the"Busted knuckle duster"

Cool Hand said
So after many months of research, shopping,and chat room time we have finally started the duster project. The plan is to do a late model hemi,nag1 conversion with all qa1 suspension upgrades. I will be installing right stuff front, and rear brake conversion kits, as well as many other products that allot of people have been asking about. The project will start out a little slow as the shop still has customer work to complete,but it needs to be completed by the end of October for SEMA. So giddy up!
We bought the car in Texas after many months of searching for the right one( I like complete untouched cars that haven't been hacked on). We luckily got it to the shop (after all the covid delays, and shutdowns) and got the plan rollin. We started by yanking out all the drive train,and suspension(which is all up for grabs),and making some quick changes that I believe made a huge difference in the looks department. First thing was swapping out the 74 hood ,grill ,and bumper. Looked at all the standard swaps.Demon,or 70 72 flat grill, or the shark tooth grill, but finally settled on the 67 valiant front end. Next over the last few days we cleaned the under side of the car. Sealed it all with KBS coating for rustproofing,and installed a stage three qa1 kit, Moser 8 3/4, and rightstuff brakes.
The tear down went great. Being a Texas car the bolts all came out with little fight in them. Instead of the usual rust I deal with daily (being a shop in Wisconsin),I was only finding dirt,and mud wasp homes that were long abandoned. Underside clean up was dealt with easily with soap,and water leaving a beautiful unpatched, or pitted chassis. We use KBS coatings on all of our builds so it was of course gonna be what sealed the duster. It looks better than new under there now. I have also installed a qa1 k member,and front end kit before so that went flawless. The right stuff brake kit fits with it perfect you just need to remember to tell qa1 your brake plans so they give you the larger upper ball joints. The rear of qa1's kit was a little more challenging. Since I've never done a 6 link setup before I had to follow every step of the directions.(Would have been easier if the parts had the parts numbers on them anywhere) Took the entire day to install,and being that I used a Moser 8 3/4 (the housing is larger) I have to modify the panhard bar to clear, as well as make some spacers to drop the sway bar down 3/4 of an inch. Otherwise it looks great allows me to adjust my ride height easily, and has lots of adjustment for shock stiffness rebound and such. She will be a great street,and track day car when done.
Here are some pictures of the progress so far. Thanks for checking it out.View attachment 1715562325first day home from Texas.View attachment 1715562328 View attachment 1715562329 bowels in or bowels out? lolView attachment 1715562330 new front end. Way cool

View attachment 1715562340 new moser 373's with eaton truetrac

View attachment 1715562342 the parts tree. ready for paint

View attachment 1715562344 part pile is growing. Anyone want?

View attachment 1715562345 underside sealed ready for new parts
View attachment 1715562347 qa1 k member and borgeson power steering box
View attachment 1715562348 qa1 control arms,and right stuff slotted disc brakes. (gonna finish up and paint wheel wells after bodywork is done.)

so

So I started working on the duster again this week. We had a small issue with the 6.1 Hemi I was planning on using. So while I save up the cash to build it right I found a good 5.7 to use for now. here are some pics of it, and it's donor.
2020-06-12 12.23.09.jpg

Here it is all cleaned up. I swapped over a few of the 6.1 parts ( Intake ,coils ,valve covers). I will get it disassembled paint the block ,covers ,and intake. Then we can put on the new oil pan, and all the conversion parts to fit it in the duster. (gonna be running the nag1 with the sound german engineering tcu setup)
With the drivetrain well in hand I figured I would get the patchwork, and panel replacement done. the only parts needing replacement were the trunk floor, and the the lower rear quarters. I started by cutting the main section of the floor out first. Here is what we started with 2020-08-11 15.17.08.jpg

Below is after getting all the spot welds cut out, and the flanges cleaned ,straightened ,and ready for welding in the new floor. I also had to replace the passenger side of the trunk floor as well ,so we cut that, and the lower quarter out while we where at it. Spent a little extra time to remove the spray on sound proofing, and wire wheeled off any surface rust ,loose paint ,and seam sealer. Then I coated the inside of the frame rails with kbs rust coating since we cant get in there later. 2020-08-13 15.42.26.jpg

While the floor was out I took the opportunity to make a few necessary modifications to the QA1 6 link. The Moser rear end we are using (even though it is a stock replacement for the original) has a larger housing than stock. this caused a few problems. I had to clearance the pan hard bar, move one of the tubes that goes behind the pumpkin about an inch, and make some spacers to lower the sway bar mounts so it would clear under the housing. I will post some pics of that later.
2020-08-13 17.47.02.jpg

Now its time to put it all together. We will leave that till tomorrow. Man that's a big hole!