I finally decided on the wheels and tires. These are American racing 15x8's 62-5865 with 255 60 15's on the rear,& 15x7 62-5765 with 225 60 15's on the front. I had a hard time, because I wanted to fill up the wheel well, and according to American racing a 15x7 is the biggest wheel that will fit in this style. My friend Mike brought 1 of the rear wheels off of his Maverick, a Weld 15x10 with a 275 60 15 on it, it fit but was tight. His friend Olen also brought a wheel off the back of his Montego a 15x8 with 3-3/4 inch backspacing with a 275 60 15, it fit better. I could have used a 275 60 15 which is an inch taller and almost an inch wider, but I didn't want to push my luck. This car has coil over shocks on it that will need to be replaced. I'll use a regular shock if I can, I think it sets a little too high.

The AC. works now ! The old V type compressors have a reputation for cooling very good, but they are very heavy and, not very efficient. I like to look at parts failures as opportunities to improve. I went to the local pick and pull and got a Nippondenso compressor off of a Nissan. A little cutting and welding and it's in place. The hose arrangement that you see in this picture is temporary. When I pull the engine I will have new hoses made, but as it is it works great. Now if I could figure out why the engine is running hot I could use it. I have a fan, and a high flow waterpump ordered. The old compressor weighs 25 pounds. The new one weighs 15 pounds, not much,but every little bit counts.

The old Mopar Ignition box was working fine, but I noticed the sealer running out of it onto the fender. I'm pretty sure it was about to go. I had this Mallory 3RLI, so I decided to use it. I had a hard time figuring out the wiring without a diagram but I finally got it. There is a dark blue wire that was hooked to the ballast resistor, this supplies 12v in the run position and, there is a brown wire that supplies 12v in the start position ( this wire also goes to the + side of the coil. When I attached these together and connected them to the small red wire on the Mallory unit it started right up but, my digital gauges got a feedback from the 12v being on the blue wire in the start mode. This caused the speedo to go into test mode. To fix the problem I put a diode in line with the blue wire. Now it can feed the Mallory unit with 12v but, the brown wire cant feed 12v back through the blue wire. If the diode ever burns out the car will start but, will cut off when you release the key. I shouldn't have a problem because there is not much current draw on this wire. I put this on my website for 2 reasons, to help someone else that might be doing something similar and, for my own reference. I'll never be able to remember this.

I also installed a new starter. The old starter is on the left, it weighs 16 lbs. In the middle is a 91 Dakota starter, the folks on the Moparts message board say that this is the best one to use. It does work very good and, it only weighs 9 lbs. The starter on the right is a Corvette starter that was on the Monte Carlo. Looks to me like GM and Chrysler buy their starters from the same Japanese dude.

Hey look I have a good looking rear end. ( No I'm not talking about my butt ) This is a Ford 8 inch rearend that came out of a 72 Maverick. I just finished sandblasting and, painting it. It measures the same drum to drum and spring perch to perch but the pinion is shorter. I'll have to find a longer driveshaft. It has a 3.00 gear and an open carrier which is better than a 2.45 but still not exactly what I want. My friend Mike gave me this rearend and a lot of info about 8 inch Fords. He says that some mid 70's Mustang 2's came with 355 posi's. Guess I'll have to hit the salvage yards.

Ok, I changed my mind about the rearend. After looking through the salvage yards and finding nothing. I looked at prices of 8-inch Ford parts. I didn't see any advantage to installing the 8-inch, so I gave the rearend back to Mike, and bought new gears and a "sure grip" for the rearend I had ( 8-1/4) from Randy's Ring and Pinion. I got a 3.21:1 gear. It was a compromise, I want to be able to drive this car anywhere. I am pleased with the performance gain, and the rpm's are still reasonable on the highway. I still want an overdrive trans, but it might be a while before I do that.

I had a bad ball joint so, I just went ahead and rebuilt the whole front end. I added front and rear sway bars at the same time. It handles great now.

I have a whole new exhaust system now. The headers are TTI . They are the only headers that I could find for a Duster that didn't go under the steering drag link on the driver's side. I built the rest of the system using mandrel bends from Jeg's, just cut them where I needed to, and welded them together.I made my own x-pipe, and I put in collector flanges at the mufflers to make transmission work easier. I almost didn't put these pics on my site because of the sloppy welds. I'm not a great welder, but the system fits good, doesn't leak, sounds good, and it was a big power increase. Good enough for me.

I pulled out the tired old stock 360 for a rebuild. It was running ok, but it was blowing oil out of the breather. When I pulled the pistons I found that the top ring was broken on all the cylinders but one. It will get 30 over flat top pistons bringing the compression up to about 9.5 to 1, a Crane powermax cam, an Edelbrock performer rpm air gap intake, and the heads will get a little port work and 2.02 intake valves. The old cast iron intake weighs 53 pounds according to my bathroom scale.

While the engine was at the machine shop, I painted the engine compartment. It's Hemi Orange !! It was a lot of work. I had to remove a bunch of stuff, most of it is back on in this picture

Can you say RPM Air Gap?

OK the 360 is back in. I got it running on Hemi Day 4/26/04. It sounds great, nice lope at idle and you can hear the headers now. While I had the AC hoses off I had new ones made at Tubes and Hoses. They did a great job. The High pressure hose originally came around the battery and to the compressor from the drivers side. I didn't like it that way because, you can't move the compressor out of your way when working on the engine, so now it makes a U-turn and comes in from the passenger side. I think it looks a little better under the hood than it did when I got it.

700R4 in the Duster

I took the car to the track 11/19/05. I wanted to see what it would do. It ran 13.76 @ 100.14. My goal was low 13's and 18mpg. I'm not too far off. My last mpg check was 14.8, about half highway,half city. 18 all highway is possible.

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