Well, we finally made room in the shop for my sons 68 Cutlass Supreme. The more I look at it the more I start to shudder. He got the seats out and they're pretty trashed under the old seat covers. He's eager to keep going but I suggested we get some manuals first like the board suggested. I looked at the Fusick online catalog and here's my first question. Shop Manual, Fisher Body Manual, and Assembly Manual. I'm assuming all three would be of great value. Do any of them tell you which parts are exchangeable with other models?

 

Those are all good manuals to have, but they will not be a parts inerchange manual.

 

You need all three of those manuals...the trilogy of truth...united they stand, divided they fall.
In the H.G. Wells book "The Time Machine" he poses the question, that I very loosely quote, "If you could only take three books to the future and could never return to the past what three would they be?"
Who knows?, in the future you may find a 10,000 year old Cutlass the evil Morlocks stashed and need those books.
With my luck some idgit would have put a chebby engine in it.

The assembly manual will show if they parts are common with other A bodies, has the original part numbers too.
For common mechanical and electrical parts you can go to the Rockauto site and look up the part then click on one of the highlighted part numbers and it will show what it interchanges with.
Otherwise just ask here, some of these guys are walking GM parts catalogs.

http://www.rockauto.com/

 

The interchange manual you're looking for is not printed by GM. It's the Hollander Interchange Manual and they are fairly expensive. You can find them on the web. Or, you can ask here.

 

Please post photos. We want to see exactly what it is that makes you shudder.

 

You should also check ebay. Service manuals come up for auction all the time, and you might be able to get one for less than what Fusick charges if you don't mind it being a little used.


For example, here's an assembly manual for $22 plus $6.00 shipping.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/1968-...sQ5fLiterature


Here's a Fisher Body manual for about the same price

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/1968-...sQ5fLiterature


And here's a chassic manual also for about the same price

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/1968-...sQ5fLiterature


Just do a search on "1968 Oldsmobile Manual" and all sorts of things will pop up. You can get an owner's manual, too, if you don't have one.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/1968-...sQ5fLiterature

 

The factory service manuals are really nice reference books. Detail is great.

The reprinted assembly manuals available on te internet are helpful, but, not great.
The only ones i know of are the ones printed by an outfit called Millenium.
Quality is not great. May of the reprinted sheets are not legible.
Sometimes there are multiple copies of the same sheet while other sheets are missing.
You'd expect an assembly manual to have everything you need to know, but, a lot of info is just not there.

Maybe someone else is doing a better job of reprinting these that I'm not aware of.

 

Check this site out. take the three minutes it takes to join. Look in the download section and you can find the assembly and service manuals for '68 in pdf.

http://wildaboutcarsonline.com/index.html

Adam

 

I'm not quite sure what it is that makes me shudder. Maybe I'm just a little overwhelmed, that and my son is very eager to get to it and I'm not sure he understands how the whole budget thing will come into play. Part of being overwhelmed comes from having my other son starting on "his" project at the same time and this is all very new to us. Oh well, it looks as though there's lot's of help here.

Thanks a bunch everyone for all the links. Very valuable and they also help with the limited budget. We'll order the Fisher manual to go with the downloads and I guess the first thing will be to get some keyed ignition switches and locks as the keys for the car are missing.

 

Just take it a little at a time as money and time permit.

One thing I've always found to be true is that there's always a desire to get a newly acquired car in running condition. So you want to get to the brakes and engine and drivetrain as quickly as possible so you can at least start the car up and drive it around the block even though it might look like hell cosmetically and even though there's a million things you'd like to do mechanically under the hood and everywhere else. But once the car is running and stops safely, things can slow down, and those other jobs, which is where all the fun is, can be gotten to as the budget permits

 

X2
My car runs fine I have put about 1200 miles on it this year.
My daughter calls it Frankencar. Somthing about a black car with one primer door and a sienna brown hood. Chrome taken off so I can do body work. Oh and also flat black trunk lid and quarter ext.

Its going to look worse before it gets better
Larry

 

Oh, if he's anything like MY son, he COMPLETELY understands the whole budget thing - dad has a bottomless wallet!

 

Do you need to be a paid member of the blub?? It keeps saying access denied.

 

You can access anything right away except for the manuals. You'll get a confirmation email and then your good to go. It took mine till the next morning.