain to get permissions for the forum. read the new member sign in post- lots of hoops to jump through. Good luck with your rebuild.
Joined: Mon Jul 23 2007, 06:03PM
Location: Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, USA
Posts: 471
To my knowledge, additional rienforcements on police cars consisted of the addition of the unibody torques boxes used on convertibles and select muscle cars...the practice ended with the convertibles in 1970.
I know of no factory roof reinforcements for light bars.
Your 76 (Last Generation C body) would be "normal" as far as sheet metal is concerned.
Joined: Sat Nov 21 2009, 10:08AM
Location: Woodslee, Ontario, Canada
Posts: 117
My suggestion would be to find out where your car was built (What plant, check the VIN#) then put out some feelers to guys who may have built your particular car. I work at Windsor Assembly, we build minivans now put my 68 Monaco vert was build there and my dad may have touched it going down the line. We prep Chargers now to be Cop cars. The old guys have fountain of knowledge when it comes to putting those old babies back together again.
Joined: Sun Oct 04 2009, 08:05AM
Location: Lockport New York
Posts: 70
Have you decoded the VIN and fender tag yet? This will tell you if you have a police car and what options are on it. Yes they used a roof reinforcement plate, its about 5" wide and runs from the front to about the middle of the roof. Here is a good site to read: http://www.allpar.com/squads/police-cars/valiant.html
The '71 and up Cop cars only had stiffer springs and larger torsion bars-no other chassis reinforcements. Some of the NM State Police pursuit models had mercury bars installed in the trunk (a 3"x40" pipe 1/2 way filled up with mercury--can you say toxic waste nightmare?) on top of a piece of 3/8" diamond plate that was tied into the sub frame. The idea was to help keep the car flat in corners, and they worked, but those suckers were heavy!
The older 60's cop cars had torque boxes, stiffer rear springs and thicker torsion bars.
Joined: Sun Oct 04 2009, 08:05AM
Location: Lockport New York
Posts: 70
Are you sure? If the car was purchased with a police package I think it included more. please read from the 2nd paragraph after the 1st color pic down to the 1st chart in the link i posted above.
