D Appeldorn

you could test your speedo with a gps .

i run on my 69 delta 88 235/75/15 (15 inch rims) and does the job, before that 235/70/15 and didn't work.

I got also the speedo to the drivers side wheel.

young olds

Can someone help me decode my cowl tag?

1969w3155

Take a photo and post here.

young olds

Not a photo but...
03C
ST 68-36667 BC00004 BODY
TR 360 Y Y PAINT

I really want to now what paint color it is because we are going to be painting some of it saturday and i want it to be right.

1969w3155

03C= Build date, March, 3rd week. 68= the year 1968, not sure of the "BC". 00004 is the production sequence # yours is the 100,004 built. TR 360 = interior trim, also not sure as info on big cars is harder to come by. I would guess black, others will chime in. Y Y is Saffron painted body with a Saffron painted roof.

young olds

thanks for the help

1969w3155

I recieved your response via email but not here, where your paint guy is calling it Butternut. They are the same color, same paint code/ PPG-Ditzler. Olds called it Saffron, Chevy-Butternut, Pontiac- Mayfair maize.

young olds

ya i wrote that at first but then i was looking up paint and saw that it crossed with the chev butternut yellow so i edited.

young olds

Thats not too rusty is it?

young olds

young olds

young olds

done?

Lady72nRob71

That's not too rusty...

It just ain't there!

Wow - great repair job for sure.
After the rust, paint and bodywork, you will be sailing home for sure!

young olds

Can i get this thread moved to the build & projects section?

gearheads78

done...

young olds

Thanks

78ChevOlds

great rescue job on this car.

young olds

thanks. well some bad news, not too bad, i got kicked out of the body shop for reasons i dont feel like talking about. so body work is going to be slow, im gonna try and do it myself now.

young olds

i got my car to another shop and its coming along pretty good, im gonna try to drive it sunday.

young olds

here are my wheels after some work they should be painted in a couple of days.

young olds

no i havent even looked for one yet, mine was in really bad shape, it looked good but when i took it out it fell apart.

young olds

alright thanks. here are my wheels as of today, i ended up painting my wheels myself. I think they came out good considering, i still have to spray some clear on them.

young olds

front brakes

young olds

ok the rear chanel is done, ive been working on it every day for the last week. i drove it in to town and put 20 gallons($65) in today. tomarow i am driving it to everett about 45min from my house, should be fun.

young olds

i will tell you guys how it went on sunday, when i get home.

jaunty75

Welcome to adulthood!

citcapp

The first thing you need to accept is do not check the gas millage it hurts to much. Enjoy your first cruise

jeffreyalman

looking very cool

young olds

ok, the drive was really good. It cruised down the freeway excellent, it did have a little hickup(backfire?) on the way there but not on the way back. I did get a few looks. All in all it did great, i had fun driving and want to do it again. Oh ya about gas mileage, my gas gauge doesnt work right now so i cant figure the gas mileage. after i fix it i will probably check though.

jaunty75

Tune-up? In all the work you've done to the car, has any of it been to the engine? New points, spark plugs, distributor cap, and rotor along with properly adjusted idle speeds, dwell, and timing will do wonders, even if the car seems to be running ok.


Welcome to the club! Do you know specifically what's wrong with the gauge? My '67 Delta 88 and made-in-the-usa's '67 Delta both needed new sending units. None are made for these cars, but the one that fits a '72 Buick LeSabre, which IS made (see rockauto.com) is a drop-in replacement. You just need to cap the second (vent) tube if your car doesn't use one. I know you've got a '68 and not a '67, but I'm guessing the sending units are the same.

Of course, dropping the tank to get at the sending unit is not a trivial issue, but it may be what it takes to get the gauge working again. But first check the wiring and make sure there are no breaks in it nor a bad ground at the tank. One of the two wires (the black one) coming off the top of the tank should be attached to the frame just in front of and above the tank. This wire can loosen or, more likely, get corroded with age and thus not be properly grounded.

young olds

ya ive done work to the engine. I have new spark plugs and wires, i did a carburetor rebuild my dad did the carb adjustments for me, i put a hei in it with a new coil and my dad and i set the timing. That is the most its driven in like five years, its not used to running that much. ive not even put 200mi on it since ive had it and about 100 of them were this weekend

young olds

the sending unit isnt the same for all 68 b-body cars?

jaunty75

No, it appears not. I just now went to the rockauto.com website and looked up the fuel sending unit for a '68 Chevy Caprice. They have one, but its not the same. The outlet pipe has a downward bend in it. Go to that site and do a search on part number FG105a. Then do a part number search on the number that made-in-the-usa gives, FG106a. There's pictures of both, and you'll see the difference.

If you try to find a fuel tank sending unit for a '68 Olds 88 or a '68 Buick LeSabre at rockauto, you won't find one. You will find one for a '68 Chevy Caprice, though. That just shows you the difference in the size of the aftermarket for these. It's worth it for a company to invest in the tooling necessary to make one for a Chevy but not for Olds or Buick. Fortunately, as we've found out, the FG106a unit, which is what shows up if you select an early '70s full-size GM, like a '72 Buick LeSabre, will also fit the '67s and presumably the '68s.

I just now went to the autozone.com website, and they have the FG106a unit listed, but it's a special order item, so you'd have to go to the store, order it, and wait a day or two to get it. Not a big deal. Cost is $76 plus sales tax. Rockauto has it for $59, and you'd have to pay shipping. I'm guess that rockauto still ends up being cheaper.

jaunty75

Heck yes! You've got the tank drained and out of the car, anyway. One would be silly not to. My tank did not have that much crud in it, but I cleaned it out thoroughly. It turned out that even my large, clunky hand and wrist could fit through the opening in the top of the tank, and I could get in there with a rag and scoop everything out.


The design of the fuel pick-up system actually acts to make this unlikely. I was interested to discover that the end of the pick-up pipe sits about 1/2-inch ABOVE the bottom of the tank. Any crud in there could only get to the fuel inlet if it floats or if it happened to be swished up into the liquid because of the movement of the car and the jostling of the gasoline.

But a big consequence of this is that you can never get all of the fuel out of the tank by burning it in the engine, and your 25-gallon capacity gas tank is actually less than that. I did a calculation based on the surface area of the bottom of the tank, and I calculated that it would take 2 gallons of fuel to bring the level of the fuel up to the bottom of the intake pipe (fill the thank to a depth of 1/2 inch). This means that as the last of the fuel that the pickup pipe can actually take in is taken in, there are still two gallons of fuel left in the tank. In short, you have a 23-gallon gas tank as far as usable volume is concerned, not 25.

jaunty75

Would you have gotten fuel out if the tank wasn't pressurized? I'm guessing you pressurized the tank to check for leaks. But the tank is not pressurized in normal use.

Your tank's fuel pick-up line cannot go all the way to the bottom of the tank both because, if it did so, it would be blocked by the bottom of the tank and because there is a filter that goes over the bottom of the pipe, and there has to be room for that. Whether it's 1/2-inch above the bottom of the tank or something less, the fuel pick-up line is still above the bottom of the tank. It has to be as it comes into the tank from the top and extends straight down. With this design, there will always be some minimum amount of fuel that the intake pipe can never reach.


True, but the experiences of others are still useful to know about and can be helpful as 9 times out of 10, he's going to have the same or a similar problem.



For the reasons you mention, I do most of my shopping at local auto parts stores, too, particularly Autozone, as I have one of their shopping cards, so I get $20 off every time the amount of my purchases reaches a certain level. But I have used Rockauto, Fusick, etc., as well as sometimes I need a part that is listed simply as "not available" in the local stores. It's not that they have to order it. It's that they can't get it at all. While it doesn't happen often, I've had this experience at both Autozone and NAPA, the two stores I go to the most often.

young olds

ok i droped the tank last night and it turned out bad. everything is fine i just tried to do it by myself and it sucked. i thought there was less then half a tank of gas in it but by the time i got it out and pulled the sending unit out i discovered it was almost full( a pleasant suprise for the most part). And it turns out that the gauge doesnt work because the float, im assuming its a float, is stuck. i should have figured as the needle on the gauge never moves.

jaunty75

It's amazing how much gas can be left in the tank when you think you've drained most of it.

It's not surprising that the float is stuck. It appears to be a common problem with these. I'd get the later-year part described above and put that in.

young olds

I didnt know i was supposed to drain it first.

young olds

were did those post about the sending unit go anyways
were did all of the post from made in usa go, also wasnt this thread use to be 3 pages?

jaunty75

Makes it a lot lighter! But I found that if I get the tank down to about half-full, it's light enough that I can carefully lower it to the ground and then pick it up and dump the gas through the filler neck into a large bucket. If I had enough storage, I would just save it and put it back in the tank when I was done. Or, I would just dump it into the fuel tanks of my other cars to use it up. Then it would off to the gas station for some fresh gas when I'm ready to fill the newly cleaned, reattached gas tank.