BangShift.com The Charger, Part 12: Fit-Testing, Installing The Holley Mid-Mount Accessory Drive Kit, And Other Projects

On the first fit, you can see that the forward tube of the header is making contact with the stud poking up from the steering box. The oil dipstick is not secured in this photo; moved to its installed position, it clears just fine.

The alternator is supposed to fit here, but in reality to make it fit, I’d have to carve into the “frame rail” quite a bit. That isn’t going to work.

What is more concerning is the interference between the passenger side motor mount and the stock oil filter location. This is going to require a remotely-mounted oil filter.

By a sheer miracle, both the washer fluid container and the radiator overflow jug are both intact and in remarkably good condition. But they look like 50-year-old plastic parts, and since the 1975-’79 B-body restoration market sucks, I decided to try a home-made scrub treatment composed of dish soap, Oxi-clean, scrub brushes and water.

The washer bottle rinsed out pretty well, but when it effectively holds glass cleaner, how dirty could it get?

The overflow tank, on the other hand, has had cooking ethylene glycol in it since the Gerald Ford’s first adminstration. This required a few flushes and scrubbing, but it is a sight better than before. Good enough for now.

The weatherstripping around the glass can be summed up in three words: “Shit’s cooked, yo.” With the windows up, the wind noise above 40 MPH was obnoxious. The whistle from the passenger side was borderline unbearable.

We’re replacing the original weatherstripping with fresh rubber from Steele Rubber. I’ve actually been sitting on this kit for a couple of years because I expected the full weatherstripping treatment of glue removal, trimming, re-setting and learning that I screwed it up.

In truth, I didn’t need to worry. Four push-pins like this one hold the weatherstripping down while the remainder of the rubber fits a run track that works all the way around the perimeter of the opening. All I had to do was to make sure that two push-pins per side lived through removal.

The new weatherstripping came with fresh pins embedded for the forward points. After that, it’s just a matter of carefully tucking the new rubber into the track with a plastic tool. It took maybe 20 minutes total to change out both sides.

My apologies for the bad photos here, but you can plainly see that the felts were absolutely shot on the car. There were gaps big enough for small animals to fit through, much less leaves, rainwater, and everything else that causes 1970s-era Mopars to rot.

To change the felts, the door panels come off and the door glass comes out. This gave me a clean spot of the original Garnet Red paint (the darker red tone), complete with the original red metalflake intact. If I ever get around to repainting this car, this exact point will be used for color-matching.

Severe caution was used with the door panels and the glass, because finding a replacement for either is a horrifying prospect. Worse yet, the door panels are formed plastic (like a ‘Cuda/Challenger) and have early heat rot (plastic dusting).

Changing out the outer felt is easy: just remove a handful of Phillips-head screws and replace. The inner felt is stapled to the door panel with stainless-steel staples. It took a Dremel tool with a tiny little cutting wheel to remove these staples and my thinnest flathead screwdriver to pry the old felts off. The new felts are attached. I’m not explaining how, I’m not proud of how I made that happen.

That being said, I am proud of how this turned out. And I never, ever want to do this again.

Here is the stock system, minus the alternator and A/C compressor. Everything worked fine in the cop car, but with the fitment issues apparent, this all had to go.

If my mind wasn’t made up before, it was when this bit broke off. The donor car had lived in the saltier regions of Ohio. Wonderful. Just because it was a “newer” car doesn’t mean that the donor car wasn’t a fifteen-year-old beater with rust issues.

Here’s the side-by-side comparison between the stock timing cover and Holley’s cover assembly. On the stock side, the orange is the alternator and the blue is the A/C compressor.

The new timing cover offers up three different port locations for heater hoses. In this photo, you can see that I’ve chosen the rear-most ports that run under the intake manifold. Whatever hose option you don’t choose gets filled with an NPT plug (that half-threaded one, in this photo.)

The cover gasket gets laid into the cover and locked in at the bottom on each side.

Since I’m not planning on deleting VVT (yet, anyways), the camshaft sensor is simply swapped over.

The alternator is an easy install. Holley’s low-pressure power steering pump allows the use of the factory power steering, and only requires you to install a hard line and the pulley.

The upper radiator hose simply re-uses the factory thermostat housing cap, and a new thermostat is provided. For the lower radiator hose, Holley provides a 45-degree and 90-degree outlet that can be clocked, plus the collar and bolts.

Holley also provides an installation tool for the crankshaft seal and the damper (either a standard or SFI-rated unit). You just have to rent the installation tool from your local parts store.

The water pump is a cartridge-style unit, similar to an LS. Six Allen-bolts hold it in place.

Don’t forget to install the thermostat with the bleeder port at the 12-o’clock position.

Holley includes a Sanden SD7 air conditioner compressor with the kit. Again, simple to install and just about idiot-proof.

Even the smaller items, like the belt tensioner, are included. Every bit of hardware, a wiring pigtail for the alternator, everything is in the box.

They even throw in the serpentine belt. And a set of instructions that tell you everything you need to know. Don’t ignore them. Don’t toss them out. Follow them and you will be just fine.

With everything installed, the 5.7 was dumped back into the engine bay for a second fitment check. This time, however, I set the engine fully into the mounts and checked everything. I still need to “adjust” the driver’s side header tube, but everything else fit beautifully.

The added benefit of the Mid-Mount Accessory Drive Kit is that the motor mount bolts are much easier to access from the front.

My final act for the weekend was to test-fit the Frostbite radiator and fan shroud for the twin SPAL fans. The shroud fits beautifully, but you can see that the radiator is a touch too narrow for my application (being fair, it is meant for 1968-1974 B-body applications). That’ll be a future project.