Father-Son 1974 Duster Project

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Misty Mopar our 74 Duster is now CANCER FREE!!!! (for the most part)
She still has surface rust here and there, and she is only a part of the way through reconstructive surgery, but the surgeon is getting better with the welder and in a few weeks we should have all the inner rust we cut out patched back in and coated with Chassis Saver.
I think after we graft pieces in to repair the trunk extensions, we will address a few spots in the trunk we had to cut out rust through.
Most every day after school my boys push her out and scrape away at old caulk and seam filler.
I'm trying to deal with wire brushing and welding and grinding on inner parts of the car for now, not worrying about sanding down the body yet because it has paint on it for now and I figure even old paint will protect the old girl while she's having her skeleton fixed.
We are going to leave the quarters on until the new skins arrive and that wont be until underneath, trunk, engine bay, floor, inside roof and firewall are all sanded. scraped and sealed with Chassis Saver. That stuff is amazing. If Oldmanmopar says its better than POR15 and any paint will adhere to forever that's good enough for me.
I have watched every youtube tutorial on quater panel skin installation and most of them say to cut it in to just below the main bodyline due to the panel remains on the car are strongest at that point and it a good place for that long weld.
Forgot to take pics before we put her away for the night, but I was able to snap this one of her while she was resting in the recovery room.....Note her new freshly built shiny motor sitting on the cradle in the left of the picture.
 

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Looks like your making good progress on "misty" . Your right that is a good spot to hang your quarters . Are you going to attempt to but weld them or are you going to lap weld them on ?
 
Hey Bear,

I'm sure the butt weld is the preffered way to go....I'm feeling really good about pulling it off and having them come out nice.

However, I was thinking about it, since many shops these days use panel-bond there must be an acceptable way to lap seam it somehow. Should the new skin tuck under the existing panel or vice-versa?

As I stated previously, I have seen many videos on the topic and one in particular was pretty good about how the bodyman cut the panel in to the car. He said the fitment was not great so he abandon the flanges on the skin and lap welded it on the car at the bodyline, tail panel and the door jamb. Of course he used the flanges along the bottom and the wheelhouse.

I'm going to be using an economy panel from a supplier on Ebay, so I'm figuring they wont fit so great to begin with. I wont be getting to it till December anyway as I have so much sub structure to make sure is together and sound.

Thank God Misty's frame rails and her bottom were solid other than the front floors and a few spots in the trunk.

I also need to hammer out a dent in the drivers rocker that has me pondering how I'll go about it, but I will not use a slide hammer that one would need to drill holes in the rocker!

I saw this dent puller that tack welded small studs to the panel and you pulled on those. When the dent was gone you just ground them off. I think I could make a homemade version of that.... I'll figure it out.

Any suggestions on the quarters will be greatly appreciated!
 
DusterDaddy said:
Hey Bear,

I'm sure the butt weld is the preffered way to go....I'm feeling really good about pulling it off and having them come out nice.

However, I was thinking about it, since many shops these days use panel-bond there must be an acceptable way to lap seam it somehow. Should the new skin tuck under the existing panel or vice-versa?

As I stated previously, I have seen many videos on the topic and one in particular was pretty good about how the bodyman cut the panel in to the car. He said the fitment was not great so he abandon the flanges on the skin and lap welded it on the car at the bodyline, tail panel and the door jamb. Of course he used the flanges along the bottom and the wheelhouse.

I'm going to be using an economy panel from a supplier on Ebay, so I'm figuring they wont fit so great to begin with. I wont be getting to it till December anyway as I have so much sub structure to make sure is together and sound.

Thank God Misty's frame rails and her bottom were solid other than the front floors and a few spots in the trunk.

I also need to hammer out a dent in the drivers rocker that has me pondering how I'll go about it, but I will not use a slide hammer that one would need to drill holes in the rocker!

I saw this dent puller that tack welded small studs to the panel and you pulled on those. When the dent was gone you just ground them off. I think I could make a homemade version of that.... I'll figure it out.

Any suggestions on the quarters will be greatly appreciated!
Click to expand...
Your right , The but weld is the preffered method . But it's not as easy as it look's and if your not using a quality panel , then you could be pulling your hair out over it . For you , I'd suggest making a 1/8" lip along your cut line and lap welding your panel to that for the best results .
 
I decided to replace the center of the spare tire well with a patch instead of removing the whole thing. We cut out the center up to the gas tank support brackets, welded in a patch, ground it down, primed and spread seam filler. Considering using bedliner on the trunk floor. My son gave me a lecture about being cheep. I explained to him that the $100.00 or so we saved on not buying that new well will help buy better quality quarter panels when the time comes....I don't get where my kids got the idea that money grows on trees...
Now I'm more convinced than ever I should fab up some new trunk drop off sides in stead of buying new. I need him to see the value of a dollar.
We have been outside with Misty every spare hour and we have a nice lighting rig of 3-300 watt clip-on lamps plus the garage lighting so we can work on her inside when we can! Love burning the midnight oil...
 

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We got the old girl up in the air this weekend and all 4 wheels off for better access to grinding and scraping.....
I was a production carpenter for many years with Broadway and Touring shows so rigging and shoring things with lumber and timber is my thing. I built these hefty but simple horses to suspend Misty from the front bumper brackets and the rear bumper shock mounts...
Easy getting under there now...
 
DusterDaddy said:
We got the old girl up in the air this weekend and all 4 wheels off for better access to grinding and scraping.....
I was a production carpenter for many years with Broadway and Touring shows so rigging and shoring things with lumber and timber is my thing. I built these hefty but simple horses to suspend Misty from the front bumper brackets and the rear bumper shock mounts...
Easy getting under there now...
Click to expand...

Having the wheels off (and, yes, the suspension too!) makes a huge difference. You are making great progress!:D
 
I made a quick adapter out of wood to flip her on it's side...much easier than working above my head. Really easy to make. Boy, are you guys dong a lot of body work.

Enjoying your thread.

ian.
 
grassy said:
I made a quick adapter out of wood to flip her on it's side...much easier than working above my head. Really easy to make. Boy, are you guys dong a lot of body work.

Enjoying your thread.

ian.
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Hey Ian,
I saw all the detail of your wooden cradle, that was flippin' awesome!!!
I have decided I'm going to flip Misty too!
I don't have the space to drop the rear and springs or the kframe so they are staying bolted on. I'll drain the oil from the pumpkin for sure.
We'll do it inside of course. The only glass in the car is the rear window and the quarter windows. The doors, interior, dash frame, fenders, hood, deck lid as wel as motor and trans are all off the car, so I'm guessing mine weighs about what yours did when you flipped her.
How many guys did you wind up needing?
 
mopar jimmie said:
Good job Bob , the car has come a long way
Click to expand...

Thanks Jim
You got us going!
We are enjoying working on her. Me or one of the kids does something each day to gain forward progress. Looking back on what's been done her body was really in pretty good shape overall. We knew the front floors were bad as well as the bottom of the quarters. there was so much junk in the trunk we never saw a few small areas of rot through, but we cut them out, learned how to weld in patches and I'm really happy with the direction we are going. Realistically we feel good about having her move under her own power by summer. We're set up pretty nice to work on her through the winter.
Thanks again for giving us a shove down the mountain!
 
I made the mistake of leaving too much board sticking out on the side we rolled it on so it was much heavier than it should have been. 2 people should have been sufficient but we ended up using 2 come-a-longs so it wouldn't fall back on us. We had the daughter cranking those.

Make sure the boards have traction..we used rubber pads and sand or they will just slide away from you which is really annoying .

ian.
 
Well we didn't get to put the old girl on her side this weekend do to lots of other family things going on. My little girl's soccer team played 2 playoff games and won the championship! That was exciting, the first game ended in a tie which had a 10 minute overtime which ended in a tie and then penalty shots to decide it. My kid scored the winning goal! That was cool.
Then my middle son's soccer team finished with the best record and won the league championship! No playoffs in this league, just best record. I'm so proud!
Aaron and I put some hours in on Friday night while the rest of the family hit the movie theatre. We did stuff that we neglected when Misty was in the storage unit. We removed the seatbelts, which when we originally removed the interior we didn't do for the lack of the right socket. Man, the bolts that run into the floor took some heavy duty pulling on that ratchet handle to get them out.
Also, one of the PO's put replacement carpet in the car with construction adhesive that was still all over the the floor in the areas not affected by the front floorpan replacement. So we scraped most of it off with a painters multi tool. I came off enough that what was left would not gum up a twisted wire wheel in the grinder. Got the drivers side free of the adhesive including the firewall. Also found that a PO mounted a bracket for an audio EQ to the bottom of the cowl, so there are a few new holes to weld shut.
I had cut the cowl open on the passenger side to graft in a donor skin segment. While I was lying on the floor of the car looking up at the rust that a need to remove on the inner cowl on around the fresh air intake on the bottom, I was thinking about getting the cowl cleaned out without flooding it with water. I'm going to put my shopvac hose in the opening I cut and seal it in with rags and tape then tape over the cowl grilles. I think if I fire up the shopvac then blow air in the cowl drains on the drivers side of the car the remaining debris will find its way to the vacuum.
This car has not seen a drop of water since May when it was outside for a week but it didn't see rain, prior to that we stored her inside for over two years, so its nice and dry and it's going to stay that way.
I'm just happy that we did something this weekend......
 
That's the way to do it. One step at a time! Keep plugging along, sounds like you're making progress. Family stuff is important, too.
 
Pushed our car out on the driveway Sunday ..jacked it up and pit a car cover over it. Just getting too cold to work on it and my kids and I are busy with school and sports.

I suspect we have a block in our drain as well but haven't figured out how to clear it.
Hell..I cannot even find the drain tube's opening on the underside.

ian.
 
Ian,
They drain into the inner fender near the hood springs.......
 
There are drains on both sides.
If you take the fender off you will see them behind the coil hood springs.
 
Sh*t...we didn't take the fenders off...but I didn't see them either when we had the car flipped...I should crawl back up there and see if I can find them...thanks !!!

Ian.
 
grassy said:
Sh*t...we didn't take the fenders off...but I didn't see them either when we had the car flipped...I should crawl back up there and see if I can find them...thanks !!!

Ian.
Click to expand...

The drains are at the top on each end of the cowl, right above the hood hinge.

You might/should be able to see them if you remove the splash shield.
 
Will that come off easily ? Is there anyway I can feed a wire down through it ?
 
I guess you can use coat hangar through the grille on the cowl....
I'll take a clear picture of where they are located when I get home tonight and send it to you.
Bruce's idea is a good one. The splash shields are held on with sheet metal screws.
 
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