New Guy With An Old Duster
Hello everyone. I found this forum this morning while searching for information on my 1975 Duster and thought I'd go ahead and join. I bought the car in 1981 from an Army friend at Ft Hood Tx and drove it for ten years before the engine died. I'm the cars third owner. It originally came from Missouri and already had some corrosion issues when I got it. Lucerne Poly Blue with a white interior and a white vinyl top covering the forward two thirds of the roof, it looked a bit like a smurf(which I didn't care for). So when a friend cautioned me about corrosion forming under vinyl tops of cars that live outside full time that was all the reason I needed to remove it, and sure enough corrosion had been forming in several places under the vinyl, so good call there.
The engine is a 318 mated to a three speed manual transmission with a floor mounted shifter, which made the car a lot of fun to drive, and once I added front and rear anti sway bars (it had none) it was even better. Unfortunately the engine died in the early nineties when the timing chain jumped a few teeth and the pistons came up and wacked all the valves and bent all the push rods. So much for timing gears with nylon teeth. Being sentimentally attached to the car by then (I'm like that) I didn't want to just get rid of it and I couldn't afford the repairs, so it was pushed to the end of my parents driveway in Los Angels where it sat for the next few decades.
Finally in August while my wife and I were in L.A. I cleaned the car up as best I could and got it ready for the trip to PA. The Winston Winner tires (Remember them?) that were nearly new when it died were now ruined and wouldn't hold air, so new tires and a new master cylinder later the car was ready to go. It arrived here in Pittsburgh about two weeks ago, and now the fun begins.
Hello everyone. I found this forum this morning while searching for information on my 1975 Duster and thought I'd go ahead and join. I bought the car in 1981 from an Army friend at Ft Hood Tx and drove it for ten years before the engine died. I'm the cars third owner. It originally came from Missouri and already had some corrosion issues when I got it. Lucerne Poly Blue with a white interior and a white vinyl top covering the forward two thirds of the roof, it looked a bit like a smurf(which I didn't care for). So when a friend cautioned me about corrosion forming under vinyl tops of cars that live outside full time that was all the reason I needed to remove it, and sure enough corrosion had been forming in several places under the vinyl, so good call there.
The engine is a 318 mated to a three speed manual transmission with a floor mounted shifter, which made the car a lot of fun to drive, and once I added front and rear anti sway bars (it had none) it was even better. Unfortunately the engine died in the early nineties when the timing chain jumped a few teeth and the pistons came up and wacked all the valves and bent all the push rods. So much for timing gears with nylon teeth. Being sentimentally attached to the car by then (I'm like that) I didn't want to just get rid of it and I couldn't afford the repairs, so it was pushed to the end of my parents driveway in Los Angels where it sat for the next few decades.
Finally in August while my wife and I were in L.A. I cleaned the car up as best I could and got it ready for the trip to PA. The Winston Winner tires (Remember them?) that were nearly new when it died were now ruined and wouldn't hold air, so new tires and a new master cylinder later the car was ready to go. It arrived here in Pittsburgh about two weeks ago, and now the fun begins.
