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Ralph, awesome info, thanks for posting. I sent you a PM so we can maybe figure some of this out.
I sent a quick PM to you with email address and phone number. If you call, leave a message. If you check my profile, there may be a pic of the H/O I owned/drag raced. Work safe. Ralph
In the winter/spring of 1969 a complete blueprinted engine from Berejik Olds was installed and raced. I went to the NHRA Springnationals in Dallas, Texas. It held track records around Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Iowa
I recall 12.65 on a 12.40 record at NEITA and 12.80's around the Midwest. I am not sure if I still have old time slips anywhere. After that year, I my attention turned to the 1970 4-4-2, W-30, 2 door coupe I ordered. I raced "Pure Stock" for a couple years and kids started coming......end of story til the last couple years. Ralph
Ralph, awesome info, thanks for posting. I sent you a PM so we can maybe figure some of this out.
Luke, you brought back some pleasant memories, thanks. We will be in touch. You are doing a great job, and the hard work will be worth it.
Stefano, I recall 13.67 one night at Humboldt Raceway. 900 feet above sea level, airbags 10 pounds in the right, 5 pounds in the left, pinion snubber ('60 Olds A-frame bumper and a piece of 1" pipe with 3 washers), rear tires at 32 pounds, and a "sweet spot" on the starting line. 13.80 to 13.90 at other times *day or night). Ralph
I wanted to put the original deck lid back on the car for its return to the road this summer. A good friend helped me out... the original decklid was pretty rough along the back edge. He cleaned out the rust, hammered the edge flat, sealed it up, then aged the repair so it blends in. This is talent I just don't have. I attached some pics of the original decklid edge before/after, and a picture in bad lighting with it back on the car.
'68 H/O's could come from the factory with 14x6 steel wheels and full hub caps... so I decided to go with steelies this year, and threw on some G70 polyglas red lines just to be different (factory was a G70 white stripe).
The garage doesn't have heat or insulation, so it's hard to get much done out there in single digits. Been trying to bring some other parts into the basement so I can get small stuff done. I need to get the dash pad out, but I'm not touching it in cold weather.
Busy weekend... had some help from a good friend getting the dash out yesterday, and the wife gave me a hand pulling the red wells today. I gave the red wells a dish soap bath... they have a bunch of red oxide primer on them that will come off with plenty of lacquer thinner and time.
I have new wiring harnesses coming from M&H, figured it was worth pulling the dash to get wiring replaced, and clean everything up back there before driving it around.
My new springs also arrived from Eaton-Detroit Spring. Good customer service and friendly people working there.
Important side note: When I had them look up the springs by application, their catalog showed that W30 cars used the same springs as a 442 with A/C, which is obviously incorrect... I gave them the correct GM part numbers 401420 (front) and 9792489 (rear). They had specs for those and provided their replacements. We will see how they end up sitting. The rates were listed as 480ish in the front and 127 in the rear.
As another interesting side note... Olds listed two springs for the rear, one for manual trans and one for automatic trans. The 9792489 is listed for a TH400 car with the 127 lb/in rate... a number of 9797319 is listed for a manual trans car, but Eaton Detroit didn't show a reference for that part number. It appears from other research the manual springs would be around 160ish lb/in. Eaton recommended the stiffer springs, but I decided to stick with the stock part number specs for now. Has anybody ever looked into the differences in the springs or why Olds would use different rates? I'm guessing wheel hop control, but who knows...
Last edited by 83hurstguy; January 28th, 2018 at 07:28 PM.
Jackson Speaker Service in Michigan rebuilt the original front and rear speakers for the car. Price was reasonable, turnaround was quick, and the results look great.
You can see what I sent him vs what came back.
A ton of small projects are going on at once, cash is flying out the door for small parts that are needed. Not much is photo worthy at the moment, but things are moving along to get this thing out for summer. An unheated garage and 14" of snow didn't help progress this weekend.
Forgot two things... the new driveshaft is done. Due to the length (thanks to Olds using a short tail shaft th400), it had to be 3.5" diameter due to the low critical speed of a 3" steel shaft (~5600 rpm).
Also, I spent 90 minutes playing with lacquer thinner and microfiber towels on the first red well... the red oxide primer came off pretty nicely. You can see the comparison between them. There is some weird discoloration on the cleaned red well, not sure what the "next step" would be to improve it. I'm going to keep cleaning them for now just to get the primer and road debris off. One has undercoating sprayed on part of the inside, I'm really looking forward to removing that...
Last edited by 83hurstguy; February 12th, 2018 at 09:18 AM.
Luke try using Easy Off oven cleaner. It work spectacularly well when I cleaned a red well a few years back and took the under coating off as well. I have a idea for making them look better contact me.
I picked up a nice set of original scoops, but since I had these repros, decided to try fixing the warped one, since I won't be as worried about damaging a repro while driving.
I didn't take many pics of the repair process, but it was pretty simple. I used a thin saw blade to cut along the parting line of the scoop, back a few inches on both sides of the opening. Since the warping was likely induced from an ultrasonic welding fixture, the scoop sprung back to nearly straight once it was cut.
With the front squared up, I used a two-part plastic repair structural adhesive from sherwin williams automotive (have a local store), it comes in a two part syringe. The stuff worked okay, it was somewhat of a pain to use, and was bright blue (they should have made it fluorescent orange just to be harder to paint over ) Not sure I would recommend it... I was hoping it would melt into the plastic a bit more than it did, but it seems to have bonded fine. There was a lot of sanding involved after gluing to blend in the repaired areas.
To finish it off, I scuffed the scoop with 400 grit to remove shipping scratches and the sheen, cleaned throughly with dish soap/water, sprayed it with adhesion promoter, and rattle canned it with SEM trim black paint. It's a bit more glossy than I would like, might try to find some paint that's a bit flatter.
Either way, the scoop sits flat on a surface now, the trim fits better, and the people rejoiced (now if only I could get 6 hours of my life back). Better pictures to come once I get trim and brackets installed.
Last edited by 83hurstguy; February 12th, 2018 at 07:09 PM.
Got my gauges back from Redline Gauge and Clock Repair in Tennessee. They were in pretty rough shape... I wanted to make sure the tach was accurate and calibrated, the original tach movement was in poor condition so it got replaced/upgraded with modern internals. I opted for the quartz clock upgrade as well, gauges were refaced with new lenses. Very happy with their work, quick turnaround and nice results.
Two months to have the car ready for Olds homecoming...
The dash is back together with the gauges, NOS electrical switches, and heater delete panel from Karl Sarpolis. The red wells are as clean as they can get for now (forgot to grab a picture).
I got the heater box stripped from the car; next step is to pressure wash the chassis/underside to remove 40 years of debris, rodents, and barn gunk. It's hard to get motivated to play with water when it's still snowing and cold out. Hopefully this weekend... then it's off to the races for a suspension swap and brake/fuel line replacement, I have a full set of control arms from a friend with good bushings, brakes, etc...
Last edited by 83hurstguy; April 9th, 2018 at 10:21 AM.
Down to a month until Olds homecoming... chassis has been pressure washed, new brake lines and fuel lines are installed, new rear suspension is in, we put in a '69 3.42 rear from Bob Kelso (the 3.91 rebuild isn't completed), the front suspension consists of rebuilt A-body control arms I got from a friend with later style disc brakes, there's also new Moog steering linkage connected to a manual steering box from Matt (rktolds).
I installed heater delete plates for now that Karl fabricated (nice pieces).
Hopefully I'll have working brakes this weekend, then the driveline can go in.
She's ugly, but starting to look like a functional car. Will it be driving in a month? We'll find out...
Last edited by 83hurstguy; May 9th, 2018 at 10:56 AM.
The brakes are bled and functional, dash is back in, the engine and trans are installed...
We added countersunk 5/16" bolts and metal locking nuts to the Taiwanese motor mounts (Anchor brand) to see if they'll stay together with over 500 lb-ft of torque on tap.
My new springs also arrived from Eaton-Detroit Spring. Good customer service and friendly people working there.
Important side note: When I had them look up the springs by application, their catalog showed that W30 cars used the same springs as a 442 with A/C, which is obviously incorrect... I gave them the correct GM part numbers 401420 (front) and 9792489 (rear). They had specs for those and provided their replacements. We will see how they end up sitting. The rates were listed as 480ish in the front and 127 in the rear.
As another interesting side note... Olds listed two springs for the rear, one for manual trans and one for automatic trans. The 9792489 is listed for a TH400 car with the 127 lb/in rate... a number of 9797319 is listed for a manual trans car, but Eaton Detroit didn't show a reference for that part number. It appears from other research the manual springs would be around 160ish lb/in. Eaton recommended the stiffer springs, but I decided to stick with the stock part number specs for now. Has anybody ever looked into the differences in the springs or why Olds would use different rates? I'm guessing wheel hop control, but who knows...
Wonder if the higher weight rate is combined with the trailer towing option and or is the Vista spring the same overall dim as a 2/4 door just heavier for the obvious reasons.
What's weirder is that the front springs I took out of the car don't match the replacements - the new Eaton-Detroit springs have the same wire diameter and free height, but have an extra coil on them. I put the old springs back in so the car doesn't look like a 4x4, but haven't had time to email the company yet about the new ones.
I'm pretty sure the springs in the car are original... balljoints, suspension, brakes all were with cotter pins that appeared to be consistently factory bent. Shocks were changed, but I don't see the springs getting swapped. Once I get a chance to email them, I'll try to put some closure on this.
The rear springs exactly matched what came out of the car, and ironically those were the ones that Eaton-Detroit Spring tried to talk me out of.
10 days until we leave for homecoming... the engine is pretty much ready to fire other than wiring and a coolant fill (there's no exhaust past the downpipes yet, but that's a lower priority). I should have the interior carpet finished tonight, then I can use my carpet weighting system to fill the radiator...
The new wiring is probably 50% complete.... I've been pretty impressed with the harnesses from M&H electric; there's a few things I'll have to fix later where the clips by the tail lights are off by just enough the harness doesn't hang right. Just a matter of cutting them out and retaping them back in.
We have reached complete insanity... hoping the car makes it. Once it runs it can get the red wells, seats, OAI scoops, a front bumper and fender, hood... hopefully an alignment... yikes...
Getting closer... It runs, but having exhaust fitment issues and some other carb issues. A good friend painted the yellow hood back to silver, but we didn’t have time to try to age it before homecoming. It’s kinda like fifty shades... of silver...
It's been an interesting summer. After an insane two-month thrash, the H/O is back on the road. It needs a lot of fine tuning but it runs pretty well. We made it to Homecoming, and Dennis Weglarz (former Hurst Engineer) selected it as his "Favorite Hurst/Olds" of the show! I'm honored that it won the award; there were a ton of really nice H/O's there, everyone seemed to love the ratty barn find patina.
We also made it to the H/OCA nationals in mid-July, which was a blast. To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the H/O, we went to Grattan Raceway, which is where the Doc Watson test video of the '68 H/O was filmed. Grattan was a blast; we had the opportunity to rip on it in the afternoon, and probably made 20 laps with various drivers beating on it. The car ran cool (185*F) with plenty of power and no issues, so I was thrilled. There were around 25 '68 H/Os at the meet; only 15 were at Grattan due to rain.
EDIT: I tried uploading some more H/OCA pictures, but the orientation ends up upside down no matter what I do, so I gave up...
Last edited by 83hurstguy; August 8th, 2018 at 08:36 AM.
While in Lansing for the H/OCA nationals, we also took the car to the Olds Administration Building and also the Demmer building where the '68-'69 H/O's (and maybe '72s?) were converted.
Overall, I got to check off a few bucket list items with the car, so it made the mad thrash worth it. I'm not sure what comes next... I'm pretty much wiped out at this point, so taking a break from it is the current plan. I need to get the exhaust finished (it's dumped at the axle and I'm not happy with the muffler sound), it needs front door panels, the 3.91 rear end needs to be finished and installed, and the list goes on. I'm going to drive it as-is for now, probably work on the rest of the projects over the winter so it's ready for more driving next spring.
I want to get it to the drag strip for some baseline ETs, but also don't want to destroy the bone stock 3.42 rear axle that's in it. Might go take some soft passes in October just to see what it does.
Last edited by 83hurstguy; August 8th, 2018 at 08:38 AM.
Congrats on getting it done for Lansing. I saw it there along with several other 68' Hursts. As a restorer I'm the type that would walk by ten restored cars to look at yours. I would have stopped but it appeared you were constantly busy with folks and then the rain came.
Looking forward to track testing and future track tuning!!
Luke what did the engine make on the dyno and what kind of et /mph do you think are in the car?
Wow. It's been over a year since an update... I didn't do very many exciting projects to the car this year, just finished a lot of small things that weren't completed in last year's thrash. The Pypes 2.5" tailpipes didn't fit worth a crap - hit a few things and didn't exit the bumper straight, so I ended up at a local exhaust shop, where we custom-bent tailpipes for it.
I went and tested the car at Route 66 Raceway (which has great track prep), had a bit of a headwind (5-10 mph), DA around 1700 ft. I was having some fuel delivery issues in 3rd, but on the second pass the car still went 12.61@105.99 with a 1.88 60 ft. It had more in it off the line, I was going to try to get one more pass out of it, but a crash shut the track down.
I was testing to get ready for the Pure Stock drags, and since the car was having fuel issues in 3rd gear, I left the 3.42 rear in the car instead of switching to the 3.90. I installed aftermarket axles so I wouldn't have to worry about breaking one at the track.
Wow. It's been over a year since an update... I didn't do very many exciting projects to the car this year, just finished a lot of small things that weren't completed in last year's thrash. The Pypes 2.5" tailpipes didn't fit worth a crap - hit a few things and didn't exit the bumper straight, so I ended up at a local exhaust shop, where we custom-bent tailpipes for it.
I went and tested the car at Route 66 Raceway (which has great track prep), had a bit of a headwind (5-10 mph), DA around 1700 ft. I was having some fuel delivery issues in 3rd, but on the second pass the car still went 12.61@105.99 with a 1.88 60 ft. It had more in it off the line, I was going to try to get one more pass out of it, but a crash shut the track down.
I was testing to get ready for the Pure Stock drags, and since the car was having fuel issues in 3rd gear, I left the 3.42 rear in the car instead of switching to the 3.90. I installed aftermarket axles so I wouldn't have to worry about breaking one at the track.
December 7th, 2017, 09:39 AM
) Not sure I would recommend it... I was hoping it would melt into the plastic a bit more than it did, but it seems to have bonded fine. There was a lot of sanding involved after gluing to blend in the repaired areas.
