Duster and Demon owners

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340_duster

340_duster

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How many owners of 70-72 Dusters and 71 72 Demons with the metal upper door frame, have seen buckling or cracks in the door inner at the cat whisker about the middle of the door ? If so what have you done about it?
 
Mine cracked 72 Demon by the sport mirror got a door that didn't have that
 
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My old Duster had that. Kept the car for 20 years and it never got any worse. Doesn't seem too common. Any theory's on what causes this?
 
340_duster said:
How many owners of 70-72 Dusters and 71 72 Demons with the metal upper door frame, have seen buckling or cracks in the door inner at the cat whisker about the middle of the door ? If so what have you done about it?
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A picture is worth a thousand words. ;-)
 
Paladin06 said:
A picture is worth a thousand words. ;-)
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0801181726d.jpg
 
Started out as a kink in the sheet metal, and after removing the paint i uncovered the crack. Checked two other doors i have and both of them are cracked in the same spot but one much worse.
 
340_duster said:
Started out as a kink in the sheet metal, and after removing the paint i uncovered the crack. Checked two other doors i have and both of them are cracked in the same spot but one much worse.
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I'm sorry partner but could you zoom out just a bit for point of reference?

Thx
 
Interesting! I'll have to check the set of '72 doors I'm going to put on my Duster.

I haven't seen that before, but it's definitely a stress crack because the door is flexing there. And it makes sense that it cracked through one of the mounting holes because that's where the least amount of metal is.

Access to that space is going to be pretty limited, but what I would do is get like an 1/8" thick piece of flat stock that's the same height as that flange. Then drill the holes to mount the whiskers, and spot weld it to the back of that flange. Put a spot weld between each set of mounting holes for the whiskers and you should be good to go, you won't be able to see the flat stock behind the flange with the door assembled or the spot welds with the whiskers in place.
 
Yep- someone tried to braze mine closed but it didn’t work. Still split to this day. Glad to see I wasn’t the only one.
 
Hemihead2 said:
Yep- someone tried to braze mine closed but it didn’t work. Still split to this day. Glad to see I wasn’t the only one.
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Yeah brazing definitely wouldn't work. Even welding it up would be temporary, it would likely just end up cracking again on either side of the weld without some kind of reinforcement. It would a lot longer term than brazing it, but I think the only way to make sure it didn't crack again would be to back it up somehow.
 
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