elwood565

Jaunty, you are doing some stellar work to this '73, giving it treatment that any other clamshell wagon would, and should, be envious of!

I wasn't sold on your choice of the more reddish looking carpet, but now that the front seat is in and things are getting put back together, it really does work pretty well. It's certainly not clashing or anything.

Again, A +++ work!

-Bob

jaunty75

To be honest, it was a bit redder than I expected it to be when it arrived. However, once it got into the car and the seats got back in, it's not so overwhelming, and I think it really looks good. Sharpens up the look on the interior overall. I'm very pleased with the way it turned out.

citcapp

Looks great, but whats with the green seat belts? Or is it just the camera doing something funny with the colors

jaunty75

It's the camera/computer screen/whatever. The belts are black.

jaunty75

Minor update this weekend. Spent all day yesterday trying to track down the short in the taillight/parking light/license plate light circuit. No luck. The turn signals/brake lights/four-way flashers all work fine, so at least part of the wiring to the lights is ok. I pulled apart every light and looked for any sign of burned wires or bad insulation and could see nothing. Everything looked tight as a drum.

I've gone ahead and ordered one of those short circuit testers. We'll see what happens when it arrives.


Today I went ahead and reinstalled the front inner fenders, which had been out of the car ever since it was painted back in 2005 and had never been reinstalled. There was no reason I couldn't have done this when I got the car four months ago. Just had to wait until I had some of the other things I wanted to do first done.

Below are before and after photos. Yes, I know, this is about as exciting-looking a thing as you can imagine, but it's a gotta-do job.





Can't see those tires any more!

OLD SKL 69

Nice work Jaunty. Interior looks 100% better. Bet you hate to even wear your shoes inside the car...don't want to get that new carpeting dirty!

jeffreyalman

funny that I never realized how close the front tires are to the engine with the inner fenders on - kinda scary

also, cost cutting - my 76 has 1 hood spring up front

jaunty75

You're right! In fact, people are required to remove their shoes AND socks before getting in now!

jeffreyalman

here's your power windows and door locks http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eB...#ht_500wt_1182

jaunty75

You're right. One thing I noticed with the inner fenders off was how easy it is to reach the grease fittings and just get at the front end components and brakes in general. It's too bad they didn't design these fender wells to be easily removable as it would make many aspects of servicing the front end easier. For example, the brake bleeder fitting is just right there when you look down at it from under the hood. Would be much easier to get at than reaching up behind things when trying to bleed brakes from beside the front wheel.

jaunty75

I saw that auction. Car looks like a mess. I've no desire to add power locks and windows at this point. The car didn't come with them, which means, I think, that the wiring is not there in the door waiting for me to plug in the motors. Besides, I've got enough electrical problems in trying to figure out the short in the taillight circuit. I don't want to potentially ADD to my electrical woes!

I could use the license plate light, though. Maybe I'll bid on it...

Aron Nance

Jaunty: Just saw a big wagon on Ebay similar to yours, nice looking Old's. Buy it now price of $12,995.00. As I recall, you got yours considerably cheaper, and it looks every bit as good as the one for sale. How's it coming on whatever is left (electrical) to fix? Great save, great buy.
Aron

jeffreyalman

not bad but unreasonable price for a sparsely equipped car http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eB...ht_1316wt_1166

jaunty75

The latest on the CC is that I have pretty much finished putting the interior back together. I repainted the moldings and plastic wheelhouse trim and it's all back in. As might be expected in such cases, I ended up with several pieces that I don't know where they go! Maybe one day I'll see another '73 up close and can find out.

Below are four photos taken the night I first visited the car back in January and then two taken as I was finishing up the rear interior. In the latter photos, the covering on the floor is greenish in color as it has faded over the years. I've since repainted it to the same color as the side trim, but I don't have a photo of that yet.

I took those last two photos before I was completely finished, and I was too lazy to remove the little boxes of screws and some of the tools, so that's why they're in the photo! Also, I was in the process of putting in some rear speakers. The car originally came with an AM-only radio with just two speakers up front. The previous owner had added a CB radio (a very 1970s thing to do!) and had put in a single rear speaker on one side. Since the speaker cutout was already there on one side in the rear, it wasn't much of a decision to decide to put in a second one.


Before (photos taken January 16, 2010).












After (photos taken June 12, 2010).

jaunty75

Yes, I paid $1500 for mine.

Bluevista

Looking good.
The fun begins and never stops.

That rear speaker grill was a trick on mine, they go in from the bottom of the panels off the car originally and the screws through the grill to hold it in are tough to do afterwards. I used a piece of solid picture wire looped through on each corner of the speaker to hold it up while I started the screws then yanked the wire out.
I did have it in the panel before I put it in but somebody forgot to connect the wires so I had to take it off after the panel was installed.

jaunty75

I'll take some photos of the final appearance of the rear interior and post them. The speakers I put in are mounted from the top, and it was easy to do the cutting for them as the trim was off the car, anyway, so I did it before putting the trim back in. Having the trim off also made it easy to run the wires down to the front of the car.

I topped everthing off by putting in a nice 1980s' era aftermarket JVC radio that would fit into a shaft-style dash opening. I got it for $5.00 at a garage sale, and it works well. I don't use cassettes anymore, but I can now use my satellite radio setup as it plays through the FM radio.

Here's a photo of the radio. Yes, I take a picture of pretty much everything!






In case anyone has forgotten, here's the car from the outside, taken back in March.

jeffreyalman

Jaunty looks great - re the satellite, if yours has a wireless FM modulator, and it has static, try the cassette adapter they sell at Radio Shack - fixed an issue or 2 for me in a few other (non-Oldsmobiles) cars

jaunty75

Thanks. I'm familiar with these things, and I'm kind of surprised that Radio Shack would still sell them now that cassettes have basically dropped off the planet in terms popularity. In my opinion, Radio Shack, which used to be a great place to go, has now become a miniature version of Best Buy, and I kind of wonder how they stay in business. After all, if you want the type of thing that Best Buy sells, why not just go to Best Buy, where the prices are about the same and the selection is 10 times larger. I see that Radio Shack still sells car audio through their website, but you can no longer find anything like that in the stores themselves, at least in my experience. They seem mostly interested in selling cell phones. I find the selection of electronics better at Walmart, and try finding toilet paper or dog food at Radio Shack!


A couple of other things I did to the car recently was to fix two problems with the driver's door. The window wouldn't go down all the way, and the mirror was loose. Easy fixes, right? Well, yes they were.

I took the upper door panel off to get at the insides, and, for the mirror, it turned out that, of the two bolts that stick through the door and that you tighten a nut on from the inside, only one nut was there at all, and that one was rusted and couldn't be turned. Basically, when the body shop finished painting the car and was back to putting the trim and so forth back on, they gave up on the mirror. I had to put the threaded rod in a vice and spray it with PB Blaster, but the nut loosened pretty easily, and it was no problem finding a couple of new ones in my nut drawers and getting that mirror on tight.

For the window, I looked over the mechanism and could find no problems, so I just started to work it up and down, and it rather easily started to go down all the way without much effort. It was amply lubricated, so I think it was just from lack of use that it had tightened up. Anyway, I can now put the window down all the way and stick my left elbow out while driving the way God intended, and I can adjust the mirror from the inside the way one was always supposed to be able to. (It's funny how crude that three-cable mechanical adjustment mechanism was compared to the motorized mirror adjustments you get on practically every new car now. Of course, I can take the battery out of this car and still adjust the mirror. Try doing THAT with your modern car!)

jaunty75

I took the opportunity on this absolutely spectacular day weather-wise in southeast Ohio to give the car its first wax job. I then took another set of photos and posted them on picasaweb. They don't look much different from the photos I had posted back in March, but this time there's no snow on the ground, and the trees have leaves on them.


Here's one photo to whet your appetite.




To see the rest, go here.

http://picasaweb.google.com/10794548...eat=directlink



I took the '67 Delta 88 convertible to the same spot for some photos.

http://picasaweb.google.com/10794548...eat=directlink

jeffreyalman

very very nice - that is one long a** car!!!

and I just realized it's so cool that are both similar colr schemes! excellent - picasa is nice to use huh? Looks fantastic!

jaunty75

Yes, they are, and that's just a coincidence. The wagon is officially "honey beige" while the convertible is "cameo ivory," to use the official GM color names. The wagon is just a touch more brown than the convertible, which is bright yellow.

Yes, picasa is nice.


228.3 inches, which is 19 feet, 0.3 inches. But your '76 is longer at 231 inches.