I just want to introduce myself....My name is Kevin and I am from Urbana, Ohio. I was recommended to this site by a member on Garage Journal. I was a 30+ year Tool Designer and Tool & Die Maker. Machining is a passion of mine. I always hated sitting behind a desk I recently retired due to a whole bunch of botched shoulder operations which basically rendered my left arm pretty much useless. After 10 failed operations I had to retire on Disability. Not something I wanted to do. So on with why I am here.

Saturday I bought my wife a '64 Olds Cutlass F85. I have never owned an Olds, and I was telling my wife that I don't believe I ever drove one. My wife is a little older than me by 10 years. Her first car was a '64 Olds 442. They are sort of hard to find around here, so I found her the next best thing....A '64 Olds Cutlass F85 Convertible. It's had work done to it and it's what I call a 2/10. It's a great 2' car, but looking at it for 10 minutes, you start seeing all of the problems.

The car itself is great looking, but after further investigation, one can start spotting the patches here and there. I'm 6' and 240#'s and I can barely fit into it. I believe the steering column has been replaced as there is quite a bit of distance between the steering wheel and dash pad. And the seat doesn't go back far enough to have adequate leg room. It's also got a different engine ('80 something 350) I almost walked away from it, but it actually has more positives about it than negatives. I also have to realize that next year will be it's 50th Birthday. The car will be driven to Cruise-Ins and also just a nice weather, "let's take a ride with the top down" car.

The car itself just has a lot of nitpicky crap that needs to be done. That will be mama's and I project this winter. Throw it up on jack stands and start fixing what needs to be fixed or change what needs to be changed. It's not going to be a high dollar show car, but I need to bring it up to MY standards. I want to swap out the brakes on front for disc brakes, clean up the interior due to wires hanging under the dash, remove a huge bulky 10 CD disc player, adjust the convertible top so the windows seal against it, and above all, make some adapters to relocate the bucket seats back further and find or buy an appropriate steering wheel and column. Later on down the road, pull the 350 out and hopefully drop in something like a built 455.

I will be bothering a lot of people about our car when we start working on it. I have rebuilt plenty of other cars in my lifetime, but know nothing about Olds or what is correct and not correct to do. And I'll have engine, trans, rearend questions.

For now though, since I finally got signed up, I am going to read through the forums and see what I can learn and see what I can learn about other members and their Olds cars and/or projects.

And finally I want to say "Thanks for having me"

 

Sorry to hear about the problems with your arm. Maybe getting a chance to work on a car will be good therapy for it.

I like your car. My father had a '64 Cutlass convertible her purchased new in '64 and kept for four years. I remember riding around in it as a kid.


I would give you a couple of words of advice. First, calling an Olds a "bastardized Chevy" probably won't win you any popularity contests on this site no matter how lovingly you meant it.

Second, you used the "s" word up there. Just yesterday I used a version of the "s" word myself, and the teacher made me sit in the corner all afternoon. I would avoid that and similar words in the future if you don't want the same thing happening to you!

 

Welcome, again sorry to hear of your shoulder issues. As you read through the newbie posts you will find we do like pictures.

 

Fixed and fixed Thank you!!!

 

Better, but you substituted the "c" word for the "s" word. I'd still be careful!

 

Welcome to CO! I have great sympathy, and great empathy for your shoulder situation. My right suffered a partial tear in 2012 from an accident (idiot in a Beemer turned left across me.............BANG!). I have decided (at my age) to forgo the surgery, but really having significant pain most of the time............fix up the Olds and have a ball................
Aron

 

Welcome to CO! Sorry about your health issue, hopefully it'll get better in time.

 

Welcome and good luck from Massillon.
Rob

 

Aron......If you can get by WITHOUT surgery, brother, go as long as you can. When I had my shoulder replaced, there were three others at the same time that I know that also either had rotator cuff repair surgery, or they had a shoulder replacement. That was in '03. Today, all are having problems.

OLD SKL.....I wish it would get better, but it won't. That's why I ended up on disability. I've had 10 replacements / alterations / revisions. It was to the point that the surgeon told me that there would be one more operation and that would be to take all of the hardware out, put in a composite "antibiotic spacer" and call it done. So now I have no Rotator Cuff, I have a cut Axillary Nerve which controls the Deltoid Muscle which now does not work, the Bicep muscle is not hooked to anything anymore, the socket has been ground on a few times, I've had two real bad cases of MERSA because of the operations, and my shoulder is permanently dislocated. And because of all of that stuff, my nights consist of a total of four hours of interrupted sleep. I don't sleep more than two hours a night because my shoulder starts hurting. The other meds don't seem to help, so I have to take a sleeping pill just to get to sleep.

So for anyone going to a doctor for shoulder pain, get on the internet and research what procedures they want to do and don't just take a docs word for it. It's surprising what one finds out after the fact.

rjohnson.....You're a few miles from me by maybe 2 hours. Are there quite a few from Ohio on here, or do you know? One other site I frequent is Garage Journal and there is a buttload of Ohio guys on it and many from up around the Cleveland area.

 

Welcome aboard

 

Welcome to the site from farther yet of Cleveland. Relax work on the car have fun with it you will find you now own one of the greatest manufactured vehicles that came from General motors the ride like a dream. The folks here are the best just be as accurate as you can with your Questions and go through older threads your question may already have been answered. I find out most of my problems can be solved that way here.

 

There is a few members that are close to me and I know of 4 70-72 cutlass within 5 miles of me.
Have fun with the ride

 

Welcome fellow Ohioan, and good luck with that shoulder. I had 2 64 cutlass's and loved them both, along with a 75 cutlass supreme, 77 cutlass vista cruiser,79 cutlass supreme and my current 71 cutlass supreme that I'm currently working on. Guess I've had a few! Loved them all.
Hope you enjoy working on your cutlass as much as the rest of us.
This is a great place for Help.

 

Thanks guys. I don't know why I put "New to Ohio" in the title, it should have been "from" instead. I guess my mind is about three steps ahead of my fingers. I've lived in Ohio all 57 years of my life. LOL!!!!

And the shoulder, it won't ever get better, only worse. That's a given. Thankfully though, my wife never ever refuses to help me if I need it, and once the snow starts flying, she's looking forward to working on the Cutlass with me. It really helps when you have a heated garage to work in for sure. And a 'fridge for the brewski's, and a flat panel TV also help a lot. If any of you guys are around Urbana sometime, give me a shout and the beer's always cold!!!!

 

Nice ride, you will enjoy top down next summer for sure. You have a great attitude about you shoulder and that will get you threw the down times and having a partner willing to help work on the Olds is an added bonus

 

One has to keep a good attitude about things. The last two or three years have been nothing but bad times in our household. Bad enough that I could probably write a book about things. And once you reach rock bottom, like they say, the only way then is back up. I lost both parents two years ago, which was so unpleasant, that I haven't visited the gravesite to this day. Then my wife found out she had "Triple Negative Breast Cancer" which is highly aggressive. Then I had 5 surgeries in 10 weeks, which caused me to have 2 real bad cases of MERSA, which caused me to have (2) IV's a day, 7 days a week, for 6 weeks, then she went through Chemo, another operation, then through radiation. And when all of that is piled together, I had a mental meltdown. Even today, I still have bad days about things. One thing I've had to do is learn to control my temper. It's not a fun ride when you're on 6 or 7 meds a day, and it's worse when you DON'T have your meds.

But I'm thankful for what I have and very thankful that my wife is doing great. It's been two years this month since she had her last Chemo treatment. they say that five years is the turning point for it not coming back, but there's never a day that goes by that you don't think about it.

ANYWAYS......I'm not here to cry on anyone's shoulder, I'm here because momma's got an Olds!!!! And when we get things situated this winter, we will be cruising with the top down next year

 

Welcome to the site. I am 59 years old. I have had 3 shoulder operations and a torn bicep muscle,plus just for fun I broke my back. I have learned what I can and can not do. However working on my 65 cutlass just might take a little longer. But I am still above ground and breathing.

 

Welcome and good luck from Louisville!

 

Welcome dude.