1987 Plymouth Horizon Duster

 Well, it all started back in 1997 when I bought my own car at the age of 17. A 1986 Dodge Charger. Parked behind a friends house after losing a rocker, I offered him $400 for it. The deal went through and soon enough I was tearing it apart at home. The car wasn't much of anything, pretty rusty, suspension was shot, brakes shot. Click here to see it. Other than the looks, I loved that car. It was lightweight, good on gas, and it was simple to fix. After I broke 2 axles (junkyard pieces) I bought my neighbors 1992 Daytona. First thing I noticed with the daytona was the huge difference in handling. Even though I had a much faster car, I still loved the Charger.

 So, in 2005, I noticed my neighbor replacing a headgasket on what looked like a charger. I didn't pay too much attention to it other than noticing the lack of rust on it. (rare!) In 2006, I was talking to the owner over a beer on our connected deck and got talking about it. He told me the car didn't run very good and wouldnt start in the winter. I asked if he was planing on getting rid of it and he said "yup, gotta get another GMC". This was my chance. He didnt know anything about these cars and wanted to get rid of it. Out of the blue he sais "you can have it for a buck, just give me the battery". WOW! I jumped on it and here we are. I pondered the idea of what I would do with it. My first plan was to fix it and sell it. After a few months of staring at it, I decided I couldnt get rid of it because it was in such good shape! Soon after fixing the daily driver Stratus, I parked the Duster in the garage and started planing. My brother at the time was doing his 16v hybrid and decided against using his Holset HX35 turbo. So I was hangin around the garage and pondered how it would look in the duster.

This was the result...

 Two possible placements. I thought to myself, these two were meant to be together... It was on. Soon I started riping it apart to do a complete restoration of the car. I was planning at first I would restore it to keep forever, but soon realized its near impossible to find replacement sheet metal for it. So I ended up deciding that once the powertrain starts weakening the "frame rails" I would retire the car and move on to my 1987 Turbo Z instead. I first started by pulling the original engine (which worked fairly good still) and transmision. Next was all the suspension, wiring and hardlines. Once all this was removed I had a really good idea of how big my the job was going to be. There wasn't too much rust, nothing that couldnt be fixed by cutting and blasting.