‘68 Charger – The White Hellephant

PHASE I

Definition of a White Elephant: Something extravagant, impractical and expensive with no useful purpose. The White Hellephant is all that and much, much more!

At SEMA in 2018, the Hellephant was unleashed – a limited run of 100 aluminum supercharged 426 hemis sporting 1000 HP and 950 lb-ft of torque – on pump gas! I had to have one, jumped on the wait list and when they eventually got around to selling them, I was lucky enough to nab one! Not only that, a contact who knew I was looking hooked me up with another one, so I ended up with two of them, though I eventually sold one at a decent “Additional Dealer Markup”. Now then, what to put it in? First thoughts were a 71 ‘cuda, but then I saw it, an overhead shot of a ‘68 Charger highlighting those beautiful coke bottle curves. Decision taken, and I happened to have a friend who had one for sale

We started working on it but as it was an original numbers-matching R/T, decided it was best to restore that one to original and find a roller. I didn’t feel nearly as bad modifying an original 383 column-shift auto that was a roller, anyway, especially since some smart guy had installed a sun roof back in the day. Of course it was a lot of work, but the rust and crappy panels were cut out and replaced and all the goodies ordered for an RMS suspension, modified 6-speed Tremec, Vintage Air, Dakota Digital Gauges and all the bells and whistles.

Round 1 – metal work at a local shop. Quite a bit of work done, but things just weren’t progressing as desired so I decided to take the car to my own shop and work on it there.

Round 2 – started work, enlisted the part time help of a couple of friends who happened to be top notch fabricators/paint/body – things were moving along but as it was a part-time effort, not too rapidly. One of the guys took a job out of town so things ground to a halt.

Round 3 – back to the original shop, but I went in every day to work on the car while also putting my Boss back together. Got all the plumbing and wiring laid out, but it became more and more obvious that I was never going to get the car to the level I wanted it, and I was spending way more time with cars than home with my wife, which wasn’t sitting well.

Round 4 – after my wife and I toured around checking out various “high end” shops, the car was moved to Horsepower Northwest in Bremerton – most places had long wait lists and/or were far away, but HPNW fit the bill by being close enough to be involved and the owner was crazy about the build ideas we came up with – plus they specialize in Mopars, so it was a perfect fit. Work during this phase of the build will be covered under the Phase 2 tab.

‘68 Charger – The White Hellephant

PHASE II

Definition of a White Elephant: Something extravagant, impractical and expensive with no useful purpose. The White Hellephant is all that and much, much more! This is where it really gets crazy.

Just a few of the “somewhat daffy to downright demented” things we’ve done, as both Aaron (the owner of HPNW) and I like to dream and he and his team turn our dreams into reality:

“Hellephant” aluminum supercharged 426 hemi, #63/100, upgraded with 108mm throttle body and higher flow/low profile blower lid.
Twin exhausts exiting through the tail lights, custom billet housings, LED’s and heatproofing
Hand-built headers and combination round/oval exhaust with Formula Z Performance 3-D printed Z-pipe, all finished with CeraKote Cobalt.
3D scanned front end with custom billet aluminum grille and Hellephant badging
Art Morrison IRS chassis
Bosch Motorsports M5 ABS system
15” Baer Extreme+ brakes with 6-piston monoblock calipers, Wilwood electric e-brake calipers, Bosch iBooster, under-dash hidden master cylinder, booster and brake/clutch booster reservoirs.
Custom billet sill plates
Custom billet coil pack covers
Twin Hardwire 28 Channel solid-state PDM’s married to Vais Technology ignition system, factory ECU and PCM via CAN bus, custom wiring harness for installation under rear seat.
Two trunk-mounted zero-gravity batteries with tender
Custom billet supercharger lid
Bespoke stainless gas tank with 3xDeatschwerks DW400 fuel pumps and Radium surge tank system
Full belly pan/roll pan
Soft close hood and trunk latches
Modified Tremec 6-speed transmission (Bowler Carbon T-56)
Flush mount front/rear bumpers
Custom front lower valence and air dam
Shaved drip rails and enhanced hood/door scallops and duck tail
Billet grills for hood scallops, design matching the grill
Big fat Michelin tires on Forgeline CF1 monoblock open lug wheels with custom center caps
Custom billet Hellephant gas cap
Custom billet mirrors

Renderings done by Tavis Highlander.

Interior work will be done by Tony Miller at Stitches in Bremerton.

More to come in additional tabs – watch this space!

Youtube Channel Videos

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7nzZsSwduw&list=PLZBybMnQGCOlf85gnqRG42O5DC8KyPbcN&pp=gAQBsAgC

‘68 Charger – The White Hellephant

The Grille

Second Gen Charger grilles are notorious for poor fit, with finger-sized gaps between the plastic and surrounding metal, cockeyed fitment and, in general, they look either really bad or downright awful, depending on the particular car. Trying to solve this problem was a priority from day one, and the guys at HorsePower NorthWest and Blackwell Engineering managed to knock it out of the park. While other builders have used stock grilles and built up the surrounding area with metal or fiberglass, these guys made a custom-fit all-billett aluminum grille tailor-made for the car.

Step One – making it fit. First step was general metal work to, for the most part, line up the stock and aftermarket hood, fenders, etc. After that, a 3D scan was performed of the entire front end.

Step Two – making a mock-up by 3D printing the grille in plastic, section by section, then mounting it all together to check fitment.

Step 3 – Milling the grille surround out of billett aluminum, TIG welding the sections together, hand-sanding to make the welds invisible and installing mounting points.

Step 4 – Milling the center section out of solid billet, with some small custom tweaks to differentiate it from a stock grille to knowing Mopar fans.

Step 5 – the headlight doors – outght be easy, but this was one of the more tricky sections, requiring 3D modeling of the opening/closing travel, design for compatibility with the electric motor opening system, and then finally the use of custom-designed Dapper LED lighting due to limited clearance.

Step 6 – a nod to old-school design with a modern twist – keeping the script Charger callout on the center section, but instead of the classic spear or R/T on the headlight door, a custom billet 426 and Hellephant.

Step 7 – Cerakote it all to make it look pretty!

Step 8 – Final metal work in the surrounding area and the custom aluminum flush-fit bumper to make it all fit perfectly.

Milling Video: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/ypD2xeNbZ8o

Headlight Door Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opBYTXFbpnU&list=PLZBybMnQGCOlf85gnqRG42O5DC8KyPbcN&index=3

‘68 Charger – The White Hellephant

Exhaust

Been done a million times – bolt on some headers, weld some tubes together, throw in a muffler or two and shoot it out the back or the sides somewhere. Easy Peasy!

Well, it would be, expect retired engineers with too much time to think and whiz-kid car builders can dream up the strangest things, and not only dream them up, make them happen!

Back in Phase I, this was all going to be relatively straightforward with TTI headers made for the stock engine position, some oval stainless pipe to the rear and, getting fancy, a pair of exhaust tips on each side to resemble the 68 Charger tail lights. Oh, and an X-pipe. Nothing too earth-shattering, until things got crazy in Phase II.

Going from the RMS bolt-in front-rear suspension systems to a full-frame AME chassis with IRS was the right move for the build, but it didn’t make the exhaust routing any easier – nor did our goofy idea to hide the mufflers up in behind the rear tires in the between the rear quarters and the trunk and route the exhaust out through the dual round tail lights.

We’ll start at the “easy” part, the engine, and work our way back to the tail lights, leaving arguably the best for last.

With the engine being centered within the AME frame and associated mods to the engine compartment, no off-the-shelf set of headers was going to fit, so they’re all hand-made from stainless. Running back, they pass through a Formula Z Performance “Z Pipe”, and a combination of round and oval exhaust pipe.

The routing then snakes its way up, over, around and through the IRS rear suspension, through the frame rail and into a pocket created between the trunk drop and the rear quarter, with double walls and insulation material, mounting points for the mufflers, flow through venting for heat dissipation and then the crowning jewel, an exit through the twin tail lights on either side of the car.

This idea was first seen on the Hellephant concept ’68 Charger when the engine was debuted at SEMA in 2018, but this is the real deal, with custom milled billet tail light housings, high temp LEDs and space-age insulation to make these function in the real world and exactly replicate stock 68 tail light functions, not just look pretty on a show car.

Not only is this all functional, it’s gorgeous, too – high temp Cobalt CeraKote inside and out of the fully stainless assembly, and a tight-as-a-glove fit within the contours of the custom belly pan, a perfect combination of “go” and “show”!

Exhaust Routing Video: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/L2n4yQJRRZM