Wills72455

Woke up to a beautiful sunrise this morning and I haven't posted pictures of my car on here yet so I figured it was a sign. It's a 1972 Cutlass S w 455/TH400 with the original engine and transmission, unfortunately it's the wrong color(black instead of the factory green) and the previous owner night shaded the tail lights. But I have plans for those problems...

oldzzy

Wrong colour! It's the right colour to me lol. Just kidding, it's a very nice looking car.

DENT

Very nice , I like black also.

cutlassjoe

I'm kind of partial to Green...

Wills72455

It's amazing what a little distance and the right lighting will do for the appearance of a car. The black was a shoddy repaint over some questionable "body work" so I will have to DA the whole car and start over after a while to get it to my standards. Black looks good but I figure the car was originally Pinehurst Green and it deserves to be again. Not enough of those out there.

rjohnson442

nice ride!

72 w29 all green

That car sure looks good black . I might be a fan of green, but that doesn't include the '72 Pinehurst.

455man

Nice car and excellent photography.

Joffroi

Great pictures and great looking car

Gator69olds

Sweet lookin rides!

oldcutlass

Very nice.

BIGJERR

Please see my link below my picture.,...........If you have these full size I would love to add them to the all oldsmobile car calendar folder........

And nice car cool pics.....

https://classicoldsmobile.com/forums...-calendar.html

JOHNNYOLDS442

Yeah black always looks great.
got a sample today of my color had to approve before the painting started next week.


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Wills72455

Thanks for the compliments guys!

I do have these in hi-res and would gladly add them to the fodder for the calender. I take it as a great compliment!

Allan R

I'm not too big a fan of black, except for Shanes and this one. Wonder why code 19 was never offered on the Cutlass line for 72. The chrome and black really pops. Love the setting too. Did you put in the Dakota gauges? I found that digital gages tend to disappear in bright light.
My favorite shot:

oldzzy

Thnx Allan i appreciate the compliment, but my car isn't any more special than any other black cars. I do agree that the chrome looks amazing, and really pops on a black car tho!

Wills72455

Good eye, those were the handiwork of the previous owner. I like the amount of info they give and how easy they are to read, plus the dash is not cluttered up. On top of that being a child of the 80s I remember reading Hot Rod and lusting after these things, that charm has worn off with age though.
I do not like that they stick out like a sore thumb and have about the same cool as an 80s Vette, so I may change over one day.

As for black, I do love the color and the look with chrome is amazing, particularly when clean. On the other hand the car is a mostly original vehicle with engine and trans casting numbers that match the VIN. On one hand I know the car would have a wider appeal painted black, on the other I think if I ever did need to sell a well restored mostly original numbers matching car in the correct factory color would bring more. Who knows, I have time to weigh my decision.

Wills72455

Oh and Shane your build thread is pretty impressive. Normally I boycott you Canadian types but I can clearly tell you are my kind of OCD car owner!

Allan R

What is the original paint code on the cowl tag? Also, just an FYI the factory letter and last 6 VIN derivative is also stamped into the chassis. So if you ever do a frame off, you can verify the original chassis to the body.

Wills72455

I will go look tomorrow and post it, I'm guessing you can decode it, but I am pretty sure it is the pinehurst green. Based on everything I can tell, pinehurst underneath the weather stripping and showing through where the previous owner/moron buffed through the paint it left the factory pinehurst green but the tag will tell all.

Allan R

If it was Pinehurst Green (some folks like that color, but it's not my favorite either) the code will be 43. Since you have a vinyl roof, I'd guess it was originally white (code A)
so on the cowl tag to the left of where it says PNT should be A 43.

Wills72455

So here's the numbers as they read on the tag:
ST 72 33807LAN470150
TR 942 43 G
05A A52 B80

Allan R

ST 72 - 1972 Model year
3 - Oldsmobile Division
36 - I think you messed up your numbers because this is a Cutlass S. 36 is the series - Cutlass S
87 - Hardtop Sports coupe
LAN - Lansing production
470150 - body number assigned by Fisher. not related to VIN
TR 942 - Dark green Morocceen.
43 - Pinehurst green
G - Green vinyl top
05 A produced in the first week of May 1972
A52 - bench seat
B80 - roof drip edge moldings. You should also have the wide B85 belt line moldings - they were included as part of this option and the C08 vinyl top.

Wills72455

Thank you, this is pretty interesting stuff! No accounting for taste, green on green on green! I'll try and search for pictures of the wide belt moldings as I'm curious what they look like. For that matter I have to see a picture of a green car with green top.

oldzzy

My car has the wide belt moldings, and I like them better than the thin bead molding. The wide molding is pretty hard to find in good shape I'd you need it.

Wills72455

Based on what I can see in this thread
https://classicoldsmobile.com/forums...t-molding.html
the belt moldings are the trim at the top of the quarters/doors that "seals" to the window.

I'd be happy to take some pictures of what is on my car as they appear, at least to me to be original. The trim there is the standard narrow chrome trim with rubber. When the car was re-sprayed black this trim was not removed and in places where the rubber is peeling or shrinking you can see the Pinehurst green paint. In 40 years I am sure it is possible that the trim was replaced once, but it appears that the vehicle was mostly original up until it was repainted black, probably in the last 15yrs from what I can tell.

Allan, are there any things I can do to verify any of my suspicions? I find this stuff fascinating, even if I don't end up restoring the vehicle to showroom specs it would really be interesting to know what it looked like 40yrs ago.

Thanks!!

Wills72455

From what I've read the repro stuff all sucks. Now I'm at a cross roads, as cool as restoring this car would be it might be easier to divert from that path.

oldzzy

Yeah they repo the rubber felt part but not the actual stainless trim pieces.

Allan R

The door molding is the easy one to get - it's the same for Cutlass Supreme and Cutlass S coupes. The hardest parts to find are the curved ones for the Cutlass S models. It took me over 3 years of searching the web to get the ones for my car. They are OEM but not in great shape; lots of scratching and haze but luckily no dents. Turns out these parts are NOT stainless, they are anodized aluminum and have to be re - anodized for the proper look.

The belt line moldings are actually a 2 part composition like Shane said. The wide strip NEEDS to have the special rubber backing with the window sweeps on it. Fusick does make the rubber part. I talked with Kevin at our car show past July. He just redid his 72 Cutlass S. He had repro rubber for the B85 from Metro, Fusick and Steele. The one he used with best fit was the one from Fusick.

I can't guarantee that your car came from the factory with the B85 molding. I stated that because of what the 72 SPECS say. Have a look at these Oldsmobile SPECS for 1972 and you'll see what I mean. Scroll down to the Cutlass S. You can increase the size of the doc by holding down CTRL and rolling your mouse wheel forward for a larger image.

Here is a pic of what the wide B85 molding looks like. This is the hard to get S curved part (sorry for the blur)


I just went down to the car and dug out the B85 I've got. I placed it over the thin bead reveal molding. You can see it's quite a bit larger. The molding has to be attached to the rubber, and then fastened to the inner door panel - this is a lot of work.


Here's the comparison shot of bead and B85. On my car it's not going to pop that much. On a black car? OMG it's going to look stunning! My plans include adding a black vinyl roof, so these will join up with the roof drip edge moldings and the vinyl trim moldings. It should be factory correct according to what I've read.


Does this help at all? Keep in mind that my project is ongoing and I haven't really touched those moldings. They're just the way I bought them.

oldzzy

That's the thing, if you want to do your car all original to bring the most money, then your car will have to 100% original and correct to bring the money. I say do it how ever you want, and be happy with it.

Allan R

The weird thing about my car though Shane, I just want it done right because I'm nutty that way. Not going to put the car up for sale. It will be my sunny day jalopy for hopefully many years to come.

X2 on do it now. Some OEM parts for these cars are becoming very hard to find and repro's , well you guys already said it

2olds

Nice i like the rims.

w-30dreamin

Very nice indeed!

Wills72455

Yeah, at this point I don't think I would want to go all original. I enjoy the HEI ignition I have and the headers and the intake manifold. I don't know if I could handle a green car with a green vinyl top either.

Allan R

Will, your car looks excellent in black. Leave it that way till you get tired of it. Then you can experiment with stripes like Shane and I have. If I ever changed color on my car, it would be to Viking Blue or Matador Red.

Remember this? Good thing this cougar drives a cougar

railfan442

I was wondering if your head unit was mounted in one of those 8-track housings? Earl..

Wills72455

No, the previous owner shoe-horned it into the ashtray area and as a temporary solution I moved it to the bottom of the dash. The housing for the deck is bolted to the bottom of the dash through a couple of holes that were already there. I'd like to make a console for it at some point as the current solution leaves something to be desired.