Plymouth Duster - The Weirdness And The Glory

so the biggest mistake i've made in recent times is taking this thing out of storage i pulled it up because i needed a car to teach my daughter how to drive stick on and i think it's slight six three out of four perfect so i got it running why was it a mistake because i can't stop driving it this reminds me of years ago i uh i picked up a free kawasaki kh-400 i was i was big into two-stroke street bikes then i had the big triples the h1 h2s and i was even the sport bikes at the time i had a tl 1000 and a 900 rr but i found this derelict kh 400 and i felt bad for it so i said you know what let me get this thing running so i did it brought it home spent the day on it got it running threw a leg over it and for three days and nights i couldn't get off this bike it was just the happiest most pleasant i can't begin to explain to you just how like the world went away on this motorcycle it didn't have the terrifying power of the you know the bigger ones it it was just mellow it was great it was like riding like like like attached to a rubber band you know i was like it made all the right sound and for three days i couldn't get off this bike that's what i'm going through with this duster right now for three days now i can't stop driving it but let's talk about dusters in general because lately these things have become super hot which is funny because nobody wanted them for the longest time nobody wanted them for years decades this was the al bundy car it got no respect and there were reasons for that and i'm gonna that's pretty much what i'm gonna show you with this car the quirks and the weirdnesses of the plymouth buffer these things to understand the duster you have to understand where it came from and you have to understand the car it was replacing which was in 1967 through 69 barracuda that had been knocked up to the e-body platform and plymouth wanted a car to fit in its place so it had the valiant as the regular you know and it had and it wanted this step up car right or the one that looked like the nova 1968 novo was a game changer it was square in the front just like this just like the earlier novas but it had that semi-fast back roof and the bulge over the rear quarters and that was the thing in 1968 you know cars had hips right the back quarter bulbed out you know it had that contour and also chrysler was on the verge of the fuselage era so that idea fit now the barracuda which have been kicked up to the e-body was a mistake that chrysler made because what they did was they took their economy platform and they made it all fresh sheet metal for it so the car has unique sheet metal from bumper to bumper the the fenders the doors the quarters the roof nothing interchanges with any other a body except the cowl the cowl is universal for all 1967 through 76 a body cars and this was the only piece that the 67 through 69 barracuda shared with the fleet so chrysler invests a lot of money in a unique body for this car but doesn't sell nearly as many as it thought it would they figured they would have it's close to mustang sale it didn't get it beautiful car but it didn't really catch on it was a fish car and everybody wanted the pony car so at any rate when they decided that they were gonna kick up kick that name plate up to the e body the duster was the car chosen to fit in its place given the mistake that they made with making the a body bar recruiter so unique the bean counter said right make it look like a nova but it has to fit everything else has to be interchangeable and here's something you need to know about the 1967 through 76 a body so it doesn't matter dodge plymouth two door four door they're all exactly the same this door this door skin is in these lines that are in the door this this minor curve here this line this line and this curve are universal for all 1967 through 76 a bodies except that barracuda so the designers were given the parameters of it has to fit that stamping so do whatever you have to do with the front of the front fenders do whatever you have to do with the rear quarter panels but it's got to fit this stamping so that's what they work with so given that this was an adaptation instead of a ground-up design like the novel was they had to do some things that didn't really make it this is the most cohesive part it's got a lot of quarks like for instance when they bulged the quarter like this they had to transition to the roof no with the wider with the with the standard roof that was found on the darts and the uh the two door valiants it didn't work it became a square so they tapered in the seat pillar and then in order to make that work they narrowed up this part of the roof so this is about an inch and a half almost two inches narrower than the equivalent dart let's use the dart um now what happens is if you're six foot tall i'm not i'm like i'm 511 right on a good day but if you're six foot slower better when you get in these cars you almost always bang your head on it because of the way this this this roof is set it's not any lower it's just closer to the seat so when you go to lower yourself in there you go i have a lot of head trauma from getting in and out of these cars the other side effect to that is that the drip rail is almost completely useless if you've got the window down when it's even drizzling it rains directly on your shoulder there's just nothing here these are like little things the a-pillars are different than any other a body uh and even to to make this transition they couldn't do the window trim the way they did all of the other a buddies so they actually used the the normal straight strip and then they had to add these corner pieces because the contour was completely different but it is a very pleasing roof line and it fits that fuselage style car is definitely a little weird it's got that rigid straight line you know from the front and then this beautiful curvature and all of this in the back the trunk was another thing first year only dusters didn't have this ridge right here and what would happen was people would slam the trunk lid on a 70 duster and it would bent in or they would go to cops there was a seat on it and it would just crush so they added this rib almost all the way through the 1970 model year so 1971 would all have this the one really weird unforgivable quirk and when i say unforgivable i mean it's a problem with the with the it with the duster i'll get to that in a minute but first i want to talk about the different models that they have so the duster has the duster body has several uh incarnations so you've got the demon the dodge demon 1971-1972 and then the dodge sport 1973-1976 and those cars are dusters with dodge sheet metal on the front there's no difference and if you're a psycho psycho psycho purist like i am you don't even consider them dodges because they both have 108 inch wheelbase valiant chassis in store or unibody instead of 111 inch dart unibody so yeah and an 1871 demon in particular is schizophrenic because it has the squared off smaller plymouth marker lights in the back and then it has the long tapered dodge marker lights in the front so you can always spot a 71 demon by that little mix match there but yeah those cars the demon and the dart sport just had the dart sheet metal slightly different contour for the wheel opening over here dodge grills and they had tail lights to match so but other than that they are dusters they had oh god there were so many different variations of this car there was the duster twister and the dodge sizzler the duster twister was actually in for insurance company reasons what they did was the the twister is just that it's a twist it had all of the dress up stuff it had the rally wheels that had hood scoops which are the the only duster body car that came with with those twin hood scoops like they put on the darts and the super bees it had the uh the scoops it had stripe said twister on the back quarter panel over there it had the rally gauges it had all of the the dress-up things but you could only get it with a slant 6 or a 318 you couldn't get a 340 in in that car so you know that was the twist it was like oh it looks like it's got all the guts but it has nothing there was the uh the gold duster which was just a trim option there was the space duster that had a fold down back seat and that was a bit of a problem because it required a whole different unibody structure in the back because the package tray and x brace behind the backseat are part of the unibody so when they did the space duster they had to reconfigure the whole framework inside the car there there was the hang 10 which was uh it was it was a gimmicky thing it was just it was just a color package color and fabric package and then there was the feather duster and i had one of these way back when they were almost new and this thing was it was a 225 slant stick a four-speed overdrive zero transmission seven and a quarter rear with 270 gears and it has aluminum uh door hinges aluminum uh bracing under the hood aluminum racing under the trunk lid aluminum uh bumper brackets to get weight there and these things in 1976 was one year only in 1976 reported to get 38 miles to the gallon i don't remember getting anywhere anywhere near that with mine probably close to like 28 but yeah the epa tests on that car in that era they got 38 miles to the gallon on the highway they were all the models the one model that they never produced but would have been like the trick was uh the duster ck this was supposed to be for 1970. so the duster ck was a low trim car you know uh nothing flashy at all hubcaps the whole 10 yards but with a 340. the ck stood for clark kent right and the trick with this was when you open the hood this mat was in the superman logo and it had the 340 with all the dress-up options on it and that ever made it test a prototype or two so yeah the duster ck would have been but anyway yeah fit and finish not the best and they're known to be rattle traps and that's fine you know only this one doesn't rattle this one's really tight but here's the ultimate quirk on the duster bodied cars and it's the one that drives always drove me crazy drives a lot of people crazy all right let's go back to 1960 the original version of this chassis the unibody was set at this 108 inch wheelbase for the for the valiant and the front track of the of the you know the front wheels was about three quarters of an inch wider than the rear track which is completely normal when they reconfigured the unibody in for 1967 in order to fit the big block in the car they widened the frame rails by two inches when they widened the framing rails by two inches it moved because they used the same control arms he moved the front wheels out board two inches from the rear wheels and they never changed the rear the rear axle with the rear axle which stayed the same so on a dark body car it's not that big of a deal it's kind of noticeable but it's not that big of a deal but when they restyled this thing and they bulged out the fenders the quarter panels all of a sudden that two inch difference in track becomes huge because this is about two and a half inches further out than the regular darts so when you look at these cars from behind you know it's got you got the little narrow rear end like this chrysler cheaped out on it they could have used the 1970 dodge or the the dodger appointment the b body rear end and it would have fit right in and it would have put the wheel perfectly in the center of the wheelhouse but for some reason they didn't they stuck with that same 1960 valiant with rear axle and now it doesn't matter it was a seven and a quarter or eight four eight and three quarter they were all the same width that was pretty bad but in 1973 when they added the bee body style disc brakes to the front it pushed the front wheels out another inch on each side which gave it another two inches what's bad enough is that this car here see this is a drum brake car but even on the drum brake cars they reconfigured the drums so that it puts the wheel out that extra inch just the same way as the the disc brake cars i guess they did that just to make it for uniform wheel alignments but now when you come right here come to the back of this car and look at it from here come down low look at the mix match of tracks you know this one isn't too bad because it's got fatter tires on it but when you see these things and they've got the stock size rubber the mix match is ridiculous that's one of the course with these cars the less obvious quirk is what they had to do with the doors now remember chrysler said you have to use this door skin because this is the universal everybody door skin so you've got to make it work with that well they narrowed the roof this door was originally designed for a glass that came up like this so when they narrowed the roof they had to make the glass fit this what a nightmare i've never been to a turkish prison but i've changed door glass and plymouth busters and i know it can't be much worse 70 through 72 uses one configuration which is a nightmare 1973 is one year only with a lot of very unique parts in it if you've got a problem with a door with door glass and an 1873 duster good luck brother man and in 74 through 76 is another model but that's just as bad as the 70 through 72. there's no fun to be found in the doors of these cars but there's a lot of fun to be found driving them and if you take a slant six car like this with this three speed you know two they used to say slant sixes you know they vibrate or even just inline sixes they vibrate they don't vibrate they purr especially with a manual transmission it's just the most soothing happiest driving around if you're looking to burn rubber with it if you're looking at ain't going to get it out of that but when you take this car the way it was designed from the factory the drivetrain package the gear spacing the everything about it and you drive it as it was intended as just like a regular car it's just magic and you just can't stop driving so now i'm stuck with this thing i've got duster on the mine i went and i i didn't want to touch this i still got it we found all the projects we have to finish we're getting ready to bring our slant race car over to the shop to get working on that again but but i was like no oh all of a sudden i'm a duster fanatic again so i i ordered the paint for it i started working on some of the dents that are on the thing i got to get it in paint i got to make this thing pretty i even did something that in 40 something years of screwing around with these cars i have never once done this is the first for me i put this thing on i put one of those on i don't even know what the damn thing does you gotta love these cars i'm gonna drive around some more i'll see you tomorrow

Channel: Uncle Tony's Garage

Views: 103,928

Rating: 4.9104476 out of 5

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Id: _gkJ-6XWQTo

Length: 17min 14sec (1034 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 10 2020