Ca Duster Dude

[challenger72]

Hey guys, I finally scored my first and probably last Duster. I’ve been on the hunt for an affordable one for a minute, passed on a couple over the years and on top of kicking myself in the ***… I’ve had to hear my wife kick me about it as well. I know a “rare find” the ever elusive wife that doesn’t mind her husband’s auto addiction.
So my new girl is a 73 slanty and is fairly straight, as far as rust goes…I’ll give it a “C” and will know more when I cut my monkeys loose on it tomorrow. I’m gonna go a bit different on this as I’m done with rotisserie restorations, I’ve done 3 and that’s 2 more than any man needs . It’s 3 on the floor and I have a fresh 440 and 340 with W/heads on it so my goal is to paint it before i retire early next year and do the motor/4speed swap post retirement.
I wanna do a rear body panel swap and front hood/grille swap as well. anyone that’s done the front end deal could chime in on what that would entail would be great seems the hoods are a bit difficult to get but what else guys?

 

[Car Nut]

 

[72bluNblu]

Welcome!

I responded to your other post about the parts necessary to make your '73 Duster look like a '70- you'd need a '70 hood, hood latch support, grille and headlight bezels, front bumper, filler panel, and bumper brackets. In the back you'd need the tail light panel and tail lights. Then you'd need to do something about the marker lights, and add the necessary brackets for the grille and headlight surrounds to the '73 fenders (or, get a set of '70/71 fenders).

There are quite a few threads here about swapping the front clips of later cars to earlier ones, yours is fairly easy because your '73 won't have the later shock mounted bumpers, and since you're keeping it a Duster you can keep the fenders if you'd like. Here are a couple, although if you search "front clip swap" and my username you'll get a bunch more. I linked these not because they're other Duster swaps but because they have the most information on them

72 TO 68/9 TRANSFER

How hard is if to swap a 1971 or 1972 dart front end on 1973 dodge dart sport

I swapped my '74 Duster over to a '71 Demon, front clip, tail light panel, shock mount bumper delete and all...

I also converted my '74 and '71 marker lights over to use a '68 marker, to match them all up...

All of that stuff is in my build thread, which is linked in my signature. Or the shortcuts,

Here's the tail panel work
My "new" '74 Duster- or why I need a project like a hole in the head

Here's the side marker work
My "new" '74 Duster- or why I need a project like a hole in the head

There's a ton more there but that's probably the most relevant stuff for your front clip changeover

 

[missing linc]

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