Guess the Engine: 1974 Plymouth Duster
The Plymouth Valiant was a very successful compact car. But it lacked pizzazz following the redesign of 1967. Enter the Duster in 1970, a fastback version of the automobile that was all-new except for the front clip. It sold extremely well against the Chevy Nova and Ford Maverick of the 1970s, having a record year in 1974 when the seller’s automobile was built. Wearing “Gold Duster” trim, this project advertises two different engines yet has a third under the hood. Located in Pompano Beach, Florida, this Mopar is available here on eBay where the latest bid is $3,939.
Between 1970 and 1976, Plymouth sold more than 1.3 million of the sporty Duster fastbacks. The lion’s share came equipped with a Slant-Six engine (198 or 225 cubic inches), but the 318, 340, and 360 V8s were also built in respectable numbers. Thanks to the OPEC oil embargo of 1973, more than 281,000 of the vehicles left the showroom in 1974. But this car is something of a mystery now. How, you say? Well, the striping on the side of the car indicates it’s a Duster 340, but that engine was not available after 1973. The seller says the engine is a 318, but the air cleaner says 440 and the engine is the wrong color for the year (shouldn’t it be blue?). So how this car left the factory is a bit of a quandry.
What we have here is a ’74 Duster with a 3-speed manual transmission (floor-mounted shifter). The seller was planning to swap that tranny for a 4-speed but no longer has time to work on the car. It’s said to run and drive nicely and has many new or newer parts, including the dual exhaust, alternator, water pump, aluminum radiator, and a conversion to a 4-barrel carburetor.
The body is mostly okay but there is damage by the driver’s side pillar at the windshield where the chrome molding was removed. Rust is said to be at a minimum, though the chassis is crusty, but the Gold Duster paint is quite faded after nearly 50 years (if original). The interior may be where the most attention is needed as the seat covers in the front are worn out and the door panels and carpeting look to need attention, too. BTW, if you wanted to turn this into a Duster 340, the seller has a spare engine to sell (along with a 440 if you really wanted to go wild).
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Comments
Guy across the highway built a 440 Duster. Had to be ’70-’71. I saw him lay down twin strips of rubber behind those fat tires on the Duster. It looked liked someone had followed him down the street with 14-inch rollers drenched with black paint. He even had custom 440 decals on the back. Cool car.
I am pretty sure all you have to do for a 440 is notch the k fram for clearance for the external oil pump the gentle massage of the shock Tower is for hemi swap. I would want to build my motor and because of my first car I’m bias to the 383 seems it’s a lower deck and would be easier to get headers on. There’s also the fact that I have one out of a 70 Chrysler Newport that helps make the decision and my 413 is out of a motorhome and makes sense to go in my wife Trail Duster.
The tortion bar’s definitely have to be replaced for a big lock!!
you also lose power steering going big block in the a-body.
once it’s jammed in that hole there is so little room for exhaust, the the big block gets strangled.
better to find a small block for it.
It’s definitely not a big block as the distributor would be up front. It is possibly a 340 or painted 318, or 360? The paint looks good though! I like the 440 dual snorkel air cleaner, as it also came on the 340!
My numbers matching ’73 340 Duster had a single snorkel…
I think it’s an older LA318 swap. They may have came from the factory in that color as the A 318s did (the Poly 318) in 66. Makes sense that in 67, when the LA replaced it, they may have used the same paint on it til it ran out. That also somewhat makes sense because the 340 wasn’t even available any more yet it has the decals for it plastered all over the car.
Probably started life as an in-line 6, got the transplant and decals, added 4bbl with the big air cleaner and just turned into this Frankenduster thing.
The Florida locale can be both good and bad. The good is no snow or road salt, but the bad is heat, high humidity and salt air near the coast. The condition of the carpets concerns me, since it may suggest that the floor pans have issues, particularly if the car was routinely driven on the beach. Determining the provenance of the engine and transmission with respect to the car’s originality should be a relatively trivial exercise, particularly if the build sheet is still intact and still with the car or retained by the owner. Load all the excess parts into the trunk and sort it all out when you get home later.
P.S. Originality be damned, I’d swap out that three-speed gearbox for either a four-speed, or if the budget allows, an aftermarket five-speed box.
My first car was a 74 Scamp with a 318 in 1979 so this is very interesting. I wanted to hop that up but mom and dad said no way and as a 16 year old kid, money was a glitch. Now with kids out of college, this could a great project. 440….4 speed….410 gears in an 8 3/4″ or Dana 60….maybe a tunnel ram… Show those Hellcats how we used to make power.
https://www.forabodiesonly.com/mopar/showcase/rons-1970-340-4-speed-duster.10399/#sc-comment-8222
Try that again.
Converted to a four-barrel…means it started life as a 318. Almost worth the trouble to restore.
i know it has to be small block of anything from a 318 to a 360 because the distributor is in the back and all big blocks they are in the front.
It has some rot holes in real odd places. Is that normal for a Duster/Demon?
Yes, and not only the Duster/Demon, but their completion from Ford (Maverick) and GM (X-Body, Nova, et al.) as well. ALL Detroit iron of this period were subject to attack from the dreaded “tin worm”, as rust proofing was non-existent, and two-sided galvanized steel was another ten (10) to twenty (20) years in the future. Ten year old examples of these cars, often with more holes in them than an entire wheel of Swiss cheese and covered in rattle can gray primer, filled high school and college parking lots all over America, mine included! They were cheap to buy and run, and as long as the rust didn’t keep it from passing a state safety inspection, they would run practically forever with minimal maintenance. The rule of thumb back in the Malaise Era was anything that ran was worth $100.
The old dreaded radiator replacement They could at least paint it black
Its no real mystery , a lot can change in a 50 year old car . Its been repainted ( badly and in a horrid color) , it has replacement stripes put on it along with a Dodge style scoop. At some point another 318 was put in and painted chevy orange and the air cleaner is off a big block car.. The car was originally red, but was repainted white before the flat tan .The dash has been painted brown ,the door panels look like carboard painted black and the seats and steering column are gold, which may be original as the seller states it was a “Gold Duster” and most had the goldish color interior. The issue there is Gold Dusters would have had things like carpeting, power steering and an automatic transmission. The seller does not supply the vin, but I’d be willing to bet this was a just a plain jane slant six car , that’s been monkey’d with into this mess.
This is pretty much exactly what I said in a different comment chain 👌 Though I did think that maybe it’s a 67 LA. Makes sense that they may have painted some of those orange with the leftover paint from the A series 318 (the polys) they discontinued after 66 (67 in Canada) I don’t know enough to know if they did that it if they were all blue starting in 67 though.
No, the poly engines and the early LA engines, along with the 225 slant sixes, were all painted the same red — a true red, not a reddish orange like Chrysler’s HP/Hemi Orange or Chevy Orange — through the 1968 model year. The engine in this car is not Chrysler Red. It has most likely been sprayed with Chevy Orange, as it doesn’t match the air cleaner, which IS painted in the orange used on street hemis and other high performance engines into the ’71 model year. Long story short, the color of whatever that mill is that’s currently under the hood, its color tells us nothing about what it really is.
For reference, the Corporate Blue engine era at Chrysler started early in the 1969 model year (some early ’69 engines were painted in ’68 colors), and the HP/Hemi Orange engine scheme ended as a running change during the ’71 model year, replaced with Corporate Blue engines with HP/Hemi Orange air cleaner assemblies, like the one that was appropriated for duty on this Frankenduster.
That’s just about what I paid for my 74 Gold Duster brand new. I think this unit is way overpriced for the condition that it’s in.