The Journey
Introducing the Imperial Deathstar, a black 1963 Chrysler Imperial. This is one of the largest production sedans ever built, and arguably the best luxury car of its day.
Join me what will probably be a never-ending saga of grease, aching muscles, and an empty wallet as I work to restore this over 50 year old survivor to a reliable cruiser.
Major Articles
Major articles presented in chronological order.
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Recent Posts
- Wizard 10: Orb Assembly December 8, 2025
- Wizard 9: Packing the Orb December 1, 2025
- Wizard 8: Upsizing November 24, 2025
- Wizard 7: Next Version November 18, 2025
- Wizard 6: Prototype Test November 11, 2025
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Author Archives: RussD
Wizard 10: Orb Assembly
With the CAD work done and parts in hand the next step was to actually assemble the Orb. Of course the electrical engineer had some last minute changes. Batteries kept falling out of the battery box, so he selected a … Continue reading
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Wizard 9: Packing the Orb
With the controller in place the next question was how to power it. The electrical engineer determined that we would need four 16650 Lithium Ion cells and a voltage regulator to make this work. He identified the parts he wanted … Continue reading
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Wizard 8: Upsizing
As Halloween approached the electrical engineer freed up time to start working on the Wizard Staff again. With all of the pieces for the dragon paw and orb done I assembled it to check everything out. And discovered several things … Continue reading
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Wizard 7: Next Version
The first question is how big to make it. The only way to decide is to make different sizes and see. Fortunately this is easy: starting with the existing 4″ design simply scale it 125% to create a 5″ version … Continue reading
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Wizard 6: Prototype Test
A bit of background on 3D printers: hundreds of different filaments are available in a wide range of colors and materials. The cheapest and most widely used is PLA, so I’ve been using white PLA for the prototyping. The plan … Continue reading
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Radio Installation part 3
With the new speaker installed in the dash the next job was hooking up all the wiring. RetroSound makes this easier with a two part harness: they have a short harness that plugs into the radio and the main harness … Continue reading
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Radio Installation part 2
Once the filler plate was installed on the radio a bit of fiddling was needed to adjust the width and depth of the volume and tuner shafts. The RetroSound adjustable mounting brackets supported these adjustments, producing a good fit. Support … Continue reading
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Radio Installation
A box from RetroSound showed up. Schlep it out to the workshop. Remove the old radio. Dig out the RetroSound bezel and carefully unwrap it. Do a trial fit to see if it goes in the dash cutout. It fits! … Continue reading
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RetroSound
There is another alternative for radios: RetroSound makes a line of modular radios designed to go in old cars. They do this by providing a radio body (which they call a motor), a set of bezels that contain the display … Continue reading
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New Radio Considerations
If I want tunes in the Imperial the current radio has to go. There are several ways to do this. The cleanest approach would be to get another 1963 Imperial radio. A working one one be expensive. And this still … Continue reading
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