Brought home a 71 Duster

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Made some progress on the duster today have a new gas tank that needs to go in but before that can happen. I had to take care of some rust/rot in the trunk. Glad I saved my old grill sheet metal for this repurpose. It’s good enough for me, waiting on a tube of seem sealer from Amazon before I finish it up. I have some blue rattle can I might hit it with after the seem sealer or I may just use black rustoleum.
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It always nice if you can find one. Well still looks like a solid car for sure I’ll be following.
 
What a nice car to fix up!
So far it's shaping up pretty good.
I think that the mileage is 114,000 as well.
 

If you don't want to waste time on spot welds and you are throwing one side away. Bust out a grinder with a flap wheel or stone to take out the spots on your throw away piece. In this case, grind the trunk well piece to get your tire hold down/tank strap mount out.
 
Is this junk runnin yet? We have our Mopar Club meet tomorrow in Gray at 1. At the Agave Azul. lol
 
RustyRatRod said:
Is this junk runnin yet? We have our Mopar Club meet tomorrow in Gray at 1. At the Agave Azul. lol
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Dang man no, I’m tired of not having any of my stuff running. I got the seem sealer and a coat of paint on there today. I’m going to blow the gas line out with my air compressor this week then I’ll be ready, but I still need to bleed the breaks. It never ends. I hope it was a good showing.
 
67/6barracuda said:
Dang man no, I’m tired of not having any of my stuff running. I got the seem sealer and a coat of paint on there today. I’m going to blow the gas line out with my air compressor this week then I’ll be ready, but I still need to bleed the breaks. It never ends. I hope it was a good showing.
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It was! Maybe you can make it next month on the 9th. My 60th is on the 8th, so we decided to have my birthday celebration then.
 
67/6barracuda said:
I haven’t found it was not under the back seat where it would normally be.
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Weren't some behind the glove box?

If you haven't tossed it-save the original gas tank pad! Those are the good (asbestos) ones, the new repops are not as good.

That would be an awesome car to run the Power Tour with your son.
 
Dartnut said:
You're going to be 60?
Man, I remember those days...
A milestone in your life, enjoy!
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Yup. Most people are surprised I'm that "young" but I started in this nonsense when I was nine years old. Like a dang idiot.
 
**** you 60 yr olds are in better shape than most of us 40 yr olds, like old cars they just don’t make em like they used to. I’m 46 and falling apart. I guess the yrs in the army jumping out planes kinda had me age in dog years.
 
67/6barracuda said:
**** you 60 yr olds are in better shape than most of us 40 yr olds, like old cars they just don’t make em like they used to. I’m 46 and falling apart. I guess the yrs in the army jumping out planes kinda had me age in dog years.
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That's what you think.
In all reality, I'm 62 with a mind of a 25 year old and a body of an 85 year old.
But, I am a stubborn guy and refuse to get old!
I have learned how to pace myself to the point of frustration, because something that used to take me an hour to do takes me four.
You have to learn to not be hard on yourself and just carry on...
 
Duster update: you guys convinced me to replace the brake lines. Went with the in-tube kit. Installed with minimal frustration. 2 of the 3 original soft hoses were clogged up and all 4 brake cylinders were frozen. I managed to save the 2 front cylinders with a quick hone, had to replace both rears. Just need to finish bleeding now.

I made up an exhaust with a cherry bomb turbo muffler, hit the tailpipe with high temp black after welding up the pipes. Installed my new OEM chrome gas cap bought from @Jim Kueneman trashed the cracked pitted lockable one.

My dumb *** made a mistake cutting the drivers floor board out. I managed to nick the damn speedo cable now it’s bleeding trans fluid a bit, two steps forward one step back.

Sold off the steel wheels and tires and went the rally wheels. Haven’t tried starting it yet because the minute it’s running I’m going to want to drive it. New brake lines, fuel tank and exhaust getting real close to driving this thing can’t wait.

Still need to patch the drive side floor board and buy some new carpet.

I would like to find someone that does that dry ice blasting of the under carriage to clean up all the surface rust then seal it.
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Patched up the drivers side floor board. Should have bought a whole new patch panel. But still had some old sheet metal left over from a charbroil grill. So I got after it cutting & welding. Nothing is perfect but it’s functional for now. I’ll move on to the passenger side that needs a small piece patched. Also bought a new blue ACC carpet.
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I’m rebuilding the 1920 Holley, it was never going to run decent with the blown diaphragm. I also got the new ACC blue carpet installed. It’s coming along slowly.
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First start in years, I put fogging oil in all the cylinders the day before so it’s killing mosquitoes it will burn off and clean up I hope. It’s missing a little bit but rev’s right up when I hit the throttle. I added a little attitude with the sharktooth grille today as well thanks to Mike (Bballfan1). I had to shut it down to get ready for some bad weather.

 
Cherry bomb muffler is nice and mild with the smoke clearing up. Moving forward with this duster. Has an exhaust manifold leak with also a exhaust pipe leak. I’ll fix that later I need to drop this off the jack stands tomorrow and take it for a ride.

 
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