Rapom's Rocket - just another Duster build thread
The last bit of progress catch up is fitting the 70-72 rear bumper. Years ago, during our Spokane junking frenzy, I picked up a rally dash frame with harness, the orange trunk lid that's on the car now and a rear bumper and brackets off a junker 70ish Duster. My 74 came with shock absorber rear and bracket mounted front bumpers. Kind of an odd combination and I've detailed how I pulled them in about 1.5" on both ends starting at post #107 on page 5.. Not much can be done with the width of the bumper up front but installing a narrower 70-72 rear is a well known mod to most late Duster owners. To mount the earlier brackets on the rear you have to drill the outer mount holes thru the sheetmetal but luckily they used the same inner structure as older models and that hole is still present. You will have to come up with inner mounts yourself and I showed my solution in the posts previously mentioned. Although the sheetmetal looks similar something was changed and the older brackets left a large gap between the bumper and the bumper cutout in the rear quarters. That wasn't going to fly so after long consideration on how to fill the gap I decided to chop 5/8" out of the bracket arms and save myself a whole bunch of bodywork. This was accomplished with the brackets bolted to the bumper so the bracket ears would stayin place while I refit the bumper to the car. I hung the bumper in position with tie downs, cardboard spacers and lots of tape then tacked the brackets back together. The outer sides were grooved out and welded together while on the bumper to help keep them from moving. Then they were taken off and the insides were welded, ground with a flap wheel and repainted black. Pretty happy with the way it turned out. It isn't perfect but these bodies were pretty sloppily constructed and are far from symetrical.
The last bit of progress catch up is fitting the 70-72 rear bumper. Years ago, during our Spokane junking frenzy, I picked up a rally dash frame with harness, the orange trunk lid that's on the car now and a rear bumper and brackets off a junker 70ish Duster. My 74 came with shock absorber rear and bracket mounted front bumpers. Kind of an odd combination and I've detailed how I pulled them in about 1.5" on both ends starting at post #107 on page 5.. Not much can be done with the width of the bumper up front but installing a narrower 70-72 rear is a well known mod to most late Duster owners. To mount the earlier brackets on the rear you have to drill the outer mount holes thru the sheetmetal but luckily they used the same inner structure as older models and that hole is still present. You will have to come up with inner mounts yourself and I showed my solution in the posts previously mentioned. Although the sheetmetal looks similar something was changed and the older brackets left a large gap between the bumper and the bumper cutout in the rear quarters. That wasn't going to fly so after long consideration on how to fill the gap I decided to chop 5/8" out of the bracket arms and save myself a whole bunch of bodywork. This was accomplished with the brackets bolted to the bumper so the bracket ears would stayin place while I refit the bumper to the car. I hung the bumper in position with tie downs, cardboard spacers and lots of tape then tacked the brackets back together. The outer sides were grooved out and welded together while on the bumper to help keep them from moving. Then they were taken off and the insides were welded, ground with a flap wheel and repainted black. Pretty happy with the way it turned out. It isn't perfect but these bodies were pretty sloppily constructed and are far from symetrical.
