Abandoned 1987 Chrysler Fifth Avenue “Project Daily”

[mopower76]

Hey all!
I have a few question threads going about my FiFth and asked if I had a build thread so I thought I’d start one!

I found this on Offer Up in Phoenix, abandoned on a property that was purchased to flip.
Listed as an “Old Chrysler 300” and “make an offer, don’t know what they are worth” no keys and or title but he was working on getting a title.
I checked on it as a parts car for my 79 LeBaron Driver (Sold Today! Super Bowl Sunday!!!) after talking to the owner he said it should be worth a couple thousand dollars… Not wanting to insult him I explained there are few that know what these neat old Chryslers are and fewer than that who are crazy enough to dump a lot of money into an 08’s Chrysler that has been sitting for 20+ years outside.
I said I’d be interested in it but only at around $250-$500 depending on condition. He politely said no and I moved on.
Fast forward 3 months, he called and said the property is in escrow and the new owners will close this next week and he wants it off the property and I can have it for free if I can get it out of there that weekend… That was Friday at 5:30pm.
Saturday morning at 7am I was loading it on my car trailer and thrilled that it seemed fairly clean and complete.

 

[mopower76]

 

[Mikes5thAve]

Cool!

 

[mopower76]

the spot it sat dormant sonce 2004 when the owner passed away

 

[mopower76]

I’m sure this was the old man’s pride and joy, odometer shows only 38,098 miles and I’m fairly certain it is original miles and has not flipped.
I found DMV SMOG test paperwork for 2004 (he passed in 2005) with some interesting notes showing the mileage at 37k.

 

[mopower76]

I decided to try out a bonded title, I’ve always steered clear of these but I had some people tell me it’s a cheap and fairly quick process.
Well, it’s fairly cheap… I went through my collector car insurance (Hagerty) for the bond (which was through Travelers) and then got the car a level 1 inspection. My first trip to the DMV to wait for 2 hours… Simple and 5 minutes to inspect, 30 minutes to background check and I had the paperwork in hand to move forward with the bond.
The bond cost $100 that took it’s time to post with Travelers and I didn’t realize the paperwork would be mailed and take 2 weeks to get.
After multiple emails the paperwork finally showed up and I went the next day paperwork in hand back to the DMV, 2 hour wait just to be told I waited too long and the insurance information sent by Hagerty needs to be re-sent as they cannot manually input insurance information themselves.
Needless to say, I was LIVID… called Hagerty on my way home and literally got a We understand your frustration and apologize for the inconvenience.

 

[mopower76]

a lot went into the car while waiting for the paperwork from Travelers -
I replaced all of the maintenance parts, belts, hoses, fuel system, brakes. Bearings, fluids etc.
I also pulled the full interior out including the steering column (possible cause dome light/brake light issue) and all surrounding trim.
Stripped all of the padded covering and set everything aside until I can figure out the best and most convenient way to strip off the glue. Then the plan is to just paint all of the plastic and I may do it black because of the blackout treatment I’m planning for the rest of the car.

 

[Justwondering]

mopower ...
I did a long writeup on replaced the interior on my 87 fifth avenue. all the details are here on the forum.
however, here is the link to the 'tips and learnings' I shared from the whole sordid affair:
Interior Trim, Landau Covering & Antenna Learnings

Basically, the fabric it glued on the fiberglass pillar forms. You need to use a heat gun to make the glue give way and easier to pull all the fabric off. Then, to truly clean everything you sand it or you can use Tuolene or Xylene (both stink-- be sure to use plenty of ventilation).

Your other 2 options:
1. if the cloth is in decent shape, just use contact cement and glue your new fabric over the old fabric-- not really an option for you since you've already pulled off the old fabric.
or
2. get the cloth off and cover with a heavy 'plastic' paint --- somewhat like a bedliner thick paint -- unfortunately there are very limited colors there. But if you are going with black out interior, that is one of the more common colors for thicker plastic paint.

You don't show where you are going to be when driving the car, so if you plan to spend much time in it during hot days, by some thinner (3/4 inch aluminum backed) fiberglass as wide as you can (comes on rolls from home depot and much cheaper than dynamat ) to cut a piece and put between the roof and the headliner. Really cuts down the heat gain in the cabin.
Ditto works for reducing cold gain and retaining heat in the cabin in the winter.

Or you could just put it back full comando and sweat/shiver as the weather dictates.

JW

 

[Mikes5thAve]

Looks clean and great price lol
It's making me want to dive into my projects but one is packed away for winter with not enough room to get into it too well and the other is buried with too much crap around it.

 

[mopower76]

I made quick time tearing the car down to clean and repair what I could in preparation for this FiFth Ave to replace LeBron as my daily driver.
A Steam cleaning underneath, door, jams under hood and inside the trunk showed one of the cleanest vehicles I’ve ever worked on, there’s not any rust anywhere!!!

 

[mopower76]

Of course the AZ heat and coolant and oil sitting for years causes corrosion and oil to solidify selling the engine, got a fill up and flush with transmission fluid and diesel fuel until the current case remain clean and the valve looked like you knew once again then a fresh oil change
The water pump is worse than any I’ve seen, I’m used to these Arizona small block cars having lots of corrosion in the water pump and at the front of the block, but I’ve never seen the water pump veins completely eaten away by rust and corrosion!
A solution of cleaners and solvent plus high-pressure steam through all of the water passages, including the heater cord got everything clean, flowing well looking great!
I flushed all the brake lines and fuel lines hold the gas tank replace the sending unit and all rubber lines then result the carburetor.
This car runs so smooth and quiet!

 

[80mirada]

Wow, that is a new one on me

 

[mopower76]

Now that it was running well it was test drive time!
My 6 year old and I took Whitey around a few blocks with ease, I knew I could move onto some cosmetic items with confidence.
The bumper filler was bent and pushed out on the passenger side front corner so I decided to collapse the front bumper impact struts and pulled the bumper in almost 4”!
I think it looks great! A little cutting on the plastic filler and I even reused the factory chrome plastic strip that clips to the leading edge of the filler. Looks almost factory and like they meant it to be that way!
Of course I couldn’t leave the taillights alone… They got repaired, polished then masked and painted blacking out the reflector areas including the center filler piece. I thought it would clean it up and slim the area down a little leaving only the taillights and Chrysler emblem in the center.
Then onto the headlights, cheap Amazon $60 LED headlights because I wanted GOOD bright lights in this car! They look better than I thought they would. Usually I don’t go for cheesy aftermarket junk because I feel it always looks out of place. This car has enough chrome and being white I think they work well.

 

[mopower76]

Wow, that is a new one on me

I never saw this in any of the cars from the Midwest, not this bad anyway and this is at least the 6th or 7th car from the desert that have bad corrosion.
two of the other LA engines and one 1996 360 Magnum engine wer so bad I had to replace the front timing covers.

But unlike back east the fuel systems look new after they are cleaned out! No rust in any tank I’ve had out here!

 

[mopower76]

I decided I wanted to put an actual stereo system in this car since I haven’t had a real system in a car for many years but had all of my old components from my last one.
I’m trying to put as little into the car as possible and had an idea to use my phone as a head unit in the car and keep everything looking stock. A seriously modest and simple stereo but I wanted to use the factory stereo for volume and sub level control.
I got a Bluetooth Legacy 3 way crossover to connect to my phone and used a In line volume “pot” and gutted the factory AM radio. I modified the factory knobs and mounted them to both so the volume knob is actually volume and the tuner knob is the subwoofer level control and I added a 3.5 jack as another source option because… Well, why not!

 

[mopower76]

Interior mostly back in, I found an 87 white with grey leather interior 5th and bought about everything he had including a decent steering wheel on a really nice cruise control column!
The multifunction switch on this car was broken and the steering wheel was very split from the sun.
Door panels and dash were baked plus it was a single speaker car so thankfully he had the complete doors and I stripped them.
Now with the leather door panels and cloth seats it’s definitely a one of one! Ha! Ha!
4 8” Rockford Fosgate HE2’s from the late 1990’s in a small sealed box under the package tray with a CAB 1600.1 amp running about 650 watts at 4ohm, 5x8’s in the rear deck and 3.5” in the dash on a mini ARC 125.4 4 channel amplifier, Audio control CL7 line driver to kick up the line voltage.
1/0 gauge, big 3 upgrade, 125AMP alternator and an extra Kenitic battery in the trunk for solid power and steady voltage. Not loud bass but clean, musical across all genres.
Changes are in the works as the phone isn’t a great or convenient head unit, if CarPlay worked through the phone like it does with a modern touchscreen head unit it would be great.
So a touchscreen head unit with Apple CarPlay is in the future, plus my little ARC amp lost 3 of its channels… Sad.
Great compact amp and sounded Beautiful but may not be worth fixing.

now you are all caught up! It’s been a whirlwind and have only been able to dedicate a few weekends a month to get it where it is.

 

[mopower76]

Looks clean and great price lol
It's making me want to dive into my projects but one is packed away for winter with not enough room to get into it too well and the other is buried with too much crap around it.

Im also doing the same thing on a 71 Charger Super Bee (client car) and a 1967 GTO (Neighbors car) plus rebuilding the drivetrain and suspension plus painting the engine compartment of my 1971 Plymouth GTX 4 speed car. Oh yeah, and working a 50 hour weeks at a Hot Rod shop…
I’m a glutton for punishment or as my wife puts it… Crazy.
It’s a disease… I can’t help myself and I can’t turn or let people down and I like to stay busy!

 

[mopower76]

DMV, Title/Plates, Brake lights, dome light, First and Foremost so I can drive it!
I just sold my daily so it’s time to daily Pinky until I get it figured out!
Then onto trunk release, tucking rear bumper, paint correction, (sand/buff/polish) finish stereo, interior and finally tint the windows and convert to R134.

 

[mopower76]

mopower ...
I did a long writeup on replaced the interior on my 87 fifth avenue. all the details are here on the forum.
however, here is the link to the 'tips and learnings' I shared from the whole sordid affair:
Interior Trim, Landau Covering & Antenna Learnings

Basically, the fabric it glued on the fiberglass pillar forms. You need to use a heat gun to make the glue give way and easier to pull all the fabric off. Then, to truly clean everything you sand it or you can use Tuolene or Xylene (both stink-- be sure to use plenty of ventilation).

Your other 2 options:
1. if the cloth is in decent shape, just use contact cement and glue your new fabric over the old fabric-- not really an option for you since you've already pulled off the old fabric.
or
2. get the cloth off and cover with a heavy 'plastic' paint --- somewhat like a bedliner thick paint -- unfortunately there are very limited colors there. But if you are going with black out interior, that is one of the more common colors for thicker plastic paint.

You don't show where you are going to be when driving the car, so if you plan to spend much time in it during hot days, by some thinner (3/4 inch aluminum backed) fiberglass as wide as you can (coms on rolls from home depot and much cheaper than dynamat ) to cut a piece and put between the roof and the headliner. Really cuts down the heat gain in the cabin.
Ditto works for reducing cold gain and retaining heat in the cabin in the winter.

Or you could just put it back full comando and sweat/shiver as the weather dictates.

JW

When I get to the headliner I’m definitely sound deadening and insulating the roof!!!
Excellent tips, thanks to all!!!

 

[mopower76]

It worked! I finally have the car registered in my name and got plates!
What a mess though!
It’s no wonder the 3rd party places want $350-$500 to get the bonded title.

Doing it myself took a while and multiple trips wasting time at the DMV but in the nd the bond was $100 and the title and plates were $75.
The plates and title would have only Been $50 but I got specialty personalized plates.

So in the end I’m pleased, now onto the taillights and interior light issues so I can actually start driving it!!