71 duster resto'mod "driver" project...

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squeek360

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Hey there members,

New'ish here, and I dont' think I've even posted anything yet; however, I wanted to share my project, so I figured I'd better get to this posting part lol

Any way, she's a 71 duster, and started life as a plumb crazy( or "in violet" if you prefer lol), white stripes and interior, buckets, console, rallye dash, 340 automatic(727) car. She was also sporting state of the art power 4 wheel drum brakes lol, a 3.23 8 3/4 non sure grip rear. However, by the time she found me, the original 340 was gone(a 77 318 in it's place), along with the sharks tooth grille..... As well, she was sporting a late 70's/early 80's "disco" body kit treatment complete with fender flares adjoined by rocker flares along the entire length of the car lol. This was due to an accident in her youth that claimed the lives of the original engine and grille.... and, er, ugh... she also had pink "heart beat" strobe stripes adorning her sides and bum, yikes! lol. Either way, when she found me, and what with being all decked out in her disco dancing dress as she was.... I just couldn't refuse her, and brought her home to meet the children lol... I'm a single father of 3 boys, or was I suppose since my youngest is 18 now, and when they didn't have a mother...atleast they had a mom'par lol...... We've had the car for about 10 years now, and shared many memories with her in her disco'd out state of mind, and are currently in the process of giving her a much overdue face lift.

I figured instead of linking a thousand pictures, I'd post up a few videos I made...

the first one goes right back to the begining when we first got her, the second takes us to the current......... great forum, I hope you enjoy the vids

p.s. in the near future, I'll post up some pictures taken of the progress that's happened since I made the vids, and the current state of things :)

[ame="http://youtu.be/djVkDMLMasg"]302 Found[/ame]

[ame="http://youtu.be/sDZmnsZWxTk"]302 Found[/ame]
 
Nice transformation! Love that color. I dig the high dollar catch can:glasses7: Did you get that tranny leak solved?
 
Not bad....looks much better and sounds Healthy...to say the least.
 
Looks like you and the Boys have gone Plum Crazy ,looks and sounds awesome can't wait to see the video of her out on the road barking gears and spinning tires. Good luck with the completion of your car.
 
thanx for the comments every one :glasses7:

.....and now that the snow is here Rodzilla, aaaggghhhh!! lol.... I finally have some time to update the thread.

I did get that trans leak sorted out 4spdcuda'... turns out I just had one of the lines snugged up rather than actually final tightened, think'n I was a bit too deep in the beer that night, it seems that sometimes during specific tasks throughout ones project, coffee should rather be the drug of choice lol...

Well, as the story goes, 3yrs ago, I sent the duster off for what was suppose to be a quick splash and dash paint job with the intent of just keeping her from rotting away completely until life provided the time and budget required to really dig into the project fully.... So basically, she was suppose to go away for the winter and arrive back in the spring...still sporting the "disco" body kit and all........Thus, we pulled the engine and trans so the underhood area could be painted, and sent her away to spend some time with a good friend of mines brother in law to paint the car. A few weeks later, I saw her in the half sanded state below, and figured everything was going according to plan..... this takes us to basically where things were at the completion of the first video



Well, delay after delay happened and she got dragged from place to place for a few years due to things going on in buddy's life that prevented him from attacking the project....at the time, things in my life were quite hectic, so I didn't really mind the delay.........

Fast forward to late summer of 2010... I received a phone call from the painter guy that he'd finally started digging into the project in a serious fashion, and the further he went, the worse things were looking......turns out the disco body kit, though completely made of metal, was also containing about 200 lbs of bondo....and beyond that, the entire metal structure was completely rusted out......

The good news; however, was that given he took so long to actually delve into things, he couldn't justify charging me any more money beyond the cost of materials........:blob:

a few weeks later, I saw the car like this.....




Just prior to the snow falling, I got the call that he'd finished painting the car and needed some help hanging the doors etc., so I headed down to his work to help him with this process... Once I arrived, we got started putting on the trunk and during this, he told me how he'd gotten an old guy whom he works with to help him throughout the body work phase.... He, himself is actually quite young and is use to dealing with modern cars..... any way, as a reward for this help, the old guy wanted to paint something, so my painter guy let him paint the hood, doors, and trunk a day prior to him painting the shell of the car.....

As a result, the car wound up with some tiger striping on the trunk and doors. As well, we used some different doors I had laying around, than were originally on the car, and they didn't test fit the doors prior to painting... Thus, we found that one of the doors was bowed out at the front bottom corner by about a half to 3/4 inch...

At this point, buddy said, lets just leave things rough hung for now cause I'm being pressured by the boss to get the car out of here...then I'll fix these things and paint it again next year no charge, cause I'm just not happy with this and my reputation is on the line.....he then said, but before I paint it again, I want an engine in there so I can drive it in and out of the shop without having to push it all over the place....

So, the car got towed home and stuffed into my little non heated garage and sat out there in the cold Canadian winter just teasing me.... This of course, opened up a whole new can of worms for me as I'd had no idea what I was going to use for an engine in order to pull off this feat, I figured I'd get the car back and leasurely put it back together without all these pressures....But, it was what it was, and the one thing I could do, was compile a winter projects list and get to work.......

I'll start with the dash overhaul.....






























..........and there you have it, the dash as it finally went in the car :-D
 
....though not a winter project, I suppose it makes sense to show the console next since it's theme ties in with the dash...



















finished console as it went in.... I used led's in all the gauges, as well as in the console.... used an srt4 boost gauge light harness with a 194 style bulb
 
.....the grille and tail lights were quite weathered, so I added them to the winter projects list...

the grille was cracked in quite a few places, so I got a plastic weld kit and went to town, finished it off with a coat of black paint

the tail lights were scuffed and faded, so I got a plastic lens refurbish kit and went to town, then finished them off with the same paint I used on the grille



















 
to solve the "before I repaint the car, you must put an engine in it" dilemma I was given, like a true Canadian, I found the solution buried beneath the snow lol..........

I'd pretty much finished all the winter projects I could do and had to hold out for spring... and finally, spring started to rear it's head. I was really hoping to find a buildable 340 to place between the fenders once again; however, time and budget didn't allow for this at the time, so my next best solution was to use the engine out of a 74 e58 360 challenger that was once slated to become my midlife crisis car....

...long story short, I wound up living out my midlife crisis in a big turbo Srt-4, and at one point during my midlife crisis journey, I gifted the challenger to my oldest son as a graduation present.... but on with the current part of the story....

The snow began to melt....





and finally spring was in full bloom....(though I believe this next picture was actually taken prior to the snow falling lol)



at this point, and now early spring of 2011.... I got working on getting the car ready to head back to the painter and the spring projects began.....

pulled the engine from the chally....









and the tear down began
































 
was that the original engine to the Chally? Its a pretty sweet challenger, but your car is gonna be a hell of a lot quicker
 
thanx rgr', and hey DarTT.... yes it is the Chally's original engine...she's apparently a pretty rare bird too as I believe something in the neighborhood of 1140 360 challengers were produced, and of those, I'd imagine most would have been near full optioned rallye package cars and this ones a weirdly optioned base model car.... course in the e body world, most will snub their nose at anything but a 70 71 big block car, so it likely wouldn't be a huge dollar car regardless of being numbers matching and quite rare... My son plans on doing a full out retro modern g machine set up with a supercharged 6.1 and a modern 5 or 6 speed setup, so I'm thinking he just might kick my butt in the end lol...

but yes, since we're on the topic'ish... the 360 feels really crisp thus far and seems to just love the revs... not exactly sure how much power she'll put down, but I'm thinking/hoping it'll wind up somewhere in the 320-350 rwhp range... it's a pretty simple setup... stock bottom end, magnum head conversion with mild porting, mopar purple shaft with .450/.455 lift which specs out in the .480's when the 1.6 rockers are factored in, M1 intake with a 730 cfm street avenger carb breathing through some dougs 1 5/8" headers, 2 1/2" exhaust with H pipe and some dynomax super turbo mufflers... currently running a 904 trans with a 175k mopar converter vs the original 727, and 3.55 sure grip 8 1/4 vs the original 8 3/4 rear (it was a non sure grip 3.23 rear).... hoping to hit a high 12 or a low 13 with it but we'll have to see what happens....
 
I was just curious about that. I dont care much about numbers matching. If your building a badass car like that, then who cares? its your car and you do what makes you happy. I think what you are doing to your car is pretty badass
 
scueek, where did you get the pieces of carbon fiber that fit into the bottom of the dash face, and goes all the way over to the glove box door?
 
340plot said:
scueek, where did you get the pieces of carbon fiber that fit into the bottom of the dash face, and goes all the way over to the glove box door?
Click to expand...

I found some carbon fibre look vinyl tape locally and made some templates for the pattern required to fill the space.... I was in a hurry, so I took the easiest/cheapest route I could find at the time, at the time....

the stuff I used was actually designed for external body graphics and wound up being extremely thin and difficult to work with, I plan on redoing it in a year or so with this 3M stuff, here's a link to a video some company made about the 3M product... definitely better stuff than what I used........ P.S. I was peeking about on your thread earlier, very sweet project you have

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0-KkEW8hT4"]3M Carbon Fibre Wrap - YouTube[/ame]
 
That was a couple of cool videos. Looks like the boys had a great time on this with dad, and that alone makes this so cool.

Grant
 
Damn squeek...awesome update. Things are really coming together =D>. Where did you pick up those seat covers? Looks like they fit very nicely.

On a different note, I spied a cool axe in one of the pictures. Nice to see another guitar slinger in our midst!

Pat
 
thanx V'Rebel, and Oneof' it's definitely been a great bonding experience for us all over the years...

I hear that DarTT, and thanx! Interestingly... a day after I made that post, the challenger changed hands once again within the family as my oldest son just out of the blue gifted it to his youngest brother, so it seems it's destiny will eventually be it's original engine after all.... but likely in the form of a fuel injected 408 stroker, woot!!

Hey Divenut, thanx.... but, I can't truely lay claim to tha axe... that belongs to my middle son (and he interjects that it's a 3/4 scale something or other lol)...he's got a few different axes kick'n around, and sometimes he'll even randomly saranade me and random dates with a heavy metal ensamble, so I definitely reap the rock star perks ha ha!!....ooops, almost forgot to add that I got the seat covers from year one when they had a 30% discount going... they did fit quite well, definitely happy with how they turned out

thanx 340_dart', the good thing was..... in the end, I beat this years snow fall, and actually wound up getting a few good weeks on the road this year :D

a side note for tangent sake... my middle son has a 70 340 4spd duster project car that came with it's original 340 block, so I traded him a set of 340 six pack heads I aquired for his 340 block..... so ultimately I'm thinking I'm gonna build some kinda 340 stroker out of it so I can give my youngest back his engine when his project is ready for it

any way, enough of my babbling and onto some more pics


...at the same time I was frantically building the engine...pulled out the k frame etc. and went to work on all of it














started working on cleaning up the wheel wells and entire underneath of the car floor pans etc...didn't get too many pics of that stuff, but heres what I have

















she cut me.....




......so I cut her back lol





...actually, when I took out the window as I figured I'd remove it before it went back in for the final paint job, and replace it with a new one once it was back.... I found that since they media blasted much of the car, the media penetrated deep between the window seal and the body, and the paint didn't penetrate as deep, so there was paint....then bare metal.... then some very minor rust spots coming from the trim screw sections... so had I not found this and simply sent the car back with the windows in... being caught in the rain once would have led to those ugly rust bubbles you often see bubbling out from underneath on an other wise mint looking car... so I cleaned all that up :D


during all this, I was also building the transmission at work on off hrs (lunch etc.), and it was finally ready to go





k frame and more etc. went in..



and we gave the engine a few more coats of paint



....if I recall correctly, time wise, this would likely have taken us to aproximately late may/early june of 2011 state of things
 
Great story so far,,,,looking forward to reading more. Nice work and glad to see your boys enjoy the car too! My 15 and soon to be 13 yr olds couldn't really care less about cars. Was a fight just to get the 15 yr old to start saving for a car since he just got his first job. Driving was such a big deal when we were kids, now its seems like most could care less, my other car buddies kids are similar. I was depressed that my 16th B-Day (1987) was on a Sunday and had to wait an extra day to get my ticket to freedom :)
 
Rodzilla said:
Great story so far,,,,looking forward to reading more. Nice work and glad to see your boys enjoy the car too! My 15 and soon to be 13 yr olds couldn't really care less about cars. Was a fight just to get the 15 yr old to start saving for a car since he just got his first job. Driving was such a big deal when we were kids, now its seems like most could care less, my other car buddies kids are similar. I was depressed that my 16th B-Day (1987) was on a Sunday and had to wait an extra day to get my ticket to freedom :)
Click to expand...

Thanx Rodzilla... I know exactly what you mean, as soon as I could say good bye to buses and bikes and roller skates, I had to have 4 wheels and didn't look back ha ha... you never know with them lil ones though, the one who just recieved the challenger in the story above.... Well, I didn't have the slightest clue that kid was into cars at all until years ago when I initially gave the challenger to his brother.... hardly knew the kid could even talk lol, and right outta the blue he just went off on me about how dare I give it to his brother instead of him, cause after all, alone he stood in the window and watched me drive up in it for the very first time ever! etc. etc. lol

yikes, I felt like a "bleeeep" that day lol... intesting how it's destiny wound up being him....

alright, back with the picture book story..... at one point in this project, my mission was to have the car down on 4 wheels and ready to head to the painter before the weed in the following picture managed to grow tall enough to touch the bottom of the car........... named this picture "duster in the weeds" lol.... yeah, some day I hope I grow up enough to get a real garage so jack and his beanstock can't just keep randomly sprouting up from what ever crack they feel like :wack: lol.....



We carried on with all the projects, and most of the pictures are self explainatory so I'll just let them do the talking....................

















































.........and at this point, wha la... the wheels hit the ground. In the end, we didn't quite beat the weed as it touched up about 2 days before the wheels touched down.........put the drivers seat from my son's 70 in for the trip.......





mocked up the gauges so we could moniter things for first fire up




Apparently, got drunk and figured I needed to tape up my steering wheel lol:blob:



Then, well........... the first delay happened. I was finally ready for the painter guy, but now he wasn't ready for me.....for this reason or that, things got delayed and delayed and delayed, until finally... we made plans to get the car in for the septemper long weekend........ Well, despite me taking 2 weeks hollidays begining that weekend in anticipation of the car heading off at the beginning of the weekend, and coming back on the following monday; thus, giving me 2 weeks to leasurely put things back together in holiday mode :D............

Yeah, that didn't happen and I felt like beating my own head with a hammer :violent1:......... but then, finally, I recieved definitive confirmation that just as my holidays were ending, he'd be ready to take the car... and low and behold, she hit the trailor once again... and though not as I'd planned it, this was a good day..........




To really make sure things would happen, my middle son and I volunteered to help sand down the car in preperation for the new paint job....









and this was how we left it that day for the painter to finish the final prep etc.



during that mid Sept weekend, I carried on with side projects such as the console exposed earlier, and painting the seat backs... etc. etc.




this takes things to the last week of Sept of this year........and finally, nearly 3 yrs and 1 month after she first left......... Violet returns in ready to actually be put back togher for real form and.... I had to poke myself with a stick I was so in shock :poke:



Stay "tuned" :happy1:
 
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