Vellu

Saw this neat 1942 Olds at Craiglist. Original 6 cylinder and automatic. Contacted seller through email and asked if he was interested to sell car internationally. No reply.

After couple of weeks saw the same car at Ebay. Contacted seller again through Ebay and got reply "car will stay states". At that point I knew that I have to use shipper to get car to me. Contacted shipper and told him that I want to buy that car and he bought it for me and shipped it to Finland.

Car is originally from New York and seller said that car have minimal rust. Well, for someone it may have minimal rust. For me and for Finnish vehicle inspection personnels there was rust more than enough. If I want to get car registered in Finland, I have to replace trunk floor, both rockers, many floor supports and many frame supports.

First I tried to look repro rockers but did not found those. So I made those from sheet metal. Now googled same rockers again and found those at Ebay. They are way better that what I have made so bought a set. Now waiting to get those so can weld them in place.

Also have Chevrolet 267 and th350. Because of Finnish regulations I am not allowed to put higher than original motor +20% of horsepower in it. So only solution to get SBC in it is to put 267. But I'm going to drive original 6cyl and hydramatic as long as they are working.

At first I was unaware that this car might be pretty rare, because of production year 1942. Is there much of these ´42 cars?


Sorry for my bad English.

oldcutlass

Welcome to the site, post some pictures of your car/s when you get a chance.

Vellu

Picture at AD



After I received it



After I received it



What's under plastidip.

oldcutlass

I love that body style, with some work you'll have a great car. Just a note, we have a great group of guys in the Vintage Forum section. The 1946 1947 and 1948 How many own them? thread is a great read.

jaunty75

It's rare because all 1942 model year American cars are rare relative to other years. Production of 1942 models was halted on January 1 of that year so that production capacity could be turned to the war effort as the U.S. had just been forced into World War II with the bombing of Pearl Harbor the previous month.

Just to give a sense of the differences, for 1941, Olds produced 270,038 cars. For the war-shortened 1942 model year, Olds produced only 67,999 cars, barely 25% of the previous year's production.

The 238 cubic inch straight six making 100 hp was the standard and only engine available in the "Special Series 66" and the "Dynamic Cruiser 76" lines of Oldsmobiles. The other model lines wer the Special Series 68, Dynamic Cruiser 78, and Custom Cruiser 98, all with the base engine being a 257 cubic-inch straight 8 making 110 hp.

Several 2-door models were available, and based on that side view of your car, it looks to be a Special Club Sedan (on the right in the image below).

The Series 66 Special Club Sedan was the second-most popular model in the 1942 Oldsmobile line with production of 9,493. The most popular '42 Olds was the Dynamic Cruiser 76 (same engine, more brightwork, etc.) Club Sedan with production of 10,142.

47 Convertible

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Hello Vellu, Your English is very good. No need to apologize. Welcome to Classic Oldsmobile. You will find help and encouragement here and particularly in the Vintage Olds forum and the 46-48 Thread Eric mentioned.

I think you will find that a lot of 1946-1948 Oldsmobile parts will fit on your car. If your Oldsmobile is the small model some Chevrolet parts and some Pontiac parts may interchange as well since that is the case with Model 66 and 68 Oldsmobiles in 1946, 1947 and 1948. You would need a Hollanders Interchange Manual to figure out what interchanges. The best one is the 16th Edition which is no longer in print but can be found on eBay from time to time. Hollanders also has a newer edition that covers more years but is not in as much detail and they still print it. You can find Hollanders on the Internet.

Your '42 is a nice looking car. Kind of surprising that it had so much rust underneath and still looked so good on the surface.

Keep us posted on your progress along with photos of what you are doing. Everyone here like photos.
Jerry

64Rocket

Is that some kind of spray plastic coating?
all they did was cover the whole car, chrome and all.
I say take it all off and paint it red again, would look amassing.

Good luck
Gene

1969w3155

Welcome, cool Olds. It's a shame that the plasti dip was put on the car, I have to wonder if it was done to deceive any potential buyer. Have you thought of contacting E Bay to see if you can file a claim against the seller?

Vellu

Car was sprayed with plasti dip. Luckily it can be removed rather easy. But at some places at car plasti dip coating is so thin that it won't peel out. So basically I have to sand it out or put another thick layer of plasti dip and then peel everything off.


Seller build it to be some kind of rat rod. And drove it about six months. Before that it was barn find. If I understood correct, car was left to barn in early ´70s.
I have taken all of plasti dip away what can be taken away. At first I was afraid that how much rust there's under that dip but it suprised that there's none. All of the rust is underneath car and luckily frame is super solid.
Seller said that there's some minimal rust at driver's floor. So I was excepting some small welding. I was just little disappointed that there was so much of it. But car was inspected in NY that same year so apparently NY inspection is easier to pass that inspection in Finland.

Rocketowner

Vellu,welcome to Classic Olds.You might be interested in reading the article (inmygarage.com/black-1942-Chevy-coupe).It contains info about production of cars in 1942,and why sone '42 American cars were produced without Chrome and briteworks. I would think that in 1942 Olds ,the numbers would be very low and the chances of finding one that did have chrome Bumpers, grill, and polished bright work ,would be rare. I had a friend, that's mother owned a 1942 Olds fastback(tan and medium brown) and was loaded with chrome, but I don't remember seeing many more like that. Larry