73 VS 74 Duster Front Bumper Differences.
A '74 with a shock bumper in the front?
Never even heard of one. Every '74 Ive seen has had the standard front bumper and a shock mounted rear bumper. Not saying it didn't happen, I haven't seen them all and Ma Mopar did some weird stuff, but...
Are you sure it's factory? One thing I have noticed about all the '74's I've seen is that they had the captured mounts for both the standard brackets and shock mount brackets. Meaning, a shock mount bumper could be installed with no changes to the car other than the bumper and plastic filler piece, the frame is set up for either type.
It's got a hole in the frame for the bracket mount, but no captured nut. If it did, I would have swapped it years ago, but I hate to think of the work it would take to open the frame so I could add the nut and then fix it.
Pretty sure it's factory, been that way since I drug it out of the junkyard way back in the early 90's. Pretty sure it had been drag raced at some point in time (had to fill holes in the cowl from hood pins), so I doubt it was replaced to make it faster. And based on the lack of a captured nut, can't see it being something that was just swapped.
I can say I am pretty sure the car was hit hard at one time, so anything is possible, but it didn't look like they replaced a frame rail or anything.
Pretty sure the Car Craft article about the '74 Duster 360 shows the filler between the bumper and body and vertical holes for the bumper mounts on the end. Almost certain it had the shocks, but it also seemed like a pre-production model since it had one sport mirror and one regular one.
Maybe the very early '74 Dusters got shock mounts and they ran into problems so the later cars don't have them the rest of the year?
I asked Daniel about his Duster 360 in my 4 speed thread and we talked about this some, there, too. I don't think the plant it was built in matter either, based on what was said there.
I can get pictures of the frame rails on my car this weekend, if you want.