Steve's 70 Gen III Hemi Build

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SteveAle

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Location
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I would like to share my build with you all. I have been working on my car for 6 years and I will catch you all up when I can.

I have been reading alot of the restoration thread and have gotten inspired, excited and found all new ways of doing things. I only hope I can pay back the help with a thread of my build.

I have always liked mopars my dad had several growning up. The first one I could actually remember thou was his 340 Duster. I guess that burnt in a bit, cause now here I am building my own some years later. When I decided to buy the car and build it I wasnt worried about a numbers matching rare car I just wanted the car. I found this jewel in the back of someones building and after some discussion we loaded her up on the trailer.
 

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Once I got car back to shop I began the planning and inspection phase. I looked the car over in the sunlight to determine what I could see wrong with the body. There were several dents, dings some rust spots and the floor board would have to be fixed. Overall thou the car was in good condition in my opinion.

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1st thing I did was try to get the engine running just for the heck of it. It needed a starter so that didnt work out very good. So out with the motor and transmission then :)

After a good pressure washing. I took it home to my basement so I could piddle with it untill I had an actual gameplan..
 

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Once in my basement at home I didnt touch the car again till June of 2011. During the year of 2010 I toyed with what I was gonna do, saved money and bought some donor cars.

The plan that I had come up with was...

383 engine
727 transmission
8 3/4 rearend

I bought a 68 Plymouth Fury for a donor for the drivetrain, I was able to buy this at a good price since it needed a total overhaul and the guy wanted the car out of his yard :cheers: I bought a 74 Dart Sport for the front end, disc brakes and all the factory AC and Power steering goodies. So most of 2010 was spent tearing down donor cars and then selling off the rest.
 

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So now I have a bunch of parts laying around. Motor and Tranmission to build. Rearend to get narrowed. K member to brace and restore. Tons and Tons of stuff to keep me busy now. So I began the tear down.

I was gonna start getting the body work done. Floor pan repair was the first step. The passenger rear was gone, I knew this but once it was all stripped I decided to put a complete new floor pan in since it was soft all over and had rust holes everywhere. So I ordered a complete pan from AMD and sent the car to get blasted and pan installed.

This was in July 2011
 

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Once I got back from the blaster I found all kinds of little dents and dings and past repairs that I never saw before :pale: Ohh well thats the way it goes, but over all I am very excited and I love the new floor pan.

By this time we are now at the end of September 2011
 

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Since it was still bare metal and it needed something put on it and something done to it before going back in basement. I decided to take to body shop and start the repairs.

After a quick metal etch bath so we wouldnt have to deal with the bare metal issue.

They started repairs on the top and pillars first. Repaired the lead joints and fixed the seam. Once all the rust was dug out of the A pillar it was quite a mess, but it looks good now. We are only at the end of October 2011 by this point.
 

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Looks good so far Steve. :prayer: I'm building a 70 Duster with a 5.7 Hemi and a 545RFE 5 spd automatic. Sounds like you might be using the spool mount k frame from the parts car. If you dig waaaaaaay back thru the pages of this Gen III forum, you can see what I did to make my motor fit with the TTI headers and motor mounts. I reworked the drivers side mount, so the AC compressor would work in it's factory position. I'll enjoy reading about your build. I'm kinda stalled on mine right now. Bigger plans then wallet.....lol.
 
Quarters had to have both lower panels to repair and 1 inner panel on the passenger side. We welded up all the lower trim and wheel trim since I had no plans of reinstalling or hunting it all up.
 

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Looks good so far Steve. :prayer: I'm building a 70 Duster with a 5.7 Hemi and a 545RFE 5 spd automatic. Sounds like you might be using the spool mount k frame from the parts car. If you dig waaaaaaay back thru the pages of this Gen III forum, you can see what I did to make my motor fit with the TTI headers and motor mounts. I reworked the drivers side mount, so the AC compressor would work in it's factory position. I'll enjoy reading about your build. I'm kinda stalled on mine right now. Bigger plans then wallet.....lol.

I know all to good about the wallet issue haha. I work and save all year to buy parts so that I can spend about a month installing what I worked all year to get. Then I start all over again. haha
 
Its now winter of 2011 and the car is still in body shop getting worked on. Here are some little things we have been doing.
 

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Since I didnt have my suspension ready to go back in and they were done at body shop and I had run out of all my mad money. Plus on top of that we were selling the house to get another one all of 2012 was building a dolley for the car to roll on that was high enough that I could work on it if I chose to and then doing nothing at all to the car #-o

Then in the storage building since selling the home might be easier without a car project scattered all over the basement :wack:
 

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Well the good news is during 2012 the house sold. We got moved to new house that didnt have a garage to keep car in. So it still in storage building.

As of June/July of 2012 we have decided that we are not doing the 383/727 deal. We are not using a 8 3/4 and we are not going to use the stock k-member anymore. We are not going to use factory ralleys anymore.

So 2012 basically started me completely over again.:eek:ops:

Now we are doing a 5.7 hemi, 5 speed auto, tube k member, mini-tub rear with a explorer rear end.

Basically money, money and more money to be spent #-o
 
I spend the rest of 12 and the beginning of 2013 getting parts.

Thanks to A-bodies Only forum and several of you wonder mopar addicts I found Hemi-Denny and with that I joined the club and got myself a Hemi-Denny front end. Denny built me a beautiful k-member with the provisions to bolt up my new model Hemi engine. Got my mustang II stuff, disc brakes for the front which was a mixture of Camaro and Ford parts :D

My donor engine, transmission came from a 2005 Ram 1500. The local salvage yard did me a good job on getting everything down to the fuel lines and evap canister :D

Rear end came from a 95 exploder with a 3.73 Trac loc and 31 spline axles. Not to mention rear disc brakes and easy to adapt e-brakes.
 

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I really can appreciate the effort and time involved in restoration that's torn down and rebuilt, so I'll look forward to following along. Good job and keep the post and pictures coming.
 
Since I lost my basement when we moved and then new house has nothing, the car has been in storage building for longer than I am happy to say.

This has given me time to buy up some parts and get a nice collection going so that when it comes out of hiding I will have something to do..

I was able to strip down rear end and get it ready to narrow. Cut off all the old explorer brackets. Cut out the area where the damper bolted on from factory and ground down the speed sensor area so rear end would be alot nicer for powder coating after its all ready to go.
 

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Well its now almost July of 2014. I have saved alot of parts, spent alot of money and now its time to make my Duster roll again. Its been on the wooden cart and in storage for way to long haha.

First thing to do is cut out the old wheel tubs and start grinding back and getting ready to widen them out get some tire clearance. I opted to buy USCartools tub kit because lets face it I am no metal fab wizard. :???:

I did pretty good cutting out the old tubs, not so good on cutting back for the move but a little metal work and seam sealer and you wont hardly know it. I screwed the extensions in place for now and plan to tack them in place once I mock them back in the car. Once tacked I will full weld and then grind them back smooth so they look better. This took me a couple days to do, much longer than I hoped for but ohh well.
 

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Cool project! I was actually looking for a duster when I bought my dart, I always liked dusters. You will love the hemi in an a body, really fun combo!
 
Instead of finishing the tubs I jumped to the spring relocation. Once again I used the USCartool kit for the relocation. I like it since it bolts in and helped with setup. The kit was thicker then the Mopar performance kit and already had all the spring holes drilled in it.

I recommend this kit for anyone thinking about mini tubbing. I had purchased the Mopar kit and ended up selling it on Ebay when I seen this kit.

But I forgot to measure twice and cut once haha. I cut to much from the frame rail and had to frankenstein the piece back in about the spring cup. Will Take alot of grinding to smooth that mistake up haha.
 

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Once I got the pieces welded in for the springs. I should have moved back to the tubs, but I started fitting my subframe connectors instead. The fit very well, had to do some grinding to fit pan and someplace just are not gonna touch pan like I would hope but will weld in nice and stiffen the car a bunch.
 

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How would i got about getting a professional rendering of what I want my car to look like? I have googled but either I am not searching the right things or I am just going about it wrong. I would like to get an idea of what I am working towards. I have a few paint colors and ideas but would like to see it first before spending the money on paint.

I have seen some nice ones on here from 76orangewagon and Riddler<sp>

Is there a magical website I am missing somewhere?
 
How would i got about getting a professional rendering of what I want my car to look like? I have googled but either I am not searching the right things or I am just going about it wrong. I would like to get an idea of what I am working towards. I have a few paint colors and ideas but would like to see it first before spending the money on paint.

I have seen some nice ones on here from 76orangewagon and Riddler<sp>

Is there a magical website I am missing somewhere?

Kris Horton @ CarsbyKris did mine.

I believe Riddlers was done by Shawn Mascol of Mascol Designs.
 
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