Mitch Amatrudo's
1970 Plymouth Duster 340

This page is dedicated to my Duster project.  Those of you on the "Duster progress" mailing list can simply scroll down or click the link to the latest progress report.  As new updates are added I will be generating an e-mail to all those on the list.  If you would like to be included in this mailing list or have any questions or comments you can contact me at info@MitchAmatrudo.com  All of the pictures can be clicked on for full-size images for those of you with high-speed access.

I bought the Duster in October of 2005 from an Ebay ad.  The seller was going to restore it but decided on another project instead, so the Duster was offered up for sale.  He was located in the Philadelphia, PA area,  and bought the car from someone in Portland, OR.

The car was last registered in Oregon in 1991.  The car had been sitting since that time.  The bad news about the car was that during the time it sat, the entire top-end of the engine was stolen.  When I got it, it had only a short block in it.  The heads, manifolds, distributor, carb, air cleaner, etc was all long gone.  The other bad thing is that the block is pretty badly damaged from the #'s 1 and 2 connecting rods and pistons being exploded.  There is a chunk that got blown out of the block at the left side oil pan rail.

The good news about the car is as follows...

The car is 100% all-original.  It has never been painted.  All of it's original sheet metal is still in place.  No modifications of any kind have ever been performed on the car.  Even the original AM radio is still in place in the uncut rallye dash.  This is a true matching-numbers automobile.  The block, 727 automatic transmission, dash, and radiator support all share the same original VIN.  I have found no evidence of any other components ever having been swapped out or replaced.  Even the original Chrysler broadcast sheet is still with the car. 

This Duster is a great color combination.  It's finished in B5, "blue fire" paint.  It has a white vinyl top and white interior with factory bucket seats. 

Best of all, the ONLY rust repair that this car requires is to replace the bottom section of the spare tire well in the trunk.  There is absolutely no other rot anywhere on the car.  The fender wells, floors, and all of those other spots that always rust out are completely intact.   There was a lot of surface rust, mainly in the interior of the car.  Much of this went away with only pressure washing it.  The rest will be blasted off in the future.

The following is a chronological report of everything that's going on with the car....

December 26, 2005
Car delivered from Philadelphia

January 12, 2006
Removed all bolt-on sheet metal.
Only rot-through on entire car is a quarter sized area on the bottom of the spare tire well in the trunk.  All rust seen in the pictures is only surface rust that can be cleaned up. 

Removed entire interior with exception of dash.

January 24, 2006
Dash and all related parts including pedals, heater assembly, etc. has been removed.  Continuing to carefully bag and label all parts and hardware that I remove from the car

February 5, 2006
Engine and tranny removed from the car.  Since there's no top end on the engine, and I removed everything else from the engine compartment, all I had to do was to remove the stuff from the front end (water pump, etc) and I was able to raise the car up on ramps, then remove the engine by dropping it rather than going through the dreaded engine hoist rental procedure and pulling it.  Saved a lot of hassle and some expense.

February 11, 2006
The wiper motor has been overhauled and painted with an Eastwood paint that simulates the original gold irridite plating.  I found a can of the correct red "Glyptal" coating online and applied it to the face of the motor.  Though this stuff was normally applied sloppily at the factory, I still don't like the way I did it so I will probably re-do it sometime again.

I restored the under dash heater box assemblies.  Put in a new heater core, cleaned up and painted everything real nice, then re-assembled it all using an aftermarket foam seal kit that worked out nice.

Repaired / re-taped the dash wiring harness.

February 16, 2006
Leave it to your local Firefighter to be the guy in the neighborhood to do stupid stuff with heat and chemicals.  I began to clean and degrease parts by developing the "Dipmaster 2000", which consists of a stainless steel bowl that sits atop an electric hot plate, and is filled with a a lethal mixture of Castrol Super Clean and diesel fuel.  It worked beautiful, not only removing the grease, but stripping the paint from most of the small parts as well !

March 12, 2006
Work on the car has slowed down a bit in the last month, but the entire front suspension is now removed and I have installed a temporary front axle for moving the car around.  I left the K-frame on the car, thinking that if the car gets bumped or dropped or whatever while in the sandblasting or body shop that the K-frame might help to keep everything aligned.  I'll remove it and clean / paint it prior to re-assembling the car.  The engine compartment has been stripped clean of all wiring and stuff.

I shipped out the dash bezel, dash lenses, and the glove box trim to CV Vacuum Platers in Canada to be re-chromed and restored.  I sent the dash speaker for the AM radio to a guy in Colorado to be re-conditioned. 

Installed a new IC type circuit board in the factory tach to replace the original transistorized one.  This car is not coded for a tach originally, but it was available as an option on the car and I thought it would be cool to have since the car has the rallye dash.  I found one on Ebay that was NOS.  I paid pretty good money for the tach, but it's real cool looking and I feel it will be a valuable addition to the car.

April 23, 2006
The biggest news is that the car is now COMPLETELY disassembled.  No more..."except for this and except for that".  The car is totally apart.  In one of the photos of the interior you can see a bunch of crap on the floor.  This is all of the junk that I cleaned out from the cowl vents and the fresh air vents.  What a dirty job.  I had to fabricate attachments for the blower and the vacuum to be able to get in there and clean it all out.  My theory now is that this junk clogged up all of the water drains, causing water that entered the cowl vent to drain inside the car, ruining the carpet (which was not in the car when i got it) and rusting the floor.

I borrowed Dad's little electric pressure washer for another household project and decided to give it a try on the car.  Holy cow, what a difference !  The engine compartment cleaned up real nice.  Most of the loose rust inside on the floor and in the trunk was blasted away.  The solidness of this car is even more apparent now.  I could actually get away with not even having the shell sandblasted, but I'm still going to do it so that it's done right.

I did a "gross degreasing" of all parts using about a dozen cans of oven cleaner from the dollar store.  This ended up being much cheaper and more effective for this purpose than the legendary "Gunk".  The cool thing is, after the cleanup I could see original markings from the assembly plant on some of the components.  Stenciled or even hand painted numbers on stuff like the tranny, who's hand-painted 3 digits match the last 3 digits of the tranny's part number, which matches the number on the broadcast sheet, etc.  Very cool.  I'm trying to decide whether or not to paint over these markings or to just clear-coat the parts to keep it looking as it did when it rolled off the line in 1969.

I bought a parts cleaning tank from Northern Tool.  Working out very well.  I filled it with 10 gallons of Super Clean then just let stuff sit in there for a few days with the pump running.  After a quick rinse with the hose most of it came out perfectly clean, and in some cases the paint was gone too.

The reconditioned speaker for the dash came back.  I've been compiling some NOS parts from Ebay, and I just today sent a check to pay for the restored rallye dash bezel, which should arrive in 4-6 weeks.  Looking forward to seeing that.

The next big step is to send the shell out to be blasted, paint the engine compartment, undercarriage, trunk, and interior myself, then figure out who to send the car to for it's long-term body work and paint.  meanwhile I'll be blasting all of the small parts myself using aluminum oxide and a small pressure-blaster, and finally painting or clear coating all of them.

Don't expect too much progress this summer.  Work on the car has already come to a grinding halt because of other projects that I have going on this year.

July 30, 2006
This is the first update on "MitchAmatrudo.com" instead of the old e-mail updates.  As predicted, I've done NOTHING to the car since April.  I have a lot of other projects going on including building a new driveway and carport, a pond, and a cool fire pit, both of which will be on this site sometime soon.  I'm still hoping to get the car blasted, maybe in September, but I wouldn't be surprised if I don't have time.

The only thing that is new, is that the long-awaited restored dash bezel recently came in from CV vacuum Platers.  Their 4-6 week time estimate ended up being about 4 months, but I made it clear to them from the start that I was in no hurry for it at all so I have no problem with them about it.  It came out awesome !  It will be hard to see in the pictures but it's really, really nice.  I knew from the start that this would be one of those items that would help to make the difference between a mediocre restoration and a top-notch one.  people are going to cry when they look inside the car at shows and see this.

This is before / after pictures of the dash speaker
and the dash bezel and glove box trim

September16, 2006
Well, I ended up spending the whole summer working on my pond, so I actually did nothing on the Duster.  This week I finally got the pond to a point where I don't have to worry too much about the pond anymore, and finished up some other household projects.  I was on night shift and knew that on my 1st day off I 'd finally be working on the car and I was really psyched about it !   It's funny how things always work out when you're working on a car though, because as excited as I was to be working on it again, by the 2nd day of doing this junk I finally had to admit to myself..."alright, this sucks"  !!!    
What I had to do was put the car as high as I could in the air and scrape all of the factory undercoating from beneath the car, using chemical paint stripper and/or a propane torch and a putty knife.  It was a dirty job but one that had to be done in order to achieve my goal of the car having a "brand new" appearance when complete. 
I hoped that I would be able to get the car to the blasting shop so that I could paint the undercarriage and stuff, but he can't do it until the end of September or early October.  It's gonna be too difficult to get a couple of days warm enough to paint that late in the year so instead of rushing and stressing I'm going to put it off until spring.  I'll have plenty of other stuff to do during the winter anyhow.

September 25, 2006
Started messing around with some body work.  I had no intention of doing any body work on this car.  Since I want it to be perfect, I figured I'd leave it up to a professional, especially when you consider that my track record with body work is not very good.  But, I changed my mind.  I figure that if I at least get all of the rough work done it should save me a lot of money.  Maybe I can even do all of it, we'll see.  Since there's no hurry to finish it I can take as much time as I need to get it perfect, besides, your ALWAYS hearing horror stories of cars going out to some guys garage and not appearing again for a year, and coming back with shoddy work anyhow.  We all know it's always best to whatever you can yourself, and I figure the less idiots I let get their hands on this car the better.

SO....all of that said,  I bought a used Matco spot welder/dent puller tool on Ebay.  Guys, this is the best automotive tool since the inception of the ratchet.  After a minimum of trial and error, I got good at using it.  My RF fender was bashed in real good.  it would not "pop" out or even bang out from behind.  I tried 3 or 4 studs on it but still couldn't get the dent to budge.  The next day I decided to try again, and found that you just have to do this pulling procedure a liiiiitle bit at a time rather than trying to get a big dent out in 1 or 2 pulls.  You can see in the picture how many studs I used on the fender (which I bolted back on the car temporarily).  An inch or so at a time and eventually you're golden.  I haven't even bought a can of bondo yet and this fender that I was this close to replacing is nearly perfect !

I did some pulling on the R rear 1/4, but this panel was hit pretty good right in the rear corner.  I'm not sure if I can save it without replacing that section of the panel, but I'm going to try again.  I did find some very small rot holes (pinholes) in the very lower part of that same 1/4, and I cut that section out.  Along with the spare tire well, these will most likely be that only sheet metal pieces replaced.  I Inspected the same section of the L 1/4 panel and it is pristine.

October 25, 2006
Man, it's been a very busy late summer and fall for me with a huge project at home and a  bunch of other time-consuming stuff going on.  Every day I've been thinking to myself "maybe tomorrow I can work on the car" but it just never seems to become a reality.  Finally I was able to come up with 2 days of doing almost nothing but working on the car, and even though it wasn't the most pleasant work, it felt great.  This round of work was media blasting small parts (media blasting is the new P.C. term for sandblasting).

Some time ago I bought a small pressure-blaster from the Cummins traveling tool sale in town.  if this event ever comes to a town near you, you should try to go 'cause it's lots of fun.  Kinda like having the whole Northern Tool catalog laid out on tables in your local K of C hall.  Whenever you get a new tool that you have no experience with you always wonder how it will work out for you.  Especially things like this, where you can get one for anywhere from 100 dollars to probably thousands.  This thing was VERY quirky, but in the end it got the job done, and I even ended up doing many more pieces than I had anticipated since it was able to handle larger parts than I thought it would.  If you want to hear more about this machine and also why doing this kind of work in the fall in New England is perfect, then  click here so I don't have to take up room on this page.

So, I had a large pile of parts that had previously soaked in the cleaning tank and cleaned up nice.  I loaded up the machine with 50 pounds of aluminum oxide media, set up a portable screen house with a tarp floor and some sawhorses to do the work in, and went to work.  The screen house thing worked beautifully, containing most of the media and the dust.  I try not to get pissed when I work on the car because it's supposed to be all fun, but I had a lot of troubles on my 1st day of blasting.  It started out great but after only minutes I began to have troubles (see the above link for more info) and there was probably a lot of cursing that day. 

After 2 days though, I was finished.  I'm sure there will be some stragglers along the way but I'm confident that I got to most, if not all of the car's small metal parts, and they look great. 

November 12, 2006
Most of the blasted parts have been primed and painted.  The only exceptions are the items that have to be painted the same color as the car, or the interior stuff (door hinges, steering column housings, etc).  It all looks really nice.  I used Eastwood paints almost exclusively.  Eastwood paints are expensive, but they look real nice, and are advertised to be durable.  We'll see on that.  They have a lot of cool paints that simulate the natural colors of materials like bare metal and cast aluminum, and their chassis black and uderhood black paints have just the right amount of gloss in them to simulate the original factory colors, rather than just the usual Rust-Oleum gloss or flat blacks.  It's exciting to finally start to see stuff that was removed from the car, degreased, stored, blasted, primed, and painted all looking brand new and ready to be bolted back on the car someday.  For now however, they've all been bagged in pillowcases or plastic bags, put in a big garbage can, and off to storage in my undisclosed official parts storage area.

November 15, 2006
"Burn baby, burn".  This was kind of a cool job.  After doing some research online, I learned that the best way to remove the front suspension control arm bushings (if you don't happen to have an hydraulic press, that is) is to burn 'em out.  The lower bushings were uneventful I had to heat up the rubber in the bushings enough so that it would soften, then  gouge out what I could with a screwdriver before finally driving them out with a hammer and a drift.  The upper bushings were a lot more fun though.  The rubber in them actually caught on fire and oozed out of the bushings.  It looked a lot like those charcoal snakes that we had when we were kids, since as the rubber oozed out of the bushings it got more oxygen and burned intensely, constantly oozing out and burning until all of the rubber was consumed.
I was unable to install the new bushings myself without a press, so I dropped all of it off down the street at Bryon Cwikla's "Restoration Suppliers of Connecticut".  Bryon's warehouse is a treasure trove of used Mopar parts, and happens to be conveniently located just a few blocks from home.  I painted the newly refurbed arms with Eastwood Chassis Black and added them to my collection of parts ready to re-install.

November 20, 2006
Rebuilding the front disk brake calipers, which are the old Mopar 4-piston type.  They were froze up real good after having sit for so long.  I soaked them in rust penetrant for days, C_clamped them and viced them to try to free the pistons, heated them up, tried everything I could to free up the pistons but had lots of trouble.  My shop manual clearly stated NEVER to use air pressure to try to force the pistons out, so I figured that would be the most efficient way to do it.  Eventually I got them freed up enough with solvents and heat so that I was able to pop them out with compressed air.  It was cool because the pistons would start to come out slowly, and I'm wondering what the big deal is about using air for this, when suddenly "BANG", and like the cork from a champagne bottle, the pistons would shoot out clear across my back yard.  I removed 7 of the 8 pistons successfully, but had to break 1 of them, and another became scored up pretty bad from all of the abuse trying to remove it.  Rockauto.com, which is a great resource for parts,  had the pistons and the seal kit in stock.  I honed out the bores, reassembled the calipers, painted 'em with Eastwood caliper paint, and added them to the growing collection of rebuilt parts and assemblies.

November 27, 2006
After a long hiatus, the legendary "Dipmaster 2000" has been put back into service for the arduous task of cleaning up all of the car's hardware.  All of the nuts, bolts, screws, and whatever other small items were boiled in the same mixture as before of Super Clean and diesel fuel to remove all of the grease and dirt.  Since all of those items were previously bagged and tagged to keep everything in order for re-assembly, I needed to be careful not to lose that, which meant having to do a ton of small batches at a time, which kind of sucked after a while. 

After this procedure, each batch was dipped in a product called "Evaporust", which is a great product for removing rust from stuff.  It's a non-hazardous, non-toxic liquid, and all you have to do is put the parts in a container and fill it with the product.  Let it sit overnight in a warm environment (the boiler room at my Fire Station works great for me) and all the rust just melts off.  Then they get a rinse and a dry, get a quick buff with the wire wheel, and everything looks like new again.  The final phase is either priming them for future paint, or dipping them in Eastwood's metal blackening solution, which simulates the factory's black oxide coating.  Another really nice product which will greatly add to the car's attention to detail when complete.

   
December 1, 2006
After finishing the brake calipers, I also rebuilt the power steering pump.  Not too bad of a job with the help of the diagrams in the shop manual.  Took advantage of the Auto Zone's free tool loaner program for the first time by using their pulley puller.  Can't beat that deal.  This car restoration is cool, because for the first time I have the chance to get into things like this.  Most people would just get rebuilt stuff and bolt it on, but I've got plenty of time to do everything myself, and I like the feeling that I'm retaining as much as I can of the car's original parts.  Think about what it's going to be like the first time I drive the car, with everything being rebuilt, repaired, or replaced at once.  It will be interesting to see how long it'll take to get all of the bugs out.

I also refurbed the taillight assemblies, which was just a quick disassembly, cleanup and repaint of the housing, and polishing of the lenses.  The weatherstrips were cracked and dry, but they are not available to buy new so I applied a coat of black silicone to them.  Looks lousy in the pictures but this won't be seen when they are installed.  The lights look great !

January 25, 2007
I took a little bit of a rest for the last couple of months.  All I did was continued to clean up as much of the hardware and small parts that I could easily get out of storage.  Most of it has either been primed, painted or chemically-blackened, and I decided that it's time to put this phase of the project (small parts) to bed for the rest of the winter.

I bought a '67 4-door Dart.  My intention was to drive it for the winter, then tear it apart to keep what I could use from it and sell-off the rest.  The car turned out to be really rusty, and there were a few things that needed attention so I decided to abandon the idea of registering it and driving it.  I tore it apart this month and sold what I could and still have most of the body panels and stuff  in my shed for whomever ends up needing them.  All I really ended up with for the Duster is one big bag of hardware and stuff, but this will be very helpful when it comes time to put everything back together, since I know that there several cases in which the original "correct" hardware was missing or shot.  Should have seen me before I pulled the motor, driving the car as pictured around the neighborhood, sitting on the milk crate in the freezing cold blowing the horn and stuff !!

November 25, 2007
Finally, after 10 months of silence, I'm back.  I salvaged what I could from the '67 Dart and sadly had the wrecking yard come and haul away what was left of it.  I hated to ruin this car, but trust me, it really was too rusty for anyone to be able to deal with.
I've accomplished very little since the last update.  I had kind of a crappy year with things not going well at home as far as getting things done around the house goes.  Lost my cat, lost one of my best friends, etc, etc. so there was little time left for the Duster.
I bolted the fenders and the doors back on temporarily so that I could work on the bodywork.  Pulled and/or re-pulled some more dents, and finally started the dreaded process of doing bondo work.  I've never been very good at this, but I'm taking my time and doing the best that I can.  I figure that even if I can't get it perfect, I can always sub the work out to someone good after I've got all the rough work done.

There was probably a stretch of several months that elapsed before I even touched the car, and even though it was time for the incredibly dirty and laborious task of sanding bondo, it felt great to be working on the car again.  I'm getting good at banging out or pulling dents to the point where all I need is a thin coat of mud, so don't be alarmed at the appearance of tons of bondo on the car.
I have a rough application and sanding done on the left side of the car only.  It's slow, but it's getting there.

I obtained a replacement spare tire well from a donor car, and it's cut, grinded, and ready for my welder to install. 

Finally, I had my annual day of blasting parts last week.  This time I had even more troubles than I did last year, (see "pressure blaster") but in the end the stuff came out real nice, and has since been primed and painted with Eastwood paints.

As for this coming winter, it looks like I'm pretty much S.O.L. for being able to get anything done.  Sure, there's more sub-assemblies that I can work on in the garage, but I'm planning on spending most of my free time trying to get my business off the ground (see "MAVMAS")

I was hoping to sand some mud in the closed, heated garage by fabricating a custom exhaust system for the dust, but the 1st prototype of the "SuperEvac 5000" bondo dust removal system was a complete failure, so it might not become a reality. 

Oh yeah, I also dropped off the engine block to a local machine shop.  He's going to clean it up and magnaflux it.  If it gets a clean bill of health, he's confident that he can fabricate a new piece to replace the broken chunk.  

The blasted and primed parts shown above include the steering column, shift tube, wiper linkage, bumper jack components, front sway bar, bottom of radiator, and front bumper brackets

July 4, 2008

This update has been a looong time coming.  Over 7 long months.  I basically spent the whole winter working to get my "Diamond Plate Productions" business off the ground, so little time was spent on anything else.  The latest report from the machine shop is that he came up with a junk 318 block, from which he's going to cut a piece to machine and prepare the block to accept this donor piece, so that it can be welded in. 

I shelled out tons of my hard-earned cash for a pair of numbers and even date-code correct exhaust manifolds.  These things are way overpriced, but I figure I better pick up a pair while I can still get them at all. 

From Ebay, I got a good deal on an aftermarket 1/4 panel for the left side.  I had the guy cut it into 2 sections for me, which was all I needed.  I decided that even though all of the mud on this panel is very thin, I would rather just replace the sheet metal.  The 1st two pictures below show basically where I had the guy cut the panels (to ship the entire panel would have been cost-prohibitive).  I proceeded to cut the panel section at the front of the rear wheel.  Came out OK, but I found that breaking the spot-welds was a difficult task.  Even more difficult was cutting the "new" piece to match the section that I cut from the car.  So difficult that of course I mis-cut it and basically ruined it.  Figuring I'd probably have the same troubles with the rear section, I decided to cut my losses at this point (only 60 bucks or so).  I took a ride to see the friendly folks at Auto Body Specialties in Middlefield, CT and bought an entire 1/4 panel for the car.  As much as I wanted to try to retain the car's original sheet metal, I am at peace with this decision.  The original panel was banged up pretty bad, and to replace just those sections would have resulted in a lot of weld area to cover.  By replacing the entire panel, much of the welding will now be spot-welds in inconspicuous areas.  Not a great feeling though, taking the cutting tools to the original sheet metal on this car.  I will be getting professional help in welding the new panel in place.

Speaking of the spot-welds, I invested in yet another special tool for this project, which is a set of Blair spot weld cutters.  This is a nice drill tool, which basically reams itself through the weld and the outer layer of sheet metal, leaving the inner panel intact with just some surface mess to grind off.  It did take a little practice, as when I began to attack the first few welds, I went through both layers, but with some practice it ended up working real nice.

The 3rd picture shows the gaping hole left after the rough-cut of the 1/4 panel.  After that is a shot of the inner 1/4 panel section, displaying yet another example of this car's lack of body rot.  As with many other parts of the car, the rust you see here is all just on the surface.  I'll give it a blast and probably cover it with POR-15 or something to prevent any further deterioration.  Finally on the bottom row there's some shots of the Blair tool and the spot weld removal process.  You can see what's left of the cut-up 1/4 panel that is still spot-welded to the wheel opening.  I sliced it into small sections, then did my thing with the tool.  Finally, I grabbed the pieces with channel locks, gave 'em a little wiggle, and off they came. 

July 11, 2008

Finally got in a good, whole day of working on the car.  I reloaded the pressure-blaster with #80 grade aluminum oxide instead of the #46 that I had used previously.  Since I had hard times with blasting last fall I wanted to try something different.  This time around I blasted all day with very few problems. 

I hit all of the areas on the car behind where the new LR quarter panel goes, did the entire back-side of the new quarter panel to remove the "overseas primer" so that a good quality prime coat can be applied, and the exterior sections of the same panel in the areas where it will be welded.

Finally I cut-off a good section of the RR quarter panel that will be replaced by a patch panel.  This little bit of work took the whole day to do, since working with the pressure blaster is a very slow process due to so much time spent waiting for the air compressor to catch-up, plus there was a grueling 2 hour+ cleanup process removing all the blast media from the car.

Unfortunately I found a pinhole in the LR quarter panel extension, which is the section behind the panel (the 4th picture above, under the bondo can) so I'll be replacing that panel as well, along with the same panel for the R side.

I'll have a small amount of grinding to do where the spot-welds were drilled out, then I have to prime everything that I blasted today.  Then, the real serious stuff will begin as I install the quarter panel and patch panels.  Stay tuned ! 

1st photo is today's overall work area.  2nd the blasted inner section behinf the 1/4.  Then the blasted rear section, which will have to be replaced.
The 4th photo is actually the inside of the new 1/4 panel, and finally the piece removed from the RR quarter.

September 5, 2008

I painted the inner part of the car, which will be behind the new 1/4 panel when it is installed, and also the inside of the new panel.  Most of this will not be seen when the car is re-assembled, so I didn't have to do a great job on this.  I used just an acrylic enamel with my old suction spray gun, and it actually came out quite nice.  It's exciting to see the actual color of the car for the first time.  Hoping to have the panels welded on before the winter.     

March 15, 2009

Well, December marked 3 years since I got the car.  We've had a long, cold, crappy winter.  It's still too cold to work outside, and I'm sure it'll be another month before I can resume any bodywork.  I didn't have the motivation to crank up the heat in the garage this winter, so when it started to get cold I moved to doing whatever I could inside the house.  Never got a chance to have the panels welded in place.
Before it got too cold I did another round of blasting, cleaning, and priming and/or painting of stuff.  The pictures below are in no particular order, but show all of this stuff in various stages of work.  Some notable items are the rear-end housing, and the valve covers and exhaust manifolds, both of which were Ebay items and are the "correct" parts for 1970.  Also you'll see that the rear axle shafts have been cleaned up and I installed all new bearings, seals and studs on them.  The red milk crate contains most of the engine hard parts that are cleaned up nice now.  The crankshaft is another example of how great "Evaporust" works.  You can see the before and after sections that showed themselves after dipping the first half of it.
I had to get creative in coming up with containers for the many different Evaporust dips, including using PVC pipes that I capped one end of, and even a stove pipe that I siliconed to the bottom of a plastic bin, into which I dipped the crankshaft, one-half at a time while it was hanging from a rope from the bar of the garage door opener.  Not my most professional moment but it worked !
The air cleaner is another expensive but correct Ebay item.  After blasting and priming it, I decided to go ahead and give it the also-correct black wrinkle finish and got the cool 340 pie tin for it.  I needed something to get me psyched after doing all of this dirty work and it worked !  Pretty cool.
No pictures yet, but my other still on-going indoor projects are restoring the steering wheel, the outside and inside rear view mirrors, and whatever outside emblems and nameplates that are save-able.
 

August 30, 2009

As all of you in this area know, it's been a lousy summer.  It rained most of the time right up until just a few weeks ago.  It was hard to get motivated to do any work on the car.  I actually did not touch it until earlier this month, when I redeemed some vacation time from work.  Part of the reason for lack-of-motivation was encountering my first big setback with the Duster.  Last fall I found a big crate in front of someone's house marked with my favorite 4-letter word...FREE.  I hooked up the trailer and fetched it, knowing that with a little modification it would be perfect for storing the finished parts that by now I had all over the place.  I weatherproofed it real good and sealed it up tight.  I put it out under my vinyl carport, put all the finished stuff in it, covered it with a tarp, and called it a day.
Problem is, we got a lot of snow, and as I mentioned it rained constantly from April through July.  I had been concerned about the condition of the stuff in the crate.  Finally I opened it up and sure enough disaster had struck.  The totally rusted axle shafts and oxidized brand-new alternator were the first things to greet my eyes, and the stench of mildew was overpowering.  All I could do was to close the lid.  It was probably a month before I had the guts to pull everything from the crate and inspect it all.  Basically everything in it was "ruined".  All of the blasting and painting I had done over the last few years was shot.  I patiently separated stuff into batches that needed to be re-blasted, those that could just be cleaned-up, etc. 

I took some vacation time from work and was able to get a LOT of work done on this and also some other stuff.  With Evaporust, paint stripper, and a lot of elbow grease I was able to save much of the stuff in the "needs to be re-blasted" pile.  There's still a pretty good batch of stuff that was too rusted to save which I will have to do this fall during annual blasting week.  It sucked to have to spend this much time doing work that was already done, but in a rare display of positive attitude for me I realized how fortunate I was to have the car in the garage and dozens of rusty parts laid out around me.  I know there's a lot of guys who wish they had a car, a pile of ruined parts that they had to re-do, and the resources to do it all.  I was one of those guys not too many years ago.

So.....for a week straight I stripped, cleaned, and painted things.  Again.  However I managed to sneak in some other stuff in addition to the messed-up stuff so that I'd feel like I accomplished at least something.  I even built a new shed in which to house all of the finished items from now on.  The last thing I did on this work vacation was to take inventory of all of the stuff in the "needs to be done" area, while putting all of the "done" stuff in the new shed.  I didn't realize it until now, but I have gotten a tremendous amount of work done on this car.  After pulling from the "undone" pile everything that I will blast this fall, I now have very little stuff left in the "undone" pile.  I now have more finished parts in the shed than I do unfinished parts on the undone parts storage deck.  It's even possible that this year's blasting will be the last.  I've been buying new stuff little by little as my bank account allows, and I now have almost everything that I need to re-assemble the car as a rolling chassis.  That step is still a long way off though, because the car will need to be painted before it can be put back together.  Below are some new pictures, in no particular order, to get all of you up-to-date.

The above photos show most of the items that had to be re-done along with some newly done stuff including original master cylinder that I rebuilt, new KYB shocks that were stripped and painted the correct black color, headlight buckets, trunk latch.

Consistent with the rest of the car, this is the original matching-numbers radiator that was in the trunk of the car when I got it.  The core is shot, and when I took it out of storage I noticed that the filler neck and another section of the top tank were smushed pretty bad too. I figured that when I send the radiator for a re-core, the person either won't be willing to straighten the tank, or will do a lousy job of it.  Not having any idea what I was doing, I was able to torch off all the solder holding the tank to the core. Then with a clever array of tools including body hammers and woodworking clamps, I was able to do a real nice job at making the tank almost like-new again.  Still have to find someone who can re-core it for me though, and I'm guessing that good radiator guys are rare these days. 

Once again, and sadly for the last time, I had the opportunity to burn-out bushings.  This time from the front eye of the rear leaf springs.  2nd picture is an example of the mess I was dealing wih all week.  3rd is the new KYB shocks (I love KYB's) that I stripped and painted black, and finally yet another example of the miracle product Evaporust.  In this case I dunked the badly rusted driveshaft overnight and after a quick rinse it looks absolutely brand-new.  Notice that even the seam is again visible.  The driveshaft even still had the original Spicer U-joints in it. 
 

November 1, 2009

I was on vacation earlier in October for a week and finally had a chance to get a lot of work done at one time.  I spent 2 days on the annual fall blasting extravaganza.  I had the usual equipment problems that made it take a long time.  This work requires a lot of patience.  It's dirty, noisy, unhealthy, and there's a great deal of set-up and cleanup time involved as well.  In the end it's always worth it though, as it's both very satisfying work to see completed, and a relief to be done and over with it for the year.
I got a real good amount of stuff done this year.  Much of it was re-doing the stuff that got ruined by the moisture, but I got a lot of other stuff done as well.  Here's the latest pics..

1. A shot of the blasting tent.   2.  Some of the blasted stuff.   3,4.  Leaf springs before and after blasting (nice)  5,6.    This year's batch complete and painted as follows:

Rear bumper brackets, Tie rod sleeve, Steering column to firewall cover, Fan, Trunk torsion bars, Battery tray, Fender to frame supports, Gas cap, Parking brake assy, Leaf spring mounting plates, Glove box door and hinge, Pulleys, Rear brake backing plates, Brake pedal assy, Trans crossmember, Rear spring mounting brackets, Gas tank strap bolts, Horn, Front sway bar links, Rear spring U-bolts, Rear license plate bracket. 

CLICK BELOW FOR THE FIRST VIDEO SEGMENT THAT I'VE INCLUDED IN THESE UPDATES !    MANY MORE TO COME IN THE FUTURE !

BLASTING VIDEO

Fall / Winter 2009

I spent a lot of time with trial and error (mostly error) on trying to restore my seat belts.  I won't even explain it here because it'd take too long.  In the end I pretty much ruined the webbing with chemicals so I gave up on them.  Luckily I researched and found a guy named Bill in Tennessee who's business is called "Upholstery Mods & More".  Bill hooked me up real good with a complete of new reproduction belts.  They're really nice, and he even repro'ed the original labels, as pictured below. 

                                            A close-up of one of the new seat belts.         The storage shed that I built to house all of the finished parts.

Now for the good part.  Remember that broken engine block ?  After much research I decided to have the block "stitched" to repair it.  I would say that half of the people out there say that welding cast-iron is not a problem.  I've heard from guys who've said that they have welded plenty of race motors without any problems.  The other half however strongly advised against it, and some said there's a good possibility that it would ruin the block.  Remember that this is a numbers-matching automobile so ruining the block is not acceptable.  The closest place I could find that does stitching is J & M Machine Company in Southborough, MA.  The guys seemed nice enough during my correspondence with them so I decided to give them a try.  Last year I opened a Christmas Club at my bank with the intention of using the funds for this engine repair.  I thought that was a cool way to ease the pain of paying for this repair.

I delivered the block, a junk 318 donor block, and the crankshaft to J & M in October.  They quickly went to work on it and within only a few days I got the report that the block and the crank both checked-out fine with the magnaflux.  No further cracks or injury.  I previously had a local shop mag the block a couple of years ago and he too said it checked-out fine, so now I have a 2nd opinion.

They cleaned the block by "bake-blasting" it which involves baking the block in an oven to loosen all of the crud, then it goes into a shot peen booth.  The block also passed a pressure testing procedure that they performed, then they proceeded with the repair.  I'll let the pictures tell the rest of this story. 
       

As John (The J in J&M) said..."The block is as good as new.  The only people who will ever know this repair was done are you and me".
Of course now the whole world can know, but I have no problem with that because I have 100 % confidence that the block is indeed good as new. 

Earlier this summer I was at my local AutoZone store on a Sunday.  The guy in front of me was buying a radiator.  Knowing that it was a stupid question since he was at the AutoZone buying a radiator, I asked him if he knew of a good radiator shop.  Turns out he ended up being a car guy and threw a reccommendation right at me of Perrault's radiator in Meriden, which is about 30 miles from me.  This guy said that he had to get his car on the road right-away (hence the AutoZone radiator), otherwise he would have gone to Perraults.  I figured I'd give them a try. 
So, I dropped it off and gave him the usual "no hurry" line.  I never even asked for a price, and he called me maybe a couple of weeks later to say it was all set.  Looks real good and the guy is real nice.  The cost was even a little less than what I was hoping it would be.  I told him not to paint it so it looks crappy in these pictures.  I'll give it a real good rattle can job soon.

What's next ?  Nothing for a while.  I have a few things that I started but never finished.  I'd like to get them taken care of before the end of the winter, but other than that I'm perfectly satisfied with what I have accomplished this year.  I don't think I even touched the car until late summer, but as I sit here compiling this update I find myself basically ready to take a break from the Duster for a while.  I have to coordinate with J & M about buying the proper parts that he needs to finish machining the block, which I'm working on now.  The final pictures below are exciting.  This is a "deck below my deck" that I built when I first got the car.  This is where I tossed all of the parts that were removed from the car.  For the last 4 years as you've seen in these reports, little by little I'd grab a batch of stuff for blasting or an item for rebuilding from this deck and complete it.  Then it would get moved to the "completed area" which is now the new shed.  As you can see there is very little left on the deck.  Most of it is exterior trim pieces that need to be replaced or simply cleaned up.  There are a handful of larger items stored in other areas such as the hood, deck lid and the seats, but this is all easy stuff to re-do.  In a nutshell, all I really need to do is finish the body (huge) and put the car back together.

June 2010

It's June and I'm having a very busy year with other stuff at home so again I have not had time to do anything with the car until now.  The next thing I need to do is to clean-up and paint the undercarriage of the car, as well as the engine compartment, interior, and trunk.  My original plan was to have all of this media or soda blasted.  I thought I could trailer the car there, have them do it and trailer it home, but come to find out it seems that none of those places can accomodate an entire vehicle, so they offer a "we come to you" service.  If I lived somewhere nice and had 5 or 6 acres I could simply drag the car to the "back 2" and have them do it there, but since I live in the ghetto and my neighbors have been putting up with all kinds of noise and eyesore for the last 5 years with this project (not to mention having to wear a hard hat at all times while outside to avoid being struck by flying tools) I decided that having something like this done so close to other people's houses is asking too much.  Besides, I took a good look under the car again and realized that it is so clean and rust-free that I don't think it's even necessary.

So, I started thinking about how I was going to access the bottom of the car and I started googling stuff like "how to build a wooden rotisserie".  What I came up with was an idea that I stole from another guy that he calls a "tilty", and I thought I'd give it a try.  Luckily I had a lot of used lumber lying around from another project, but I had to make a ton of trips to the hardware store for bolts and stuff, and there was a lot of thinking and planning time involved so it took a couple of weeks to finally get this thing together.  Using the existing temporary front and rear axles, I basically built a wooden cradle that the car attaches to.  The idea is that 2 gorillas can pull down on the 4x4's while another picks up on the other side of the car to make it tilt up on it's side.  I wanted to add a more high-tech edge to this extremely redneck device so I worked my exisiting winch (the one I use to haul the car in and out of the garage with) into the project.  Besides you can't always find 2 gorillas when you need them. 

I finished it up and tried it out and I'm confident it's gonna work great.  This will most-likely be a 1-time use device only so I didn't want to unnecessarily stress anything out, but I hoisted it about halfway up and everything seemed secure.  The plan is to go all the way over with it so that the car rests on the 4x4's and also leans up against the front of the garage so that it can't go anywhere.  I would NEVER think of working under the car just hanging from the winch cable as shown in the picture.

The last picture shows the car hoisted up on the tilty.  You can see the red line that indicates the route that the winch cable takes.  Stay tuned for a report on the dirty job of restoring the bottom of the car.

ADDITIONAL UPDATES TO FOLLOW

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