Very cool car !!!!

Looks really nice. Good to see you out in it getting some seat time.

Andy I would be very proud of that car. Sits right, looks right, engine/drivetrain etc. are darn near perfect. I would take that car over a pro touring thing any day.

Thanks. It is a fun car to drive. It goes straight, handles pretty well, stops really well and goes hard when you get on it. It is noisy inside due to all of the bare tin but I think I could solve that by having an upholstery shop install some carpet. I do have a few things I'd like to improve on it such as putting a larger fuel cell in it and replacing the floor in the trunk. I'll also need to change the gears at some point since the 4.56 gears are just too steep for this engine. I think 4.10 gears would be better but I might need to drop down to the 3.90 range. I need to get more miles on the car before I'll know for sure. Here is another picture I snapped. Working on my car photography skills......

Andy did you have trouble with the Wenger PCV or was it a stock type valve? I have a Wenger valve in my 493 and it's worth the money IMO.
That Duster looks amazing and those 4.56 gears must be really snappy off idle

Gus

Awesome build as always Andy. Your books and posts are a huge help.

Nice CAR ! !
I love the EFI and Big Block in that A body !!!!!

I took the car over to the local alignment shop to have my home brew alignment double checked. The manager of the shop came out to look at the car and he said "what is that? I mean, I know what it is, but what is it?" He was confused by the coil packs and EFI on a big block in a Duster. Not to mention the Viper brakes and digital dash. He walked around the car a few times, stared at it and tried to process it all. Guess they don't see very many cars like this pull in for an alignment job.

Dare to be different

very nice car and pics andy ! i have always admired your work.
as gus mentioned, have you tried that adjustable [and rebuildable] PVC valve ?
i have two of them for my two projects [bought when we had a group buy] , but i haven't tried them because the engines going in them are no ways near built.
if you had a stock PVC valve, the adjustable one may be something to try. on the other hand, if indeed you DID have the adjustable one, and it was giving you problems, why do you suppose it didn't work with your EFI ?

If the Tech can't figure out how to operate the shifter, can't figure out how to take it on a test drive it or pull it in on the alignment rack, I usually take that as a sign I built a really good car.

People don't always know what to think when they see the modern stuff on an old school powerplant.

Yeah I took the Duster to a local auto shop that I use for my daily drivers and asked them to do a full safety inspection. They went over the whole car checking nuts and bolts and looking for leaks and stuff like that. They also did a test drive. I asked the owner how the test drive went and he said the car seemed really peppy! I asked him if he figured out the shifter and he said he just left it in drive. I told him that it was a full manual automatic so he was just driving around in third the whole time. He said it drove just fine. Which is actually true. With 600 ft-lbs of torque, 3150 lbs and 4.56 gears out back it does drive just fine in 3rd. It doesn't really need a transmission for driving around town, just leave it in 3rd all the time.

Summit has Koni shocks on sale so I picked up a pair for the front. I was running Calvert drag shocks up front. The Koni shocks make the car more stable on the street and they do a better job of soaking up little bumps in the road. I'm sure they'll slow the car down a bit at the track but I'd rather have something that is stable on the street than super fast at the track. Not sure why I put the drag shocks in the car in the first place, guess I had them sitting on the shelf so I figured I'd use them. Doesn't seem like a good choice now that I think about it.

One of the stocker tricks was to loosen the top nut on the shock shaft and run it that way at the track after going through tech with it install like stock
You may want to try that at the track to see if your car will like it or not

What are the part #s for those shocks? Summit's search doesn't come up with anything for old Mopars. Thanks!

Koni 80-1538 is the front shock for A,B and E body cars. If you search for a '70 Cuda the number will come up but if you search for a 1965 Dodge Coronet it won't find anything. I like the Koni shocks since they are adjustable. You just collapse them and then turn them a little bit and the shock will drop into adjustable mode and then you can make them firm or soft. I usually set them up on the firm side of the middle of the range.

Thanks Andy, I was looking for A-bodies and got nothin'.

That is because Koni doesn't know what an A body is. If you look in a Koni master catalog they only have listings for B and E body cars. Evidently the engineers who work for Koni aren't even aware of Mopar A body cars. But the shocks fit just fine.

I decided to pull out the 4.56 gears and swap in a set of 4.10 gears. Also decided to pull the fuel cell out of the trunk and build a custom 20 gallon tank to fit in the kick up area between the wheel tubs. Both projects are underway but neither one is proving to be easy! I was able to pull the Dana 60 apart but putting it back together requires some tools I don't have so I'm waiting for those. Doctor Diff set me up with the new gears as well as an install kit and a bunch of advice. I've also been following the FSM as well as this document from the Strange Engr website: https://www.strangeengineering.net/dana-60-gear-installation/

The FSM is useful but not spot on since the Strange S60 has side adjusters and some other little details that are different. Besides, the FSM approach is super complicated with expensive checking tools for pinion depth and such. Everyone I've talked says to just bolt it together, check the pattern and go from there.

The fuel cell project has been interesting. I think I've figured out how to solve the various issues I had with the cheap off the shelf fuel cell. I did a bunch of research into fuel cells and came to the conclusion that to run an EFI system on the street I needed a custom tank. I wasn't confident enough in my design knowledge to draw up a tank and have it built so I decided to work with a local chassis shop to customize an existing tank. We're adding a sump, replacing all of the mounts and brackets, redesigning the vent system and the filler tube. I'll snap some pictures once I start getting parts in hand.