jdullen

Hey everyone,

I am new to the list here and considering restoring a 1967 Olds Delta 88 Holiday Coupe (I think) that a relative currently has. It has been sitting for 20 years and will need a decent amount of work, but the price is right...FREE! It will become my hobby...

Anyhow, I was wondering if anyone can tell me what all of the items on the cowl tag mean. I have found some looking through the forums, but not all. Here are the codes. Any help would be appreciated.

06E
67 35887 BL 4017BODY
363 DDPAINT
C60 U80

I have to really look it over good to see how much is required and if it is worth it. If anyone has any thoughts on what to look for/check out, that is also welcome. Thanks.

Jim

wmachine

Free is good!
06E Built 5th week of June 1967
67 35887 1967 Delta 88 Hardtop Coupe
BL 4017 Linden NJ plant, body sequence number
363 (don't have interior codes handy)
DD Crystal Blue color
C60 Air Conditioning
U80 Rear seat speaker

Presuming it has an automatic trans, it would come with a 425 engine with a 2 bbl, or one of 2 4-bbl versions.
A nice car, regardless.

getnolds

i got two 67 deltas for sale call me 847=276-9737 matt

jaunty75

I have a '67 Delta 88 convertible. It has a 2-bbl carb on the 425. I've had it since June of '09. Photos are here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/10794548...eat=directlink

Depending on what it is, I might be able to help you out on parts availability. Not that I have any extra parts myself, but rather what I've been able to find.

My first, sort of loaded, question would be, does the gas gauge work?

Theo's '67

I also have a 67 delta 88 convertible and no my gas gauge does not work?? lol

jaunty75

Mine didn't either. Have you tried to fix yours? Interested to know what I did about it? The design of the sending unit, clever as it was, was practically guaranteed to fail sooner rather than later.

Jaybird

Hi jdullen: Welcome to the site! Parts for these cars are available. Some are getting harder to find. The members of this site can help you to restore your car or sell the parts from it. Jim post lots of pictures for us, as soon as you are able!

jaunty75: I have a 67 Delta 88 and my gas gauge works. I removed the gas gauge from my parts car and took a look at the rusty thing and I believe that it does not work. I wonder if it could be saved? I bet not.

Jaybird

jaunty75

I tried to save the one on my car. I disassembled and cleaned it and thought I had the float sliding up and down the shaft ok, but when I put it back in the car, it got stuck again fairly quickly. The one bad thing about sending units is that you can't easily test them outside the car. I suppose you could do it by dipping it into a large bucket or maybe sink full of water, but I didnt' want to get it wet. I supposed I could have filled a bucket with gasoline and tried dipping it in that. Maybe next time.

I've seen NOS ones for these cars on ebay for $300 with claims that I, of course, need this to make sure my car really is 100% original.

Nope.

No one sees the inside of the gas tank, and no one checks the sending unit when it's judged at a car show, not even at the OCA Nationals. I'll use the $70 brand new one from Rockauto that's made to fit early '70s big GM cars and works just fine on my '67.

Theo's '67

I have not tried to fix yet but yes i would like to know what you did....

jaunty75

The short answer is, if you are going to lower the gas tank, don't bother with trying to fix the old sending unit. Buy this one from Rockauto instead:



It's part number FG106A, it's what fits a '72 Delta 88 (and probably other early '70s Deltas, 98s, etc.), and it costs $60, plus shipping. I've not looked into it, but I'm guessing this is less, perhaps way less, than what you would pay to get the original sending unit on your car rebuilt.

It's a drop-in replacement for the unit on your car, and it's what I put into my car after trying to fix the original, having it not work, and having to drop the tank a second time. The only difference is that it has a second, smaller pipe for the fuel vapor return, which is something that wasn't present on the '67s, so you just cap it off. I used a vacuum line cap that fit that size tube plus a hose clamp.



Here's what the sending unit on your car looks like. The first photo is as it comes out of the car. The second shows it disassembled with the bottom part not shown. Actually, the first photo is not completely correct because it's missing the sock filter that attaches to the inlet pipe at the bottom of the can.






The second photo shows how the thing works. It's a clever design as far as damping fluctuations in the gauge reading because the float is contained completely inside the tin can, and the can is closed up at the top and bottom.

The only way fuel can get into the float area is through those little tiny holes you see punched in about every inch or so on a diagonal up the side of the can. Because they're so small, fuel goes in and out of the can very slowly, so the float level changes very slowly. Thus, short-term fluctuations in the liquid level in the tank don't affect the gas gauge needle, and you don't see it waving at you as you go around corners, up and down hills, or come to a stop and start up again.

But you can also see from this design how problems can crop up. The float, which is the black thing that looks like a hockey puck, rides up and down on the shaft inside the can, which fits very snugly around it. If the shaft gets dirty or worn at all, if the contacts on the inside of the float wear out or get rough, or if the walls of the can get dirty over time, the float can get stuck. That's what happened in my car.

I took it all apart and cleaned it up, and I thought I had the float moving freely inside the can, but when I put it all back in the car and put gas in the tank, the gauge would not go above about 3/8, and wouldn't move at all after a while. Talk about annoying. So I decided that, if I was going to go through the trouble of dropping the tank again, I wasn't going to mess around any more with the old unit. Another person here on CO had found that the sending unit for a '72 Buick LeSabre, which turns out to be the same unit as for a '72 Delta 88 and probably other big GM cars of that vintage, and for which replacements are available new, was a drop-in replacement, so I went with that.

The one other problem with using the old sending unit was replacing the sock filter that goes over the bottom of the intake pipe. The one on mine was dirty and torn, so it could not be reused, and replacements are not available. I took the old one to a parts store along with the sending unit and asked them to look through their books to see if they could find something that would substitute. They came up with something close (I forget what year and make--for some reason late '70s Pontiac comes to mind), but I still had to drill out the part that fits over the pipe and then epoxy it in place. When I removed the sending unit the second time, which was about six months after I had put the cleaned-up original unit back in, this whole shebang had fallen off in spite of my best efforts. It was another reason that I decided not to fool any more with the old unit but rather find something new that would work.