what a trip it was. started at 1:00 AM Saturday. went to Indianapolis to catch a plane at 5:30AM. Scott picked me up from the Raleigh NC airport. went to his house and drove the car and all the dealing. he done a grate job cleaning and painting under the hood. the car was even nicer than i expected. i started for home and had a noise that sounded like the fan clutch was locked up and the fan was roaring. Scott had put a new one on so figured that it must be something else. the next gas stop i looked everything over and could not find anything wrong. i also tweaked on the A/C and got it working very well. i then went on and the noise was louder than ever. after several stops i could not find the noise. around 7:00PM i started to hear a metallic noise with it and was getting very worried. i stopped at an Advance Auto and had a couple of them look at it with me. we could still not find the source of the problem. i continued on till 10:00PM and got a room. this morning i got a fresh look and found that the power steering pulley was crooked and loose. i tightened it up but the pulley had slipped long enough that it was wore out in the center. i added some red loctite to the threads and nut and just let the pulley slip the rest of the way home. i got home at 1:00 PM. i snapped a couple pictures on the road. i will post some pictures of the car tomorrow.

 

Wow, glad you had a good trip, despite the steering pump issue... At least it was not a show stopper. (I would have thought the pulley and shaft were keyed...)

I am happy you too the adventure and drove her home - lots of memories it will make.
So what is that round topped mountain?? What tunnel is that? I like hearing stories from the road...
My long one is here: https://classicoldsmobile.com/forums...ong-story.html

 

That's Pilot Mountain in Mt Airy, NC. There is a park at the top. Eric, sorry to hear you had issues on your trip home. Probably one of those things that would have taken a while to show up with short trips around town. But good news with the AC. So, how does the wife like 'her' new car? I'm dying to hear more details about your trip. Give me a call tomorrow if you get a chance and fill me in...I'm willing to bet you got a few 'thumbs up' along the way....dang, I really miss my car now!

 

Scott, time for a new avtar!

 

Good point...unfortunately, I don't have anything to replace it with ..... at least for now. I'm hoping for a short term separation from the hobby but one never knows what lies ahead! I'm just glad the car went to a good home.

 

Congrats on getting the new car home. Post those pictures soon

 

i used to live in winston salem,remember pilot mt. very well,looks like youre on 52 heading towards mt airy.

 

i was going to call you today but when i got home i took the girls swimming and then took the car out for a drive to show Melissa's parents. i sure wish i could have made it a couple more days out there. at one point on the road i was in a traffic jam. i went 13 miles in just over an hour. i had to pull over in the traffic jam to put on the wiper arms. the traffic was stopped at that time and 5 people from 4 different cars got out and look it over right in the middle of the interstate. the wife loves the car. i will paint another pulley tomorrow. i figure i may have to change the pump also. it never used a single drop of engine oil. it is right where it was when i checked it at your house. the temp ran just at and sometime just under 200 with the A/C on and going up the mountains. i sure gave it a good test. and of course the Oldsmobile passed very well.

 

i wanted to stop at that Pilot MT but needed to keep going. the bridge was of a railroad trestle that looked neet ( it looked better in person). then the tunnel was right before i got to West Virginia.

 

Well, I got my grass cut while you were having all of that fun! Seriously though, I'm glad you had a safe and fun trip and glad that your wife likes her new ride. I have a full can of engine paint I meant to give you but I'll mail it to you. Keep me posted of your 'refinements' of the car.

 

Glad to hear of the transaction working well for both of you. And yes, also glad the trip home wasn't more eventful than it was! John

 

the only request that she has is that she would like to have a tilt wheel. she is very short and looks like a kid in the seat. i may lift the seat about 1/2 inch to help. her line of sight is right into the top of the steering wheel. anyone have a tilt, column shift steering column?

you said you miss it all ready. i know how you feel. i miss my 91 W-41 also. i wish i could keep them all.

 

One of the other nice things that might help her out with the tilt steering is it makes it easier to see all the gauges, depending on where she has it tilted. Got a rebuilt tilt for mine, keeping it as a column shift. There's lots of the tilt columns on the market- some really cheap on ebay. Seen them going for cheap like around 20 bucks. Just pay shipping or go get it.

 

i know that you all seen pics of the car when scott had it but here are a couple more. i need to find out how to make smaller pics. it takes me 15 minutes to make them small enough to load them on here. i got an estimate on new paint. if i do the work of taking it apart and putting it together, he can paint it in two stage for $3500 to $4000. i was always a single stage fan but he said with this color it would be best to go two stage.

 

Jensenracing,
I'm glad to hear that the long trip went fairly well. Happy to hear that the car stayed in the Classicoldsmobile community.

 

Very cool! And a good story to go along with it! Two thumbs up!

 

What's wrong with the paint? IMO the car looks fantastic. Must be some close up issues that don't show on the pictures??? Have you considered keeping the original paint and just polishing the heck out of it? Assuming that it is original paint of course. If not then the point is moot. But honest to gosh, it looks really good just sitting like that. Man on a fast horse wouldn't be able to tell......

As far as pics resizing goes, it depends what you're using for a picture editor. I have the Vista operating system. If you have that, clik on the picture you want and use the top menu to Open with Windows Picture manager. Then use the Edit picture tab. From there use Resize and you can shrink it down to a web page size. Crop the picture to get the most of the car in and say ok. Works great.

This pic used to take 2.25 MB. Now it only takes 58 kb. That's a huge difference. You can also upload from photobucket to this website, but I haven't figured out how to do that yet with my account.

 

the paint is thin. you can see the primer under the paint when it is out in the sun.

as for the pictures. i have vista but when i crop the pic down to just the car it is still to big. then i have to go to flicker and re size the pic there and download it back to the computer and then sometime it is still to big.

 

Just set your camera so the picture from it is between 1 meg and 1.5 meg. The forum will resize it to less than 100k for you if no greater than 1.5megs. Easy...

BTW, NICE looking car - looks factory fresh in those pics!!

 

Awsome car! Glad to hear that you didn't have too many problems on the trip. A power steering pump should be easy to replace.

 

the power steering pump is not an issue. i have 6 or 7 of them. after i figured it out, the worst thing i would had to do was take the belts off and get a shorter one and just run the alternator. after i figured out what it was i was no longer concerned because i knew i could deal with it on the road.

 

i just figured my gas mileage from the trip home. it is a little better than i thought it was but not as good as my rallye 350. i got 14.41 MPG on the trip home. my rallye 350 gets between 16 and 18.

 

Photobucket.com resizes them perfect for forums......FYI

 

just added a pic of the trunk. if anyone wants to know where the factory spatter paint goes and don't go, i can send detailed pictures of this trunk. it is the factory spatter paint.

 

I know you've gotten several pieces of advice on this, but here's one more.

If you're using Windows, I strongly recommend the Windows Powertoy called "Image Resizer". You download and install, and then all you do is right click on any photo, select "resize image," which will be a new item added to your popup menu, and select the size you want (640 x 480, 800 x 600, or 1024 x 768). Takes two seconds, and quickly turns a 1.5 MB image file into a 100 kB image file suitable for use on the web. You can also select a batch of images and resize them all at once. I can't recommend it more highly.

Scroll down about half way on this page to find the description

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx

The download link is along the column on the right side of the page.

 

i have vista. will it work with vista?

 

If you said you run Windows Vista, I missed it. I'm sorry. No, this doesn't work with Vista, only Windows XP.

However, there is a version that will work with Vista.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/phototoysclone/

 

I use paint to resize, just open the image in paint, click stretch / skew, I do 25% and 25%, and save. very easy

 

Nice '72!! ...........but it ain't no '71

More pics please, I like pics.

 

So if you are going to repaint it are you going with the same colour or changing it?

 

if it were me i would go with the original color. it will ultimately be up to my wife. i told my wife that if we sell the 91 442 then we would get whatever car she wanted (only oldsmobile) and i would redo it to the color she wanted. i never thought i would have gotten a car this nice to start with. now i am backpedaling and trying to talk her into the original color. she has decided for sure to keep the interior color and top color. i told her if she did not keep those i would resell the car and find a differant one to do. this car is to nice to totally change everything. she did say she would like burgundy with the W29 stripes on the hood in the same color as the top. after getting it home i really don't want to change the color. i almost don't want to repaint it at all.

 

The paint looks to be in very good shape but you said it might be a little thin? So would you just add the same color? Not sure that W29 stripes the same color of the top would look that good on that color, burgundy with tan stripes maybe stand out a little more. With a little gentle persuasion you may be able to convince her into keeping that color.What do they call that color?

 

if we keep the Saturn gold we won't put the W29 stripes on. i am not that good at determining what colors look good together but the guy that does my painting is the one that recommended burgundy with this top. my wife loved the idea. to me i was thinking it would look like crap but she found a car on the net that had a color combo like that and now really wants that. i have to admit, it did look better than i thought.

 

I have seen a few burgundy and tan combos and they look ok.Almost bought a 69 Cougar XR7 that was burgundy-red with tan top and interior.he told me the original color was gold.

 

That's a great looking car! Glad you got the problem resolved, it's stressful driving an old car that far sometimes...haha, especially when it's new to you. I drove my Toro from Los Angeles to Tucson (about 8 hours or so) and had zero problems. I was a bit worried but it's in good shape.