Just to get a starting point I put the car up on the scales. Obviously the car isn't complete so I added weight to estimate where I'd end up. I put a battery in the trunk as well as the fuel pumps and then added 35 lbs of ballast for the fuel. I put weight in the driver seat for a driver and I put the starter, water pump and stuff like that in a box on the front fender. The radiator is in place but it is dry. The car is missing a driveshaft and the torque convertor so I'm light there.

Anyway it comes out to 2800 lbs as is so I'm thinking I should be able to go down the track at less than 3000 lbs. I need to add wiring and plumbing and a front windshield so I know I'm light, but I don't think I'm more than 200 lbs light.

Interesting thing was the weight distribution. Looks almost perfectly square front to back and side to side. I'll keep an eye on the corner weights as I build the car. Love to see it go down the track with a 50/50 weight distribution. That should help it hook......

An honest 700 HP @ 3,000#
You may as well put the 10 point in and get it over with....

Yep your gonna have to slow that down by around .5 sec to get into the 10's

Looks like a fun project!!

After reading comments about downsizing and losing the shop over the last couple months, it's good to know what you were talking about. Really sounds like a sticky situation and I hope it comes out in your favor!

Just like mine, 10.80s no quicker. Cut out the halo and front down bars. Do you have X side bars? I tied the front frame bar into those. If tens are doable then the down bars can always be put in rather easily. Can you really tell the difference between a 10.20 and a 9.70? Keep it slow and fun to get in and out of, no net, no cert.

Yeah but I'm sure the 727 and Dana 60 are going to suck up a bunch of power and the 700 hp was with cold air for the carb and dyno headers dumping into a very low restriction muffler system.

I also plan on driving the car to the track so that means street legal rear tires and the front suspension has to be up in the air a bit more than a pure drag car.

But yeah, if it ends up around 3000 lbs wet with driver even 600 hp will push it right to the 10.00 line. The car has 4.56 gears with 345/55-15 tires so it will go thru the lights at around 135 mph at 7000 rpm. Should be a fun ride if it all works out. We dyno tested the engine to 7000 rpm so it will pull it. The peak power was around 6800 rpm so it should pull to the stripe. Guess some of it depends on how good the converter is. I don't know much about torque converter so I'll have to study up on them.

Please tell me the overhead crane is staying!

Time to move farther out of town I guess.

The duster looks nice, I like white.

Sorry to hear you are losing space your shop always impressed me in various pictures over the years.

I'm thinking the duster needs a stick!

It is a manual shift car with the manual shift pedals. I suppose I could pull the Doug Nash out of my Coronet and put it in the Duster!

The Doug Nash is kind of a crude tranny for a street car anyway. But I think that is way more work that I'm interested in. I'll just swap out the 4 speed pedal box for an auto pedal box and be done with it. Besides, if I put the Doug Nash in the Duster I'm sure I'd be busting parts right and left.

A Lenco would be cool but not really in scope.

I have a brand new ST1200 4-speed here for my black Charger...bucket list material for sure.

Something about an appliance white, big tire, 4-speed street-strip Duster speaks to me.

Why do you say the Nash is crude for a street trans? Straight cut gears?

Very cool Duster Andy...just sold mine last month, but I am in the works
right now to possibly get another one (72) this time!

Youll get the fever for a lenco after watching steve clukey's duster on youtube. Its a ladder bar car with mostly stock suspension except the chassis engineering shocks. Runs a n/a sb thats close to 800hp now. Car has been in the 8's. Check it out.

You just can't go wrong with a Duster.

Sounds like every project car I've ever owned!!

One thing to remember about a roll bar vs roll cage is tubing diameter. With a 6 pt bar the bars (atleast the main hoop) is required to be larger in diameter than if you have a entire cage. I forget the actual tubing size, but if the cage was a kit for a 10 pt cage than cutting out the bars may not make the 6 pt portion legal.

I was thinking that too, 1 3/4 min OD for roll bar tubing, 1 5/8 for cages, so if the cage is 1 5/8, it will not be legal as a 6 point.

Real nice lookin Duster Andy, very cool.

Keep us updated with your progress (y)

my best friend always says : "our hourglass is quickly running out of sand....." how true, how true. then, he goes on to distract me from my projects to his ! but that's what friends are for, right ?

Might be wrong, don't have rule book in hand right now. Mild steel 1-5/8 x.120 dom, CM .083 x 1-5/8, welded seam type 1-3/4 x .134 wall. Side bars, if X, then 1-1/2 x .065, if single, same as hoop, seat bar 1/14 x .065

As far as I can tell if you have a 5 point (or 6 point) roll bar then the main hoop needs to be 1 3/4. That is good to 10.00.

The 8 point cage can be 1 5/8 mtl and is required if you get into the 9's.

The main hoop on this cage is 1 5/8 so I think I'm just going to cut the whole thing out and start over.

Any recommendations for a roll bar kit? I see that Jeg's has them, Art Morrison, Comp Engineering, etc. From what I can tell all of the kits are really crude with no fishmouthing on the tubes or anything like that. It is basically just a bunch of straight tubes in a box plus the main hoop. The rest is DIY.