kanskidoo

Okay, here's the update on my post car project. To date, I've pieced out another 442 and a Cutlass gathering parts. As you can probably tell from the avatar pic, this car wasn't exactly a cherry; it had laid in the dirt so long, the front brake hubs were rotted thru! Frame-wise, I blasted the frame, rearend, front suspension, and all of the body and POR-15'd everything, rebuilt a '70 front suspension, ran all new brake lines, fuel lines, rebuilt rear brakes, added '72 Monte front discs. Replaced four body mounts on the frame that were rotted. Body-wise, I built new lower rear quarter panels and all the supporting metal, rear inner fender wells, rear wheel well flares, and trunk floor pan, removed most of the chrome (will retain the side scoops). Rebuilt front and rear lower window channels. Mildly customized the grille, smoothed firewall, built new dash panel. I have most of the car wired, except for hooking up headlight and park light wires; used EZWire kit. Dash is repadded and has Dolphin gauges in it. Brakes and clutch work. I used fiberglass bumpers, installed flushmount tail lights. Most of the major sheetmetal work is done, am about ready to start blocksanding it. Rebuilt '76 455 Toronado motor with 4-speed, 3.55 gear, . Floors and firewall insulated, will insulate the rest once the car is blocked. I fired the motor last week, sounds good, didn't run it long as no exhausts yet. That's next.

Warhead

Another worthy 65 post project!
Looking good so far, keep us posted.
http://ultra-hi-comp.proboards.com/i...ay&thread=1650


Jim

stan 65 cutlass

looks good, dont see customs as much any more

J-(Chicago)

2 thumbs up here.

kanskidoo

Thanks, guys, for the good words. I've been retired from Boeing Defense about 5 years, do my own work, and have spent the last two years working on it. It's the second car I've done an off-frame rebuild on. When I was building my '40 Chevy, I could buy a lot of re-pop sheetmetal for it; not so with this one, so building trunk floors, quarters, etc. has been more time consuming. I had almost a twin to this one in '65, so decided this one had to be different, plus it was going to be ridiculously expensive to put it back to original, and without a Boeing paycheck any longer..........!

nonhog

Looking good. Glad to see your still at it. Only complaint too long between updates and not enough pictures.

Cool car!

kanskidoo

It just takes me longer than it does other people to get stuff done. A guy would think that most of the stuff just bolts back together, so no big deal, but since I'm not using original parts, nothing fits like it's supposed to. For instance, I bought a Hurst "knock-off" shifter from Summit, installed it before I put the body back on the chassis, all went well. But when I remounted the body, since the shifter has a shorter stick and isn't "dog-legged", it wouldn't clear the driver's seat in 4th gear, soooooooooo had to remount the shifter about 2 inches forward, which caused the linkage arms to interfere with the tranny cross member, and I had to reconfigure the cross member.
Also, the captive fasteners inside the body the mount bolts attach to were rotten, I had to cut them out and replace them with new fasteners, then reweld the skin. About half of the fasteners were like that. Wadda mess...but I'm more "knowledgeable" now, right? Also had to replace the door hinges, and that threw the door and fender alignment all out of whack. I'm a one-man show, so doing the adjustments by myself took a while to get everything to re-align.

therobski

Nice another post car save-these buggys are geting really hard to find. My 64 "Rustbucket" was about the condition your 65 was in. (Don't let the picture fool you) Gearheads and a fews others know! I out sourced my trunk and interior floor pan and braces-64 GTO parts, the body is going on a rotiserie soon at the body shop. While they are working on that for the next 12 months or so that will give me time to build a rolling chassis. You may have saw my thread in this section. Great job!!!

kanskidoo

My car was such a mess. There wasn't a straight panel on it; someone had even walked on the top. It had Chevy motormounts scabbed into it, the tranny hump was almost totally cut away, firewall with big holes in it. It had front springs from something bailing-wired in place of the rear coils, trailing arms had plates welded onto them and to the rearend housing, a sad attempt at traction bars, I guess. I got a 400 motor with the deal, but had a bazillion miles on it, had laid outside and the only parts saveable were the crank and rods, all else junk...and since none of the later drivetrain stuff will interchange, I decided against using it The driver's door had about 1/2 inch of bondo in it. Couldn't find any post doors, so had to straighten the ones I had. Car had been drug by the rear frame bar, which was bent so had to straighten that. I had my '40 Chevy sandblasted when I was starting on it, but decided to do my own blasting on this one. I built my own rolling body stand, worked okay, but was kind of a pain to blast the underside of the body. A rotisserie would of been nice. Oh well. I keep telling myself that since it's a post car, it's gotta be worth it.

therobski

Yes it's a "POST CAR". And yes 64-65's are my passion also to the point at sometime I may sell my 67 442 tribute car that I built my way and reinvest it into the 64. Some 64-65 parts are the same. Recently, I have bought a pair of rust free 64 post doors, from a club member and other parts. If you are good with patch panels my original doors are very repairable on the bottom edges. Let's figure out something if you need these down the road. I also have a great running 67-400E on a stand that I may part out because it has (65) A heads and bunch of performance parts on it that I can use for my 425 build. That block is coded different that a 65. But there are parts around reasonable priced, at least for now. Keep your chin up....

kanskidoo

I have my doors pretty well straight now; they were basically okay, except both had huge dents in them and whoever did the "work" (tongue in cheek) didn't bother to pull out the dents, just bondo'ed over the dents. Real mess. I think I took about 5 lbs. off each door. Couldn't find any other post doors at the time, so rebuilt mine. Biggest trouble I had was getting the door profile right. The motor is a '76 455 from a GMC motorhome (they used Toronado motors in them.) It's got baffles and windage trays in the pan the other motors don't have, plus it's a 9 1/2 comp. motor, plenty good for a driver. Surprisingly, it had very little taper in the cylinders, and honed standard bore within tolerance. The crank was an automatic crank, and was good, but I traded it to a machine shop for a .010/.010 "stick" crank and used it. I put new rings, rod & main bearings, soft plugs, oil pump, timing chain and gears in it. A buddy tuned up the heads for me, had to replace four valves; guides, etc. all good. Used the original intake, kitted a 2818-1 Holley for it, bought a new billet HEI distributor. As I said, I just fired it last week and it sounds healthy.

I was looking at your post on your progress on your '64. Looks like you are making good headway. I had to rebuild both my back window and windshield lower channels. Bought a front replacement channel from OPG, but didn't use it, ended up cutting strips of 18 gauge, and welding them in place. Real time consuming, but came out great. Did the same thing on the rear channel. My tray between the trunk and window was pretty good, but did have to patch in a couple of places next to the window.
I'm a dedicated sucker, so I'll keep plugging away until I get 'er!

Here's a pic of what my windshield channel looked like before the redo. Also enclosing a couple pics of what the windshield and back window look like now. Sorry, I didn't take any pics "in process".

mrgm

i love these body styles