Duster shells all the same?

74Dusted said
The Tail Panel is shaped a little differently at the bottom on cars with Rear Bumper Shocks, a regular (Pre-Shock) Tail Panel fits, but will require 2 small sections of metal to grafted in to fill the gaps where the crossmember met up with the tail panel in the shock area.

Yeah the Tail Panel is a pain. There are 120+ Spot Welds holding a Duster/Demon/Dart Sport Tail Panel in place, I know, I've drilled em out on a few cars. Usually about 8-10 on each side where the quarter panel meets the Tail (There's 16-20 spot welds already). 3-4 on each side inside the Trunk Channel, underneath the Seal (There's roughly 24-28 spot welds). 4 on each corner at the top. You're up to about 36 spot welds total by this point. Trunk Latch Support, there's about 18 spot welds holding it to the Tail Panel & Trunk Floor. The rest of em (And there are a lot) are along the bottom edge of the tail panel, holding it to the Rear Crossmember.

No need to graft in any metal for the tail panel, the shock bumper cars' tail panels were just bent in to meet the floor. I'm quite sure, having removed mine, that the '74+ tail panels started just as flat at that section as the earlier one's did. Of course, if you want it to look like a pre-'74 car under there you'd need to do that.

You can see what I mean here. If you look at the bottom edge you can see it's pulled up where the bottom of the panel is bent in, so the panel started flat and was just bent in to meet the floor pan.