1970 duster Kinda pro-touring, somewhat lo budget build

id do a BLATANT cut and paste, but the thread has already been a couple of YEARS in the making, which would mean that id be doing a whole lotta cutting and pasting, with much editing and reworking. i honestly dont feel the need to do that, so i will just link to what hhas been done previously, and continue the updates below that. so please, to have some clue of whats going on, and has went on, read the links provided. ill answer questions about what i have done, but wont try to spoon feed you.....

http://www.forabodiesonly.com/mopar/showthread.php?t=111545

im also working on a pretty good update at the moment, so please bear with the link until i get it done. finally making progress on the EFI and 5 speed stuff.

michael

Nice to see something oddball.

I love your car. Definitely one of the inspirations behind my Javelin!

Ranger50 wrote: Nice to see something oddball.

im honored. especially on the forum that has cars ive never heard of before. i mean, my car is oddball, on a forum where i learned what a wartburg was.

thats just really cool.

and youd seen my thread before javelin?

So the previous total was 6776.15.

For this update, I will not include the new set of tires I put on, as those are now a wear item.

40 for the throttle body adapter

45 for some welding

11 for the pilot bearing

Sacrificial tranny cross member was free

New total is 6872.15

So as I said in my last update, I’ve been laid out most of the summer. At the beginning of summer, before I blew out my knee, I went down to run to the old south. My best friend and I were there most of the day, just hanging out. I unfortunately didn’t have the money to enter, but it was nice to be there with so many of the PT guys, especially at my home track of Carolina Motorsports Park. Definitely an attendable event next year. Dustin drove most of the way down, just because.

on the way back, I had a couple of bone jarring impacts due to south Carolinas wonderful roads, and a set of railroad tracks that the city forgot to mark as under repair.

These impacts, coupled with excessive inside shoulder wear, broke belts in both front tires.

My local tire guy, Freemans tire and wheel, stood behind his tires even despite the excessive wear and the fact that he KNOWS I autocross/beat on this car. Was able to give me the replacements at his cost. I will recommend him to anyone within driving distance.

The tires were pretty badly worn, and the picture kind of sort of shows how they’re abnormally shaped. It was MUCH more dramatic in person. And really kind of cool to see.....

Due to the tire wear, I’ve decided to go back to a little more sane alignment settings. Also hopefully going to make it stick a little better in the process. While I’m at it, I need to finally get my front sway bar mounts that I bought a long time ago installed. Pretty far down on the list of priorities in my life at the moment, though, if I have to be honest.

After blowing out my knee, and then the heart attack (electrically induced. I’m only 30...) the car sat with the new front tires on for a few months. No cover, dirty, etc. it was also having hot start problems and hesitation problems on the way to and from CMP, so I decided that one of my next focuses should be the EFI conversion and five speed swap. The EFI conversion will be much more than just that, as I’m also swapping to a hydraulic roller for less maintenance and more manifold vacuum, rewiring the car, and doing a little gauge cluster work in the process. The 5 speed swap will include new carpets and removing the 4 speed hump for better leg room, as well as reworking my seat brackets and installing additional chassis bracing.

None of this happened due to me being laid up, and then building my daily driven ACR. I paid my welding instructor 45 to finish my intake for me, and scored a magnum to 4bbl throttle body adapter off of dakotar/t.com for 40 bucks. One of my corvette buddies also gave me a set of LS1 injectors left over from his c5 race car for my swap.

When we welded in the bungs, we did some quick and dirty math for the height to install them at, said screw it, and build a very rough jig with a piece of angle iron and a pair of c-clamps. we set the full length bungs on the angle iron that was clamped to the head mating surface, and welded them in. in the process, we made some lumps on the inside of the bungs where the O-rings sit, as well as effectively blocked the entire port.

I worked a little bit before the power outlet tried to kill me on getting the bungs cut to length. Never made much progress. In the last week, I have though. Wound up drilling a hole through the portion of the bung sticking into the runner, then using a spiral cutter bit in my dremel to cut through it. This gets the majority out. Then, using a carbide burr and plenty of WD-40, I ground the remaining stump flat with the intake port roof. Finished it up with some sanding rolls from harbor freight.

to take care of the lumps in the O-ring side, I very slowly and carefully ground them down with a tiny little sandpaper roll on the dremel, then finished it with a 120 grit sanding roll in the drill to make it round again. Worked like a charm.

our method of setting the installed height of the injectors was not scientific, or even that well thought out, but by sheer dumb luck, the injector is almost flush with the roof of the intake port, and angled right at the backside of the valve.

Now I only have 7 more to do, then some massive port work on the rest of the manifold. I want to knife edge the plenum to runner walls, port the plenum to carb flange, and port match further into the port than the 1/4 inch or so that I had done previously. ill then go on to porting and polishing the magnum throttle body unless I find a cheap 1000CFM 4bbl one before then.

On the tremec swap, I actually have been using the archive from moparts for my reference.

http://www.moparts.org/Tech/Archive/clutch/25.html

Asking some questions, the guy that did it in the 440 cuda PM'd me, and I met him over in charlotte to look at how he did it. Very nice guy, and I spent a few hours talking with him. He even gave me a free trannny cross member to cut up. I believe that I will do my t-bar cross member a bit differently than he did by sectioning in extra material to the factory stamping. I will also further reinforce that area with torque boxes, and spar from the sub frame connectors to just next to the t-bar anchors.

So that’s about where I stand at the moment.

We, as a family, drove the car to the millingport corn maze for my birthday last Sunday. Had a very good time there, and my 3.5 year old got to be the line leader for the maze (led me and mommy around for a couple of hours. it was a HOOT! I’d recommend y'all to travel over here and go to it next year. For 7 bucks a head, its 4 hours of good, quality, family friendly entertainment.)

Brother Dustin and I have also instituted what we call "fun car Fridays". We’re driving our pleasure cars on Fridays to work and then out and about afterwards. He went to a cruise night tonight that I had to pass on, due to trying to get a customer’s 02 Trans am finished up. But for the last month or so, I’ve been driving mine every Friday. Sometimes to the site in Lexington, where I make sure to get smiley's bbq (id recommend the skin sandwich. its artery clogging manna from heaven), sometimes to concord, sometimes just around Albemarle, sometimes to charlotte. Have a good time getting looks from people, getting compliments, and leaving work at full throttle. Still really have to fix the carb, or get to the EFI. Hasn’t fixed itself since the start of summer....

So anyway, that’s the update guys. I’m grateful to be able to give on.

going autocrossing saturday. finally installing my sway bar monts from LAST DECEMBER!! on friday.

were racing at z-max in concord, nc ifanones interested.

Seriously dig the intake work.
Good luck at the autocross.

aint the first one in this car. hopefully i wont break it this time.

last time, i broke a sway bar mount and munched a fender. still have to replacethe hacked back together mount and change the oil before the event saturday.

14 hour workday yesterday, 12 today, etc.

hope tp get it done.

and thanks for the intake work props. you read through the link and see the whole thing?

so, time for a no money update:

i finally installed my sway bar mounts.

finally.

and not a moment too soon. the crappy addco mounts had loosened again, and were actually only finger tight when i went to pull them today.

if y'all remember, im now using the energy suspension conversion kit. came with the wrong sway bar bushings, and is unorderable with the 1 1/8 bushings that my bar requires, so i had to buy those additionally. again, its been a year, so that info may be out of date now.

while removing and scrapping the origonal pieces, i found some wear on the mount bushings. as well as permanant deformation duwe to the addco design.

pretty bad, as they only have about 10k on them.

thenew mounts were not exactly easy to install, either. the plates themselves lined up with the factory k-frame hols nicely on 2 of the 3 holes. the third hole is one youre supposed to drill. i did so, but was unable to get a bolt in there. i will have to remove the LCA's and strut rods to inser that bolt. i tried going in from the bottom, but theres not enough room for a nut and washer combo between the bushing and frame, and not enough clearance to get the bolt through from the top. that being said, i still have twice the fassterners af the addco mounts. i also had to use a ratchet strap tp get everything held in place and aligned properly for the first time, but once toghtened, nothing binds. the rear of the sway bar is pretty close to the control arm, but does not contact. these are much more solid mounts, provinsing better ground clearance in the process.

older pictures for comparisons sake:

and ggeneral ground clerance shot:

while i was under there, i changed the oil. wix filter, 7 quarts of 5-40 rotella-t synthetic, and a little while later.....

cleaned out, cleaned up, and packed for tomorrows autocross:

im going to try something new tomorrow by taking video for you guys. i have an idea using a gian binder clip, my smartphone, and my sunvison that i can get some pretty bad footage of me driving the event poorly. just so you guys can have a ride along.....

also, if you care, im currently rewiring a 69 olds 442 w-30 convertable for a customer. i have pics if anyone wants to see them...

budget stays the same.

I had no idea how inexpensively you built your car, makes me even more impressed with it, which I really didn't think was possible!

that budget is how much is invested in converting it from an 11 second high schhool re-created car to the pro-touring car it is today. not the overall budget.

hope that was what you meant, but im pretty sure you thought i only had 7k in the whole car.

well, if you were hoping i actually got video, i hate to have to disapoint you.

my testing of the binder clip/sunvisor/smartphone combo worked perfectly. the problem was that SCCA would not allow me to run it. they require fixed mounts for all cameras.

i left out of the house saturday at about 6AM for the autocross. nice morning, though a little chilly. car was running great. git up there, met a bunch of nice guys, then decided to walk the course a few times so i wouldnt get lost like i always do.

this coure was HUGE.

most of the fast guys were taking in the mid 60 second range to complet. my fastest time of the day was a 79 and change, but was fast enough to top a c6 corvette and a shelby cobra to name a couple. we also had probably 125 cars turn out.

the duster had some carb issues on the big sweepers, and was much more controllable in second gear than first. i asked for an instructor first run, and got the head novice instructor that runs a mild 66 mustang. really cool guy that helped me a ton. we had a ball running it for all it was worth. i ave to say that there was less body roll with the new front sway bar mountsm and the car was much more controllable. a local photographer runs a website calles outsidethegarage.com, and was there taking pictures. i copied the two from his website of my car.

craig (AKA bonecrusher on the pro-touring forum) was there, and we hung out most the morning. very cool guy, and nice to spend time with. he got some videos of my launching the duster in his thread, and also some good footage of the course. http://www.pro-touring.com/showthread.php?64496-2005-Chevy-Corvette-build-amp-upgrades-amp-Nova-parts-donater-thread&p=949418#post949418

ui was joking with him all morning about breaking my tranny. its been making not-too-happy noises for a long time now, and i just havent had the time or motivation for my tremec swap. our running joke was that if i broke it, id HAVE to finally swap it.

well, i broke it. leaving the evnt, the trans was making some very loud grinding/crunching/howling noises. finally locked into second gear in mt pleasant, about 20 miles from home. i no longer can get it out of that gear at all. and theres a spreading puddle of gear oil under the car on my garage floor.

is it sad that im proud of killing an a833 in the process of beating a factory five cobra in the autocross course???

Dusterbd13 wrote: that budget is how much is invested in converting it from an 11 second high schhool re-created car to the pro-touring car it is today. not the overall budget. hope that was what you meant, but im pretty sure you thought i only had 7k in the whole car.

long day yesterday lol.
Funny that every random on the internet who has seen a picture I took of the z car when it was at Dustin's asks if the Duster is for sale (literally have 5 emails in inbox right now asking as much lol). I always tell them it's not mine but it is definitely not for sale.

I was there at Zmax running a WRX wagon, wish I would have seen this thread before the event and talked to you! Your car looks great!

corytate wrote:

Dusterbd13 wrote: that budget is how much is invested in converting it from an 11 second high schhool re-created car to the pro-touring car it is today. not the overall budget. hope that was what you meant, but im pretty sure you thought i only had 7k in the whole car.

long day yesterday lol. Funny that every random on the internet who has seen a picture I took of the z car when it was at Dustin's asks if the Duster is for sale (literally have 5 emails in inbox right now asking as much lol). I always tell them it's not mine but it is definitely not for sale.

actually, if someone gave me 50% of my mortgage in nickles, id sell it.

In reply to Uncoiled:

theres always next time!!

Dusterbd13 wrote: is it sad that im proud of killing an a833 in the process of beating a factory five cobra in the autocross course???

Nah, not at all. And as far as the FF guy knows you drove it all the way home too!

i did drive it all th eway home.....

had to do 3/4 throttle to get it to move into the garage at the end though. im pretty sure its broke.

and yeah, im pleased with myself.

previous total was 6872.15

this week, we add 260 for a new throttle body.

new total is 7132.15

so, let me tell you a little story.

it all starts with my buddy in Columbia a month ago. i was planning on going to visit him, and every time i travel, i check craigslist for deals where I'm going. sometimes i score, sometimes i don't. well, i downloaded the craigslist app to my smart phone. up came an add for a 1000cfm Holley throttle body that had never been run, just bolted on. for 250. i checked the price on summit, and it was a 530 throttle body. at the time, i had just purchased the adapter for my magnum throttle body, and KNEW it would not flow enough air, no matter how much i ground on it. so i waited. two weeks later, the add was still up. so i e-mailed him. he called me back, and we got to talking. really nice guy, building a Pontiac that he decided to stuff an LS into instead of injecting the 455. so he was selling his injection stuff. he had bought this, bolted it to the intake, and stopped. never got any further. so i asked him for his address before i headed to Columbia. turns out he was in Georgia. after a couple more weeks of indecision, i decided to do what i tell my customers, and "spend the good money". so i didn't try to beat him up on price, and gave him money for shipping, etc.

this is what i received:

very well made piece by the looks of it. all the springs ride on Teflon washers, the shafts are all running on bearings, good machining. no instructions, and throttle plates that are progressive. as in they work like a double pumper. i have the feeling that when the "secondaries" open, its really going to screw up my VE and TPS tables. so i need to figure out a way to make them a 1:1 ratio for opening. maybe Monday ill call Holley and see if can get the instructions for this thing for some hints, unless someone has any for me.

i also spent the week ordering tranny parts. having spec make me a custom clutch, and ordered my bolt in cross member solution. both of these purchases fall into the "spend the good money" category.

tonight after finishing the 442, i spent some time on my porting job after cleaning up the shop and getting my truck running again. (leaking injector o-rings in the TBI, and a bad coolant temp switch)

finished one port completely, and got the rest of the excess bungs cut off.

hope y'all had a good thanksgiving.

Michael

its been like an early christmas around here these past two weeks. a very expensive early christmas, but a good one.

first up, budget before was 7132.15

since i got the 442 done, i spent the payday. well qualify these two purchases under spending the good money.

first, i ordered my new clutch kit. spec stage 2+. used a throwout bearing for a late 90's jeep 4.0 5 speed wrangler, as it fits the tremec and mopar fork together like it was made to. also had them build my disc with a 10 spline pattern, and the pressure playt for the mopar. 10.5 clutch, good to 600 horse on slicks. will give me room to grow for when i get the rest of the car sorted enough for a centrifugal supercharger. this set me back $440. ive used probably 10-12 spec clutches in various cars over the past decade since i opened my own buisness. great clutches for abuse. the stage 2 thats in the car now has had great pedal effort (very light), no chatter, and bever slipped. i could have gotten away with just a disc swap, but decided that this was a big enough job already, and id like to do it with all new parts. would NOT want to have to change clutches again. i delt with matt rocksvold down there for the whole order. great guy, and a mopar fanatic to boot. id recommend him to anyone calling spec.

i also dealt with tony edler, of www.globaloverdrive.com for my crossmember. i had origonally planned on making my own, but decided to spend the good money. this is the newest crossmsmber for the tremec swaps on the market, and is designed to retain the structural rigiodity of the t-bar crossmember. im probably still going to stitch weld the t-bar crossmember to the floor pan if i can get the undercoating off and get a good weld, just for anal-retentiveness sake. this set me back $241, and came with all the nuts and bolts, as well as the trans tunnel template for cutting. he has been very helpful, and a bery nice guy to talk to on the phone. the crossmember came well welded, with interlocking tabs, and powedercoated to boot. nice piece. looking forward to seeing how it works.

i also dropped the input bearing retainer off at the machine shop last night. hollis page at hp engines (of engine masters fame) is turning it down to fit in the stock hole on my lakewood bellhousing.

also, i got the steel for my trans tunnel patch. it was free. i dont have a picture, but go look at the top of your dryer, and youll get the idea of where it came from.

all thats left to secure is:

mustang pilot bearing for making the hybrid

trans rubber isolation mount

mustang electrical connectors for the tremec

gear oil

new budget total: 7813.15

im still debating yanking the motor to fix my leaking pan gasket and give everything a good cleaning while im at it. i just really, really dont want to pull the motor. ive got enough things to do and stress without adding that.

also, need advice:

i have never successfully dialed in a bellhousing. id like to get this one right. how in the heck do i do that?

and y'all make sure to enjoy those that you love during christmas. and every other day of the year too. theyre the best GIFTS you'll ever get. (a gift is freely given, with no expectations of return. those that love us dont have to, they choose to. same with those that we love. sermon done now...)

michael

Can you undo the motor mounts and yank up on the motor with a cherry picker enough to get the pan out? Might be an option.

i still dont think id have the room without dropping the headers and cooling system. at that point, whats a little more for the motor?

but definately something to look at when its up on the lift.

so the 4 speed is NOT completely dead.

found while changing the rear tires and wheels tonight (ADD and sick facination with what actually broke) that the nuts had backed off the shift levers, allowing the forks to go where they shouldnt have, the linkage to jam, and the tranny to lock itself down. the tranny will need to be opened up and checked out, but im assuming its rebuildable since the noises are much less violent now, and it has all 5 gears again (4 forward, 1 reverse). moved it under its own power. the puddle of gear oil: the rear seal no longer does. at all.

so ill be posting that, the clutch, driveshaft, crossmember, and hurst shifter up for sale. someone make me an offer i cant refuse.....

i think that some of the noises are coming from the rear wheel bearings again, though, so well see what i uncover when i get the tremec in. hoping to get the car down to the lift christmas eve, and start tearing it apart over the holidays. if the rear end is even THINKING about giving me any trouble, im putting an 8,8 explorer piece in.

merry christmas, y'all.

and yes, im putting the steelies and pie pans back on for kicks. think ill even autocross it like that....

Michael

im a bit whooped, but figured id update. budget to be fixed later....

brother dustin and i yanked the interior and trans tonight. the car has worse oil leaks than i realized, which made the job pretty messy. definately doing the pan gasket and rear main while its apart on the lift......

only snags, other than mess and stuck fastners, were really of my own making. some things that i looked at and questioned myself on why i did them that way, etc. came apart pretty easy, except for the exhaust. i had to cut it. ill use some band clamps to put it back together when im done.

also, i sold the 4 speed for 475. figured that pretty good for a unit thats got some gear noises, etc.

also bought some new carpets, as the 4 speed hump is going away for some more legroom. i bought from stockinteriors.com, also opting for the extra expense mass backing. was shocked when it was ACC carpet that arrived. the mass backing makes it pretty nice, but i will definately have to use a heat gun to make it more pliable for a good fit.

dustin noticed something that i thought was pretty cool when we got the trans down. theres rocks up inside the crossmember!! just goes to show im not afraid to get it dirty driving it....

lastly, some 15 inch wheel fitment pics. i put them back in storage, as i wasnt feeling it....

ill be spending the weekend and next week doing this swap. look for regular, almost real-time updates. hoping to have it driving by the middle of the week.

michael

Love Love Love the Dog Dish hub caps with body colored wheels. Those year Dusters are my favorite.