1971 Plymouth Duster

Well here is a first picture of my car. I've done a lot of work to her in the last 6 months and there is still a lot left. I want to take her down to high school drags this spring so I've got to keep working. When I bought it for $99 4 years ago it was beat to hell. It had a running 318 though so I knew there was some potential. Someone had ran all over the roof and hit EVERY panel of the car with a baseball bat and the rear fenders were all rusted out and the two fenders had both taken hits. I had to take out the bondo board a throw on a mask for 2 months. After 2 gallons of bondo and a lot of hard work I was ready to paint it to make it through the winter. I primed it, put a mopar stripe on it and through a clear coat that I got for free on it. I plan on later painting it lime green or mopar orange.

Then I got to the fun stuff the mechanical work. I put some seats I stole from a mid-eighties 4-door Omni and put them in because everything from the seats to the carpet had been striped when I bought it. I got a racing steering wheel in and put a cd player I had got for free and a $20 pair of 6x9's in. I then drove it down to the car wash and was scared shitless when the brakes wouldn't work and I could hardly keep in on the road I decided to get all new drum brake shoes on and tune the steering. Then I needed to hear it make some noise so I decided to put the headers on that I had got when I bought the car. It took 15 hours of labor to put them in I had to lift the whole engine, make higher engine mounts and the steering went through the headers so that all had to come down. I still had to put a new oil filter mount and new starter before that job was complete. Then I put in a couple turbo mufflers and side pipes that I had got for free from a friend. After all that she was smoking the 10 year old tires and putting a rumble to the neighborhood. I also put a 3" tachometer I got for free from a garage sale. I then found some slots that were 7", 8", and 10" wide. I went down to Discount Tire and had them mount the 7" in the front and 8" in the back. I'll put some drag slicks on the 10"s for the races. I also bought some traction bars from a friend for $20 and mounted them up.

Basically that's where I'm at with this 1971 Plymouth Duster and there's still a lot left. I've got a 6-pack hood scoop I'm going to mount and paint the entire hood flat black. I also need to find a parts car for a new bumper and some interior pieces. I've got some new valve covers and a manifold I'm going to put on real soon. Eventually I want to put a new cam in it and paint the whole engine bay. I'm thinking about rigging in a NOS system. I want to re-paint it this spring and I'll be good to go.