1970 Plymouth Duster 5.7 Hemi/T56

[B_Chandler]

Front suspension. Another one of those "read everything, second guess, triple guess, reconsider, and then do it. As stated before I needed the big balljoint upper control arms for the disc brake conversion. Used were hard to find or expensive for what they were so I splurged and got the QA1 stuff. Same with lowers, I looked at plating and rebuilding the stock pieces and considering time and money, I was bucks ahead with the QA1 stuff. The adjustable strut rods and swaybar are also QA1 pieces. Everything else, tie rods, idler, pitman arm, etc are off the shelf. The '70 drag link hit the back of the oil pan sump before reaching full lock. No Bueno. I think I read here or saw pictures here with the '73 and ayer drag link that locates the tie rod ends vertically instead of horizontally like the 70-72 piece. Looked like it would give enough clearance and it does. The front brakes are another Dr. Diff purchase.

 

[jrc4y4]

Cool build, keep it coming!

 

[DionR]

Front suspension. Another one of those "read everything, second guess, triple guess, reconsider, and then do it. As stated before I needed the big balljoint upper control arms for the disc brake conversion. Used were hard to find or expensive for what they were so I splurged and got the QA1 stuff. Same with lowers, I looked at plating and rebuilding the stock pieces and considering time and money, I was bucks ahead with the QA1 stuff. The adjustable strut rods and swaybar are also QA1 pieces. Everything else, tie rods, idler, pitman arm, etc are off the shelf. The '70 drag link hit the back of the oil pan sump before reaching full lock. No Bueno. I think I read here or saw pictures here with the '73 and ayer drag link that locates the tie rod ends vertically instead of horizontally like the 70-72 piece. Looked like it would give enough clearance and it does. The front brakes are another Dr. Diff purchase.

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Quick note that the OEM orientation is with the caliper to the front of the car. This makes the brake hose cross the centerline of the spindle and keeps it straighter.

Plenty of people have done it that way, just pointing it out in case you made an assumption.

Carry on, great work!

 

[340sFastback]

You got a ToddRon crossmember from Modern Driveline? Was this recently or are we several years in the past at that point??

Last I looked they were discontinued, but I admit I am not following them closely. Ok, not following at all anymore since I am past that point now.

They were out of stock when I wanted to buy one. I contacted ToddRon and he contacted Modern Driveline and told them if they can't produce them he was gonna find someone else that could. ToddRon said he got a commitment from Modern Driveline to sell them and if they could not live up to that commitment he was gonna find another vendor. As a result Modern Driveline pulled one out of their warehouse which lacked powder coating and missing the bolt spacers and sold it to me right away with a small discount since "it wasn't finished or complete".

 

[DionR]

They were out of stock when I wanted to buy one. I contacted ToddRon and he contacted Modern Driveline and told them if they can't produce them he was gonna find someone else that could. ToddRon said he got a commitment from Modern Driveline to sell them and if they could not live up to that commitment he was gonna find another vendor. As a result Modern Driveline pulled one out of their warehouse which lacked powder coating and missing the bolt spacers and sold it to me right away with a small discount since "it wasn't finished or complete".

I remember you saying that.

They don't list them on the website at all anymore. I have it bookmarked and the link goes to some blog of theirs now or something. Wonder if ToddRon took it back and is still looking for another vender.

In the end, it didn't really affect me. With my non-stock engine location due to the Holley mounts, it probably would have been a $700 paperweight. After designing my own, pretty sure I would have been able to use about 0% of that kit. So if anything, Modern Driveline not listing them for sale might have actually saved me money.

 

[B_Chandler]

Its about this time in the story that my "Field Find/Dead Project" 77 Power Wagon showed up and I did what any normal, sane, reasonable adult would do, made it my daily driver. My (very short) attention was diverted so Duster progress was/is hit or miss. Now that the truck has proven itself by completing Sick Smokies Sick Ward, I'm turning my focus back to the Duster. During the truck thrash, one of the things I did was purchase a Champion radiator with same side inlet and outlet, Ford Contour electric fans and wiring pigtails for the fans. I cut the bottom of the core support and lowered the radiator a little. The top tank is now even with the top of the suppor and still the liquid high point. My plan is to graft a USCT core support brace at the bottom to regain the strength, protect the radiator and restore the look of the lower core support. Still need to fabricate brackets for the fans and come up with upper and lower hoses.

 

[B_Chandler]

I'm setting up a cable operated throttle. I'm using a 92mm Holley style LS throttle body. Clocked upright, the angle on the Hemi manifold puts the throttle linkage i ln the air on the right side. I flipped the throttle body and with the Sniper manifold, it will let me hide the cable a little and clean things up some. I kinda like it.

 

[B_Chandler]

The last thing I tinkered with was the oil filter relocation. Words of wisdom-- If you want or have to relocate the oil filter, do not buy the "kit" from Mancini racing. I loves me some Mancini, but they got this one wrong. It might even be a bit cheaper if you're a smart shopper, to buy the hoses, correct fittings, filter mount, etc. The problem with the Mancini kit is the AN fittings for the block. They send a pair of 45deg -8 male AN to Male NPT. Well you can only thread one of them into the block. The 45deg angles won't let you spin the other fitting into place. I emailed them about it, not expecting anything, just wanting to let them know and I.never heard back. I bought a straight -8 to NPT and a 90deg hose fitting. Seems to do the trick. The other problem was finding a place to put the filter mount. I didnt want it anywhere that would make a huge mess or puke oil all over everything at oil change time. A friend suggested the wheel well and after rejecting the idea at first, I sat and started scratching my head while holding the filter mount in various places and decided my friend might be right. Don't tell him I said that. Out came the CAD tools and I started fabbing a bracket. The source material was an old Dell computer case. My concern with locating the filter out there was rocks and other debris damaging the filter and leaking oil. To that end I made a shield out of the same source material that should do the trick.

 

[72dustervs]

Great project , looks like its coming along nicely

 

[Woody500]

Is that the filter mount or your pattern? That material doesn't look heavy enough & looks like aluminum in the pics.
If it's the mount, vibrations will crack it.

 

[B_Chandler]

Both are in the pics. It's a little thin. Its from an old PC case. I figured I'd keep an eye on it. I rarely get it right the first time and this is probably no exception. Blue is the pattern. White is the metal.

 

[nckennyb]

Great build. I'm enjoying your pictures and commentary.

 

[B_Chandler]

Quick note that the OEM orientation is with the caliper to the front of the car. This makes the brake hose cross the centerline of the spindle and keeps it straighter.

Plenty of people have done it that way, just pointing it out in case you made an assumption.

Carry on, great work!

I found that the front swaybar made it easier/better to hang the calipers on the back. Thanks for the info. I'm always open to suggestions, comments, other opinions and ideas. I get tunnel vision pretty easily and it takes someone else's perspective to snap me out of it.

 

[B_Chandler]

Another productive weekend...not here, but I'm sure it was somewhere. I am back in Duster mode. After much consideration and groaning, Ive swapped back to the Holley Sniper intake. The Edelbrock is a beautiful piece and the better of the two in terms of performance but more suited for drive-by-wire than cable. Can't say I didn't try. Got the throttle cable routed and connected thanks to the fine folks at Lokar. Had to modify the bracket a little, but it works. Still have to tweak the pedal to get true WOT, but for now it'll act as a soft rev limiter. Yeah, let's go with that. Finished plumbing the oil filter adapter after getting the right fittings. Funny how that works. I love Mancini Racing, but their kit sucks. Cheaper and easier to buy the hose, fittings, and remote filter mount than to buy their kit. One of my awesome neighbors gave me a big Dayton industrial fan. Its a wall mount deal, but I couldn't come up with a place to mount it on a shop wall so it sat in a corner. In an unrelated event, I removed the pole mounted HughesNet satellite dish from the far side of the house and thought the pole would make a good fan stand. Turns out I was right. All it took was one of the old wheels off the truck, a Slant 6 crank pulley, and some MIG wire to make it happen. I modified the dish mount to fit the fan and now I have what amounts to a portable hurricane. Now that I think about it, maybe I actually was productive. Maybe.

 

[B_Chandler]

Its been a minute since I've updated anything. Between the holidays (which were great) and work (which wasn't) I've been sidetracked. I've known the driver's floor had a thin spot right about where your heels sit. I tried welding up the little holes, but it quickly turned into an exercise in futility and I kept exercising a lot longer than I should have. So while I didn't have the same holes, I still had some. I picked up a driver side replacement pan from AMD. That was a fun trip. I drove over in the W150 and met an employee there who has a hemi powered Ramcharger. Good people there all around. Anyway, It's been sitting here waiting for me to get the ambition. I have USCT front torque boxes that need to go in and it didn't make sense to weld them in before I fixed the floor. So, armed with implements of sheetmetal manipulation/destruction, I dug in. I've never replaced a floor pan. I've patched them with everything from street signs, old license plates, and flattened pieces of 5V crimped tin. We live in the age of "All things are possible through YouTube" I just wanted to see what I was up against. Where were the trouble spots or where could potential surprises be waiting. Shout out to Adam Hamby at Indiana Garage for some great sheetmetal repair/replacement content and 70's TV Music. He's working on what's left of a '72 Duster with basic shop tools, salvaged scrap for patches and AMD panels for the big repairs. Now, with tools and some newfound knowledge, I started marking and cutting. To keep from cutting through crossmembers and other structural parts, I went under the car and outlined places I didn't want a blade to pass through by drilling holes alongside the edges of everything. I used cheap Harbor Freight spotweld cutters. Interesting thing there, the locating point dulls long before the cutter. After some use, they walk bad enough that they must have been the inspiration for the Fats Domino song (use the Google kids ) The pilot divot or hole if you're not careful, becomes your friend or maybe I just need a better center punch than the HF one. I had to repair a couple of places where my air chisel got carried away. That helped dial in the welder for the bigger job ahead. The replacement panel dropped in place with a couple of tweaks at the firewall lip and where my MDL crossmember hoop sits. I haven't welded it in just yet. I'm working out another kink I'll post below.

 

[B_Chandler]

Here's an observation on the AMD half pan replacement panel. The holes for the seatbelt bolts are in the wrong place. After staring at it and thinking I'd done something wrong, I even thought maybe they were backwards. The tunnel side hole is ahead of the factory spot and the rocker side hole is behind the factory spot. That doesn't line up if you look at them across from each other so they're just wrong. I'm not an expert on A-body seatbelt bolt hole locations so maybe different is the better word. Maybe there was a change later on. It's also interesting to note that the bulge in the tunnel lines up on both the existing tunnel and the patch panel. Folks doing an entire floor may never run across this other than maybe the rocker panel side. It's not a reason to bash AMD (And that is 1000% NOT my intention). I'm extremely happy with the panel overall. This is a minor deal. My plan is to cut around the original spot on the tunnel side which will get rid of the hole and keep the factory location. On the rocker side, I'll drill a new hole and take a coin-sized piece of scrap and fill in the other hole. The tunnel side pic could have turned out better, but the scratched area to the right (Rear) of the stamped hole lines up with the factory seatbelt location and you might even be able to see where the bulge for the mount lines up panel to panel. Experts, please chime in. Is this something else that may have changed? Say maybe in the '73 and later cars? I have to think that it's where the holes were on the car used for development, right?

 

[B_Chandler]

...and lastly to answer the question no one keeps asking. "What are you going to do about the gaping holes in the transmission tunnel?" As stated before, I'm not a sheetmetal guy. I can take a smooth, flat, piece of steel or aluminum and unintentionally turn it into abstract art or avante garde(sp?) sculpture. I'm that talented.

I've seen some really nice tunnel work on this forum and I'm envious of the skill and end result. I found a pre-rolled "universal" tunnel patch online (Summit maybe?) and purchased it. It was right around, but less than $150 delivered to my door. I've only set it on top of the MDL hoop to see what it would look like, but at a glance this might be the ticket. The radius front and rear seems really close. There looks to be enough on the sides to meet the floor once it's down all the way. I'm sure it'll need some tweaking here and there, but for the price, it's a really good start. More to come as progress is made here.

 

[nckennyb]

I always mark the outline of the frame and crossmember, flip it over and drill a bunch of holes where I want my spot welds to be. Don't forget to mark and drill some along that pan bottom there in the rear pan where it needs to spot weld to the existing floor underneath about three inches from where it turns up at the rear seat. I forgot that one time and it was a pain to recover.

 

[B_Chandler]

Did I mention I dropped the motor and transmission out again? I did. First time doing it from the bottom and I think that's the way to go! It seems like a lot of work, but all-in-all it's less hassle than trying to wrangle it out from the top. I pulled it all to begin working on stripping the paint in the engine compartment and cleaning up undercoating and dirt from the inner fenders. I found a lot of filler in places I didn't expect to find filler. Looks like the body shop attempted some smoothing but they were pretty thick in some places and I'm not sure the filler was 100% cured. It seemed a little gummy. It's all gone now but has me wondering what's under the rest of the paint. Uhhboy. Still working on it, but had to slap some primer on it so it would have some protection until I got back to it.

 

[B_Chandler]

I always mark the outline of the frame and crossmember, flip it over and drill a bunch of holes where I want my spot welds to be. Don't forget to mark and drill some along that pan bottom there in the rear pan where it needs to spot weld to the existing floor underneath about three inches from where it turns up at the rear seat. I forgot that one time and it was a pain to recover.

That's my plan once I'm happy with the way it sits. I'll sink a couple of self-tappers here and there to hold it in place while I outline everything underneath and then pull it out and perforate it for welding. And yes! I was looking at that and working on the fitment there in the rear. That's one of the areas where I got happy with the air chisel and Brrrted my way through in a couple places. Now I just have to get it to lay back down good enough to stitch them back together.

That had to suck trying to either undo it or figure it out from the blind side.

 

[340sFastback]

I did a full one piece AMD floor in my '69 Barracuda which is same floor as a Duster. Both tunnel and rocker seat belt holes where in wrong location. I moved the holes in the AMD floor pan to match original locations.

Adam on youtube Indiana Garage I don't recall him having to move seat belt holes for his '72 Duster when he put in a one piece AMD floor pan. So apparently the AMD floor pan had holes in correct place for his car.