Hello from an Okie Olds Owner
July 25th, 2013, 01:27 PM
#1
Hello from an Okie Olds Owner
TLDR Version: Hi, My name is Travis. I have car. Whee!
Long Version:
First post here aside from adding myself to the map, though I belonged to an olds mailing list maybe 10 years ago so I may eventually recognize a name or two. My name is Travis, I'm in Oklahoma City midtown. It's been a solid decade since I owned an Olds (86 Cutlass S with a 350 from a '71 Chevelle + th350), but on Saturday, a day after my 30th birthday, I joined the family again. Here's a quick story of the car.
The car was out in the middle of the Oklahoma panhandle nearly as close to Denver as it is to OKC, but a couple of pics made it look promising.
I found out over the phone that the car had served as the ambulance for the town until 6-7 years ago (06/07) and supposedly the current owner's friend bought it from the city & drove it lightly. My father, my brother, and I took the 5-hour drive to check it out. It was repainted 1-2 years ago and there are a couple of smallish dings, in addition to evidence of a minor fender bender on the rear bumper. The interior is in near-immaculate shape except for the scarring inside the rear gate where they clearly slid gurneys in & out for several decades. The upside of this is that the rear seats were folded down & look nearly showroom perfect. Adding to the ambulance story, there are drill holes from where the radio was attached under the steering wheel and a zipper fabricated into the headliner to access where the antenna was attached, which is now just a rubber plug in the roof.
Needless to say, we reached an agreement and I drove my new friend home 5 hours without incident. It's clear that not a lot of maintenance was done in the last 5 years - with my dad's help I've replaced much of the ignition & charging system and located/fixed a small fuel leak from a busted carb gasket. After this & some light tuning she runs great. Fluids are clean, she runs alarmingly quietly, and at 99.5K miles there's not a lick of smoke.
I was also delighted to find that the block was gold, which matched the "Ultra High Compression" logo on the air filter cover and the (possibly original) gas cap which read "premium fuel only." By all evidence it looks like I was lucky enough to find one of the few & fun 315hp 330's. Now I'm just having fun on parts runs since most parts stores tell me it doesn't exist. That said I plan on double checking to make sure my numbers match up. If anyone is an expert on this motor I'm open to advice & pointers.
I'll leave you with this little gallery I was able to put together in short order. I'll likely do another once I've cleaned her up & replaced the windshield.
https://classicoldsmobile.com/forums...a+cruiser.html
Long Version:
First post here aside from adding myself to the map, though I belonged to an olds mailing list maybe 10 years ago so I may eventually recognize a name or two. My name is Travis, I'm in Oklahoma City midtown. It's been a solid decade since I owned an Olds (86 Cutlass S with a 350 from a '71 Chevelle + th350), but on Saturday, a day after my 30th birthday, I joined the family again. Here's a quick story of the car.
The car was out in the middle of the Oklahoma panhandle nearly as close to Denver as it is to OKC, but a couple of pics made it look promising.
I found out over the phone that the car had served as the ambulance for the town until 6-7 years ago (06/07) and supposedly the current owner's friend bought it from the city & drove it lightly. My father, my brother, and I took the 5-hour drive to check it out. It was repainted 1-2 years ago and there are a couple of smallish dings, in addition to evidence of a minor fender bender on the rear bumper. The interior is in near-immaculate shape except for the scarring inside the rear gate where they clearly slid gurneys in & out for several decades. The upside of this is that the rear seats were folded down & look nearly showroom perfect. Adding to the ambulance story, there are drill holes from where the radio was attached under the steering wheel and a zipper fabricated into the headliner to access where the antenna was attached, which is now just a rubber plug in the roof.
Needless to say, we reached an agreement and I drove my new friend home 5 hours without incident. It's clear that not a lot of maintenance was done in the last 5 years - with my dad's help I've replaced much of the ignition & charging system and located/fixed a small fuel leak from a busted carb gasket. After this & some light tuning she runs great. Fluids are clean, she runs alarmingly quietly, and at 99.5K miles there's not a lick of smoke.
I was also delighted to find that the block was gold, which matched the "Ultra High Compression" logo on the air filter cover and the (possibly original) gas cap which read "premium fuel only." By all evidence it looks like I was lucky enough to find one of the few & fun 315hp 330's. Now I'm just having fun on parts runs since most parts stores tell me it doesn't exist. That said I plan on double checking to make sure my numbers match up. If anyone is an expert on this motor I'm open to advice & pointers.
I'll leave you with this little gallery I was able to put together in short order. I'll likely do another once I've cleaned her up & replaced the windshield.
https://classicoldsmobile.com/forums...a+cruiser.html
July 25th, 2013, 02:09 PM
#4
@oldcutlass: it's not uncommon for small towns in Oklahoma to have old hearses pulling double duty as ambulance, or station wagons serving as both for the town. A good friend had a '64 Cadillac hearse that was also a small town's ambulance. In this case it looks like they just found a white wagon in the town's budget & let it go to work. Of course, they're getting less common to find this way as they've been slowly replaced over the years. I'm told that right now is a fairly ripe market to pick up a well-maintained late-80's/early-90s hearse.
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