Richard (Gearheads78) turned me onto this site, so I thought i'd sign in and say hey.

I had a 1968 ElCamino SS396 that I had been trying to sell since last June- Around August I found this 66 cutlass for sale on craigslist. I emailed the owner for some details, told him when/if my car sold- I'd be giving him a call. The ad eventually disapeared from CL, but i kept the details and kept looking at the pics.
Fast forward to January, and my camino finally sold.
My first call was to the cutlass guy- even though the ad had gone away, i had to try in case there was a chance he still had it...And sure enough- he had put it away in storage for the winter, sick of not getting any interest from the ads. A week later, I had it in my garage!

DSC00340.jpg

1966 Cutlass, 330 \320hp, HD 3spd floor shift (no console), 3.23 rear- Black bucket seats.

I bought it from the Second owner. He had gotten it in 1978 when he was 15 years old- his dad had bought it for him from the original owner.

I immediately yanked the 1980's foglights, Sold the 14x8 gold nugget rims, added 15x8 cragars, and had it looking like this:

IMG_0490.jpg
IMG_0492.jpg

A little video i took the same day:


More pics
http://<br /> http://smg.photobucket...66OldsCutlass/

So I'm just getting started cleaning stuff up... I've got a 8 month old boy at home, so my free time isn't what it used to be, but that just makes it sweeter when I can have some wrenching time.

Plans are to tune up the 330 and dial it in (distrib and carb are pretty goofed up)... Redo the interior- new seat covers are already on order from legendary... Clean & detail it, and drive it.

My elcamino was pretty much fully restored, but had no room for the wife & a baby to ride, which was the main motivation for selling it... Now i'm looking forward to crusing with the family. :-)

I Also enjoyed racing the camino (best of 12.75 @107mph, and that was after driving it an hour and a half to the track!) So the cutlass will definitely see some 1/4 mile passes eventually- though i know it will be lucky to turn a mid 14 second with the current drivetrain... a 455/4spd swap is a definite posibility for next winter.

A few weeks ago, I located the original owner of the car. (his name was inside the owners manual). Turns out he still lives here, and was very happy to talk to me about the car. He promised to try and dig up a couple photos of the car when he owned it... And as promised he sent me one just a few days ago...
New66OldsmobileCutlassApril1966.jpg

He bought it brand new on March 3rd in Bellevue, WA...Special ordered it, it was his first brand new car. He lived in Kirkland.
Sold it in 1979 to the guy I bought it from when he was 15. After college he joined the Navy as a pilot and was stationed in florida and took the car with him. Took it along every time he was transferred, to Texas, Sacramento, and finnaly in 1999 back here to Seattle.
He lived and grew up in Woodenville, just about 10 mins from where I grew up and have lived the last 20 years. Turns out the Original owner still lives in Kirkland, just about 2 mins from where i work everyday!
245,000 miles and 42 years the car saw the country and still made it back home! Pretty cool!

Anyway, So that is my newbie first post :-)
-Ben

 

Just wanted to add... here are some pics of my previous projects...

The car that got me into the hobby and stuck on Oldsmobiles...
1968 Delmont 88 Convertible...
Olds-1.jpg
about 12 years ago, a friend of mine got this from his dad, and i fell in love. he drove it for a year before the carb took a crap and he parked it. After 3 years of begging, his wife made him sell me the car. It was a bondo bucket (quarters were almost 100% sculpted bondo, no metal!) but i loved it. Looks way better in the photos than it did in real life.

I moved to a place where i had no parking and sold it after only a year of cruising it.

I owned a bunch of Chevy's... had a thing for elcaminos, had a 1969, a 1970 before eventually owning the 68 SS that i restored... Had a 69 camaro for a girlfriend...

DSC00010.jpg

Picked this 70 Cutlass S up for a song because the front suspension and brakes were hosed up... Fixed it up, then sold it... Just wasn't in love with the bodystyle.
DSC00225.jpg

Then i bought my 68 elcamino... A friend had bought it sight unseen off ebay(don't ever do that!) around 1999, was supposed to be a show car- when it arrived from Arizona it was far from a show car.. paint looked like a wagner power painter had done it. Engine barely ran, suspension and exhaust were shot... He was so pissed he covered it up with a tarp and parked it. I bought it in 2005... Dispite the ugly paint, it was rock solid- No rust at all (arizona car)... So i pulled it home, and over the course od the next 3 years i restored it into this:
DSC01325.jpg

So, thats a little more about me :-)

 

Looks like i can edit now... fixed the pic in the above post, deleting the dupe here...

 

rambow - nice 66!! - I'm a fellow 66 owner so I am a little bias - mine has been in the family since new - would love to find a 442 coupe - again, nice car!!

 

Welcome! Very cool Cutlass. I really like the '66-67s. It's really great you actually have a photo of your car when it was new and its backstory. Sure wish I did. Any plans to paint it back to silver, or are you going to leave it burgundy? Looks good as is, so no real reason to do so.

Good job going with Legendary. I've ordered an entire interior from them and really like their stuff. I also have a '69 Camaro and am waiting for them to finish production on their Camaro line.

In any event, welcome and enjoy the boards! Thanks for the pics!

 

Thanks yammiman!
Any photos of yours?

Speaking of 66 442s... Kind of funny story.
I had a guy following my 68 elky last fall (for sale sign in the window)... He called me came to look at the car. Hadn't been in the market for a muscle car, but seeing mine sparked his interest. After a week called me to say while he liked the elcamino, he had decided he wanted a backseat, and on a whim (beware late night drinking & bidding on ebay! LOL!) had won an 66 442 on ebay.

Anyway, After he got it, he asked if i'd come look it over for him- i was surprised to see a car almost identical to the one i had been drooling over since august! A burgandy, black bucket seat, 4spd 442!

Anyway, he and i have become friends now, and funny, now i have the burgandy 66 cutlass, and he's got the burgandy 66 442, both living withing about 10 miles of each other!

 

I do like silver, but already been down that road with the last elcamino... I've always been a big fan of burgandy metallics, So if/when this car gets its bodywork, it will probably remain burgandy.

The body is a presentable 5-10footer. Its solid, but does have rust bubbles coming through in the usual spots, lower front fenders, bottom corners of the doors.. below rear window area- but otherwise, its straight and shiny, so it will probably be a few years before the bodywork becomes a priority.

For now, just want to focus on making it reliable, safe and comfortable... Then we'll move on to making it fast- and after that we'll see about making it pretty

 

welcome to the site and congrats on picking up the 66 Olds. I like the color and you are right , the fog lights had to go. I picked mine up last fall and am working on it till we get nice weather. It came from the prairies where it's dry and no salt , unlike here. Hopefully we have a long cruising season here as I will only be taking her out when I can have the top down for the most part. We still have some snow on the ground here but it's raining right now so it is disappearing fast. Again welcome aboard.

 

glad you made it over...you will like it over here

 

The little things like Cragar's and removing foglights make it look better already! Welcome!

 

Welcome to the site you must be just down the street. Nice car sounds good too. have fun with it

 

Welcome yet again Ben

 

Interesting story about all your cars but especially the Cutlass, real nice car. You need to get your neighbor that owns the 442 on this site too.

 

Man that is nice.

 

Man that is a nice ride! I have a 77 Vette in that color.

 

Very interesting to find the HD 3 speed floor shift. Should be the top loader Ford tranny. Olds engineers tested trannies by doing 5000 rpm burnouts repeatedly and only the Ford held up. That is why Olds went to it from the weak sister
Saginaw.

 

Cool car!
Coming over to this thread from the "New guy from Ohio" thread, I asked you about the 3-speed manual, and I see here that Joe already commented on that bullet-proof FoMoCo trans you have. Should have a 2B code on the firewall data plate. If you post all the info on the tag (or a pic) we'll decode it for you.
I also mentioned that the 320 hp 330 is nothing to sneeze at. Pretty potent small block right out of the box. Everyone makes a big deal about the W31 350, but that 330 will run right with it!
And check to see if your 3.55 is a 2 or 4 pinion variety. If its a 4-pinion, you won't need to beef it up.

 

Yup... has the FOMOCO 3spd... both the guy i bought it from talked it up, and the original owner commented on it to when i spoke to him.

Here is the Vin & Body tags...

Vin 338176Z115510

Body Tag
02C
ST 66-33817 BF 04271 BODY
TR 980 WW PAINT
026311

Engine block front code:
381917 1

Heads:
#3
Code on the front of the pass head (now on the rear of the drivers side!)
WxxxxxG (i couldn't read the numbers, only could make out the letters.

Rear:
SI

Pretty sure that decoded to:
Body built 3rd Week of February 1966
66 Holiday Coupe
Fremont Plant
Body number 4,271
Black Bucket Seat Interior
Platinum Plaint Upper and Lower

026311 = ???

W/G code on the head meant it was a factory High Compression 320hp 330 motor (which the orig owner confirmed is what he ordered new)

SI rear code should equal 3.23 non-posi rear

 

welcome. . .nice projects

 

Nice ride, the color looks good on the car.

 

Excellent! You've done your homework quite thoroughly. Unfortunately, there is no decode for the Fremont accessory codes that I know of.
Your shifter has "442" with the "H" at the bottom, I presume.

 

Actually the shifter just has the "H" on the shaft, doesn't say 442 on it.

 

Oops, my bad. Of course it doesn't say 442 on it. I've researched the early HD 3-speed manuals, option M14. There were introduced in Feb of '65, and were the first Hurst shifters put in Oldsmobiles. The initial 442 shifters had "442" and the whole word "HURST" at the top of the handle. In '66, they went to the handles with the traditional "H" at the bottom. I have not seen a 1965 M14 *non* 442 shifter handle. So I was asking about yours.

 

Nice car and even better story about it. It makes it even better when you know the history behind the car.

 

Nice '66.....what size tires are you running on the 15x8 Cragers?

Thanks!
Doc

 

Thanks, it has 235/60's up front with 255/60's out back.

I added airlift 1000 air sprigns to the rear, they raised it about 1/4" over what it was (with 10lbs in each bag) really made a difference in how it handles.. plus i like the stance with a tiny bit of rake to it.

 

As much as I like totally stock Oldsmobiles now, I've always thought the '66s look really cool sitting high with fat tires!
Here's a pic of my first Olds. It sat up "just a little bit high". G70-15s on the the and N50-15 Mickey Thompson Indy Profiles in the rear, ET mags all around. Woof woof!