1970 Duster AlterKtion, 4 Link, LS/T56/Turbo and Minitub

I know I know!! I've been getting a lot of that! hahaha Mopar Gods angryyyy

Well for some updates I think and I hope I figured out my issue with the pistons being broken. After changing the 585 coils out with the 514's that other 5.3 didnt break any pistons. It was a sludge monster though with 350k on it. I didnt get to hammer on it too much before the bottom end came out of that one lol. But the test was to see if I lost any pistons when I hammered on it and it didnt seem to be an issue!

I got the 6.0 apart that is my donor motor. It had a "rod knock" when I got the truck as a parts truck. Come to find out it actually had a broken rod!! Luckily it broke right at the crank and didnt hurt anything! I already had a new crank for the new build turning the 6.0 into the 6.1 so I'll use the crank that came out of it to fix one of the 5.3s back to a running motor again. Then off to a new dyno!

Sludge Motor:


6.0 Donor:

Just be glad and don't wonder "why". LOL

Yeah, not knowing the root cause of any failure before putting anything back together is terrible because its bound to happen again lol. Only upside is you get to gather more data of the failures. One thing I'm skeptical about is that the bottom end has come out of all of those motors so this new one is getting a new pump as well, even though the last couple motors had a new pump. 0 parts and transferring besides the intake/injectors etc this time.

Get a set of 5140 forged Eagle rods, pitch those powder alloy stock rods. These engines are common as dirt. The rods are probably available for LS engines at WalMart.

Oh yeah, the 6.1 has all forged aftermarket internals. K1 technologies rods and Wiseco pistons. So she should be good to go now.

Still amazing that its rod broke at just the right spot that it didnt trash the block, and just kept running going thump thump thump on the windage tray.

Yeah, it sure is pretty crazy! I got lucky with that one! I had turned the motor over by hand with the heads off and 1 of the pistons didnt move lmao but nothing bound up. I was like . I couldn't get the bottom end apart fast enough to see what happened haha.

So its time for an update. My **** luck has continued. That 6.0 block with the broken rod that I thought was okay ended up actually having an issue. It sent a part of the rod through the inner wall of the block into the oil galley. You couldn't see it from looking normally but when the machine shop started cleaning up the motor they noticed it when looking in the oil galley ports. So my buddy gave me HIS block that he was going to build. That one ended up being cracked in a few places lol. Now I have moved back to Vermont and the machine shop is in NC. Before I moved home my buddy and I built a pallet to put the motor on when its done and ship it from where I use to work to where I work now. Welllll now that I'm in Vermont its a bit harder to get a block down there. So a friend in Rhode Island had a good 6.0 mockup block he gave me for free and other friends delivered it up who were coming to VT anyways. Then another buddy was driving to NC for work so we put the block in the back of his KIA rental car lmao. Long story short, the 3rd block is the charm it seems per the initial inspection and the machine shop is working on it now!

This was a video from the move home. It was quite the convoy to get all my **** back! And that was missing the 34ft enclosed trailer with the Duster in it and my tool box etc. I've got some pretty awesome friends!


1st Block



2nd Block




Here are some pics of the car before we loaded it to move home.

70DusterDev said:

So its time for an update. My **** luck has continued. That 6.0 block with the broken rod that I thought was okay ended up actually having an issue. It sent a part of the rod through the inner wall of the block into the oil galley. You couldn't see it from looking normally but when the machine shop started cleaning up the motor they noticed it when looking in the oil galley ports. So my buddy gave me HIS block that he was going to build. That one ended up being cracked in a few places lol. Now I have moved back to Vermont and the machine shop is in NC. Before I moved home my buddy and I built a pallet to put the motor on when its done and ship it from where I use to work to where I work now. Welllll now that I'm in Vermont its a bit harder to get a block down there. So a friend in Rhode Island had a good 6.0 mockup block he gave me for free and other friends delivered it up who were coming to VT anyways. Then another buddy was driving to NC for work so we put the block in the back of his KIA rental car lmao. Long story short, the 3rd block is the charm it seems per the initial inspection and the machine shop is working on it now!

This was a video from the move home. It was quite the convoy to get all my **** back! And that was missing the 34ft enclosed trailer with the Duster in it and my tool box etc. I've got some pretty awesome friends!


1st Block
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2nd Block
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Here are some pics of the car before we loaded it to move home.
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It’s ma Mopar telling ya that she ain’t happy you putting that chebbie pile in one of her classics

Lmao you aren't kidding! Mopar gods are getting their satisfaction out of this build for sure haha

Lets go, get this thing back together already.

I knowwww, working on it!! As soon as I get the new motor its going to a dyno!

did you give your buddy in vermont one of your 'broken' blocks to continue using for mockups?

I offered! But he was done with it, so didn't want one cluttering up his shop. And that guy was actually in Rhode Island who gave me the block haha. A lot to keep up with.

Still waiting on the new motor from NC. ARP main studs are on back order. But heres a cool pic of the car when it was in my buddies barn and then when I moved it from his barn to my sisters garage.

New motor is done and the car is back at my house from my sister garage! My buddy is shipping the motor from NC up to VT next week and the dyno date is set for Sept. 7th! Hopefully this is the LAST time this thing is apart lol

Can’t wait to hear how it goes.

Finally got to the dyno with a successful motor (well coils really)!! Myself and my buddy Biddy (nickname) loaded the duster in his enclosed Monday morning and headed for a 7 hour ride to Pottstown PA to get to a hotel near the dyno. Tuesday morning came and we got to the shop and unloaded the car. Not soon after the guy whos doing the tuning, Brad, had me change the plugs from the TR6s to the BR7s and then we were off! The first hard pull after making some changes and doing some smaller pulls netted 684whp at around 12psi. I was stoked! We then played with timing a little and did a plug check to make sure the 15 degrees was safe and by the mark on the electrode we are more than safe and happy there.

From there we started playing with boost. I had 2 wastegate springs in the wastegate and the next pull at 14spi we made 689. Brad said something wasn't right and that we should see more gains with 2lbs added with what my motor is. He told me to pull the air filter off and without changing a thing he had to stop the pull because the boost was so high. He then set the gate back to spring plus 10% and it pulled 18psi making 778whp! But it was using 96% of my injectors. So I had to pull a spring and he backed it back down to just gate to get a new baseline and it was 6psi matching the spring making 638whp. Finally the wastegate was working like it should. Then we set the boost to 13psi and it made 753whp using 70% of my injectors so he was happy with that. And I was ecstatic because I was just hoping to break 600whp. Brad told me to get 2 450 pumps and some 120lb injectors and come back vs my 2 255s and 80lbs and I'll be over 800 on 93 pump when I get sick of 750whp lmao.

I had found this guy Brad (Ace Tuned) on youtube because he had posted a few videos about fixing peoples issues from other dynos and he really seemed to know his ****. And he sure did, you could tell the way he worked through the tune and dyno runs that he not only knew the Holley system and LS capabilities, but he knew a ton about the hows and whys of tuning so he never was guessing why something was wrong or right to make changes. He'd say "this is doing this because of X so I'm going to do Y". As an engineer who is always looking for "root cause" of an issue before it can be fixed, this was awesome to see.

Theres a couple little things I have to do and log some date for some updates and adjustments but I drove the car quite a bit last night and she didnt blow up!!! And I smiled the whole time! I will say, @TT5.9mag you were absolutely right about that air filter. Gonna have to figure something else out. Space is just still an issue.

Heres the 780whp pull - love the screamer pipe fireball


Heres the final 750whp pull

Please forgive my language but **** YEA! I’m happy for you. This is what boost is about. I also told you double however much fuel pump and injector you “think” you’re going to need. Well done. Now go scare the **** out of yourself. That car is going to be a riot to drive. I see 70mph burnouts in the near future.

Thanks!! I know I'm pumped! And yeah, you sure did haha. Honestly, those 315 street stickies and the 4 link hook REALLY well. But yeah, I gotta go relearn to drive the car now!

Finally snapped a picture of the plug as well to show the timing of the car.

From what I can see that plug shows a happy, safe timing curve (might be able to add a degree) and good initial fueling. Cut one apart and see where the wot fuel ring is.

Yeah! I learned all about that stuff when I was at the Dyno. Brad showed me a cut apart plug to show how to read rich/lean conditions. And that the timing at 15* is more than safe because of the plug. I had asked quite a few times if 15* was going to be too much (with my history of motors blowing up) and so he showed me how he knew it was okay. He had said we could add some timing but I wanted him to leave it, so if I spend a day doing burnouts and hammering on the car it was still more than safe.

Excellent. Sounds like a great tuner. Glad you could pick his brain and he was willing to share his knowledge with you. I like guys like that.