I’m growing to appreciate the methodology of Dylan McCool’s rebuild pattern for his vehicles: recover, assess, deconstruct, assess again, then pick a section and get to wrenching. So far he’s rebuilt the whole front clip, he’s determined just how much sheetmetal his 1973 Dodge Challenger is going to need to patch up properly, and he even bit the bullet and decided that decades of grime, algae and lichens had to be blasted off of the car. So enough of the deconstruction…once you’ve removed everything and you’ve cleaned up, the time for building begins. So, where to start? Seeing how the stock 318 is a seriously dead player, locked up tight, maybe an engine is in the works?

For that, McCool has decided to restomod the Challenger using a 5.7L mill that was scored from a Jeep Grand Cherokee. You know, the same engine that is sitting in the Project Angry Grandpa Chrysler 300C? Shoved into a car weighing almost half a ton lighter than our in-house Chrysler, the 5.7L should stomp nicely in this E-body and it will be interesting seeing Dylan get the new engine working in the car. Maybe it’ll help curb the tide of “just LS-swap it” mentality by showing that yes, Ma Mopar does have an offering for the late-model types. But before fitment begins, more proper preparation: cleaning and rust removal in the engine bay with some steel wool. The next chapter in the rescue of this Challenger can be seen below: