[Redeyeordered]

Just a thread about one of my rebuilds. I’ve done a few in the past 3-4 years or so and this is the first Hellcat rebuild. I have done 2 easy 300 C rebuilds, and a more challenging 15 Scat Pack with my brother.

After a lot of searching i found a theft recovery body/shell in late may. It was a 15 manual trans hellcat that had the front subframe, engine/ trans removed and the interior door panels were removed and the front/rear seats. Oh… and the rims/tires were stolen too. Sawzall was their tool of choice for disconnecting the driveshaft and exhaust and some of the front bumper cover attachments.

I posted about this in another thread back in may. I was looking for a suitable donor car since then. After watching and bidding on about a dozen others narrowly missing on a lot of them and actually winning one by “accident” (a story for another day) I finally snagged my donor vehicle, another 15 M6 hellcat with about 20k miles on the engine/trans in less than running condition.

Most of that should buff out… right? RIGHT?!? 🤣😂🤣

Well… inspection once I got it home (minneapolis) from South Carolina revealed a few things. Damage to… Trans cooler line, driveshaft, oil pan, about 5 coil packs, no keys, bcm was shattered, and front subframe was toast. Crud.

 

[Redeyeordered]

The auction winning date was august 31 I believe…. I had it back in MN by sept 2nd and found the crud mentioned above by the end of the first week or so having it. Then the parts gathering began. That took about 2-3 weeks for most of it to arrive and source.

i took that spare time to get the seat covers fixed, swap seat frames, etc. below is the bent passenger seat frame that I swapped to another frame. Yes I work on stuff in the living room. Don’t judge.

subframe and suspension to mount the engine to.

I Did have some assistance as a family member has a shop and he assisted with the removal of the engine, replacing the oil pan, and mounting the engine to the new cradle on a Saturday for about 8 hours. My dad stayed with me and helped replace the broken coil packs, replace the damaged trans cooler line, and get everything prepped to stab the engine back in on Sunday. The my family member was kind enough to just toss me the keys to the shop to close up Saturday night and let myself in Sunday to finish. And it had to be done so he could open for work Monday.

At the end of the day on Sunday I had a car that was a brick… no keys, and pcm needs to be programmed to talk to the rest of the car. In the mean time I’m tracking down rims/tires, brakes, figuring out a ton of small details on how to get things done. One example is the passenger caliper… it was wedged in the rim and the rotor split into 3 or 4 pieces from the impact. Well… a sawzall came in handy to get that extracted.

Above as it rolled out of the shop. And below as it has the calipers installed and the refinished rims/tires.

 

[Redeyeordered]

Interior is back in and everything works that I have tried. All interior lights, buttons, wipers, etc. some things had to have wiring fixed, and other things just worked after being plugged back in. I have the drivers seat in, it’s just not pictured.

At the dealership for pcm and key programming…

And I had some bad relays after getting the keys programmed. Replaced those and it cranked over. I cranked it without fuel (I pulled the fuel pump fuse/relay) about 8-10 times for 5-15 seconds (with substantial breaks in between 2-3 times to not overheat the starter) to get oil pressure built and flowing.

I’ll insert videos when I get around to uploading them in the next couple days of that process.
It started right up and no misfires. I have 3 trouble codes according to the built in code reader in the cluster. P0480, P0038 and P0058. First is a fan voltage out of range (it’s not connected), and the other 2 are the bank 1 and 2 rear O2 sensors voltage out of range. Well… they aren’t connected as it’s the factory manifolds to nothing until tomorrow when I get the exhaust out back together.

At this time it’s a running and driving hellcat again. It’s October 17th, and Iearned that I had my donor car won on august 31. Not complete yet, but I said I could/would have a running hellcat in single digit weeks after getting my donor car. Victory is not 100% secure, but it’s mostly complete. (I did drive it into the car hauler tonight after all) 6-7 weeks from the winning bid isn’t too bad for an untrained hack that does this in his spare time. (with some major assistance for half the engine swap from a pro)

next steps are bleeding the brakes, assembling the front end/cooling. I have all the major parts, just need to stick it together. Then it’s testing time. Of course a lot of the testing will have to wait until spring of 23. The fun car season is over in MN for this year. It was 31 today… I’m wondering why anyone lives this far north, and why I haven’t moved south yet. 😂🤣😂

 

[Redeyeordered]

Finished for now… installed the radiator, intercooler heat exchangers, and condenser. Filled with coolant and leak checked.

No issues except missing a damaged upper rad hose. Luckily one was available about a 1 hour drive from me.

also… had to bleed the brakes. Of course the final inner bleeder screw on the drivers wheel was tight… I tried to gently get it and of course i twisted it off…. I’m an idiot and tried an easy out. Didn’t work… bigger easy out… still didn’t work and I went too deep(this part is why I’m an idiot)… caliper needs work on the bleeder now.. so… used caliper ordered and installed a week later. There are plenty of set backs like that in a project like this, but it is what it is…

new caliper installed and brakes are bled.

Then it was onto installing the bumper cover. The mounting brackets/provisions were damaged at the salvage auction, so some plastic bond epoxy, and plastic welding fixed that up…

And bumper cover/grille installed.

This project is pretty much compete. It does everything it supposed to and it’s together. Minor things to be done in the spring like an alignment, a small exhaust leak to be fixed, and other icky tack things like that.

to think of how it started.

 

[Bobo]

That's COOL!!!

 

[GOING TO HELL 19]

You should name it Jesus!

 

[Bennysc1]

Wow !!! That was done very fast. Congratulations!!! Nice cat !!!,

 

[Dennis H]

You Sir are a Brave man.

 

[GreenMachine15]

Is your plan to keep this car or resell?

 

[SpeedySRT]

Congrats !!!! Great project !!

 

[Turd McGavin]

i'd resell it and wouldn't tell a soul about its back story. You did the work yourself so it wont be on the carfax

 

[GreenMachine15]

If it was sold at an auction as a theft recovery, google the VIN and pictures will come up sometimes of the auction listing pics.

 

[Redeyeordered]

Thanks for the comments guys. I bought it at Copart. So, it’s a salvage title basically forever.

i just plan on finishing it and driving It. I’ve had a lot of v8 coupe/sports cars through the years and I always disliked the automatics I’ve owned compared to manual trans cars. So, any manual sports car is the one I want. I know the automatic cats are amazing also.

In April I had ordered and took delivery of a 22 redeye challenger in July. (Hence redeye ordered as user name) It was a blast and the a8 transmission was great. I still prefer to shift the gears myself though…

Today was exhaust day and finally washed it.

I’m debating on stripes and hood color… Factory black accent hoods are matte, and no stripes. This hood was off a black car with the carbon stripes. Remove stripes, and matte the hood, or leave it gloss black, or paint body color?

And also… a friend suggested adding the carbon stripes to the rest of the car, leaving the gloss hood with the stripes. It would be unique… not sure which direction I’ll go, but that will be a decision made by future me.

 

[Speedy]

Cool project! You'll know the car inside and out when you're done. I'm curious how the process went to get keys and all that programmed to work?

As for the hood, I find these cars are BIG and it's too much of the same color without either stripes or a black hood, so my options would be either painted hood body color and add stripes, or matte black hood. Depends on budget I guess there?

 

[toekneethetiger]

Now that, is doing the Lords f#&king work right there. Very cool!

 

[wnaber]

Seriously impressive work!

 

[SRK]

Awesome skills, congrats on saving that car. As to the hood, I'm thinking the car would look great just leaving it as is, and install the red front end and bumper. That black with stripes suits the car, given the wheels and trunk spoiler. At least drive it for a bit like that?

 

[ddivinia]

I bet you learned a bunch on this project.

Well done,
D.

 

[BarnCat707HP]

Love the black hood

 

[Wolfgang]

Heck of a job, kudo's to you for all the hard work that paid off. I wouldn't mind doing one of these once I'm retired (too many years to go though) I just hope I have half the patience of you.