1970 Duster AlterKtion, 4 Link, LS/T56/Turbo and Minitub

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Welp, shes back together mostly and runs!! I need to pull the intake back off and fool with it. When I charge it with my tester I made I can hear an air leak. Also have to put the shifter back on.

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Yeah shes running! I have an intake leak I'm fixing tonight. I started playing with tuning myself last night. I found a tune in the sloppy wiki tune cabinet that is actually really close to my setup, so I started with that.
 
Got it out of the garage for a few minutes this weekend! Needs a bath BAD. I'm heading back to Vermont for 10 days Wednesday so I won't get much of the tuning done yet. But heres a nice daylight video!

 
More adventures! Seems I cant catch a break with pressurized crank case stuff. I went home to Vermont for the week of the fourth and trailered the Buggy up for some wheeling while I was home. When I tried to come up the truck started to feel underpowered and when I looked in the mirror the whole highway was smoke. SO I pulled over and the truck had a wicked skip and my PCV was blowing crazy amounts of smoke. GREAT. I was only 20 minutes from home so my mom and dad came and got the truck and trailer with my dads truck and service truck. Monday morning we started pulling the truck apart and found an injector had malfunctioned blowing a hole in piston 5. Luckily my buddy Wyatt had a spare used 6.0 piston on the shelf so we slapped it in and had the truck running again by Tuesday and midnight. Was back on the road to NC Wednesday morning. Nothing like a cross country test ride pulling 10,000 pounds lol.

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Dont mind the valve marks on the pistons. Thats another issue I found. Seems the cam I put in the truck is a bit too aggressive at higher revs, because it doesnt hit or make noises turning it over by hand or at idle.

Had some good wheeling though! Finally made it up an obstacle I've been trying to make for 8 years. (Videos dont do justice. The half pipe is GNARLY!)
NOT making:

Making it!!:


ANYWAYS back to the duster. Yesterday she finally got her FIRST bath in over a year from being under the knife!!
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Also she made her first maiden voyage to the grocery store as a success! No blowing up the motor this time! Also started to get some good data logs as well!
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Getting the car aligned next Monday, so hopefully I can really start to make some tuning adjustments and data logs after that!
 
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racerjoe said:
Curious how your power brakes work when you get into boost.
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I actually mounted a vacuum canister in case I need to use it, but everyone I've talked to on sloppy mechanics and LS Swapped Mopars that are running a turbo ls have no issues since you're usually off the gas when you're back on the brakes and building vacuum again. But I have something else wonky going on with my brakes right now anyways because they arent working for ****. I'm going to mess with that this weekend and bypass the factory proportioning valve and the line locks to start with a clean slate. I'll keep you posted though!
 
No idea how I missed your build all this time but keep it up man. Glad to see someone we this route as well after i started mine back in 2016. Rant the srock gen iv 4.8 on mine, twin 61s and th400. Now I'm onto the built gen iii/iv hybrid 370, built th400 and twin 6973s. You aren't too far from me either. I should be down to Rockingham with minenduring the dig or die event August 21-22. If you're come on out. Would love to see the car.

Keep pushing, you'll get it worked out
 
I'll have to look that up! I'm also gonna try to get to the street car take over in Charlotte in September. But we shall see! Have you had it on the dyno yet?
 
70DusterDev said:
I'll have to look that up! I'm also gonna try to get to the street car take over in Charlotte in September. But we shall see! Have you had it on the dyno yet?
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Heading there August 12th since this is a new setup. If it all goes well ill be down at the rock the 21st-22nd. Look a couple threads away from yours and you can see my build on here.

Also if you use Facebook, lookup ls swapped mopars.
 
Sigh, so there is still an issue. I'm not sure if this one has been since start up or happened after. I didnt do a compression test before startup because I was excited. Never again. The car pulls pretty good now but there is still some blow by. Finally got around to a compression test and cylinder 7 and 5 are 80psi >.< the rest are 180. Machine shop had put the bottom end together again. And the shop is very reputable and have built motors for me before that get their *** whooped with no issues, so its not something they're doing.

This time I had a tune in the car from the sloppy tune cabinet and timing was way conservative at like 12 degrees. BUT a friend from sloppy did notice something. I'm running the round 585 coils and apparently their dwell time is supposed to be 4.2ms max. And holley defaults to 4.5ms. That can cause all sorts of hell with advancing the timing a ton on its own. Idk if that has been my issue all along but we changed that last night. Hopefully gonna have the motor back apart this weekend and see what happened.



On the bright side, I did get it aligned. And the engine bay looks pretty awesome lol.
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Welp, got the motor apart this weekend and found the 2 broken pistons. Did a leakdown test first and 7 and 5 both had about 60% leak down, so I figured it was going to be the same thing as before and it was.

Cylinder 7
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Cylinder 5
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Disassembly
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Aaaanndd the wall trophies
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New pistons should be here this week. Hopefully this time around with the new tune changing the dwell I wont have this issue anymore. Went back and checked the data log and never built more than like 12psi of boost. So I can't imagine it was boost that hurt the pistons.
 
So! Updates! Got the 2 new pistons in and got the car running! The new dwell times seemed to have fixed the issue of popping pistons! This time I just pulled the pan in the car and slid the 2 pistons up out and swapped the 2 new ones in. The first time I broke the 4 pistons it also KO'd my main bearings. This time I didn't check them since I didnt pull the motor and was being HOPEFUL that being it only broke 2 pistons I was okay.

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Wellll I got to drive the car a handful of times now! And man she goes good! And I'm ironing out some other bugs. Like the exhaust was SO drony in the car. So I added a muffler right after the downpipe. 4" doesnt belong under a car either. What a pain lol.

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Anyways as I drove the car that handful of times I watched my oil pressure get worse and worse each time >.< and now its at 10psi and 0 when under throttle or hot basically. Soooo back off the oil pan comes and this is what greeted me .... sigh... lol so it seems that the detonation killed the bearings this time around too. I ordered new bearings and hopefully and just slide them in with the motor in the car still. Hoping the crank isnt damaged or anything. I have that 6.1 I'm building for this still its just much more money, so this just needs to last this season haha.

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On goes the battle. Also need to order an aluminum radiator. My factory one does okay if I stay cruising. But if I'm really beating on the car in stop and go traffic it gets up to around 230-240 degrees.
 
Welp, found the issue. It seems my thoughts were correct, the rod bearings were fine but the main bearings were wrecked. Luckily I caught it before it spun a bearing or really hurt the crank. New bearings will be here today and should have it running by the end of the week again hopefully!

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70DusterDev said:
Welp, found the issue. It seems my thoughts were correct, the rod bearings were fine but the main bearings were wrecked. Luckily I caught it before it spun a bearing or really hurt the crank. New bearings will be here today and should have it running by the end of the week again hopefully!

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that looks like fun.... not
 
That is really odd that the mains took such a beating. Usually detonation hammers out the rod bearings. Did you find a bunch of trash in the pan or oil pump pick up? This has me puzzled.
 
Yeah the oil pickup screen from the post above that one had a bunch of the bearing material in it. The rod bearings looked fine though!
 
Well the crank is trashed where the rod bearings ride. Junkyard 5.3 is going in it with my heads and cam while I finish the 6.1 I'm building. This motor was just supposed to be temporary but its been a nightmare while I worked out bugs lol. Hopefully I'll have the motor out of my donor rig soon.
 
See... car telling you that chebbie motors don’t belong in mopars :poke::poke::rofl:
 
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