Getting back to my roots... building a 1972 Duster to 'dream spec'
Hello all,
This first post is going to be text heavy but the story of this car is pretty relevant. Feel free to skim it and check the pictures.
I come from a line of car guys. My grandfather started importing Bugattis into the US in the '50s and my father has been a wrencher and tinkerer forever. Both of them had a thing for Mopars: my dad ran Valiants and Darts for years and my grandfather is starting a resto on my grandmother's 1955 Plymouth wagon! So it was natural that I was going to be a car guy and start with a Mopar.
Back when I was 12 or 13 the deal was simple: pick a car on the property, get it running, and there ya go you have your first car. Helping my dad move cars around one day I spotted a beat up blue Duster sitting under a tree. It looked a LOT cooler than the rest of the cars on the property and I was all about it. As luck would have it, he bought it for the engine 10 years ago and just parked it.
It was in pretty good shape. I spent a few summers spending every spare minute and cent on the car. Here's me at 14 or 15.
A $150 slant six from upstate NY got the thing on the road. I drove down to get it 2 weeks after I got my license (there was a stop in Boston on the way down to visit a girl I knew =P~). The guy was bringing an NHRA spec Duster back to factory spec and this was out of his parts car. He was amazed it was going in that little Subaru Loyale.
My mechanic's skills were non-existant at that point but I learned. By the time I got my license the car looked like this. It had a 225 slant six with 140 psi compression across the board, a single barrel carb, and a 3 on the tree. Not exactly a barnburner but it got me around and I thought it was cool as hell.
By my first year of college I was out of time and money to work on it. It got parked at my parent's house for years. In the meantime, cars became even more central to my life. I got my engineering degree, spending every free moment building Formula SAE racecars and running a research project on diesel engines and fuels.
Fast forward to the present: I moved out to Detroit over the summer to start a job, test engineer on experimental diesel engines (and I work every day at a GM engine development shop). And it's time to get back to the project!
It got shipped out from Vermont about a month ago, I was ecstatic to see it (and another project of mine, the 1983 Alfa Romeo GTV6) come off the truck.
It went straight in the garage, where it'll stay for a good long while.
The venerable slant six will probably get pulled, rebuilt, and go in a 4 speed overdrive van that my dad's looking at.
There's some work to do... a low speed accident crumpled the inner fender well.
A pillar rust... cause if it was easy everyone would do it!
Trunk rust, also in the tail lights :/
And as it sits now... almost entirely stripped save for the drivetrain, suspension, and dash. But those are the fun parts.
So what are the plans? First, this is a wildly sentimental project. Those of you who have done one of those are shaking their heads because that's always trouble. Anything I find in there is getting fixed and getting fixed right. 14 year old Xander owns this car more than 23 year old Xander does. So whatever 14 year old Xander wants, he gets.
The new Challenger came out while I was wrenching on this car and I thought that was real cool. I loved the idea of modernizing old muscle so of course this will get a new Hemi and TR6060. But I'm not done yet... I also want it to handle well and 14 year old Xander wanted to embarrass some sports cars with this thing. 23 year old Xander is getting some input here though, I want this to be reliable, serviceable, and ready for a long road trip. The engineer and racecar builder in me is also calling some shots here.
My current yet very tentative plan is to do the suspension from a new Challenger as well. Provided that the track width lines up, the rear subframe is easy. It's a Mercedes unit, out of a W211, and looks something like this:
Mounts on essentially 4 points plus beefed up shock towers. Not that tricky. I would love to utilize the entire front cradle and front suspension from the Challenger as well. Rebuilding the entire car from the firewall forward isn't that big a deal but again, geometry of the Dodge/Mercedes unit pending. Also I'm not gonna run any 20" rims on my Duster, if I can't find a classic looking 17" or smaller rim, then that's gonna be a big deal. (If anyone know a manufacturer making rims like this let me know.)
I'm committed to maintaining a '70s feel on the car in a lot of the details. It'll have an old interior, and a lot of the little things that give a car its feel will be original. Things like door handles, gauge cluster, etc, make a big difference in the feel of a car.
Dream-spec has its costs and if this project takes 5 years, that's okay. It needs to be done perfectly and I'm not in a hurry. Second, I have some solid fab skills and that whole engineering degree can come in useful here. This project will have some headaches but it's within my skillset.
More updates to come! This thread may get pretty long so I thought I'd get it up now, maybe updating it periodically will keep me making progress on the car.
Hello all,
This first post is going to be text heavy but the story of this car is pretty relevant. Feel free to skim it and check the pictures.
I come from a line of car guys. My grandfather started importing Bugattis into the US in the '50s and my father has been a wrencher and tinkerer forever. Both of them had a thing for Mopars: my dad ran Valiants and Darts for years and my grandfather is starting a resto on my grandmother's 1955 Plymouth wagon! So it was natural that I was going to be a car guy and start with a Mopar.
Back when I was 12 or 13 the deal was simple: pick a car on the property, get it running, and there ya go you have your first car. Helping my dad move cars around one day I spotted a beat up blue Duster sitting under a tree. It looked a LOT cooler than the rest of the cars on the property and I was all about it. As luck would have it, he bought it for the engine 10 years ago and just parked it.
It was in pretty good shape. I spent a few summers spending every spare minute and cent on the car. Here's me at 14 or 15.
A $150 slant six from upstate NY got the thing on the road. I drove down to get it 2 weeks after I got my license (there was a stop in Boston on the way down to visit a girl I knew =P~). The guy was bringing an NHRA spec Duster back to factory spec and this was out of his parts car. He was amazed it was going in that little Subaru Loyale.
My mechanic's skills were non-existant at that point but I learned. By the time I got my license the car looked like this. It had a 225 slant six with 140 psi compression across the board, a single barrel carb, and a 3 on the tree. Not exactly a barnburner but it got me around and I thought it was cool as hell.
By my first year of college I was out of time and money to work on it. It got parked at my parent's house for years. In the meantime, cars became even more central to my life. I got my engineering degree, spending every free moment building Formula SAE racecars and running a research project on diesel engines and fuels.
Fast forward to the present: I moved out to Detroit over the summer to start a job, test engineer on experimental diesel engines (and I work every day at a GM engine development shop). And it's time to get back to the project!
It got shipped out from Vermont about a month ago, I was ecstatic to see it (and another project of mine, the 1983 Alfa Romeo GTV6) come off the truck.
It went straight in the garage, where it'll stay for a good long while.
The venerable slant six will probably get pulled, rebuilt, and go in a 4 speed overdrive van that my dad's looking at.
There's some work to do... a low speed accident crumpled the inner fender well.
A pillar rust... cause if it was easy everyone would do it!
Trunk rust, also in the tail lights :/
And as it sits now... almost entirely stripped save for the drivetrain, suspension, and dash. But those are the fun parts.
So what are the plans? First, this is a wildly sentimental project. Those of you who have done one of those are shaking their heads because that's always trouble. Anything I find in there is getting fixed and getting fixed right. 14 year old Xander owns this car more than 23 year old Xander does. So whatever 14 year old Xander wants, he gets.
The new Challenger came out while I was wrenching on this car and I thought that was real cool. I loved the idea of modernizing old muscle so of course this will get a new Hemi and TR6060. But I'm not done yet... I also want it to handle well and 14 year old Xander wanted to embarrass some sports cars with this thing. 23 year old Xander is getting some input here though, I want this to be reliable, serviceable, and ready for a long road trip. The engineer and racecar builder in me is also calling some shots here.
My current yet very tentative plan is to do the suspension from a new Challenger as well. Provided that the track width lines up, the rear subframe is easy. It's a Mercedes unit, out of a W211, and looks something like this:
Mounts on essentially 4 points plus beefed up shock towers. Not that tricky. I would love to utilize the entire front cradle and front suspension from the Challenger as well. Rebuilding the entire car from the firewall forward isn't that big a deal but again, geometry of the Dodge/Mercedes unit pending. Also I'm not gonna run any 20" rims on my Duster, if I can't find a classic looking 17" or smaller rim, then that's gonna be a big deal. (If anyone know a manufacturer making rims like this let me know.)
I'm committed to maintaining a '70s feel on the car in a lot of the details. It'll have an old interior, and a lot of the little things that give a car its feel will be original. Things like door handles, gauge cluster, etc, make a big difference in the feel of a car.
Dream-spec has its costs and if this project takes 5 years, that's okay. It needs to be done perfectly and I'm not in a hurry. Second, I have some solid fab skills and that whole engineering degree can come in useful here. This project will have some headaches but it's within my skillset.
More updates to come! This thread may get pretty long so I thought I'd get it up now, maybe updating it periodically will keep me making progress on the car.