12:05 Garage- ’70 Duster build

racerjoe said
Good question. The sooner the better, but I think we all know the real world gets in the way of progress on hobbies. My ultimate goal would be for it to be done with all the bugs worked out by Moparty 2023. I think the longest wait time will be for the camshaft and lifters, everything else seems to be in stock or have a relatively short lead time. The plan would be to have the hemi on the K-member ready to go, drop out the 408, bolt trans to hemi and put it in the same day/weekend. I'll work on a new tune for the megasquirt offline so it basically becomes a plug and play conversion.

My G3 swap timeline has always been winter of 2023/24. That was more because I have to do the T56/TR6060 swap at the same time and I didn't expect to buy the trans until next summer.

But all along the way I have been buying up the parts I needed just so I didn't get to the point of being ready and either they are unavailable or on back order. Took 3 months to get my headers, and if I hadn't been told there were pans on eBay I would still be waiting on that. I still need a car front cover and things like gaskets and such. Best I know, the only part I am nervous about is the lifters, but I have my 6.4 cam and upgraded valve springs already. And I even pulled the trigger on a "Black Friday" deal for a T56 and am just waiting on that to arrive.

In theory, I could actually start in January. But the reality is that there are probably things I am missing and a fair amount of money left to spend and if I did jump into it this winter it could end up keeping the car off the road this summer. And I want to avoid that at all cost. Never know, but I expect I will just keep buying parts, put my core 5.7 together and wait until the winter of 2023 to start the swap.