Well Happy New Year everyone. Here's hoping for a much better 2021 than what we have experienced in 2020. It's 8 months since my last update and here in Melbourne Australia we were in lock down for 12 weeks through winter & spring so there have been periods where my project lost traction for lengthy periods when I couldn't access services or get help here to do tasks that required an extra set of hands.
In my last update I'd found that the hood on my car was bent and after weighing up the options I opted to replace it with a new hood from Thorntons.
Amazingly they had the hood completed in 4 weeks, I had it shipped to the port in Newark where my shipper had it into a container and on the water within a week or so from arrival and it was less that 10 weeks from order placement to delivery. The packaging was fantastic and the build quality is way better than I expected (more on all that in the next instalment ).
During the shutdown it gave me time to trace more of the history of the car and a piece of the puzzle led me to 2 previous owners including the shop who painted it in 2014 after it came out of its 27 year deep sleep. I haven't gathered many photos but the couple I found revealed a number of things that had been changed on the car in the 12 months or so prior to me buying it and post these owners selling it. There's a few pics below of the interior & engine bay taken back then from which I've identified changes like the original deluxe steering wheel that was changed to a sports wheel and the original air cleaner replaced with a repro. Both of these since corrected.
Living on the other side of the planet throws up huge challenges when you need parts and sometimes I've been forced to use repro parts that I'd ideally like to have avoided. It astounds me how some of the actual manufacturers of repro parts spend so much on tooling costs yet they don't get critical dimensional aspects right. Most recently I was forced to use a repro Dual Gate shifter as my original pressed metal housing had too much wear and at the same time replaced the shifter cable. Well the repro shifter looked nice but several critical components were way off and resulted in reducing the shifter cable travel by over 1/4" preventing sufficent travel to reach park. Then the cable that was advertised as "the factory correct 29 3/4" was in fact too short compared to my factory original cable which measures 32". The result being the cable is way way too short to fit between the 2 fixed points on the shifter & the bracket on the transmission. Ok that's my gripe over now.
The 12 week shutdown allowed me to go back and fix a number of things that I made errors with or weren't happy with. A much nicer crash pad was sourced from Brian Trick which meant pulling the dash out again - but hey once you have done it once the 2nd time around it's easy. I took that opportunity to repaint the steering column to the original colour that I'd previously revealed on the column. It also allowed me time to find an original Deluxe wheel to put back on the car as it was born. The wheel was restored by Gary's Steering Wheel Restorations in Carlisle PA and Gary did a fantastic job.
The fellow CO member that I bought the deluxe wheel from also had a nice original brake booster which I bought and had restored by BrakeBoosters.com in CA and they did a fantastic job too. Thanks so much WTHIRTY1 for the recommendation on those 2 suppliers.
Enough of the waffle. More to come in the next few days to bring you up to date on where things are at now.

Ownership traced back to Iowa were in was advertised by the 2nd owner. After reading the detail in this advert I now understand why the car had a '68 W30 rear axle when I bought it. I believe the W27 was swapped out very early in its life as the '68 rear had been in it for a very long time.

Photo taken in 2014 at the shop that did the cosmetic resto

Photo taken in 2014 at the shop that did the cosmetic resto. Still had its original Deluxe Wheel at that time

New Thornton's hood arrives - nicely packaged

Thorntons hood

much nicer crash pad to replace the splitting original

Green crash pads redyed to gold

Sample of the original column color revealed

Column repainted in original color

Steering wheel before restoration


Restored steering wheel & booster - very happy with the results here

Very noticeable difference with the stamping of the original booster to the repro one it had.

Dash back together again

 

Glad to see you back at it. As usual, everything looks great!
When I was in high school a guy in my home town bought a car just like that which I admired from afar. I used to drive by the house to keep tabs on it hoping some day to maybe be in the right place at the right time to buy it. He moved and car disappeared. I always wondered what happened to it. I wouldn't be shocked if that is it? Do you have any history of location?

 

Hi Rohan.

Good to see you are again progressing nicely.

You made an excellent choice to go with Thornton.

I saved an original hood for 20 years and had it on my Vista Cruiser when I sent it for paint. The painter said it would take 60 hours to make the original fit properly (and it wasn't bent).

I bought a Thornton to replace it and the painter said he only had to do a bit of surface work before painting. The hood fits MUCH better than an original. And the overall cost was less than having the original reworked; I even got an additional $1500 when I sold the original.

Cheers,
Gary

 

Thanks Scrappie, its nice to be moving along again. Until a few months ago I believed my car was sold new in St Louis but after significant research and coercing the DMV for help with records I was able to trace the original sale to Des Moines, Iowa. It was only there for about a year before it moved to St.Louis before it went to Caruthersville, MO. It moved owners a few times in that area before was bought back by the initial owner in Caruthersville who pretty much parked it in his garage and didn't drive it at all from 1986 to 2014. There's not many in this color scheme but there's still a handful around.

 

Hi Gary, thanks for your message. Yes your absolutely right the Thornton's hoods fit remarkably well and quality is excellent. I weighed up the risk of having the 50 year old fibreglass crack on me somewhere else a few months after it was repaired & repainted versus the cost of the new one and it was a "no brainer" as they say. My car is currently being prepared for painting of the hood and the painter spent about 4 hours work max to get it paint ready. He said of all the new fibreglass hoods he's prepared it was certainly by far the best. I'm mounting my original on the garage wall as a bit of "car art" for now. Cheers Rohan

 

Looking at the older pics now I see there is no vinyl roof. I remember the car I knew of having the gold vinyl roof. Its a really great color combo nonetheless.

 

So things rolled on through winter here with little progress. I played around doing lots of little jobs like redrilling the holes for the trunk emblems, pulled the 8 track out again after deciding to use my original woodgrain face rather than the repro that just didn't have the detail. Also pulled the stainless trim off the rear window and polished that. A good friend that knocked out a few little dents in them for me and warned that these trims were "flash chromed" and I struggled to believe it, however he was right. I was there at the platers during the stripping process and watched the reaction in the tank. The wheel arch moulds were also the same and once stripped they were way easier to polish and came up beautiful.
With a bit of time to go back over & correct things Mark Cornea was good enough to make me a "special" decal for the oil filler that matched the original to include "W30" as they were originally.
In the past few months my painter put the pressure on to get the car to him to paint the new hood and the stripes, so that mean't getting the car running. The biggest challenge was the shifter & cable as mine were worn out & I had to use repro's. Well that was a big mistake. The cable I sourced was too short and then the shifter had insufficent travel to reach park. I have been able to use the "S" rod out of the original shifter & another lever to put into the repro housing for now but plan to restore my original shifter, but for now to get the car mobile whilst the painting is done then this will do. After sorting out the teething problems she fired up without too many problems at all. I do have some carb tuning to do to get the choke idle right but will do that on return from the painter. It was great to get the car rolling again and test drive it. After the initial test drive I reverted to using my original accelerator cable as the repro made with a smaller diameter casing didn't like the bend out from the firewall and was way too tight but that was the only issue. Took her out after that onto the local freeway for a short run and she ran beautifully.

The template for the emblems worked well. Just a pity the bodyshop filled the original holes


My original untouched 8 track fascia

8 track fascia cleaned up nicely with soap & water

Modified oil filler label with the correct "W30" in the lower line as original.

Rear window trim came up nicely with the dents removed and polished up. Incorrect parcel tray will be replaced with time once Legendary can supply the correct one.

S bar out of the repro shifter on top and the original on the bottom. 1/4" difference resulted in 1/2" less travel for the cable.

 

Commenced the masking process for the stripes, the stencils were quite good but did require a fair bit of massaging to get the alignment on the front fender correct and as close as possible to being on point. The biggest disappointment was the width of the wide stripe at the front marker, it was 1/4" too narrow and tomorrow we will rework that to achieve the correct 2 1/4"
A big thank you to a couple of good Olds friends in this group that I had to call on at short notice to clarify the detail needed . My painter and I spent 6 hours on the left side which I thought wasn't too bad given how tricky it is to fit a flat stencil to a surface that is multi dimensional.
Jacking the rear to axle till the sill was level and then using a laser level to get the stripe lined up and level made it relatively easy. On day 2 we got the right on in about 4 hours after the learning curve on the left side).
The hood is now all preped and the underside painted black. Once the rear wing is rubbed back and a few repairs completed then the white will go on. With fingers crossed we should be well advanced by Friday.

 

Nice work laying down the stripes and sharing the pictures. Car looks great!

 

Thanks, it's the most nerve-racking part and I just hope it all turns out ok. One way or another we'll know the verdict later this week so I've got all my fingers crossed.

 

Well, we finally have some color on and I'm pretty happy overall. We did have 2 spots where the paint got under the stencil and left a rough edge but both spots are a relatively easy fix. The hood and rear wing have been painted so now its time to start masking the hood for the gold stripes. The masking will be done by hand to the factory blueprints and should hopefully be completed by the end of this week. The gold turned out great, it was matched to the original (non metallic) by Kolor Korrect who specialise in correct paint colors for classic cars of the 60's & '70's (mainly Mopar but they were spot on with the '70 Olds stripes gold).

 

Well I got the rear wing back together and on yesterday. The pedestals had stress cracks and one of the stud inserts was stripped out of the fibreglass so I repaired and strengthened the areas around the stress cracks and machined up a new thread insert to retain the stud before all the parts were repainted. The fit of the pedestal to the trunk lid is very nice but not so between the pedestal and the wing - but hey they weren't perfect by any means when they left the factory.
I had bought a set of 6 repro nuts to hold it to the trunk lid but was disappointed with them and they won't be staying on. These nuts spin on the washers (like the seat nuts) but the washers on the repro's are quite a bit smaller than the originals and not really ideal for the application. It took me a while to confirm that the nuts that were on the car were in fact original but with that now confirmed I'll be adding them to my growing collection of bits to take to the electroplater next week and will replace the repos once I get them back.

 

Setting up the stripes using the factory blueprints (downloaded from Carsonline) didn't work out unfortunately, as there were just too many missing dimensions. So after a stressful 24 hours I reached out to a good friend in this group who's been in this situation not so long ago and he very kindly helped out will all the dimensions I was missing. The painter & I wasted 4 hours initially but with all of the correct info we had it all masked up in about 6 hours. The radius of the front inner corners is very tricky as the fineline tape just cant get around such tight corners but the final result was a compromise but not too bad overall. The paint went on a few hours after masking so I'll have some photos of the finished result for my next instalment in the next few days.

 

At the back of the stripes, did you go straight across or slightly bowed ?

 

Hi Vader, the back edge is slightly bowed but it's so subtle that you can hardly tell. Visually it looks like it's straight. Long story but at the last second of the masking process I had a guy here in Australia with an untouched original W30 take several measurements from the back edge just to confirm as I wasn't confident about this point. I know there's differing views on this and I was going to go perfectly straight but at the last second I opted to go with measurements of an untouched car. Most people would look and think its straight but a good eye can see the extremely light curve.

 

Well the hood came up pretty nice I think and I like the feel of the edge rather than clear coating over everything. Late this afternoon we bolted the hood back on but will need to shim out the left fender just a little to get the gap right. I'll collect the car tomorrow night and bring it back home to get front trim back on and start going over lots of little things to prepare it for registration shortly.

 

Nice car!

 

Wow the hood came out nice! Car is looking great too.

 

Beautiful car. Paint looks great!

Those gold stripes look like a perfect match to the factory color. Do you have a reference number for the Kolor Korrect gold paint you used for the stripes? I gotta order me some.

Thanks

 

What a beautiful car!! You must draw huge crowds down there in that car. Good for you mate. Ha ha. Thanks for sharing your build.

 

​​​​​​​
Thanks guys really appreciate the positive feedback.

Brad, I'm pretty pleased with the color and I think its pretty much on the mark with the original. I dealt with Jaime at Kolor Korrect and she was extremely helpful, I got the "Gold Stripe" color number off the PPG chart for 1970 which shows the PPG code as 23197 and provided this info to Jaime and thats all she needed. Just tell her that its the same as what she mixed for Rohan in Australia - I'm sure she will remember me. It's an interesting color as it looks really light gold in bring sunlight but takes on a gold/green tinge in the shade. I started waxing it today and you can see the difference from the hood which is shaded compared to the stripe on the door that's got more light on it.

 

Lots of fiddly finishing work completed today, with the hood pins and front hood trim back on it made it start looking more finished but there's still some alignment work needed on the grille and hood stops (tomorrow hopefully). I'm not happy with the Aluminium headlamp bezels but I can't find anyone that will do that bright dip anodising like original. I see that there's a significant difference in price of the repros from the various Olds parts retailers but I'd like to know if they are all the same. Does anyone have experience with the repros ??

 

Your car is stunning!!! Love the color combo!! Wow!, you're not kidding about the difference in pricing for your headlamp bezels, Fusicks at $229 a pair, the parts place at $89 a pair?? and of course adding the shipping to get them down to your part of the world!! I can't imagine what you have to go through to get parts! We're so spoiled here!! Fusick does manufacture their own and they do sell nice quality stuff, but I've also bought parts from them that had "the parts place stamped on them" (like my OAI under bumper scoops!)

 

Thanks a million for the Kolor Korrect info Rohan! Finally a supplier that can make the PPG 23197 color. What a relief.

I'm really looking forward to reading through your thread here on your restoration. Keep up the good work!

Brad

 

Looks great, Rohan!

I have heard good things about the Fusick bezels. Keep an eye out for an NOS set. They are rare but appear from time to time.

 

Rohan - Looking excellent! As far as headlight bezels - you need to go to Fusick. The first repro versions of these things were a mess. Each side had at least one mislocated screw hole and the vertical flange ends on the outside edges were a mess......not very good pieces. Fusick USED TO carry those but their catalog had the "warning" of "not our manufacture" I think.

Fusick apparently had their own made and they're the higher priced versions..something like $250-270 for a pair but Randy ("rand5204" on this site) bought some for one of his '70 442 converts and he told me they fit great.

There are places here that can properly re-anodize originals but used ones typically have small chips in them (sand, etc hitting them) so the labor to get everything prepped prior to re-anodizing is a expensive proposition. I'd try Fusick.....likely A LOT less than having a set restored.

 

Rohan, my experience mirrors Patton's. I had my aluminum polished and reanodized. There are a few pieces of aluminum trim near the windows and two headlight bezels. The bezels were NOS but I didn't like the finish. Now all the aluminum trim matches and looks gorgeous. But the bill was $800. That was near what it cost to polish the stainless.

Looking at the stack of polished pieces, it appeared that there was about six times as much stainless as aluminum trim.

Funkwagon on this site had problems with freshly-anodized pieces for his 1970 flattop wagon not matching in luster or color. He had to have his pieces redone to get them to match. And he told me my $800 charge was a bargain.

 

Funkwagon on this site had problems with freshly-anodized pieces for his 1970 flattop wagon not matching in luster or color. He had to have his pieces redone to get them to match. And he told me my $800 charge was a bargain.[/QUOTE]

Very true!!

 

Rohan, is your Kolor Korrect gold stripe paint the Basecoat/Clearcoat or Acrylic Enamel?
Thanks,
Brad

 

Brad, my stripes are painted with basecoat / clearcoat.

 

Perfect! Thanks

 

Thanks Patton, Gary & Funkwagon455, appreciate your feedback and insight on the repro headlight bezels and the challenges in refinishing my originals. Looks like the Fusick repros are the way to go by the sounds of things. Pricey but those bezels make or break the front of the car and there's no point of spending silly $$$$ on mine and still have the risk that they don't turn out well.

 

w30brad Brad, just to clarify. ​​​​​​I gave Kolor Korrect the color number and details and they supplied me that sprayed out sample I had in the photo as I can't get that original formula mixed here in Australia and you can't send paint overseas, it did however cost me the same as a quart of paint. When that sample arrived here I got my paint shop to spectro color match it in base coat but the formula they use is different to the US as the Australian tinters are different. Apparently some paints tinters in the US still contain lead which is banned here. Cheers Rohan

 

Thanks Rohan, I don't want to hijack this thread, so I posted a reply on your thread about the Gold Paint:

https://classicoldsmobile.com/forums...-match-149075/

Brad

 

Well we are now pretty close to finished. Been doing a few test drives to sort out the bugs before registration and still need to fit the rear hood moulding once its repaired and also strip & repaint the wheels but its a fantastic feeling to have it back out on the road again for a few short drives.

 

looks real good. Enjoy the satisfying feeling after a long project.

 

Beautiful!!!

 

Very nice work!

 

Excellent work! Your car has come a long way glad your almost done.

 

Well, a few test drives showed up several annoying rattles but I've almost nailed those now - except the squeaks from the wheel trim rings . Had to drop the pan on the transmission after continual leaks both on the pan and from the speedo drive after the trans was rebuilt but its perfect now. Must say I wonder what seals the guy who rebuilt if for me used because it was leaking everywhere. I still have a fuel gauge issue where it's reading 1/2 the actual level and I'm currently checking all the ground points to see if that's contributing but it's looking like the tank might be coming out shortly to check the sender..... I've finally got the car registered and been enjoying getting it out and about whilst the weather is still good (it's Fall here now). It has been unseasonably hot this weekend and sure enough the restored original starter hasn't handled the heat well, it was fine initially with the cool weather but it doesn't take a long drive now and sure enough it won't start again until it cools off for 30 minutes. I'll explore shielding it this week but I have a feeling that's not going to be good enough. This week I also plan to hook up the AC hoses and get it charged then over Winter the SS1 wheels will come off and be stripped and repainted ready for it to go to the Olds Club of Australia National Meet in October. Here's a few pics I took when I had it out today. This will likely be my last report till October when it's absolutely ready and totally finished for the Nationals.