73 Duster project progress

[theothergarth]

I have been on this site for about a month now and have gotten so much help from the members! :cheers:

I thought some of you might want to see what I have been doing with your help.

The back story: We bought a blue 74 Duster for my wife to use as a daily driver back around the 1998 time frame when we lived in CO. Fast forward to 2011, the AF had moved me to FL in 2004 and the car has been sitting unused in the back yard for at least 6 years. The rats had moved in and so had the rust. We now have a 16 year old boy that has a license and needs a car to drive. Time to restore. Because of the rust on the car, we decided to find a solid body and do a swap. In comes a solid body, yellow 73 Duster /6 car from NM, and the project begins. All the running gear/interior/engine bay are getting fixed/upgraded and getting swapped from the 74 to the 73.

We hope to have it done before Xmas this year!
Attached Images

 

[theothergarth]

The beginnings of my new dash. Hopefully I will have it done in the next week or so. Once it's done I can put the interior back together and start in on the motor

 

[theothergarth]

$20 worth of wire and about an hour after work vs $200+ to buy a harness for the new instrument cluster. Now I just have to get the new dash finished so I can mount the gauges and wire em up!

 

[Abodybomber]

Looks good.Like your duster.

 

[Old Tired Rebel]

Y'all are making some fast progress.

 

[theothergarth]

My son and I are only working on it for a few hours on weekend mornings before it gets to hot. We hope to finish up the interior in the next few weeks. When the interior is all done we start tearing down the engine!

 

[theothergarth]

Well, the original plan was to have the car back on the road by the beginning of the school year (early Aug here in FL). Now we are shooting for beginning of the year. Things really dropped off on the build through the hot months, but hopefully we will start making progress again now that it's cool off a bit. We got the interior panels cleaned and refurbished and started putting the interior together last weekend and hope to finish it this weekend. I got the new heater box installed in the car this morning and the engine was stripped down to the bare block and sent off to the machine shop the beginning of the week.

BTW....the purple is much subtler than it looks in the pic

 

[theothergarth]

I am working on the cars in my friends garage I helped him build this summer. He has not had the time or money to put in electricity or any kind of work benches yet. For juice we are using an extension cord run from the house. I decided to build him a work bench, and then promptly filled it up with all my stuff. While I was at it, I built my wife a potting bench.

 

[theothergarth]

It was almost like Christmas morning yesterday afternoon when the UPS guy showed up. Got all the goodies I ordered from Summit. New intake, cam (w/ lifters, springs, timing chain), water pump, pistons w/rings, and intake valves(The exhaust valves are on back order). As soon as the machine shop gets the block bored, pistons mounted to the rods and valve job done we can start putting it back together! Is that a light at the end of the tunnel I see?

 

[Old Tired Rebel]

I am working on the cars in my friends garage I helped him build this summer. He has not had the time or money to put in electricity or any kind of work benches yet. For juice we are using an extension cord run from the house. I decided to build him a work bench, and then promptly filled it up with all my stuff. While I was at it, I built my wife a potting bench.

Tables look great.

 

[Abodybomber]

Love the hood scoop buck! Also, what intake is that,just curious.

 

[theothergarth]

hood scoop? The intake is a Weiand Stealth. It will be up for sale when we get the Duster on the road and start gathering all the leftover project parts.

 

[Abodybomber]

Thanks, on the intake info,healthy runners.Sorry on the hood scoop buck.The pix of two benches.The one on the left reminded me of a z28 scoop,sorry.

 

[theothergarth]

Heard back from my machine shop Friday, the short block is done and I will be picking it up Monday or Tuesday. .40 over, new KB pistons and 9.5:1 compression without getting the block or heads milled. FREAKIN AWESOME! I am going to have to control myself now and take it slow so I don't miss anything when putting it back in the car. Can I start getting excited yet?

 

[theothergarth]

I am waaaaaaaay over due for posting updated pictures here. We have been very busy with my sons FIRST Robotics club these last few months as it is competition season. We have been to two regional events and won them both, and go to the national championship in St Louis next week. We have still managed to make some progress on the car as well. The engine is in the car and broken in finally.:cheers: We had an old set of manifolds on it for break in, then put the new TTIs on. The stereo has been installed with the exception of the head unit being mounted, but it's all wired up. The new Vintage Air system:glasses7: went in last weekend. Getting real close to :burnout:

 

[theothergarth]

I guess "real close to :burnout:" is a relative measurement of time. Here it is 5 months later and we still are not on the road. It has been a busy 5 months though. I retired from the USAF in June, after 22 years, and then got a gov contractor job working in the same bldg I retired out of.
In the 2 months I was not working I volunteered to take our Robotics "drive team" up to an off season competition in Indianapolis and ended up hauling tools and robots for 2 other teams besides ours up there. We had a great time and performed well.

As for the car, there have been a few smaller things accomplished. We welded up some pipe to connect the new headers to the existing exhaust and, actually drove the car from my friends garage, where we had done most of the work, to our house (about 2 miles). The car was not registered yet, there was no instruments/dash, and we had no shift cable at the time. I had my son start it up in neutral, then I crawled under the car and shifted it to drive on the tranny before it got to hot, then followed him home in my other car.

Since we got it home we have been mostly puttering. I have managed to build my center console and get it ready for upholstery, and my custom dash is ready to be sent off for powder coating. The center console will hold my audio head unit, gas and voltage gauge, the shifter, two cup holders, and have a flip top on the arm rest to the storage area inside.

 

[CudaChick1968]

Just curious, but why did you eliminate the glove box on your custom dash insert? Lots of empty space over there ...

 

[unknownsnake]

im sure that jumbo ac box took up some room :/

 

[theothergarth]

couple of reasons....partially what snake said, the new box insert that came with the new A/C is pretty small. I didn't really use the glove box much except to keep the insurance and registration info in and I built ample storage for my purposes into the center console arm rest.

Also, I wanted to use the space where the glove box was for one of the new vents, and I'm thinking I might have a friend of mine that does art work paint a Ed Roth style mural or maybe just the little duster dude on the open part where the glove box would have been

 

[Divenut]

Looking real fine man. Can't wait to hear about that 1st cruise!

Pat

 

[74DartSwinger360]

Any updates on progress?

 

[theothergarth]

very little progress.....life has a way of....getting in the way I guess. I did manage to get out to the garage to tinker with the dash and gauges a couple of weeks ago...got the gauges hooked up and mounted, and the dash installed, but didn't have time to see if any of it worked

 

[Thunder]

Car is coming along nicely. Somebody is going to yell at you for painting the engine bay black though. Other than that she's looking good.:coffee2:

 

[Dartnut]

I like this build, awesome looking work done here.
What happened to the blue Duster?
It didn't look that rusty to me on the outside at least.
Keep up the good work!

 

[theothergarth]

Yeah, I know most don't like the black engine bay, but to me it looks good, not to mention, any grime in the engine bay shows very easily on yellow.

I still have the blue Duster, but will be looking to sell it when I finally get around to it. The interior is in pieces, but mostly complete and in good shape with newly reupholstered seats. The drivers side front floor is rusted through and has been patched. The trunk floor is pretty rusted and the metal behind all 4 tires is all but gone in the usual places.

The new (yellow) Duster has been on hold for the last 10 months or so until time and money become available again. I continually hope I will be able to start back up again soon, but other than puttering here and there, not much new has been done in the last year other than starting it up and letting it run in the driveway for 10 minutes once a month or so.