72 duster resto

junkyardhero said

the motor is far enough along and a question mark, i'd go ahead and do the ol' rattle bomb rebuild (gaskets/seals, chain, oil pump, freeze plugs) and you'll be able to inspect the bores, confirm the pistons, figure out what cam you've got and degree it.

the k is purely a judgement call. obviously it's much easier to do now rather than later but the question that you'd have to ask yourself is: will i get to it later?

personally, i much prefer the spool mounts. i'd do the t-bars regardless, the motor's out of it so it's a quick and easy one to knock out.

i guess it really comes down to budget and what is a priority.

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I've not done an engine rebuild before so no tooling or resources for that outside of this site. I have wanted to do it though just to conquer the fear of messing something up, you know... just taking my time to do it right. But I am a little worried about overspending based on what I might find. Might be the ostrich move to just slap things together and hope it runs which could bite me in the end if the engine has problems.

Agree that the spool mounts are superior - definitely have time on the schumacher return policy to make the call and spend that cash elsewhere..

The steering box is another question because I have the opportunity to swap in power steering but I haven't really had a problem with the manual steering. I know if I end up selling it to someone who hates manual steering one day that's their problem... but they'd probably hate the manual brakes it has too.

Overall:
Budget > Prioritized Job List > Personal Ideals
That's my decision tree.