1972 Plymouth Duster from North America - Comments

Occasionally a resistor, and not much more. Inside the front seat and dashpad cracked, but most dusters do.

This car is still great, having been a 225 until 1983 and then upgraded to a 318 which came from a 72 duster. Now it has a cracked passenger side manifold which I'll fix this summer.

Thank you I love this car!!

I also had a 72 Duster with Slant 6. Sold it at 93,000 miles. Sure wish I still had it now. It was such an easy car to work on.

Mine was a weird one with a power steering pump that was over sized for it. You could steer it with just one fingertip on the steering wheel.

I asked an automotive engineer about it and he said what had probably happened was the factory had run out of the correct sized power steering pump, but everything GM made was interchangeable, so a substitution had been made to keep the assembly line flowing. He guessed maybe only a few hundred had been made that way. He also said those kinds of substitutions are never done anymore in the modern age of computer tracked inventory.

The other quirk about my Duster was the speedometer read about 10 mph faster than actual, so you always felt like you were going faster than you really were. I never realized it until I got a two year 85 Olds Cutlass with a correct speedometer and found my commutes were faster. I don't know if it came from the factory that way or my Dad had figured a way to rig it so it would encourage me to be slower.

What got me thinking was the comment on the resistor. I learned to always carry a spare ballast resistor since it needed one every few years. I can't really even remember why, but vaguely I think it wouldn't start otherwise? Don't know. Maybe someone can remind me because I suspect this might keep me awake like trying to remember the words to a song I used to really like.

RE the above comment: you had one of the rare GM built Dusters? Everybody else's was made by Chrysler.

I love these old Mopars! My '64 Dodge had a Slant 6, and my family had several Volare station wagons with the Slant 6. A friend of mine bought a '73 Duster from a farmer and had to pull it out of the mud ruts in the barnyard where it had sat for years. The Slant 6 fired right up and he drove it out, and the 3-speed manual was still tight like a new car. It's fun to see them on the road!

To 13:06.

Oops. Yes of course it was a Chrysler. Guess the old memory banks are not working so good about the GM thing. Since writing my comment I have also remembered I didn't have the Duster. My sister four years older had the 73 Duster. It was black. I had the brown 72 Dodge Dart. Hers was totaled when she drifted into a median at highway speed and wiped out the front. She was okay though.

I think the Duster and Dart were basically the same car, and also the Swinger? Oh I think that is what I had, a Dodge Dart Swinger. This is embarrassing how poor my memory is getting on this. Probably I would remember better if I had been involved in the purchase, but I got it as a hand me down from the sister 8 years older. Please correct me if I am stating something impossible about the car models as I wouldn't mind getting straighted out.

The other funny thing about the steering was eventually the power steering hoses started looking cracked, so I replaced them. Dad warned me if any dirt got into the system, some little dust spec would get stuck in a valve and the steering would be really crummy, so I did my best to clean all the dirt out from around the hoses before making the swap. But I apparently missed some tiny bit of dirt, or a bit a hose flaked off. After making the swap, the car was normal turning left, or going straight. But if you gave the steering wheel a little jerk to turn right, the wheel would slowly turn all the way to the right. I was really fun to drive that way. From a stop, you could give the wheel a little jerk to the right, take your fingers off the wheel, give it some gas and the wheel turned at just the right rate to make a nice turn. Then turn the wheel back to center and off you. I'm sure I'll never have a car like that again.