The truck driver called me at 5:45 this morning to say he was in town. We made the transfer at the parking lot of the Harry Grove stadium in Frederick, MD.

As usual, having is never as good as wanting. The car has a lot of small issues, the worst of which is that there is 1/2" of water in the footwells. Fortunately, the carpet is long gone and the floor pans are solid, so I need to pull the drain plugs. There was definitely a water leak at the top of the windshield on the drivers side, and it appears that the roof glass has leaks. There's definitely pinchweld rust at the roof windows and passenger rear quarter window. I can't tell if it's just lifted the butyl seal or if it has rusted through until I pull the stainless trim. The passenger rear quarter has been creased, bondoed, and creased again, so I'll be getting a lot of practice with the shrinking disk (unless I manage to locate a replacement fender, which is unlikely). The car is really solid, except for the aforementioned pinchwelds. The dash at the base of the windshield is not rusted at all.

The interior is trashed and somewhat moldy. The good news is that the front seat is exactly the same width as the split reclining six-way power bench in my soon to be scrapped 86 Caprice wagon. Apparently no one makes repro upholstery for four doors anyway, so I'll be having covers and door panels made. The headliner is shot.

The SS III wheels on the car are 15". Most of the trim is either in good shape or there is a replacement inside the car. The one problem piece of trim is the ribbed die cast piece at the bottom of the tailgate. This piece has a small extension on either side on the end of the quarter panel, and the one on the driver's side is bent and cracked. This is unique to the 64-65 Vistas, so I doubt I can find a replacement. Hopefully the chrome shop that did my friend Scott's Jetfire emblems can work some magic here. Also, the OLDSMOBILE letters on the tailgate are missing. I hope they are in the car. There are two boxes of parts in the back that I haven't looked into yet.

Sometime in the last week or so the car developed an electrical problem and won't turn over now. I'm hoping it's just the NSS or ignition switch. The seller also mentioned that the car will run for a while then stop. I'm guessing the gas tank needs to be flushed. It looks really solid and rust free from the outside, but the tank in my 62 wagon from Nevada had about a 1/4" of silt in the otherwise really nice tank when I dropped it.

I really, REALLY don't want to do a body-off on this car, but the force is strong with this one...

 

Nice find Joe!
New projects are always exciting.

 

Really nice Joe.

 

A cool car in spite of all the problems. If it weren't for the problems, what would be the point, anyway? Who wants a car that's all done?!!!

 

I've always said that I still build model cars, now they're just 1:1 scale. The fun was always in the building.

 

If it was easy, anyone could do it, right?
nice save.

 

I'm right there with you Joe. If I ran across a 66 flat top in that shape I would have a really hard time passing it up.

 

Doesnt look too bad, sorta familiar actually minus a few years and with more glass. Hope you post picts in the build thread.

 

Very cool. I like the 15" SSIII's with the RWL tire on that wagon. Have you yet made any determination as to what wheels you are going to use?

 

Nice!

 

For some reason I thought the SS III's were 14" when I bought the car. Given how much I'll need to spend to make this roadworthy, I'll be keeping these wheels for now. The tires are ancient Goodyear ST's, which have been out of production for years (not to be confused with the Wrangler ST truck tires that are still available).

 

Nice skywagon!

Good luck and have fun with the build! =}

 

Joe congrats that's a neat car wish you the best w it
Dean

 

Update on the Vista.

I finally got home early enough to play with the car (and the rain has temporarily stopped - I feel like I live in Seattle!). The good news is that the car runs. I had to fill the carb float bowls through the vent tubes, but once I did that it fired right up. Naturally the choke and accelerator pump don't work. The fuel pump and hard line to the carb are brand new, so I need to figure out why it doesn't pump fuel. I suspect the tank is crudded up (already have a new inlet sock for the tank pickup), but the rubber lines could be bad also.

Apparently the NSS has been jumpered or is out of adjustment, because the first time it started the car was in reverse. Fortunately, it's still chained to the trailer, so no harm, no foul. The trans apparently works, at least in reverse!

Speaking of the trans, there's a kickdown cable under the hood. I haven't gotten under the car yet (the dual exhaust pipes block any view of the trans pan) but apparently it's already been converted to a TH350. It also has an HEI on it, which is a fitment problem with the stock air cleaner, as the two front plug wire boots on the HEI cap are pretty much rubbed through from the back edge of the air cleaner.

I popped the drain plugs in the footwells and the rear storage compartment to allow the standing water to exit. The power rear window works fine. The biggest problem is that the roof and rear quarter windows leak like a sieve. I got a tarp over the car since we're supposed to get a monsoon on Friday and there isn't room in my shop at the moment.

The only body rust I've seen so far is a quarter-sized hole in the floor of the storage compartment, an easy fix. The big problem is that all the interior garnish moldings around the roof and rear quarter windows are rusted out. The body sheet metal is fine, but the screw-on moldings are wasted. I guess that's better than the alternative, but finding these will be a challenge. The moldings between the roof and quarter glass should be the same on all 64-67 VCs and probably SportWagons (can someone confirm this?). The moldings around the sides and bottom of the quarter glass are probably 64-65 only, and I suspect VC and SportWagon only, though I'll have to compare them to those on a flattop. Anybody parting these out?

There's also carpet squares lining the cargo area, and they are sopping wet, so removing them is the first order of business. The load floor sheet metal has a lot of surface rust, but what I've seen so far appears salvageable.

Supposed to be a nice weekend, so hopefully I can get it running enough to get it off the trailer and into the shop. Stabilization is the first order of business, followed by pulling the glass and inspecting the pinchwelds.

 

Never the easy way, eh?

 

Story of my life...

 

Quarter windows interchange only for 64-65 Vistas and Sportwagons. I'll break out the books and research the molding applications later.

Henry

 

GREAT FIND, JOE! Of course, I am somewhat partial to the longroofs! Have fun!!!!
Aron

 

Yeah, I knew that. The seller mentioned that he had originally gotten a 67 quarter window for this car and it didn't fit, so he ended up buying a very rusty 64 parts car for the glass. I appreciate the application help. The garnish moldings around the quarter glass are in two parts. I'm hoping that the front part is the same as those on flattops, or maybe the back part is... At least that would increase the donor pool.

 

64-67 upper stainless molding #4428335 - 6
64-65 lower stainless molding #4430411 - 2
66-67 lower stainless molding #4542304 - 5

Part numbers are the same for Buick SportWagon and Vista.

64-67 GM A body flat top wagon molding are not even close to being the same.

Henry

I researched the outside quarter window trim moldings. I've come the the realization after re-reading your post I now understand that you are concerned about the inside garnish moldings. So I'll check tomorrow.

 

Yes, thanks. If the interior garnish moldings had also been stainless, we wouldn't be having this discussion...

Also, while I realize the flattop wagon garnish molding is different - most likely due to length - I'm curious to see if I can use it to patch the molding on my Vista. For example, the garnish molding on the leading edge of the flattop quarter windows SHOULD have the same angle and sweep as those on a Vista. Similarly, the straight sections should have the same cross section, even if the length is shorter. This is all a contingency plan in case I can't locate the correct VC/SportWagon parts.

 

The water in the footwells, rusted out interior garnish trim, and silicone around the exterior stainless (WHY do people think that will work??? ) had me prepared to see this, but it's still disappointing.

 

Glad to see this in the right hands! OK.gif

Looking forward to all the build updates

 

Another update for today (yeah, the weather was nice finally).

Car does run and drive. I got it running for a while by filling the float bowls through the vents, then poured a couple of gallons of gas in the tank and apparently now it's pumping correctly. The car feels like it has a vacuum leak somewhere, but I haven't put a gauge on it yet. The power brakes are powerless, so I'm guessing that may be the leak. Hoses are all connected and I can't see any cracks. I drove the car about 1/2 mile, up to the end our our farm lane and back. At least first and second work.

This car has definitely been monkeyed with by one or more previous owners. Wiring is hacked (again, why am I not surprised). So far the only electrical things that work are the starter and ignition, the power rear window (but only when you use the key in the tailgate, not from the dash switch), one headlight, one front parking light, and three of four turn signal bulbs. Oh, and the aftermarket radio apparently powers up, because the indicator light comes on, but there are no speakers. Oh, the GEN light works, which of course means the charging circuit doesn't.

None of the power windows work, so I'm hoping it's the circuit breaker. Unfortunately, the inside of the car has been moist, so I'll likely need to go through the harness and clean EVERY stinking connector contact.

The A/C compressor is off the car, and the one that came with is apparently off a Buick (as indicated by the inspection stamp on it). Unfortunately, the compressor mounting bracket is also for a Buick motor. The brackets for this car (1964 330 A-body only) are MIA. I have plenty of later model A/C brackets, but the correct 64 brackets would be nice.

I also removed the soggy non-original carpet in the load area. The load floor panels underneath are appropriately rusty, but salvageable. The actual storage compartment lid is dented, so I'll probably need one of those at some point. And I don't think that there's one piece of interior garnish molding that's not rusted out somewhere.

Pretty sure this car isn't going to be at Nationals this year...

Oh, speaking of idiot previous owners, the rocket scientist who installed the TH350 connected the kickdown cable to the 4GC throttle arm at a point that pulls the cable when the throttle is CLOSED! Fortunately, there isn't a mounting bracket for the cable anyway, so it's not like the kickdown is functional.

One final oddity. The HEI that was stabbed into the motor has a single wire coming out of the housing on the side opposite the normal three wires that run to the cap. The distributor does have a vacuum advance, so it's not from a CCC car, and it doesn't have the VSS box like the Seville EFI distributors, so I'm going to have to investigate further. It's a factory wire with a single pin weatherpack connector on it (which is not connected to anything). Weatherpack connectors would be very late 1970s, at the earliest.

And whoever installed the HEI used a relay to power it.

Good thing I don't mind doing wiring.