New member 78 Delta 88 Royale

[Dutch]

Hi everyone! This is the board I've been looking for. My son and I have been working on what is now his first car (he turned 16 last spring).

I have been working on old cars and motorcycles for over 30 years myself. When the opportunity to get my father-in-law's old 1978 Delta 88 Royale four door to tinker with, we didn't pass it up.

The car has 91,000 original miles on it and was inside most of its life. Michigan road salt had started to take it's toll around the edges, though.

After the car had been just sitting for several years we tackled it.

I told my son, "First we'll make it stop, then we'll make it go, then we'll worry about appearance."

The brakes were completely shot. I mean everything.... Every hard line, rubber hose, caliper, wheel cylinder, e-brake cables, etc. was replaced. Also on the safety list was 4 new tires. This after the tread separated from the tire carcass going down the road. The tire really showed no sign of being bad, but age had gotten the best of it.

Once we got past the brakes we worked on the 350 4bbl R code motor. It really needed very little. New cap, rotor, plugs and wires and a carb rebuild and then some tuning and that was set. We had a local guy bend a dual exhaust system for it with turbo mufflers (reverse flow). It has a pleasant exhaust tone, but not obnoxious.

He has been driving it as a good running, good stopping, good sounding, but kinda ugly car for several months. Over the last few weeks, we tackled the body.

We used a cutoff wheel to cut out the cancer along door bottoms and wheel arches (the only real rust out and it really wasn't THAT much). Then using cardboard patterns we cut out new metal to patch in the spots we cleaned out. I have a mig welder (notice I didn't say I AM a mig welder ) that I did my best with to install the new metal. I was actually surprised, given my lack of talent, how forgiving the mig was. We finished off with just a very little bit of filler and then sanded everything down.

The car had an UGLY worn vinyl top (Green metallic body with a green top). We really wanted to take the top off but we were afraid of what we might find under there. We were thinking of painting the car satin black anyway, so we decided to try something to use the existing top. We coated it with three coats of Dupli-color Spray on Truck Bed Lining. While I don't suggest this for a car you have aspirations of winning a car show with , it covered pretty well and will hopefully at least seal the top somewhat until some time in the future when we may attempt removal.

I was having trouble locating the satin black paint I wanted to use to do the car. I wanted to get him better, more even coverage than just spray bombing usually achieves, but I got a lot of "deer in the headlight" looks from automotive paint counter guys when I said I wanted a gallon of satin black.

Frustrated, I went back to the computer for some Googling. I found a rodders board that had a thread about using a John Deere paint called "Blitz Black". The more I read, the more I liked what I was reading, so I figured we'd give it a try. It is a two part paint (with a hardener/catalyst) so I reasoned it would hold up better than most cheap paint. This stuff was only $27/gal and the hardener was $37 for enough to mix up that gallon of paint.

It mixed easily, sprayed on nice and was a breeze to use. The only thing I did was use a PPG MR188 slow drying reducer instead of the reducer available from John Deere. One of the complaints I had seen about the JD stuff was that it dried very quickly and resulted in some "striping" because the finish didn't flow out enough for the strokes to blend well. We just used my old trusty siphon feed spray gun @ 50 psi (HVLP?? we don't need no steenkin' HVLP! ). The finish was just what we were after. Not just a plain old flat finish, but no high gloss either.

We're still finishing up getting the trim all back on. We made one decent rear bumper out of two. The one on the car had a couple bad pieces, but I was lucky enough to find another bumper that wasn't great, but the pieces that were bad on ours were good on this one.

The interior was in great shape (the same green color in velour).

To go with our "kustom" theme (I know, as "kustom" as a 4 door late 70's 88 can be...) we painted the wheels the original metallic green that the body was originally painted to give some contrast to the black, but try to tie in the interior. We snagged some Olds "rocket" dog dish hub caps to replace the original full covers.

I need to get a decent picture to post up and show you what we have....

[Dutch]

I am attempting to add a couple pictures... wish me luck!

Here's a few pictures of sanding, masking and the results. This one probably won't show up in any Classic Olds coffee table books, but we like it!

Some may look at the grille and say, "Hey that's a 79, not a 78..." Well, the car's a 78, the header and grill came off a 79 in a junkyard to replace the cracked original header panel.

[Oldsguy]

Very nice! I owned a '78 Delta 88 once and my wife still says it was the nicest driving car we ever owned! You did good!

[lee of bass]

I have 78 delta88 2dr royale,you did some good bodywork I have light rust around the front wheel well and under the chrome on the bottom of the door.I'm in michigan I need new floor pans also.Do u do bodywork 4 pay? If so I could send u photos 4 a quote.

[J-(Chicago)]

lee, if you're ever down this way let me know.
There's a 79 2 door about 15 miles from me in the junkyard.
Good parts left on it.

[cts-v]

Nice work. I had a 77 Delta 88 back when I turned 16. Good first car, and great father / son project. I'm hoping my son is going to want to do that in about 11 years (he's only 4 right now).

[ent72olds]

Lookin' cool! I think you have a good theme started there. Hey what's up with the '69 Cutlass? Looks like somewhere in Queens(Astoria) maybe!