Your name & where you are from?     

Your name & where you are from?  

Trent Garner.  I'm in Fayetteville, AR.             

What is the year, make & model of your car?

1970 Plymouth Valiant Duster

When did you get your car & from where?

I got it in 2001 from a friend in Lincoln, AR.

When you bought it was it complete?

IIt was a complete car, although it was rather rough in places and needed a tune-up really bad.  It was running (barely) and driveable.

What was under the hood when you bought it? 

IIt came with a 340ci engine, a Holley 750 dbbl pumper and a Victor 340 intake, and it ran pretty strong, even with a low-compression cylinder!  With a good tune-up, it ran low 14s at the strip, not bad.

What have you changed about your car?  

Greg and I built up a 340 short-block he bought from a local machine shop into a racing engine, and added a different 727 trans built for racing by a friend of my dad's in our hometown.

We restored the exterior of the car and had the body painted inside and out.  We had to replace one of the rear quarter panels and the entire trunk pan.

The car is painted Sunfire Orange (a 1970 Mopar color) with a satin black hood.

New (to me) wheels and BFG tires.  We also upgraded the car from small- bolt pattern to big-bolt pattern and upgraded the front disc brakes to bigger rotors and single-piston calipers.  The car originally had front disc brakes from the factory, with a small 10.5" rotor and four-piston calipers that were a headache to maintain and rebuild.

Was this your first project car?

Yes

Why a Mopar?

I have always appreciated Mopar Muscle cars, although I can appreciate just about any kind of hotrod, really.  When the opportunity came for me, it happened to be a 1970 Duster.  Guess I'm just lucky that way.

What’s the best thing about your car?

Greg and I have done most of the work on the car, from the restoration to building the engine and transmission ourselves.  But, we also had help along the way from many good people, and I want to say thank you to all of them!

Is there a funny, sentimental story about your car?

I knew about this car for ten years before I finally got my hands on it.  My buddy let me drive it early on in those ten years, and I was impressed.  He tried to sell it over the years, but nobody wanted the car back then, except me. However, I didn't have the $4500 he was asking for the car at the time. 

As the years rolled along, the car was stored in Lincoln in a chickenhouse most of the time, and I didn't get to see it much, but I knew it was still there.  I finally got my chance one day when my buddy started talking about wanting a 4- wheeler to go riding around on dirt roads.  I had a good 4- wheeler and jokingly offered to trade him straight across for the Duster... and to my surprise he said yes!!  The value of the 4-wheeler at the time was about $3000.  we signed the titles over to each other, and wham!  I now had my hotrod, woohoo!

As a nice aside, he also had the numbers matching engine and tranny sitting on wooden pallets in the same chicken house, which I didn't even know about.  I bought those from him for $1000, and have both stored safely away while I drive the crap out of a different drivetrain.  Someday I plan to restore/rebuild the original engine, even if I don't put it back in the car anytime soon.  The matching trans is already rebuilt and race-ready.