73 duster interior in 70 duster , will it work?

[oldcarnut]

Has anyone put a 73 -76 one piece headliner and rear sail panels in a 70/71 duster . I prefer the 70/71 but have access to a clean 75 interior and would like to drive my car before Jesus comes back !

 

[72bluNblu]

Has anyone put a 73 -76 one piece headliner and rear sail panels in a 70/71 duster . I prefer the 70/71 but have access to a clean 75 interior and would like to drive my car before Jesus comes back !

The one piece headliner will work fine, just take the bows out. The one piece headliner is just held up by the dome light, rear view mirror and visors and those are all mounted in the same spots.

The sail panels should have a few mounting points that overlap, I have the earlier metal panels on my ‘74 duster. The opening around the pop out window latches will be too big, and there will be some mounting points for the sail panels that don’t have a mount in the car.

And of course the plastic sail panels won’t match your metal topped doors. The sail panels themselves are usually pretty brittle, so be careful with them as they’re not reproduced and most of the ones out there are cracked.

 

[oldcarnut]

Yeah I figured there would be some minor differences. I was going to swap the doors to as they've got sport mirrors and are better than what's on the car now . I'm glad I can retain the rear metal panels too. I appreciate the help thank you

 

[72bluNblu]

Yeah I figured there would be some minor differences. I was going to swap the doors to as they've got sport mirrors and are better than what's on the car now . I'm glad I can retain the rear metal panels too. I appreciate the help thank you

If you use the later one piece headliner and the metal rear window panels you’ll have to make your own sail panels to take care of the gap between the metal panels and the one piece headliner.

Switching the doors as the whole assembly works fine, but remember that the window glass and internal door/window hardware is different from the early to later doors. So you can’t mix and match the internal door/window parts.

If the doors are mid 73-ish? or later they’ll have the side impact beam too, which adds a decent amount of weight if that’s a concern to you.

And yeah, make sure you can get the replacement plastic parts for the later doors if you need any, because not all of that stuff is reproduced. At this point a lot of the original stuff is pretty rough. Personally I’d rather have the earlier interior parts.

I just had to deal with an interior door handle that broke on my ‘74. They aren’t reproduced, so, you have to find an original. And of course the drivers side is harder to find because more of those break. The earlier interior handles are reproduced.