babs68

I've been meaning to post in the newbie section for months now, but with work and other priorities it took some vacation time and some garage time to post this.

This car is a tribute car for my brother who passed away before he could finish it. He loved his Oldsmobiles, he had a 69 hardtop and a 68 Convertible both of which my dad stored and takes care of. The shop that was suppose to finish—the car—I found out to be very shady. I won't go into it, but I got the car back and whatever parts that were there and decided to finish it myself. Before he passed the body work was done by the both of us and he had all mechanical and engine work done by the shop.

Upon looking at everything it looks like my brother put a Bowtie Overdrive 2004r and rebuilt the original engine. Though the shop said they "Lost all paperwork and receipts". They converted the front drums to disc and neglected to work on the rear drums. Apparently they lost the drive shaft as well.

I am slowly putting the car together with whatever free time I have and I hope to have this at least running by the fall.

I will at some point need a mechanic that I can trust in the Sacramento area to break this engine in.

It has been over 15 years since the last car that I restored and that was a VW, these Olds are a bit different.


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Below are shots of the engine and I am not too sure what they did with it, but it does turn and it looked clean when I took the valve covers off. The only thing that worries me is what the shop may have done to it when it was just sitting there for months.

I'm pretty sure they outsourced the engine rebuild.

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oldcutlass

Welcome to the site, nice project. Sorry about your brother. If you have any mechanical ability you can break in that engine. Post a parts wanted list, there are members here that may be able to help.

babs68

Thanks Eric, I have been looking at the parts for sale ads for a few months now and picking things up here and there.

The most difficult part of trying to finish this project is the space that I have. It is housed in a one car garage and I have about a foot or so of space on each side. I can work on the front end, but when it comes to working on installing any parking brake stuff or even getting the trim on is a challenge. Oh how I miss having a two car garage.

The electrical will be tricky and also trying to fire up a rebuilt engine for the first time will be fun. I've never actually have gone through the process of rebuilding an engine and updating all the dressings and hope they all work and fire up.

We'll see how this goes.

oldcutlass

Start a build thread and as you come across each little project ask if you get stuck. There are plenty here that will guide you along the way. Heres a good read:
https://classicoldsmobile.com/forums...ing-motor.html