My Duster Adventures

Well, this evening I checked a few more things off the checklist! My radiator hose coupler finally came in so I installed my lower radiator hose and heater hoses, painted my coolant bottle bracket and got that bolted in and the hose hooked up, welded in the last of the seat brackets and welded a reinforcement plate to the bottom of another one of the seat bolt holes, welded some spots on the subframe connectors that I’d missed (probably when I ran out of wire a while back), painted the subframe connectors, transmission mount and bottom sides of the patch panels I put in, bolted the drivers seat in, filled the radiator with water (I’ll put coolant in after MoParty, in case it happens to puke on the track), dropped the car down off the wheel cribs, cleaned a bunch of tools out of it and then DROVE IT FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE JANUARY!!!

It needs an alignment (pulls to the right) and the front brakes don’t feel like they’re grabbing like they should be so need to bleed those some more BUT the car rides and drives like a whole different car!! But I guess that should be expected, suspension wise it IS a whole new car! The steering is responsive, zero slop and the turning radius seems to be much tighter! Our road has some decent dips/bumps and it took them MUCH better than the 1.03 bars, worn out 5 leaf springs and Monroe shocks. It also just dawned on me that I don’t think I set the adjustment on the QA1 shocks at all. I’ll check that tomorrow.

I think the suspension got settled in a little bit on the drive. The drivers front is at 23 3/8”, passenger front is 23 1/4” rear is right at 25”.

I’m hoping to get the grille in tomorrow, and finally get y’all some good pictures of the car!