Cinnamon 75 Duster \

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Earlier this week I figured out it was leaking from 2 rust pinholes in the low spot in front of the fresh air hole. I put a piece of clear 1/4" tubing on the end of a roofing caulk tube and worked it in through the cowl drain. Got it in the bottom corner past the leak and layed a heavy bead of caulk in the bottom front corner.. Then took another piece of the tube and carefully turned it to spread the caulk. Next day I caulked up underneath it as well. Thursday I pulled the right wiper pivot and added a zerk and greased it. After which I flooded the windshield and cowl and did not see any leaks.
Started wrapping things up for winter. Hung the fenders back on it today. Need to put stuff away and organize the garage. ( Not heated, and not happening ) so very limited work now that its chillin.
 
Snow today. This was a few hours ago. Got at least 4 inch so far and more snow and heavy ice expected overnight.

Checked for water Friday after heavy rain and passenger side was dry, but there was a little on drivers side near hump. Thinking maybe I messed up the seal on the wiper when I took it out to add the grease fitting. Didn't see anything there when I drenched it with the hose. I guess I will wait till Spring and hang out in the car during a downpour and look for it.

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zkx14 said:
Snow today. This was a few hours ago. Got at least 4 inch so far and more snow and heavy ice expected overnight.

Checked for water Friday after heavy rain and passenger side was dry, but there was a little on drivers side near hump. Thinking maybe I messed up the seal on the wiper when I took it out to add the grease fitting. Didn't see anything there when I drenched it with the hose. I guess I will wait till Spring and hang out in the car during a downpour and look for it.
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This kind of mindset is what bonds all A-body guys......
 
Got a foot of snow since last night and chance of a few more inches later today. The Duster is not happy :protest:. #&@#% groundhog!

I did pull the distributor back out a few weeks ago and found that the guts were not moving freely. Should have checked it better while it was out before. Would need at least bushings, vac was sketchy, so got a rebuilt. Also got a timing light and compression tester now. So if it ever gets nice again it will be tune-up time.

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DusterDaddy said:
This kind of mindset is what bonds all A-body guys......
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So I'll be in good company at the funny farm? LOL

stokey04964 said:
Very Cool Build here. Nice Job!!
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ThanX!

We got 3 more storms totaling at least another 10 inches of snow since the pic I posted, but its supposed to get up near 50 today and tomorrow. If I can get it de-snowed today, maybe pop new distributer in tomorrow...maybe...
 
Got the distributer in the other day. Got it fired up and started tuning it up. Had it running decent with about 6-7deg initial advance. Went to work at it again today and got no flash from the timing light! %#@&! This is a brand new $70 Craftsman light! So I spent an hour and a half going to Sears and exchanging that. The sales kid was good about it, but I'm always amused... He pulled it out of the bag and say he'd like to check it. I'm like 'go for it' wondering what he is going to do. So he walks over to the wall, then looked at the wires, and says something about not plugging into an outlet. I guess he thought it was some sort of work light... Anyway, I got another one. I was running out of daylight, but did make sure it works. So where I'm at now it showed about 22 deg with mech in and 35ish with vac. That was just a quick check, so not sure if it will stay there. I did check manifold vac -steady at about 19hg. Next chance I can I really want to check compression. Chance of snow tonight and again on Tues. Ugh.
 
I here you about the snow, just started here about an hour ago.
I am sick of winter already.
Yersterday hand washed the cars.
Crazy winter this year.
 
Fresh air and flowers? No, I was looking for something in the basement the other day and opened a box with glaze in it..love the smell of bondo. Lol

It did warm up a bit today, so I got the compression tester on it. Got readings between 117 and 121 on cylinders 1,2,3,5, and 6. I had trouble threading hose in #4, so did it last - got 130. Not bad, but seemed odd, so randomly did #2 again and got 130?? I was using a remote starter and pausing between revs to look at the readings more at first, I think that gave me lower PSI than just cranking it continuous. Also need to get a better charge on battery then try again. As for now... the clear sky and high 50s of this morning turned to heavy rain and it is supposed to be 18 degrees by morning!
 
Your readings are decent.
What most probably happened is you got a little bit of heat in the rings while cranking it over.
That raised the readings.
Run it.
Getting any snow? It just started here
 
sireland67 said:
Your readings are decent.
What most probably happened is you got a little bit of heat in the rings while cranking it over.
That raised the readings.
Run it.
Getting any snow? It just started here
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Small chance of snow, but not expecting any accumulation.

I had the engine warmed up good before I checked it. Let it idle a while and drove it around the yard. If anything it might have been cooling down some by the time I did the last couple readings. It's only got a couple hours run at most on the new rings(mostly idling), so will see what it does with more run time. Takes a while to break in when it doesn't leave the driveway.
 
Subscribed! nice work by the way. It's very encouraging seeing you take on so much. That rust would break many men,lol....
 
needsaresto said:
Subscribed! nice work by the way. It's very encouraging seeing you take on so much. That rust would break many men,lol....
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Yes, rust, I know that flavor. LOL
Just always looking at the next steps and using any opportunity I have to make progress.

I checked out your restoration thread.
You are encouraging. :wav:
Keith
 
Thanks for the kind words!!

NEVER say die!!!!!!!!!!!:cheers::cheers::cheers:

Because I wanna do this:burnout:,Im still beating on this disease....:violent1:
 
I said a while back that the fenders were 'not too bad'. I'm sure that by most standards they would have been scrapped (along with the rest of the car). I decided to be consistent, I would fix them like everything else. The left was the easier one that I showed previously. As for the right, it required some donor metal (which I believe was from a 73 Dart Sport) that I got from member 'Framedude' last fall.

The outer skin of my fender looked pretty good, but it had rust on some of the mounting areas. I swapped the long bracket at the back along with the top piece where the square hole is under the antenna. also had a small area rusted on top near the little indicator light, and the front and back sections of the mounting flange.

I drilled the spot welds and tapped the bracket out from the crimp along the back edge. I cant say I was surprised, but there was a lot of rust under there. Made me wonder about some of the restorations that I see where 'everything' is blasted and primed, followed by a very expensive paint job - but stuff like that is never removed. That rust unchecked could have gone through in the next couple years.

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My Duster's fenders fit that same description as does my whole car. I too made sure that the insides of things were thuroughly cleaned and primed. If you take a look at my project the body and bolt on panels look crazy, lots of different colors etc, but those parts are clean as a whistle on the inside and they are ready to go back on the car, and be repaired, primed and painted on the outside and will last a long long time to come.
 
DusterDaddy said:
My Duster's fenders fit that same description as does my whole car. I too made sure that the insides of things were thuroughly cleaned and primed. If you take a look at my project the body and bolt on panels look crazy, lots of different colors etc, but those parts are clean as a whistle on the inside and they are ready to go back on the car, and be repaired, primed and painted on the outside and will last a long long time to come.
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Checking out your thread. Great job! I can see you got into some areas I did not ... treating inside A pillars, etc. Your fenders look good. Here's what I was referring to-

This is the donor fender and my original re-enforcement bracket. My fender was surface rusted over almost the entire area behind the other piece, yet only a couple pinholes went through. I patched the lower skin on the other side, so never separated the inner piece on that one.

My original point was that I think its nuts to spend a lot on a paint job. The guys spending 10K+ on a paint job are often trusting a shop with their repair work and may not be doing any of these steps to find/ get rid of hidden rust. There is just no way you are going to get it all! Based on what I saw, I am guessing that (like me) you will be painting yours yourself? I'm going a step further and keeping mine the original color, which is about as close as you can get to the color of rust. LOL

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I'm with you, but I am doing a color change. Ours will be an economy job done in the garage. I have run rust converter through anywhere I could as well as scraped and doused everything under and Inside with rust reformer paint. It's my plan to keep the old girl out of the weather as much as I can...
 
I haven't accomplished much, so this is more of a log entry...
I've continued to search for leaks in the cowl area and have found a couple more. The worst was where the flanges of the side panel come together with the cowl and firewall. I had gone over all of these with seam sealer when the dash was out, but I never dug the old stuff out from between the flanges, just cut the gobs from corner. The main spot was right under the cowl drain. Resealed it with Blackjack neoprene this time. I checked it again after Really heavy rain and the side was good, but I think I have similar problem near center of cowl. I might try digging sealer out and replacing from the engine bay side if I can do it without trashing the paint.

While hunting leaks I pulled the cluster and found the speedo cable end is cracked. So will need to replace that.

I also tried replacing the leaf spring bushings. That was a disaster.. snapped one of the studs on front hanger on passenger side and one of them on drivers side shackle. The bushing set I got over a year ago turned out to be wrong, front is for 1.5 inch eye and I need 2". Also not sure about the bolt size. Mine is 9/16 and the 2" kit I found details on show it as 5/8. ?? So far I have not been able to get the pass side eye bolt out of the metal sleeve, so may need to cut it.

I still have one big rust out to repair in front of drivers side rear wheel. I cut the rot out of it last weekend. Will need to pull seats and interior panel before I weld a patch in it so nothing gets lit up.

Will need to round up some parts as soon as I can get a few bucks available. Was out of work for a while, but got a good new job now. Things are going in a good direction again. O:)
Keith
 
I didn't mention that I painted and under coated inside the fenders after repairing them. I hung them back on the car today. Still need to find a couple of the 1-1/8" washer nuts for the studs at the cowl. But otherwise I think I have all the hardware.
I also put the splash shields back on underneath( not the ones behind the wheels) 2 in front of K frame and 1 under steering. The last proved to be the worst.. When I changed the brake lines I did not realize it has a place for the line to go through. I had to take the brake line off and rebend it to the right position.

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Great to see this thread back ....I love this car so please keep the updates coming. Not enough later dusters around :)
 
Welded some patches in today. Drivers side, in front of rear wheel and front corner of drivers door. I believe this is the last of the spots that I needed to patch. I still need to change the gasket on rear window, so possible issues there. Otherwise its ready for filler...

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FYI
I bought a speedometer cable at my local NAPA for like $20.00
 
sireland67 said:
FYI
I bought a speedometer cable at my local NAPA for like $20.00
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Thanks. Was it the correct length ? 63"ish IIRC. I started looking around the other day and saw listings for 80inch that I guess is a one-size-fits-many.
 
There is water damage to the headliner on passenger side. Have not decided what i'm doing with that yet... I think it was getting in through the screw hole at the back corner of the canopy trim. Probably should have pulled it before i did the vinyl top, but i got lucky. First look it appeared to be a lot of rust, but its just surface. I just rubbed my fingers on it and it comes up pretty clean. Its a little heavier in some of the nooks and cranies like the area where the roof meets the quarter (the infamous factory bondo joint), but even that looks like it will clean up good. Some rust reformer should take care of what's left. I was surprised to see what actually maked up the headliner. At a glance it looks like thin vinyl over paper then a layer of foam over a thin cardboard base. Of coarse the years have turned it into a crispy critter with almost none of its original flexibility.

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