79 Olds Cutlass Wagon school project...

[SRD Art]

Hey guys, just wanted to start a thread of my project. Meet "The Pumkinator", my 1979 Olds Cutlass Cruiser that I picked up about 5 years ago. After a bit of tweaking and wrenching I've been daily driving it as my business hauler since that time, and decided recently it's time for a major overhaulin'. Hope you enjoy, as usual any comments/suggestions land on open ears...

Here's the car right after purchasing.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/Begin72.jpg

Factory Options-
140 hp 305 Chevy V8
TH250
2.41 gears in the 7.5" rear
Rally gauge pack, no tach
Olds Rally wheels
Rear air deflector
Light Blue vinyl interior
8-track AM/FM stereo (still works!)

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/Interior1.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/Interiorgauges.jpg

The car ran terrible, had absolutely no power despite the 305 had been rebuilt about 36,000 miles prior. The previous owner's wife bumping a truck in the snow sealed it's fate, and for $300 I drove it home.

First order of business after getting it home was pull out the G-tech. A whopping 21.79 @ 59 mph! The 0-60 time didn't even have a chance to register! :sick:

Checked the timing and found it WAAAAAAY retarded, in every sense of the word. Bumped it up and magically I felt some ponies again. Checked the carb and saw that the factory Q-jet's choke had been paper-clip wired open. Noticed in the process of doing that they blocked the secondaries from opening! :doh: Fixed that and with no other changes, the second G-tech run yielded an 18.67 at 74 mph. This is at 4500ft altitude up here in the Rockies, so I figured this was good enough to drive for the time being.

Next on the list was new front end to pass our state's safety inspection. After a few days of searching I found a '78 Cutlass Cruiser in a farmer's field just a few miles from my place. Body was rusty, interior was hammered, but it had a transplanted Chevy 350/TH350 and a good front nose section. The guy told me they quit driving it because the trans was slipping. "How much you want for it?" I asked, "Oh... I'll take $75." Wasn't long before it was on a tow dolly on the way home. I Installed a battery and some gas in the carb and it fired right up! Ran o.k. but was clearly a high mile motor. Pulled and sold it, kept the trans as a core, and yanked the front clip and every other usable part off it before hauling it to the wrecking yard. Got a bunch of parts and made $300 cash off it, not a bad deal.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/wagaweedsdside.jpg

[SRD Art]

After a couple months the TH250 started having issues so next in order was a new trans and some hp upgrades. I picked up a decent used TH350 from a friend and pulled a small block 406 from storage that I used to have in my Suburban. It had about 60,000 miles on the rebuild-

Stock 400 bottom end with ARP rod bolts
.030 8.7:1 eutectic pistons
Factory 400 smogger heads
Crane 266 cam, lifters, springs
Ebrock Performer and 750 Q-jet.

I swapped the cam for a Comp XE268 and the Performer for a Proform air gap dual plane intake and painted it GM corporate blue before slipping it and the TH350 with a stock converter into the engine bay.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/wagon4066572.jpg

Not a tremendous hp killer but it made decent torque and was a great daily driver motor. I installed it with Hedman shorty headers and a 3" single exhaust through a Flowmaster 40 series. On the dyno it made a little bit disappointing 221 hp and 282 ft lbs. The a/f ratio was pretty rich at the time and I think the altitude, low compression and junk heads were limiting it quite a bit.

Dyno Day 1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsZdbnMrk4Y)

Taking it to the track it ran pretty consistent 15.70's at 87mph. Consistent enough for me to win first place in points for the year in the Club Racing Series street tire class at Rocky Mountain Raceway. Overall our Utah Muscle Car Association club took 2nd place in street tire class. (Way to go boys!) My 60ft times were 2.4s, limited by the grandpa gears and stock converter. I've learned to live with it as it puts down 21 mpg highway without overdrive, but that's all changing soon.

[SRD Art]

Here are some more videos. You can see in these how I used some vinyl dye and changed the dash to black from light blue. Also covered the fakie wood grain with brushed aluminum vinyl.

1st try at the road course. Only got to run one lap because of troubles with the car. First off I had just installed a new Hurst ratchet shifter for the TH350 earlier that day and it wasn't quite adjusted right. You can hear in the video a couple unexpected downshifts into 1st instead of 2nd at curves and a couple times it went from 1st to 3rd. Then the cracked valve spring thing happened. When I get into the pits at the end you can hear a pretty gnarly tapping of the rocker on the stuck valve. While it was idling and I was trying to figure it out the valve dropped but I was able to shut it down before any major damage to the short block. The wind was blowing on the camera so don't turn the sound too high.

Road Course Day 1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMAOQV3ZDZA)

Next video was my first attempt at autocross. Kind of a wimpy course but a good way to get my feet wet. This was like my 4th or 5th run of the day. This was after pulling the 400 and putting the factory 305 back in with a Crane 266 cam and the rest of the bolt-ons from the 400. It's pretty slow off the line but gets going eventually. :sleeping:

AutoX Day 1 inside car (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TXeM3lGHek)

Next is the same day from outside the car with a no sound digital camera. Woohoo! Look at the rear body roll near the end of the course. Needed a rear sway bar pretty bad at the time.

AutoX Day 1 outside car (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RkY8CWtYhU)

[SRD Art]

After about a year of driving it was developing a bad case of loose front suspension and it was also time for a cosmetic upgrade. I picked up new ball joints, tie rod ends and a 12:1 ratio AGR steering box.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/steeringbox001.jpg

I also scored a set of Trans Am GTA wheels off ebay for a great price and after a little rattle can semi-gloss black effort threw on a set of 225-50 and 255-50-16 BFG G-Force Sport tires. Because of the funky F-body offsets, I had to put the rear wheels on the front of the car with a 3/4" spacer and extended studs and the front wheels on the back.

Photo from the ebay ad, anybody on here?

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/2fb8_11.jpg

While I was in there I cut the factory springs to get a feel for the look of it lowered, and added a little more rattle can semi-gloss to hide some paint chips on the lower panels and hood. Here's the end result. It's dropped about 3" out back and almost 4" up front.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/LeftSide6572b.jpg

Last summer I got a taste of road course and autocross when I attended an open track "Wide Open Wednesday" at Miller Motorsports Park in Tooele, UT. I ran the autocross several times and the road course once. Unfortunately part way through the run on the road course unknown to me a valve spring cracked. Luckily the valve got stuck in the guide and it wasn't until I got in the pits at idle the valve let go and tagged a piston. Fortunately I shut it down fast enough that all it did was scuff the carbon on the piston and bent the valve slightly. No major damage to the short block. Whew! Time for a refreshing! That about gets us caught up on the car's history.

[SRD Art]

I should probably intro myself a little here. I've grown up around muscle cars and drag racing and started drawing cars after I read my first "Cartoons" mag around age 12. After some time in automotive retail I got out and put my artistic skills to work and became a graphic designer. When the economy tanked the company I was working for went into the toilet and I found myself along with about 1.7 billion other graphic designers looking for work, a real joke to even get a foot in the door for an interview. At that point I started pushing my side business, Street Rod Designs, to keep $ coming in. In the process of drawing cars of course I've drawn mine. The wagon has gone through 3 different styling changes, but I think I'm finally pretty well sold on the last.

This first concept quick sketch was a pretty simple idea based on the mid 80's Hurst/Olds Cutlass. 17" Torque Thrusts and a low stance made it shout a bit.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/HO65.jpg

After a while of looking at it I felt the wagon needed a look that was a little less overdone and a little more aggressive. I really like this style stripe and a med-dark charcoal grey with some carbon fiber accents. I liked this theme but this stripe seemed like it had been done several times and I felt some flash was missing.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/Grey65.jpg

During this time of exploring ideas for the wagon I finally gave up on the graphic design gig and felt it was time to get back to my roots and passion for employment. After a lot of research in schools I decided to attend a "Collision Repair, Street Rod Emphasis" program at a Utah Valley University, only about 20 miles from where I live. Turns out the street rod instructor Cris Bogges and his program have been called by many "the best in the west". I talked with him several times before deciding to hit the books again, and had no idea about his reputation until I started asking around. A real down to earth humble guy with mad fabricating skills.

Since I needed a project to work on at school and the wagon needed a facelift things fell right into place. Ultimately I'd like to work in a shop building killer pro-touring and low-rod style machines so this car is the perfect practice project. Although the grey wagon theme was cool I figured I needed something a little more loud for two reasons- 1. to draw attention to my side business and design skills and 2. to catch the attention of shop owners/ possible employers after graduation. I've always dug the look of old school Mercs and such with a satin sheen but I don't like to see newer cars painted entirely that way. To me it looks a little too much like it isn't finished, just my opinion. Gotta have at least some shiny paint on a nice pro-touring car so I combined the two ideas. I narrowed it down to two colors, new Camaro green and Avalanche orange.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/WagonGreen.jpg

After comparing them the orange stuck and the name Pumkinator seemed a natural. In this rendering I kept details fairly simple, I just wanted to compare colors.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/WagonOrange.jpg

This is the base art for the car, more concept sketches coming soon...

[SRD Art]

This past April I completed my first year of collision repair classes. We learned all the basics about body work and paint. During open lab time I was able to bring the wagon into the shop. Unfortunately it had gotten a cheap re-paint along the way, which included a poorly done filler hack. A lot of the areas around the rear wheels have been forming rust behind the bondo and by last year I had up to fist sized rust holes. Replacement sheet metal for wagons seems hard to come by, let alone a 79 Cutlass so I had to fab patch panels from sheet metal. Some photos...

Passenger side. That's 3" pipe so you can see the size of the hole. This side was pretty much limited to this area.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/RRhole.jpg

Driver's side had smaller holes but was in a lot worse shape. Rust was everywhere and you can see how thick the bondo was. Looks like they just slopped it on even in the drilled holes used to pull a dent. Not welding in these areas was just asking for rust to form.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/LRrust.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/LRrust2.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/LFrust.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/LFrust2.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/LFrust3.jpg

Here's the driver side after cutting out the rust and applying Por-15 to the inner panels. Also the fabricated patch panel.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/LRcut.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/LRpatch.jpg

I patched all other holes in a similar manner, welding new metal in and then applying Por-15 to hold them over until I can get back to them in when school starts up again in August.

[SRD Art]

Most of the guys in the first year classes are headed towards a career as a collision repair technician and focused on fixing dings and dents on their cars during open lab times. I took a little different route and started hacking, cutting and welding instead. :unibrow:

When the 406 was running well I could get it up to about 127mph and then it felt like the suspension started to loosen up and the car would rock around. Not sure if it was the wind getting under the car or funky aerodynamics but it definitely wasn't a smooth ride, more like driving a boat on choppy seas.

First order of business to smooth things over a bit was narrowing the bumpers. I looked on the net for ideas and saw several rear pans or narrowed bumpers that were tucked smooth with the rear 1/4. With as much real estate that a wagon has out back I didn't think it looked quite right, I think it looks better on the El Caminos I suppose. I also wanted to keep a somewhat factory look with some subtle changes so after measuring I hacked 3" out of the center with the plasma cutter.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/Bumper.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/Bumper4.jpg

Prior to this I had been welding a lot of thin sheet metal. Probably could've stood to crank up the machine for a little deeper penetration, so to be safe I welded the back side too.

Here's some comparison shots...

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/Bumper7.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/Bumper6.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/Bumper3.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/Bumper5.jpg

[SRD Art]

To add to the smooth look I wanted to ditch the generic boxy door handles.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/doorhandle.jpg

I think shaved handles are cool on the right car, but not on a daily driver. I'm also trying to do this car on a student's budget so I trudged around a local wrecking yard for ideas where I stumbled upon this 92 Geo prism. I want to keep the car all "GM" and these handles have a nice slope in them that sort of matches the hood line of my car. $10 for all 4. No key with them so I have to buy a new lock set but that's cool.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/prismhandle.jpg

Using the door from the parts car I started hacking. I had to patch the original key lock hole and open up a hole to fit the new handle.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/handlehole.jpg

While at the junk yard I also spotted an 84 Regal with a factory rear sway bar. Grabbed it with the lower control arms still attached for $15. I brought them to the shop and found some scrap sheet metal that I trimmed to fit so I could box the arms. Took me two hours to knock it out, just in time to get the car back on the ground right before my professor closed the shop for the day.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/rca.jpg

Most of the welding done...

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/rca2.jpg

Bolted in. What a difference I felt in quick sharp autoX type cornering!

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/swaybar.jpg

[SRD Art]

Another body mod I wanted to do was some fender vents. This Nova was a great motivation for the idea.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/Novavent.jpg

I looked and looked for a factory vent that I could stick in there like the second gen Trans Am or late model Escalade. Nothing was the right size or looked like it belonged on the car. Then I stumbled across this photo of an Mercedes AMG CLK and fell in love.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/Mercedesvent-.jpg

I took the spare fenders from the parts car and after welding up some trim holes I started cutting and came up with this. I basically made a 3 sided rectangular cut in the fender, bent it inward, then welded in sheet metal to fill the gaps. I got all the metal work done on both fenders and that was about the end of the semester. I'll continue with getting the fenders prepped as school rolls around again.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/Lfendb4.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/Lfendaft.jpg

These will be fully functional to help relieve some engine compartment heat. I wanted some nice metal mesh to cover the holes but had a hard time finding what I wanted online or at the local metal suppliers. I ended up grabbing a couple old 6x9 speaker grilles and cut out the mesh from these. Perfect size holes and easily shaped!

Also had to do a little more rust patching and trim hole filling while in there...

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/Lfendrust.jpg

[SRD Art]

Some new parts came in...

When I first lowered the car I simply cut the springs. This works for a good visual reference and it helped handling because of the slightly better spring rate and lower CG, but really it's a terrible way to lower a car. After a time the springs settled and sagged and dropped almost another inch from where it started. I like a slight rake but right now it's about 1 1/2" difference front to rear and I'd rather have it closer to 1/2". As low as it is now it sits on the snubbers and it's got my suspension geometry all goofed up. Bumpsteer on hard turns like turning into a parking space is out of control.

To remedy the issue 2" drop spindles are in order. I did some research on g-body forums and found that folks had great success with both DJM and Bell Tech, and not so much with some of the cheaper off name brands. The DJMs were a better deal so keeping the budget tight I ordered them from Summit Racing. DJM doesn't list a part # for G-body cars but we share front suspension with 1st gen S-10's, part # DS2031-2, $149.95 + shipping. I'll be getting 1" lowered springs soon too, I'll post info on that when I get them. The goal is 5.5" of clearance at the frame just behind the front wheel, 6" of clearance just in front of the rear wheel. I currently have 4.5" / 6".

G-bodies were built to be an economy mid size car with a goal of halfway decent gas mileage amongst other cars in their class. Several things were engineered into them to keep them "light" including some cars having aluminum rear drums, light weight (i.e. crappy, like my worn out original) steering boxes, etc. If I have my facts right the smallish 10.5" front brakes were also intended to save weight. As a result braking is definitely not that of a sports car. There are many brake upgrades available out there but again keeping the cost down means being creative. I saw a trend on g-body forums to put on either 2nd gen Camaro or 90's Caprice spindles, milling down the g-body rotors to become a hub, and using LTI late model Camaro drop off rotors and calipers. Problem with this is it creates geometry problems because of the taller spindles and tends to increase bumpsteer. To compensate you have to purchase high dollar aftermarket offset upper control arms. After doing research on S10 forums I found that a lot of those guys have come up with a better idea- keep the G-body spindles- maintaining stock geometry, have the g-body rotors milled to a hub, and with a simple bracket and some slight mods to the spindle you can mount 98+ LS1 Camaro calipers and 12" rotors. You can even re-use the factory g-body brake hoses with the F-body banjo fittings. Simple as that. There are a few different companies that make the caliper adapter brackets, but I found an engineer/machinist on one S10 forum that water jetted a bunch of sets for forum friends. Several folks said they worked great so I bought a set from him for less than half the price of buying them from these companies. I also scored a good pair of rotors free from a friend in our local muscle car club who upgraded to slotted and drilled rotors on his T/A.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/spindles.jpg

[Radlark]

I like your write up I will be subscribing, I also like the "shoe string" budget approach!!

[Lemons]

Nice project and great write up. I like where you are headed. I have a soft spot for those wagons since I have a '82 olds cutlass cruiser. No one understands why I love that car. Looking forward to seeing more.

Chris

[56pickup]

Cool little project! :thumbsup:

[SRD Art]

More parts and art...

For the car's interior I definitely want to get rid of the bench seat. During hard cornering it doesn't give much support, the cover is pretty banged up, and it doesn't match the rest of the build at all. I considered getting some seats from Summit Racing, they have the Summit brand seat for $149 and the lower line Procar for $156, but I was concerned that the lower end seats may not be fantastic quality and I wanted something unique. With having worked last year as an apprentice in an upholstery shop I decided to find a used seat I like and customize the covers.

I'd love to keep my car all GM, but as I went through the local wrecking yards it's difficult to find a GM with a real performance type seat. Seems a lot of the seats are made to compensate for big Americans and my somewhat smallish 5'-10" and 160 lb size didn't fit snug in anything. Then I stumbled upon a '98 Mazda MX3 in the import section. After sitting in the seat I knew these were the ones. They fit me like a glove, have great supports to keep me planted while cornering and I like the hole under the headrest so I can run a 5-point harness through for seat belts.

The driver's side foam is beat up just a little but that's very easy to fix. Other than that they're in decent shape and a great base to start with. Not bad for $50 for the pair. The plan is I will remove the covers, take all the seams apart, using the old panels as a pattern cut out the new material and then have my old boss sew it all together. He offered to let me run the machine but I want perfect lines and curves so I'd rather the guy with 25+ years experience do the sewing. When he's done I'll assemble them back together and build custom mounts to bolt them into my floor pan. Doing a lot of the work myself I should be able to have the front and back seats done for about the same cost or less than the pair of Summit seats.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/Seats.jpg

Here are the materials I'm considering. I took a paint chip book with GM 2008 Avalanche orange over to the upholstery shop and we found that his British Tan was a fairly close match. I also looked at some black vinyl with the same grain as the tan, as well as some "carbon fiber" pattern vinyl. These are all high quality products and will last for years to come.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/Brtan1.jpghttp://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/blackcarb.jpg
http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/silvercarb.jpg

Here are some design ideas I was toying with. So far I think I'm liking A, B, E, & F the best.

I like A & B because they're mostly black and have a bit more aggressive look. The outer perimeter will be smooth vinyl and the center black area will be carbon fiber pattern.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/Seat1.jpg

C & D- a couple more mostly black variations.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/Seat2.jpg

E & F I like because they would really brighten up the interior. I need to do a paint spray out card first before deciding on these, if the tan didn't actually match the orange very well it would be a big mess. If that were the case having just a small accent strip like A would be a better choice.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/Seat3.jpg

Another variation of mostly tan center.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/Seat4.jpg

Finally a different color combo. With the car being black and orange I will be using brushed aluminum and silver as my accent color. In this variation I'd use smooth on the perimeter and both silver and black carbon vinyl on the inserts. After seeing this one I decided I'd rather stick with the tan to tie it into the exterior a little more.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/Seat5.jpg

Feel free to let me know what you all think. :)

[Knaller]

Nice to have this kind of school! Working on Your own car helps alot when on a budget. We dont have something like that over here...
For the seats i would prefer a simple design like F to match with the exterior. But with accents in brushed aluminum, design I would be nice too. You can stitch a logo in the silver stripe to make it more pretty.

[SRD Art]

Took my 2 boys up to the mountains camping a couple weeks ago. We drove through a few small towns on the way and I came across this little gem, an old Sinclair gas station. Pretty cool find- I love old gas stations and diners, and we had a great time camping.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/sinclair01.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/Sinclair02.jpg

[SRD Art]

My goal is to be able to eventually get the car into the 140mph club. I've been wanting to upgrade my 85 speedo to something more accurate to the car's abilities and I recently scored this from Ebay, just under $17 dollars including shipping, new and never used! You guys remember Mallory selling gauges back in the 80s and 90s?

It's old and had a little surface rust on the back side, but it's perfect and brand new inside. I will be incorporating it into the factory gauge layout to make it look factory stock.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/160speedo01.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/160speedo02.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/Interiorgauges.jpg

[SRD Art]

I went to the local track's open track day this past Wednesday to try out the new rear sway bar and get one last set of runs in before I tear into the suspension and change things around.

Unfortunately I had two problems with the car, the alternator quit charging on the way to the track and for some reason the right front caliper was grabbing harder than the left. You'll see in both videos how that caused the right front wheel to lock up and slide under hard braking. Got kinda scary at one point on the road course. I have a flat spot on the right front tire now, kinda sucks but at least I planned on upgrading to 17s in the near future.

After the 406 broke a valve spring I yanked it and slipped the factory 305 back in so I could keep the car drivable while I build the 406. I put in a mild Crane 266 cam (.440 lift) and all the intake and exhaust accessories from the 406. Here's a shot of the engine as it is now.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/engine03.jpg

The motor runs great and lays down 21 mpg with a TH350 (no overdrive) but my guess is that the stock 140 hp is prolly only up to 170-180. Backed by factory 2.41 gears you can see it's lengthy acceleration on the track and I am so looking forward to the torquey TPI 406 I'm putting together! The cones on the course are to keep the newbies and stock handling cars from going too fast. Kinda lame but it keeps everyone safe.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTx6MJpiIc4

Because the alternator went south I decided to head over to the autocross course where the lines are usually short rather than having to keep asking for jump starts in the road course line. I got in line and the officials decided to take about 10 minutes to discuss something while we all waited in line. I kept the motor running and the electric fan and such were running the battery down. Finally after they started racing us again and I was on deck the battery was low enough that the fan quit working and the car started to heat up. It was at 240 degrees when it was my turn so knowing this would probably be my only run I went all out. Because I wasn't familiar with the course and I was stressed about the run I saw the cones in the background of the first hard turn and got disorientated. Completely blew the run but it was fun. I spent the rest of the evening fiddling with the alternator and found a wire in the harness that came loose from the connection. Got it repaired and headed home.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7r63fAbSKPo&NR=1


Despite the problems, I had a good time and felt a definite improvement in stability with the sway bar outback.

[SRD Art]

I'm back in school and I finally have some updates on the wagon project. Mostly been project planning and price shopping over the summer and just before school started I was informed I was awarded a full tuition scholarship for the 2011-2012 year. Hard work and straight A's finally pays off! That fortunately freed up a little extra $ I can slide towards the car.

Biggest project news over the summer was landing a 5.3 from a 2006 4x4 truck with just over 40,000 miles on it. A friend of a friend set the deal up and I'm getting it for $500 for the motor, accessories, computer, and wiring harness. To keep costs down I have to pull the motor out of the truck, but that's a good thing so I can see how everything hooks up and make sure I get all the parts I need. I don't have it home yet but will be posting photos when I do.

The truck intake manifolds are just plain hideous, so keeping it under a cover is critical. I'm not a big fan of the truck engine covers, they're just a bit bulky and look like they belong on a truck, so I considered making one. I got on the web to see if anyone else has done a custom cover when I ran across a photo the 2010 Camaro SS cover. It really caught my eye as it's a little different than the average LSX cover and the color scheme fit my car perfectly. I'm not a fan of the center runner bumps, but otherwise I liked it. I checked ebay and scored a nice used one with mounting bracket for only $42.00 shipped. I'm considering a custom insert for the center portion with rounded "tubes" rather than the squared off ones and will shave the Chevrolet script and add on Oldsmobile script instead.

Here's a shot of the cover and a mock up of it on my small block minus the carb to see what it will look like. Man that engine bay needs a face lift! Coming soon...

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Enginecover1.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Enginecover2.jpg

[SRD Art]

Over the summer I took a couple opportunities to raid the local junkyard for a few parts. Unfortunately useable old car parts around here are rare so I have to get a little creative. :)

One of my favorite scores-

Part of next semester's chassis class is narrowing rears. The 7.5" is a weak link in the G-body cars and for a long time I had planned on a late model disc Mustang 8.8". After considering the near bullet proof 31 spline large bearing 9" and the fact that I can swap centers to change gear ratios I decided to grab one of those and use it as a narrow guinea pig. A trac loc center is a real bonus, so I checked every Ford truck rear axle tag in the yard on two different occasions. The second time I found a 78 4x4 Bronco that was missing the tag so I turned the drum on one side and with a big grin I watched the other side move in the same direction. Out of about 40-50 trucks I checked this was the only one with a track loc, so after an hour and a half of wrenching on rusted bolts I had it in the back of the wagon. Because the tag is missing and I haven't cracked it open yet I don't know what gears are in it, but I found most of the trucks had 3.50's and that'll be perfect for autocross. I also have a set of 2.75 gears I will be transplanting into another center for daily driving. I will be keeping my TH350 so the highway gears will help get the fuel mileage up there without overdrive. A third center with 4.10s would be nice for the drag strip, but that's on the back burner for now.

I suppose for a 5.3 that I will be setting up for somewhere around 400 hp at the flywheel a 9" is a bit overkill but the potential of a 5.3 with a pair of hairdryers on the exhaust is pretty intriguing. That'll have to wait until after I graduate but is on the future plans. By then I should be able to afford a larger cube motor too so hp options are wide open, no pun intended, lol!

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/Ferd9.jpg

[SRD Art]

Here's another great score. Through my research I found that 82-90 something Camaros have a direct swap sway bar with G-bodys. There are currently two Camaros of that vintage in the yard so I checked both. One Camaro's bar was smaller than the wagon's stock 1" bar. The other was a '90 RS with a V8, and when I looked under it again the big grin spread wide as It had a 36mm (1 3/8") bar on it. Score for $15! I can probably order a larger aftermarket bar but I'd rather use this one for now and spend the cost savings elsewhere. I also grabbed some firewall to radiator support bars from a '75 El Camino (long ones in the photo) and from an '84 Regal I grabbed the radiator opening support bars (thin ones in the photo). I also grabbed a power steering cooler from a '96 Caddy.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/braces.jpg

[SRD Art]

The left corner of my front bumper is pretty rotted, a problem doubled because I plan on narrowing the bumper 3" like the I did to the rear bumper. I have yet to see a 78/9 Cutlass wagon appear in the yard, so I grabbed a donor from an '85 4 door Cutlass Supreme. When you compare the two there are some design differences, but I think I can make them work to my advantage. I don't like the top portion of the '85 bumper compared to the smooth top of mine, but I like the turn signal holes. What I will be doing is cut out the lower portions of either side of the '85 bumper and graft them into mine. I will be utilizing the turn signal holes for brake cooling ducts, so it'll have form and function. A little more than I'd hoped to have to spend but $50 scored the bumper.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/bumper1.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/bumper1a.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/bumper2.jpg

[SRD Art]

Last semester when I started getting the doors ready for the low profile Geo Prism door handles I realized that I didn't like the handles bolted right to the outer skin of the doors, but I'd rather have them sunk in like on the Geos. While at the yard to be respectful of their business rather than hack nice doors I found a couple prisms that had banged up doors and grabbed the door handle sheet metal. Now that school has started and we've been getting familiar with the shop tools I realize I could have fabricated these fairly simply with a bead roller, but I guess these save me the time in the extra step. I'll be trimming these down and welding them into my doors.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/doorhandles.jpg

Before I bought my wagon some kids had stolen it from the previous owner one night and took it for a small joy ride. The result was a broken rear hatch handle and a very hacked up steering column. It turned the wheels but not much else worked properly. I also don't like the headlight and wiper switch styling on the 78/9 cars which looks cheap and chintzy to me, not to mention not having wiper delay drove me absolutely nuts. From the '85 Cutlass 4 door I grabbed the tilt column with the wiper switch on the column, newer design delay wiper motor, and the correct dash parts to make the changeover. Wish I could've found a column for a floor shift car but I have yet to see one show up in the wrecking yard. I'll modify this one to delete the shifter arm bump.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/steering.jpg

[SRD Art]

I put the word out on the local muscle car forum about my 5.3 and it wasn't long before someone offered a set of headers for $100 which I will be trading design work instead of cash. They're Flowtechs that he swapped for pacesetters on his late model F-body. I know Flowtechs are probably inferior to the Pacesetters but for basically free except for 2 hours of my time I'll take 'em and put the $300 elsewhere. I'm saving the stock manifolds for a future turbo build so the headers will only be on there for a couple years anyway.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/FTheaders.jpg

[SRD Art]

While I was in there getting ready to tear down the front suspension I slipped on a 12" rotor from the LS F-body brakes I picked up. What a difference over stock! Notice particularly the space between the rotor and the upper control arm where the ball joint bolts in. WoW! am I excited to be able to stop quickly. I checked on Summit brand drilled and slotted rotors, $34 ea front and $49 ea for the rear. That's cheaper than replacement no name brand rotors form the local auto parts store. Anybody use these? They have the bling but I don't want total garbage either.

I've learned through experience that cheap usually means just that, but I'm unfamiliar with the difference between a cheap rotor and a spendy one. I won't be looking to be number one in brake tests, I figure just simply upgrading to larger brakes will make a huge difference than what I'm used to. Who knows, maybe they're fine for a nice weather driver, local car show and cruise-in duty, and a monthly autocross event car. Anyone have input from experience specifically with the Summit rotors?

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/10brakes.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/12brakes.jpg

[SRD Art]

Finally for this round of updates is a couple shop photos. First is my car in it's new resting spot. I picked this space because I have the fence wall to hang my project white board and inspirational rendering. I also have a couple tables tucked behind the car for working on and laying out parts. On the right of me is a 65 Mustang which unfortunately needs a serious complete overhaul, it's pretty rough. Sad for her but lucky for me the student that owns this one won't spend much time working on it. Based on what I saw in the last 2 semesters it seems more like she uses the shop to store the car rather than work on it. That translates to no grinding particles embedded in my windows and no careless dents in my car caused by not paying attention while working. I'm figuring my spot is one of the "safest" spots in the shop, lol!

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/wagonatschool.jpg

Our class has 15 students, 9 are younger and 6 are older retired guys from the community that take the class so they have a shop to work in and can tap into my professor's expertise. As a result we have a pretty good variety of project cars in the shop.

These two are younger student's projects. The '53 Chevy 4-door was purchased with the top chop done and the owner is going to finish the body work, shave the door handles, french the lights, and spruce up the interior a bit. The plans for the bug keep changing, but it's for sure getting some sort of top modification, will be fenderless and have 17" wheels. This student expects that it'll take him 3 years to complete. Makes me think I'm nuts for wanting to do a complete rebuild on my car, exterior, interior, drive train and suspension in the 6 remaining months I have until graduation. I'm pretty focused, determined and had the whole project mapped out before school began so I think I can do it. Let the thrash begin!

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/Jaychevy.jpg

This old guy project is very cool, a 64 Fairlane that has been back halved with a disc 9", a full roll cage, rack and pinion and a healthy fox body 5.0. He'll be putting a lot of street miles on it so he opted for a 26-10.50 rear tire but wanted a deep offset on the rear rims. There's room for bigger meats later on if he decides to go that route. Behind him is another old guy straightening out a '40 Ford with street rod plans.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/64fairlane.jpg

Some other projects include a young guy 62 Impala 2 door post restoration, an old guy trike with a VW rear half and a custom made chopper front half, and an old guy 53 Chevy pick-up street rod. I thought I should share this one because of it's uniqueness. It's a young guy project, a '37 Hudson Terraplane. Yeah, I never heard of it either and didn't have a clue that it's one of 500 two doors produced that year. He found it for a cost of next to nothing in someone's back yard with a surprisingly straight body and is currently working on a top chop, after which it will get a full street rod treatment. He bought a 6.0 LS motor a while back but isn't sure yet if he's up to the task of converting it and is considering a traditional small block Chevy. Either way he said not to put where the school is located for fear that the hard core Hudson freaks will find out and steal it from the shop to prevent it from being hacked up, lol! Too late though, the roof has already been cut off and the posts sectioned since this photo. Should make a REALLY unique street rod.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/hudson2.jpg

[cencalc6]

Great story man,your doing a great job :thumbsup:

[SRD Art]

Thanks! :D

[SRD Art]

First off, you'll have to excuse the quality of the cell phone photos...

When I was looking for a wheel and tire combo I really spent some time researching how big a tire you can fit on a G-body. I so wanted to run a 315-30-17 out back but just couldn't find an 11" wheel price (including spacers if needed) that fit my budget of $1200 for wheels and tires. I finally settled on MB "Old School" wheels, a great price and nice looking. Tony had another g-body Malibu wagon that he put 'em on, with a 285-40-17 on 17x9.5 out back and 245-45-17 on 17x8 up front. I liked his car, but the fronts looked too skinny, maybe it was just the illusion created by stock height suspension.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/Tonyswagon.jpg

I also read a lot of g-body debates about how wide a tire can fit up front. The consensus seemed to be an 8" wheel with a 245 width was about maxed out. Well, I like taking things to the extreme so I decided I would make something wider work, whatever it took. I decided on 275-40-17 on 17x9.5s out back and 255-40-17 on 17x9.5s up front. The kid with the Hudson in my class works at Discount Tire so his manager swung me a smokin' deal on the wheels and Nitto 555 tires, $1164, mounted and balanced not including sales tax.

Pictured here is the 255 on 9.5 compared to a 225-50-16 on my 16x8 GTA wheels.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/Wheels1.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/Wheels2.jpg

Remember the front of my car has been lowered and has sagged to about 4.5" in the front and the rear is about a 3" drop. When I first bolted on the wheels things were waaaaay tight and the fenders were resting on the tires. It reminded me of a lowered import with deep offset rims and I didn't like it at all. The manager told me if they didn't fit up front he'd swap me for the 17x8s and I was seriously considering that.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/wheels3.jpg

I have had on my to-do list to raise the front suspension anyway so I built some small 6" tall stands from 2x4s and set them under the frame just behind the front tires o raise the car to where I wanted it. Right there it gave me some better clearance and the tires could turn without touching.

Here is a picture of stock height, 27" at the top of the wheel opening, and a 3" drop- 24" at the same spot.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/wheels5.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/wheels6.jpg

Since these fenders won't be used on the car we decided to use a large slide hammer and moved the fender eyebrow out 1/4 inch and that was even better for clearance. I really think this will work, especially after a little more massaging of the fender lip.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/wheels11.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/wheels10.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/wheels13.jpg

[SRD Art]

So to answer the question, yes you can run a 9.5" wheel and 255's up front on a g-body. BUT there are some issues that need to be addressed. This 9.5" wheel has 5.5" back spacing, that's pretty deep, and obviously that makes 4" width from the rotor outward. As you see them I have a 3/4" spacer behind them. This is a definite necessity, notice how close the rim is to the tie rod. It doesn't contact the wheel but it would probably knock off clip on weights.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/wheels4.jpg

Another problem area is that the tires would hit the rear side of the plastic inner fender wells in the area where the arrow is and would not allow them to turn all the way. Simply removing and/or modifying them will give the necessary clearance.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/wheels7.jpg

Here's the passenger side with the inner fender well removed and the wheels at full lock.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/wheels8.jpg

[SRD Art]

Here are a few more reference photos. Notice also with the 3/4" spacer and the wide wheels the front track is now wider than the rear, even with the 275-40s back there. Tony used 1" spacers on his car to kick the rear wheels outward.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/Tonyswagon.jpg

Since I'm narrowing the 9" rear anyway, I'll simply make it 1" wider than the factory wagon rear on each side. This should give the whole car a bit more of a wide stance. Overall I think the wheels look great and will work out fine even with the car being lowered 3". I plan on painting the centers that are now grey to black to better match the car.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/wheels15.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/wheels13.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/wheels12.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/wheels14.jpg

[SRD Art]

What a difference!

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/wagonatschool.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/wheels15.jpg

[bonecrrusher]

Whats the biggest wheel/tire you can fit out back without having to tub the car/narrow the frame?

[SRD Art]

One extreme ride height photo. Just for kicks I put the old "skinnier" rims on and let the car down. This is with 2" spindles and 2 3/4 coils cut off the springs. There was about 2.5" of clearance under the front cross member. That wood block is 5.5" tall. Wish I could drive this low all the time, but definitely not here in Utah, the land of lousy roads.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/LOW.jpg

[SRD Art]

Now back to the proposed ride height with the 17's bolted on. I figured this was a good reference point, maybe Powerade will sponsor me now, lol!

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/newlow3.jpg

I spent today's spare lab time tearing the car down to get it ready to come off the frame. Just a few shots of the aftermath so far. How about those great seat covers! :barf:

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/stripped.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/newlow1.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/newlow2.jpg

Nice granny blue carpet, Eeeeew! The new interior will match the theme of the car, mostly black with silver and orange accents. The factory carpet had a pretty thick layer of a flexible plastic backing, something I've never seen before. Much to my surprise the jute pad underneath looked almost brand new. I suspect the plastic backing saved it from dirt and grime and all the milk bottles spilled in the back.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/carpet.jpg

Here's Grandpa's Oldsmobile driver's side portion of the split bench next to the Mazda seat. Looking forward to getting them in, I'll be building the mounts after the car is the rest of the way torn down. The Mazda seats will make a huge difference in keeping my backside planted in hard cornering. Woohoo!

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/seats1.jpg

Finally a quick mock up of the driver's seat in place. I need to build custom mounts to raise them up about 3", more to come later on these...

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/seats2.jpg

[SRD Art]

Whats the biggest wheel/tire you can fit out back without having to tub the car/narrow the frame?

You really have to play with offsets to get bigger meats in there but on his Malibu wagon at stock ride height Tony has a 285-40-17 out back with the same wheels I have, 17x9.5 w/5.5" bs. He used 1" spacers to keep them away from the frame rails. Right now with no spacers my 275s are touching the frame, but I have nearly 1.5" I can push them outward if I roll the wheel opening lip. Most guys say 275 is the safe wide tire. Lots of GN Regals run 26x10.50x15 or 26X11.50 slicks. I found 2 folks that have 315-30-17's out back and they had to notch the frame. I will be notching the frame for future changes. Hope that helps. :D

[SRD Art]

Finished pulling doors and interior today.

Last ugly seat photo, I'm really glad to see these things hit the dumpster. On this passenger side I pulled out the foam which was in great shape so that I can fab a small jump seat that will fit in between the buckets so that I can still fit my wife and 4 kids in the car with me. When not in use the back will fold down and do double duty as an arm rest. I also pulled off the factory arm rest to save for another project.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/passseat.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/seatsketchjump.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/seatsketchjumpdn.jpg

[SRD Art]

Here's a shot of the passenger side floor. I knew this was there and screwed down a piece of sheet aluminum a couple years ago until I could get to this point to fix it. Funny, the parts car on page one had a large hole in exactly the same spot. My guess is that because this is right above the gynormis factory cat, I'm thinking that the cat got hot enough to cook off the under coating, and the salt they use on the roads here in winter just took it's toll over time. With the school shop tools handy I'll use the bead roller and brake to make another insert out of 16 ga sheet steel and weld it in properly.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/passfloor.jpg

Unfortunately I didn't know this was here. The previous owner had filled the gap above the windshield between the roof and trim with clear silicone, a tell tale sign of a windshield leak. I'll bet that's what caused this. Luckily it hasn't rusted to the point that the floor integrity has been sacrificed so some cleaning with a wire wheel and some Por-15 should take care of it. I'll be pulling the windshield trim to patch up any problems around there.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/drivfloor.jpg

The rest of the floor pan is luckily in great shape. Interesting how at the factory instead of gluing the jute pad to the floor they just slapped down some double stick squares and laid it down. Quick and simple.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/rearfloor.jpg

[SRD Art]

And last for today, new goodies came in. I ordered 2 LS swap books from Joseph Potak and Shawn Henderson and Marcus Savitske's handling book from Amazon. Right around $50, free shipping. I glanced through Marcus' book so far and I like the way he writes. I'm artsie fartsie so when people talk to me like I'm an engineer at Boeing it goes over my head sometimes. From what I can see he spells things out in a way that even I can wrap my head around the concepts. Really looking forward to reading it. PS I see Tony has his Monte's photo in the g-body section! Coool!

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/books.jpg

[SRD Art]

Finally got the motor and trans out.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/nomotor.jpg

Also finished up stripping the rest of the car. I find it fascinating to see how things were engineered and imagine how they put it together at the factory.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/stripped2.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/sripint.jpg

Unfortunately I found this on the rear passenger side wheel well, rotted clear through. I'll be moving them inward slightly so I'll fix the hole when I extend the tubs. Driver's side was fine.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/passwell.jpg

But with the bad comes the good, found this inside the rear seat. Looks like the car was built in Texas and delivered to an Olds dealership in Rapid City, South Dakota. Funny, that's where my wife is from too.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/buildsheet.jpg

[SRD Art]

I bought a heavy duty wire wheel for my electric grinder and hit the driver's floor. Under the flakes I did find some holes, so I decided to go ahead and replace the area marked out.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/driverfloora.jpg

To protect it from any stray sparks I covered up the rear window with some heavy butcher paper doubled over and cut the floor with a die grinder.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/CIMG0229.jpg

Here's the hole left for the passenger side. Yikes!

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/passfloor-1.jpg

Once I got the rust cut out I sheared off some 18 ga sheet metal. I got basic dimensions traced on the sheet stock and did a rough cut with beverly sheers.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/floorstart.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/roughcut.jpg


I used a machine called a Pullmax to duplicate the factory reinforcing ribs, here I am working on the passenger side.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/pullmax1.jpg

You use an upper female and lower male die, and the machine's up and down action beats the metal into place. I made 3-4 passes raising the lower die each time to get the correct depth imprint.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/pullmax3.jpg

This is the end result of trimming and using the Pullmax, here's the driver's side tacked in place. Notice how the formed ribs line up with the factory floor ribs. This was as far as I got today, tomorrow I'll finish up the passenger side. More to come...

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/driverfloor.jpg

[onelapduster]

Moving right along! I think you hit the stance just right. I really like that you are doing a wagon and not a typical G body car. Your gonna have one mean machine when its done!

[SRD Art]

Thanks!!

[SRD Art]

I had to take a 2 week break from the car to wrap up a bunch of class assignments for mid term grades, more on that in a few.

Getting back on the car I finished up the floors. The pullmax did a great job with the strengthening ribs and the end result looks great and matches the integrity of the factory floors. There was a lot of surface rust so I stripped the whole front floor area and coated it with Por-15.

Driver's side...

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/floordriv.jpg

Passenger side. The dash and shifter shadow makes it look warped but it's nice and flat...

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/floorpass.jpg

After the floor was complete I got the seat brackets knocked out. I decided to use the Mazda sliders and modify and weld them to the "legs" of the Cutlass seat brackets. Now they're just the right height and the sliders work fantastic. The back part of the seat also reclines back and forward smoothly, something the factory bench didn't do. I will finish them up by painting the brackets black and then building a sheet metal cover to keep them hidden.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/seatsin.jpg

[SRD Art]

On Monday evenings I go to the "paint your own car" class at the school. This gives me another 4 hours a week to get work done, only draw back is it's in a different shop. So instead of working on the car itself I have some individual body parts over there that I work on.

This past Monday I worked on the front bumper. Mine is pretty rotted on the passenger side, you can see the floor through it! The rest of the rust is surface rust, which will be taken care of during sandblasting.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/bump3.jpg

As I mentioned before, I picked up a wrecking yard bumper from an 85 Cutlass Supreme to get mine back in shape. The 85 bumper has different body lines on the top so the plan was to cut the bottom half out and graft it into mine. Nice thing about the later model bumper is that it has the turn signals in the bumper rather than near the headlights like mine. These will become functional brake cooling ducts.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/bump1.jpg

First thing I did was using the plasma cutter I cut out a larger than needed patch area.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/bump2.jpg

The turn signal openings are huge and would look out of proportion with my single compared to the 85 dual headlights, so I narrowed them by 4.5" where the weld line is. Here's a mock up of where they will go.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/bump4.jpg

I then cut out a large rectangle from my bumper and also narrowed it 1" above the left side cut line to tuck it in close to the body. The weld has already been ground down in this shot. I then trimmed the new piece to fit and tacked it in.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/bump5.jpg

Here's a couple shots of what it will look like on the car. I'll finish welding and get the other side done next week.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/bump6.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/bump7.jpg

[SRD Art]

Here I thought I'd take a moment and talk a bit about what we have been learning. First half of the semester we've been getting familiar with the machines in the shop by doing small projects. This included forming steel sheet metal and getting familiar with gas and tig welding. We covered mig welding last year and I was excited to learn tig this year.

Our professor is pretty dedicated to learning real hot rod based practical skills so his program is very hands on. We're also lucky to have some great forming equipment. This includes the Pullmax I've mentioned before, a Power Hammer, a planishing hammer, an Eckold that we use for shrinking and stretching, hand shrinker/ stretchers, a huge sheet metal brake, power shears, power and hand crank bead rollers, a slip roller, an english wheel, sand bags and mallets, and a few other big boy toys I'm forgetting. Here are a few projects we all had to make...

A simple circle made by running a flat strip through the slip roller until it was uniformly round and then tack weld with the gas welder.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/sliproller.jpg

Here the sheet metal brake was used to make a "multi angle with a curve and a fold" strip that had to match the one the professor made. The curve was made by making several small low angle bends.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/brake.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/metalbrake.jpg

Here I had to cut a curve in the sheet metal and using hand tools bend the metal over a wire, finishing it off with the Pullmax. If you're not familiar with this it's very common in areas like fender wheel openings on early cars such as a 30s Fords.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/bead.jpg

For this one I had to use two different dies on the bead roller. Can't help it, I like flames. :)

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/bead2.jpg

[SRD Art]

The next projects were a little more complicated. First I had to use the mallets and sandbag to beat a flat sheet into a bowl that actually looked like a beat up mess when I got done. Then using the hand shrinker on the edges and a hammer and dolly in the center I worked it until it was a smooth 12 degree bowl that had to fit flush to the professor's template. After I got the grade on that one I then had to use the planishing hammer to put more dish into it to get it to match a 7 degree template curve. Here's the end result-

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/planish1.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/planish2.jpg

Next was using the english wheel to form a flat sheet to fit the professor's bowl. This was cool to learn because the wheel doesn't work like you might think as you try to make it travel across the panel. End result-

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/english1.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/english2.jpg

Next was a small version of part of an inner wheel well. This one started by laying paper over the professor's part and folding it to find out where the highlight was and where to shrink it for the curve. I then transferred our paper pattern to the flat sheet, trimmed, and hit it with the Pullmax and shrinking dies. That got the curve started but that area was a warped mess. The planishing hammer smoothed it out some and the Eckold with shrinking dies continued the curve around. Back and forth between the three machines ended in a nice smooth wheel well that had to fit closely matched to both the outside and inside of the professor's version.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/well1.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/well2.jpg

Finally the one our professor calls the b**** project, a complex curve that has a concave long curve with a convex curve along the sides. I initially started the bend on the flat sheet cranking it over my leg. Then lots of trips back and forth between the Eckold shrinker and the planishing hammer finally ended up like this, again we had to match the one our professor made when laid on top.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/complex1.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/complex2.jpg

[SRD Art]

For the welding side we started with several gas welding projects, including butt welding with and without rod, vertical welding, welding up 1/2" holes, brass brazing steel to steel and copper pipe to steel. Gas welding uses a lot of heat so it warps the sheet quite a bit but it leaves a soft weld. Simply hammer and dolly-ing right on the weld straightens it right back out. Pretty neat.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/gas01.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/gas2.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/gas1.jpg

This assignment we had to simulate bullet holes with a pick hammer, much like those that are often in old cars out in the fields. Then using a hammer and dolly I straightened them out and welded up the holes.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/bullet.jpg

[SRD Art]

Finally my most anticipated new thing to learn- TIG welding. For practice with this we worked with steel butt welding with and without rod, vertical butt with rod, stainless, and aluminum. Although I thought it would be easier, aluminum turned out to be harder. Although it's softer and you'd think you would use less heat, aluminum absorbes and dissipates the heat so fast you actually have to use more voltage and ac rather than dc to get a good puddle going. The throttle is sensitive because it's real easy to get it too hot. Here are a couple of my butt welds after some practice. Top one got a little too hot and sank in a bit. Other two aren't too bad for my first time ever welding aluminum.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/alum2.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/buttalum.jpg

Now for the second half of the semester we'll have a lot of practice putting to work what we've learned so far. We each have to french a tail light and an antennae and then we each have to build a complete hot rod body for a pedal car chassis out of .063 sheet aluminum. This ought to be fun! ...

[SRD Art]

Next item to get in place before I can start building the roll bar is the battery. It needed to move to the rear to clean up the engine bay and help a little with the weight bias. I want to keep as much room available in the back so I can still use it to haul stuff around, so tucking it was in order. Here's a couple shots of what I have to work with.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/trunk1.jpg

The whole blue rear floor unscrews and comes out to reveal another floor underneath on this car. Underneath the right side of the blue sheet metal is a support to help hold the upper floor up. The frame rail is directly below that.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/sripint.jpg

After looking at a couple different options I decided that positioned right above the frame rail on the right would be best. That means moving some things around and removing the support.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/trunk3.jpg

I cut and relocated the right side floor edge that supports the spare tire door. The arrow shows where it used to be attached. Where it used to be it was shorter because of the angle at the top (see above photo) so it took a spacer welded in the middle to make it the new correct length. I also had to cut out the support metal underneath.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/Trunk4a.jpg

Notice also the space saver spare, I got it free from a guy I know that owns a couple Corvettes. Its a 155-70-17, lighter and skinnier than a full size, perfect for clearing the bigger F-body brakes, and is the same height as a 275-40-17.

Next I cut the door and reshaped it to fit in the recess.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/Trunk5.jpg

The lower floor is contoured to fit the frame so if I set the battery in as it is it was raked down towards the front. To make a flat support for the batt to sit on I grabbed some scrap 1" square tube, cut it at a 45 deg angle and welded up an L shape.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/Trunk5a.jpg

I then welded it into the car on top of the inner floor...

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/Trunk6a.jpg

... and here's the end result. The battery is sunk into the floor about 3" and it has a strong support to bolt the box to. Tomorrow I start making a battery box from .063 aluminum. Cost of the materials is about 6 bucks compared to paying $80+ for one already made.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/Trunk7.jpg

[SRD Art]

I was on date night with my wife last night and as we were getting into the car a guy pulled in next to us in an orange 2011 Caravan. I liked the shade a lot, similar to Vette Atomic orange. I've looked at lots of orange paint colors and I think I've narrowed it to one of these two paint codes. I'm not sure if the Vette is a 3 stage or not, I'd imagine the Caravan is two. Whichever fits the budget better wins this bout.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/caravanorange.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/atomicorange.jpg

[daemon2]

THats a great color, I wouldn't tell too many people you fell in love with it after seeing it on a minivan:lol:

[bonecrrusher]

Digging the spare & battery work!

LOL @ seeing that color on a minivan...

[SRD Art]

Lol!! "It's a CORVETTE color..." ;)

Thanks, More pics of mods to the tire well coming soon...

[SRD Art]

Now on with the box and the well, sort of sounds like a Disney movie, lol!

Here's a shot of the pattern I used for my battery box. It will be cut and folded from .063 aluminum. I wanted a nice smooth look so the sides will fold around and meet in the middle of the back, having only one vertical weld rather than one at each corner. I've also provided flanges on the top and bottom of each side. The top will be folded completely over and create a smooth perimeter top while providing extra strength. On the bottom the flanges will mate to the floor of the box...

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/box1.jpg

Still working on the box lid but you can see the box put together on the right of the next two shots. Jumping on to the tire well...

[SRD Art]

Currently I run a single 3" exhaust that exits behind the passenger rear tire. I want to keep the single 3" but wanted to do something different- have it appear to be duals as folks will expect a performance car to have and exit somewhere else. In keeping with the overall design of the car I decided to run dual rectangle tips and have them exit below the center of the rear bumper. Only problem is that my gas tank and spare well are right in front of the bumper and there's no room to plumb exhaust. As you can see the spare tire takes up the whole well so some more mods are in order to create a passage way for the pipe to run through. See the beginnings of the battery box on the right...

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/well2a.jpg

So I marked out an area to remove, trimmed it out and prepped for welding.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/well4.jpg

Using the sheet metal brake I bent up a piece of 18ga steel, here tacked in place, to create a "shelf" for the spare to rest on.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/well5.jpg

Now the tire rests at an angle and although I removed a large chunk of the well I actually created better space management. Under the tire I now have storage room for a small tool kit, tow rope and jumper cables and the lid closes with room to spare. I also have created a large open area to run the exhaust pipe.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/well6.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/well7.jpg

I recently picked up a pair of Flowmasters and tips from a friend that's changing the exhaust on his 91 Corvette. I'll save the mufflers for my son's Nova build that will start next year and the tips will go on my car. They're each about 7.5" wide and should look great nestled under the rear bumper. My car will be anti-chrome so the tips will be getting a makeover as well.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/Tips1.jpg

[SRD Art]

Some new updates from the last coupla days.

First off I got the front bumper finished up. I sectioned it 1" on the pass side as well as sectioned the turn signal opening from the donor bumper. I then cut out the area on my bumper, tacked in the donor piece and welded it all up.

I learned something new as I did this. Monday my professor and I were talking about weld "prettiness" and where I need to be at with my welding to be at a level where a decent shop will be impressed and hire me. I asked about mig welding and which was a better weld - a nice continuous bead or "stacking pennies"? We discussed the possibility that stacking pennies, although it looks great, wouldn't heat the metal enough to get decent penetration on thicker metal. So to run a test to answer my question I welded the passenger half with short continuous stitch weld beads. I used the paint shop side 120V MIG with the heat cranked all the way. If the stitches were too long or too slow it would blow a hole, so after finding a decent speed I got pretty nice welds. On the driver side I stacked pennies.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/bump8.jpg

When I flipped it over I found that with that smaller welder on a thick bumper it had trouble penetrating very well either way, but to my surprise the stacking pennies actually got better penetration overall. It also had a smaller heat zone around the weld and looked a ton better :twothumbs. Too bad it's all going to get ground flat anyway, lol!

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/bump9.jpg

[SRD Art]

Everything I've been doing so far in the rear of the car was to get everything situated so I can install a roll cage. After researching kits I found nothing fit the wagon the way I wanted. So I checked into just getting just a main hoop and building off that. I got a price from Jegs, I think it was like $45, very reasonable. What wasn't reasonable was the $99 shipping shaft, er, charge. So I decided to just build the whole thing from scratch. Because I've never done anything even remotely close to this I decided to do a mock up first before bending steel. Using PVC pipe, a few homemade brackets and some duct tape I got one put together.

Please note that my cage won't be "legal" for any serious racing venues, it's main design purpose was to add stiffness and safety without sacrificing comfort and streetability at all. Some features will be- A snug overall fit contoured to the interior. There is recessed main hoop cross bar behind the front seats so I have plenty of seat adjustability. I will also be building a camera stand off this bar. I have fairly long legs so I sat in the back seat with the mock up in the car just to make sure there was plenty of "get in" room and clearance for knees. The rearward bars make up the "cage" portion, similar to a 10 point cage turned backwards. I did this mostly because I didn't want to cut up the dash for front bars and that's probably overkill anyway. I also want to keep the versatility of the wagon's back storage area so the diagonal brace will be above the rear seat area. The rear bars will hit right after the rear wheel wells. I want to keep the stock lower half of the front door panels so I had to make the front bar fairly low to clear the armrest mold. The front bars are more for chassis stiffness than anything and are similar to a tiger cage.

With doing the PVC mockup I was able to test fit and try different options before bending and possibly wasting metal tubing. It's rough and pretty ugly, but when it was in the car it fit great and placement looked decent as I envisioned the real bar in there. The interior will be black with a splash of orange and silver accents. I plan on painting the cage silver too.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/rollbar1.jpg

[SRD Art]

The last thing I needed to do before the cage is the rear wheel tubs. If you rememeber the passenger side had some gnarly rot on it.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/passwell.jpg

I don't much like the plastic rear interior panels and this side now gets in the way of the battery...

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/rearpanel1.jpg

...and I think the shape of the factory tubs are too doofy to have exposed.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/sripint.jpg

I saw this photo the other day looking at roll bars in wagons and thought the squared off wheel tubs and fairly flat and plain panels made the car look kinda mean so I decided to go for that look.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/AMC_pacer_wagonrollcage.jpg

I started cutting today using a plasma cutter. I will be extending the wheel tubs in about 1" and the red arrow points to the frame rail that will get notched to match the tub. I don't need to do this now but I'm getting it set up for later. I maxed out my budget on rims and tires for right now so when the 275's are worn out I will be getting 11.5" rims and 315-35s out back.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/whelwellR1.jpg

I'll be cutting out the driver's side tomorrow and then start building the tubs.

[SRD Art]

Finally for now is the big parts delivery for this past week, my 5.3 LS motor. It's not the one I originally thought I was getting but it will do. I sold my rebuilt original 305 (that was in the car when I bought the whole car for $300), for $450 to a fellow classmate for his '54 GMC project. This 5.3 cost me $480.xx including sales tax so I guess I did o.k. for $30 out of pocket ;) lol!

It's from a 2000 Tahoe with a little over 106,000 miles. Unfortunately it came as you see it, luckily it did have the power steering pump but is missing most everything else such as ecm, wiring, alternator, starter, etc... Let me know if you have spare parts that can help me get it together.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/eng1.jpg

Despite I have to piece it together, I'm totally stoked to have an LS motor powering my car. I'm gearing up for the Holley LS fest, woohoo!!!

[bonecrrusher]

Roll Cage provided by #48 Jimmy Johnson sponsor - Lowes!

LOL - looking good! :thumbsup:

[SRD Art]

Lol! Yeah, too bad Lowe's isn't sponsoring me too. :D

Finally some more progress...

First off, another class assignment. We learned about frenching, and for our assignments we had to make a panel and french a tail light and antenna. We were graded on just going through the process, not finishing it to paint ready. Here's mine and my light is in the background. It was a fun assignment but it's not as pretty as I would do to a real car, I knocked it out quickly to get back to my car...

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/frant.jpg

[SRD Art]

I wanted a fairly large tub, big enough to stuff a 13" tire at full suspension squat. The main problem with doing this to a wagon is the back seat. I want to keep mine totally functional in the up and down position. This required some creativity and some trial and error. Finally on the 3rd cardboard design I got everything to work out. I started with a "chip board" pattern and flat 18ga sheet metal to come up with the sides.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/wellside1.jpg

Using the pullmax I raised the edge to a 90 degree angle

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/wellside2.jpg

and using the slip roller bent the top.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/wellside3.jpg

[SRD Art]

Here's the final product, panels welded with screws holding them in place. They are slightly different side to side because the gas filler neck is inside the wheel well on the driver's side.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/welldoneboth.jpg

Notice the notch I had to create to allow clearance for the back of the seat.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/welldoner2.jpg

[http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/welldoner1.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/welldonel1.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/welldonel2.jpg

[SRD Art]

Now I have to modify the seat back just a bit, the hinge bars run into the wheel wells so I need to move them inward about 1-1.5". More to come on that...

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/seatbracket1.jpg

[bonecrrusher]

Nice Shaggin' Wagon!

[daemon2]

Keep it coming' :)

[SRD Art]

Progress updates...

First off the final shots of the wheels tubs. After welding I used a DA with a 220 grit pad to clean them up and then coated the cargo area with Por-15. Eventually I'll cover the area with some bed liner type material so I can still load messy junk back there.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/tubfin1.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/tubfin2.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/tubfin5.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/tubfin3.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/tubfin4.jpg

[SRD Art]

Tuesday I started on the roll bar. Previously I picked up some 1 3/4" .120 wall tubing from the local metal supplier. They came in 24ft lengths @ $53 ea and I had them cut to 12 ft lengths. After some measuring my professor helped me start bending the main hoop. Using the PVC mockup we were able to bend the curves to match the design perfectly without needing to remove the bar from the machine for test fits. It turned out great and fit nice and snug. Next order of business was the hoop cross bar. This was bent to allow a pretty wide range of movement for the seats.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/roll01.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/roll02.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/roll10.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/roll08.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/roll07.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/roll09.jpg

[SRD Art]

Ugh! Had one of those days Friday. I volunteer on Friday afternoons to teach a drawing class at my kids' elementary school so I have the leave the shop at my school by 12. I really wanted to have the roll cage in the car by Christmas break so because of running out of days and the Friday short day I was in somewhat of a hurry-up mood. Seems like when you try to rush, things go wrong and that's just what happened. Looking back I have to laugh but it was pretty frustrating at the time.

I checked out the hole saw from the school's tool room to use in the milling machine to notch my tubes. When I put it in the mill I found the arbor had been "studentized" and was slightly bent making the hole saw slightly wobbly. I used it anyway and it did an acceptable job on the main hoop cross bar. When I tried to notch the first of 4 short tubes I'm using to connect and triangulate the newly bent rear bars, the blade caught on the tube while cutting and the shaft on the arbor shattered sending the hole saw flying and it gouged my bar. I wanted it done so taking the advice of another professor here I set it up in the chop saw to cut it on an angle. Part way through cutting the blade caught the bar funny, shattering it and sending blade shrapnel around the shop. "Good grief!" I thought, "what else can go wrong?!!" I ended up using a 4" grinder to shape the notch, lined it up and started welding it in. I think because I forgot to sand the surface rust off I was getting a lot of spatter from the welder. That was frustrating because I'm trying to make pretty welds, not to mention that when I finished I tipped my helmet up looked over my shoulder and saw a rag on the table a couple feet away had caught on fire from welding spatter. Yep, I was cursed Friday.

After the rag fire I realized that rushing through this was not the answer so I took a second and looked up tubing notchers online in the computer lab. I found that Speedway motors has one for $100. It has a 40-90 deg range and it comes with a 1 3/4" blade. I've decided that I'll just buy one of those and take my time to do this right when school starts up again in January. I do get 2 more days in the shop before the break so I'll get some little things on my list knocked out.

I guess the moral of Friday's story is another reminder to not rush through things and learn to laugh at the irony of things that go wrong. I always try to do that and enjoy later telling my wife my funny "fail" stories as we both have a good laugh together.

Anybody else have days like this?

[Ryguy442]

Hey, love the car. My father was a huge Oldsmobile fan, I have a few myself now. Iv had alot of days like your Friday, iv had my hand crushed under a car, saw blades explode, fires, just about everything go wrong that can go wrong. Sometimes it's just best to walk away for awhile before you and up doing more harm then good. Good luck with the olds, I'll be watching for updates.

Ryan

[SRD Art]

Thanks Ryguy!

Lots of updates- first some dash planning. Pro-Comp gauges have the same font that my factory cluster has...

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/5447_d.jpg

They only come in 2 5/8" rather than the Sport-comp 2 1/6" so I can only fit 3 across instead of the 4 I originally planned. They also don't have the Diff temp gauge in this line but I can live without it. I'm willing to bet even if I road course the car I won't overheat the rear axle so I probably won't need to keep an eye on it. So here's a very quick photoshop mockup of my dash...

Mods will include a new black complete dash cover, adding the 160 speedo, painting all factory gauge needles red, deleting all dash vents except lower heater and windshield defrost, and all fakie wood grain areas replaced with brushed aluminum. I also have a Grant steering wheel with brushed aluminum spokes. Three center gauges will be Water temp, Oil temp, and Trans temp. Gauge on the left will be a brake pressure gauge. Shift light 3 3/8" tach will go on top of the dash in the left corner by the windshield pillar. On the dual pillar pods will be an a/f gauge along with a digital gear indicator like Ken Block's rally car.

Only thing to decide now is the color of the gauge rings. The Autometer dealios come with a silver bezel, but I'm leaning towards painting them black, see bottom photo. Thoughts?

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/dashmock01.jpg

[SRD Art]

I found and bought this guy wasting time on ebay today. It lights up and screams at you, perfect for the Pumkinator motif. If it's large enough I'll hang it from the rear view mirror as my new g-force-o-meter for video viewers, if not I'll keep it as a fun key chain.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/Pumpkinkey.jpg

[SRD Art]

I took a quick breather recently to update my wagon's concept rendering. Added the brake ducts in the front bumper, the fender vents, factory mirrors, tucked the rear bumper, a new graphic to the side, and of course the new wheels.

I also changed some plans for the front turn signals for two reasons. First, the lenses on my light buckets were only manufactured for two years and they're a bit banged up. Finding nice ones has yeilded pretty much a big zee-ro. I've also been struggling on how to come up with a cost effective ram air hood system and everything I dream up will take too much work time and/or $. So today I removed the turn signals from the light bezels and I liked what I saw.

The turn signal holes will become a ram air inlet with two tubes merging into one near the throttle body. I'm still working out the air filters. I ordered some 6.25" wide combination white daytime driving light/ amber turn signal LED lights today. The holes I made in the bumper are about 8.5" wide, so using the brackets that come with the lights I will mount them "floating" in the center of the holes, and as the air flows through it will still be plumbed for brake cooling. Although it now sort of looks like an strange S10, I think it was a good compromise and a good final design. Let me know what you think, thanks!

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/WagonOrangefinalnew10.jpg

[SRD Art]

This past Friday I went by the junk yard to grab some parts I scouted out earlier in the week. I definitely scored some great deals.

First off I'd like to thank the previous owner of this early 90s Camaro for installing Edelbrock rear lower control arms before the car made it to the wrecking yard. New price is $205 from Summit, only $10 (!) for the pair from the wrecking yard. Fighting a rusted bolt and 3 very tight ones was absolutely worth the effort.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/DonorCamaro.jpg

They have a little surface rust and the paint is beat up but other than that they're in great shape, no dents or other issues mechanical issues.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/LCA1.jpg

[SRD Art]

Next up is this trailer hitch I pulled from a 78-79ish Elcamino. I checked Draw Tight's website to get an idea for what a new one is worth, but they don't make the g-body hitch anymore with the larger 2" receiver, they only list a whimpy class 2 with the small 1 1/4" receiver. I made out ok with this too, only $25 and except for paint it's in great shape. My Nova is set up to flat tow with a tow bar so it'll be perfect for that or towing a small trailer or car on a tow dolly. Although the hitch has a decent tongue weight rating I doubt my lowered suspension would like towing something bigger too much.

Plans are to modify the mounts so it's directly behind the bumper rather than underneath. I'll cut a square hole and use a custom ball mount with an SCCA style tow hook attached for racing and of course a ball when towing.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/Hitch1.jpg

Got some miscellaneous stuff too. The seat back/ arm rest is from the back seat of an Astro Van. I'll use it in the front between the buckets, and build a simple base so I can have one of my kids sit up front. It'll fold down as an armrest when not being used as a seat back. The vents are from a 79 Pontiac LeMans. I'll have them set up for heating the front and the rear, they're pretty cool because they swivel 360 deg to direct air flow. I grabbed a couple rear marker lights from the El Camino, mine are a little hammered. The jack will fit nicely in my modified spare tire well, and the low profile height will work perfectly with the lowered stance of the car. $10 for everything here.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/Miscparts2.jpg

These Caddy engine covers caught my eye as the 2010 Camaro cover I bought just won't look right on the truck intake. Two are plastic and one aluminum, and I thought I might modify them a little. For $10 total for all three I figured it wasn't a big loss if I cut them up and it didn't work out so I went ahead and grabbed them. The runners on the truck intake don't look so bad but everything sticking out of the top looks terrible. I'm thinking to trim down the aluminum one to just the center rectangle to cover the top of the intake, then cut one side off each plastic one to cover the coil pack areas. We'll see how it goes...

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/Cadcover1.jpg

[SRD Art]

Now for some new goodies.

I got this dual gauge pod from gbodyparts.com. They had the best price I could find at $50 including shipping. Seemed a bit steep for a mass produced thermoformed thin piece of plastic, but I guess you gotta pay if you wanna play. My interior is currently totally stripped out but mocking it up where it will go it looks like it won't be a perfect fit for my car, for sure one of the screw holes doesn't line up at all and not so sure everything else will exactly either. Maybe the wagons have different pillars? Either way I don't think it will take much to make it fit well.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/Pillarpod.jpg

Bunch of stuff from Speedway motors- My car is stock with light blue seat belts so I picked up a black retractable seat belt that will be for the jumper seat up front, an aluminum radiator hose extension tube tapped for a drain or gauge, some aluminum hood pins, a pair of circle track spindle savers, and a 9" to g-body rear axle bracket kit with the multi position LCA mounts and the brake caliper brackets, and finally my tubing notcher kit.

The fan in the upper left is from Roush Yates, it's a circle track item that is typically used to either cool the brakes or the driver. Despite being small and running off 12 volts it really cranks! I've removed all the factory big-n-ugly g-body HVAC housing and will build a custom heating system that will all be tucked under the dash, more on that as I get more parts for it in.

Next to the fan is a pair of "euro style" (woohoo, now I can pretend my car is a BMW) LED Daytime Running Lights. Cool thing is they also have built in amber turn signals so these will get mounted in the holes I created in the front bumper.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/Miscparts.jpg

I also got this radiator from Speedway. It's 31" wide and has a "double pass" flow. With 3- 1" tubes they say it cools like a 5 core traditional radiator, and I liked this one because the inlet and outlet are both on the passenger side, just like on the LS water pump. This should help clean up the engine bay a bit. Unfortunately it's taller than the factory radiator so I'll need to modify the radiator support to make it fit.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/Rad1.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/Rad2.jpg

I picked up these LS F-body rotors and ceramic pads as a kit form ebay. Joe at Bulldawg said he's had some success with these and suggested for the price they can't be beat. I'm sure they're cheap-junk Chinese parts, but so is the stuff you buy at the auto parts store anymore and this kit at $180 was way cheaper than anything local. Remember this is a budget build. :)

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/Rotors1.jpg

[SRD Art]

Here's a few shots of the motor mock-up. In the photo it's pushed back about an inch from the stock location. I think I can slightly modify the firewall and get another 1/2" back out of it.

Driver's side...

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/EngClear1.jpg

Passenger side...

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/EngClear2.jpg

Here you can see the factory Tahoe oil pan is way too low. Joe from Bulldawg Muscle Cars is sponsoring my car a bit with a few parts, the GM muscle car LS oil pan kit is one of these items. I should have it in a couple days, thanks Joe!!

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/OilPan1.jpg

[SRD Art]

I made a trip to the local Sherwin Williams auto paint store today for supplies. While there I got pricing on the paint I want. Officially it's called "Toxic Orange" and is used on 2010+ Challengers, Chargers and Vipers. It's also called Mango Tango with the same paint code and used under that name on the more docile cars and Jeeps. We compared a paint chip to satin black and it all matches well. I was hoping for less wallet damage, but between primer and paint even with a student discount I'm looking at right around $1000. Ouch! Oh well, gotta be done. I better get a few more renderings whipped out...

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/2010_dodge_viper_toxic_orange.jpg

VHT recently came out with a "Burnt Copper" high heat engine paint. Here I sprayed it on some pvc pipe to see how close it matches the paint cap. It's a real nice burnt orange, but I think it may be off a bit from the Toxic Orange body paint. I forgot to take it with me today so I'll run it by on Thursday to compare to the paint chip. If it's not close enough I can always get some high heat additive and use a little Toxic orange for the motor.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/enginepaint.jpg

I bought this heat switch from ebay for my home-made heater system. It has has 4 positions, has the resister built in to the switch, and is illuminated. Only problem is it looks a little old school and cheapish and in the ebay photo it looked black but is actually brown. I think next time I'm at the junkyard I'll look at some of the more modern switch knobs they have and may be able to adapt it to this housing. Sorry for the blurry photo, my camera is like my eyes, can't see anything up close, lol!

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/heatswitch.jpg

[SRD Art]

I've been looking all over for some cup holders to build into the center console and recently found these tucked in the corner of the Walmart automotive section. I wanted some stainless showing and it had to be big enough to fit a 20 oz. bottle of soda-pop and a large convenience store fountain drink. These will do after some slight modification. They were also the least expensive thing I could find at just under $6 each.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/cupholder.jpg

I also got in my brake pressure gauge. I bought this one off ebay too because the font matches the rest of my gauges. Crazy thing is it comes with fittings for high pressure nylon tubing but no actual tubing. That's kinda dumb. I looked in the Speedway catalog and saw they have long braided lines specifically for gauges so I'll have to grab one of those.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/Brakepressure.jpg

[SRD Art]

Here are some shots of the Speedway tubing notcher. It's ultra simple and very easy to use. Only 2 complaints- the numbers are a sticker. Human error shows it's placed about 2 degrees off, but that's easy enough to compensate for when measuring. But also, just the fact that it's a sticker and the WD-40 I use to lube the saw as its cutting soaked right into it. I know eventually it'll peel off so at some point I need to get the dremel tool out and grind all the marks permanent.

Cutting the tubing this way went so well. The first few cuts were off slightly but still weldable. After I got a good feel for how to use it resulted in some real nice snug fitment. I LIKE IT! One of the best $100 I've spent.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/Tubenotch1.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/Tubenotch2.jpg

Here's the mock up of the cage so far. The back half is all welded as a unit as is the main hoop. I started on the front bars today and by Thursday I should have all the sections in the car and welded together. Because of pipe limitation I decided to triangulate the braces instead of doing an x brace. Should still be pretty stiff. I've decided to paint it Krylon aluminum with a satin clear to match the silver accents on the black and orange interior. The photo shows it in bare metal.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/rollbar2.jpg

I should have the rotisserie to the school by Friday so early next week I'll have the frame out and then the fun really begins!

[waynieZ]

Ben its looking great,you got some talent man! Very Nice.

[youthpastor]

This past Friday I went by the junk yard to grab some parts I scouted out earlier in the week. I definitely scored some great deals.

First off I'd like to thank the previous owner of this early 90s Camaro for installing Edelbrock rear lower control arms before the car made it to the wrecking yard. New price is $205 from Summit, only $10 (!) for the pair from the wrecking yard. Fighting a rusted bolt and 3 very tight ones was absolutely worth the effort.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/DonorCamaro.jpg

They have a little surface rust and the paint is beat up but other than that they're in great shape, no dents or other issues mechanical issues.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/LCA1.jpg

Nice Score! I love hearing about these deals!

[SRD Art]

A few more photos...

Here's the complete roll bar mocked up in the car. Again I wasn't necessarily after conforming to any particular type/ class of racing, although I think if I did the correct door bars it would be legal for under 11.90s at the strip. The biggest reasons for building it were 1. To learn how to build one from scratch, 2. To stiffen up the car, and 3. To create something that didn't look like a mass produced unit yet still have the strength of one, and 4. add a cool element of design.

I didn't want to weld the bar to the frame, mostly because I wanted the bars in the car for strength when I put the body on the rotisserie so I can start strengthening the chassis and building the rear suspension. While I'm in there welding up the bars I will weld them to 1/8" thick plates which will be welded to the floor. When it's all back together bolts will go through the floor and down through the frame to tie it all together.

Without the seats in...

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/roll21.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/roll22.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/roll23.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/roll24.jpg

Notice in the photos above that the cage sits on a ledge from the main hoop forward. I knew once I got the rear section welded to the hoop welding the last little bit on the top was going to be difficult, especially since I've never done anything like this before. I know its typical to cut the floor out and drop the cage down but it's so tight to the roof I didn't think there'd be enough room since the frame is not far from the floor here. Several of the older guys in the program suggested cutting a couple holes in the roof, weld up the bars and then welding roof patches in. I didn't want to do that so a hunch said cut the body seam on the floor and bend it down (red arrow), bang the top seam out of the way (green arrow) then tugging on the partially welded cage would allow access to the top as it dropped out of the car on one side and down into the feet well on the other side. I got it within 1/8" of dropping down and it was pretty much stuck. Not willing to give up I gave the side that would drop into the feet well a little kick and the bar had enough flex to drop down and it fell right out of the car on the other side. This allowed plenty of welding access and it didn't take that much effort to get it back into place. I did the same on the opposite side, a little kick and it popped right out.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/rollbar27.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/rollbar28.jpg

[SRD Art]

One problem I ran into while making the front bars was I ran out of bar. The last bar to bend was the floor bar for the passenger side and it was about 6 or 7" too short. So I grabbed piece of scrap practice tubing and carefully stitch welded them together. In the second photo you can see the end result, it came out pretty nice. There was some mild warpage and you can still feel where the weld was but I think it's good enough that if I didn't say anything it won't be noticed. Although I originally was going to have plain painted bars I may cover these floor bars with some vinyl that matches the seats. The rest of these photos are pre-welding, testing fit with the seats in. I need to oblong the driver's seat bolt holes a little to move the seat inward about 1/4" for door bar clearance, but other than that everything fits great.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/roll25.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/roll26.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/roll11.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/roll12.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/roll18.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/roll13.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/roll14.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/roll15.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/roll19.jpg

[OOCustoms]

your project is looking great! If I were you though, I would have put an insert where you butt welded the bar on your last photos. The way I was trained on something like that is to do an insert with three plug welds around the pipe on either end if the weld. This will prevent the tube from pulling apart and bending at the weld because of the added inner tube. other then that looks great man!

[SRD Art]

You're right, and that's good advice for anyone that may need to do this on their car. I didn't have any scraps that would fit inside but also I was in a bit of a hurry and didn't think of it until after it was done. Adding an insert will also help strengthen the bar. Since this isn't really a support bar I think I can get away with it. Thanks for the compliments!

[67goatman455]

wow this is looking great!

[SRD Art]

A few more pics-

To weld the cage into the car I used our platform mounted plasma cutter on manual mode to cut out some 1/8" thick 4x4" plates and bent them with the metal brake to contour the floor pan.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/roll29.jpg

For the back two bars I had to make custom plates that contoured around the body bushing bumps in the sheet metal. To do this I first cut out the shape I needed from white poster board. The light beam follows the lines of the cutout...

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/plasma1.jpg

...and transfers that to the cutter.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/plasma2.jpg

Maybe not as precise as processes like cnc water jetting but it did a great job. I used the machine again to fabricate some brackets for the trailer hitch, more coming on that soon.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/plasma3.jpg

Originally I started to rattle can the roll cage satin aluminum but it was too bright and shiny and showed all the nicks and imperfections in the tubing. I decided to go with a more traditional satin black instead. The paint in this photo is fresh so it still looks fairly shiny, but it dulls down a bit as it dries. It should be just about the same sheen as the dash, console, and door panels when dry.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/roll30.jpg

[SRD Art]

Updates- Trailer hitch is in!

A couple pages ago I mentioned that I scored a $25 g-body El Camino trailer hitch from the junkyard. I'll be using it to tow my street/strip Nova to Georgia when I relocate in a few months and to the track when I get the itch to go drag racing again. Two problems with a hitch is there's no room because I will be running the exhaust tips right under the center of the rear bumper and I also don't want an ugly trailer receiver visible from behind. So I decided to figure out how to hide it behind the bumper....

The hitch...

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/Hitch1.jpg

Here's the original bumper shock/ mount. I used a die grinder to cut a small slit in the body (not visible, it extends about 8" into the frame) to drain the oil. I did this pointed away from me inside the trash can because the oil is a bit under pressure and sprays out. (I learned this by accident practicing on one of the front bumper mounts. Lol, it sprayed about 10 feet in the air and got oil everywhere in about a 4 foot radius!) After the oil was drained I welded up the slit and sand blasted them.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/Bumpbracket1.jpg

I then cut off the factory Draw-tite brackets. Using the bumper shocks to help make a poster board template I plasma cut out some C shape brackets from the 1/8" steel sheet and some C shape brackets from the left over hitch brackets. For strength I drilled out all the holes from the smaller metric to 3/8" and used grade 8 bolts. Here it is all welded and in place.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/Bumpbracket2a.jpg

For clearance I had to persuade the spare tire well a little with a small sledge.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/Bumpbracket2.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/Bumpbracket3.jpg

I then cut off the ends of the bumper support bracket and bolted them on.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/Bumpbracket4.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/Bumpbracket5.jpg

Here is the first test fit with the bumper. It looks like a large gap but once the tailgate and the plastic piece that fills the rest of the gap is installed it looks better. Once all back together I will actually tuck the bumper closer to the body, another reason for draining the oil.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/Bumpbracket6.jpg

Measuring out a rectangle in the center of the bumper I cut it out with a die grinder. The cut out piece will be welded to some square tubing that will insert into the receiver when the race tow hook or the trailer ball is not being used. The panel will hide everything except the small gap outline around the rectangle. The bumper will be black so it shouldn't be very noticeable. I got the tow hook from Harbor Freight on sale for $10. Not sure yet if it's SCCA legal but for the price I figured I'd grab it.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/Bumpbracket7.jpg

Next I need to build support brackets that will be welded to the hitch and bolted to the frame about 10" inward. More on that soon. Overall I think it turned out great and really ads to the car's versatility without sacrificing a clean look out back.

[SRD Art]

Now that the hitch was in and tied the rear frame rails together, the big highlight of today was pulling the body. Woohoo!

There are 12 body mounts on the wagon, 10 of them are bolted in, 2 are pushed in. 7 of the 10 bolts came out easily. 2 of them, both 4th back from the front, were so rusted that there was pretty much nothing left of them. I'm surprised they didn't just fall out of the car. number 3 bolt on the driver's side froze up after a few turns. Then it started spinning freely. I thought the bolt broke but actually the tapped plate started spinning inside the body and karate chopped through the floor sheet metal. I cut around it to peel up the sheet metal and spot welded the plate back down. After that and a bigger impact gun it came right out. Notice the torn sheet metal at the top of the photo, wow.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/Bodybolt1.jpg

We have a rolling electric winch on beam track that spans the shop. Using a heavy tow strap I found the balance point in the rear door openings and pulled it up. I wish I could tell you guys how exciting today was. After fixing a couple things and some fabrication to beef up the frame it will head to the sandblaster. Once it's back and painted it's all bolting on parts from here on out. This was a huge milestone and I'm totally stoked. And yes, I know the front tires are on backwards. ;)

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/bodyoff.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/frame01.jpg

[daemon2]

I enjoy seeing updates on this build, great progress!

[Macbuick]

The interior will be black with a splash of orange and silver accents. I plan on painting the cage silver too.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/rollbar1.jpg

With black interior, wouldn't it be nicer to paint the rollcage black ?
Dark painted rollcages are always way more subtile and discrete than light ones....
see your drawing with black tainted windows and imagine the silver rollcage flashing behind the windscreen :)

[SRD Art]

With black interior, wouldn't it be nicer to paint the rollcage black ?
Dark painted rollcages are always way more subtile and discrete than light ones....
see your drawing with black tainted windows and imagine the silver rollcage flashing behind the windscreen :)

Originally I wanted the roll cage to standout and the silver paint will also match the silver accents on the dash and door panels. But, you're right, I think black is a better choice, silver may have stood out too much.

[SRD Art]

Progress for today...

I always stay as late as I can to work in the shop so most everyone was gone when I pulled the body off yesterday. I feel like I spent half of shop time today explaining over and over what I plan to do with the frame.:beathorse

I did strip off all the brake and fuel lines and unbolted the rear shocks. The driver's side rear spring cup was torn, so I got this welded up too.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/springcup.jpg

Then I addressed the retarded G-body trans cross member. For those that own these cars understand my pain because the g-bodies are set up for only single exhaust. Unless you can fab up something you're going to be out about $150+ for a cross member with a driver's side exhaust tube clearance. I looked at a couple aftermarket and a few custom dealios on the net and decided that the easiest and cheapest thing to do was modify mine.

Quick and dirty, the hand held plasma cutter hacked the thick tube easily. Unless you have a surgeon's steady hands, which I clearly don't :), you end up with something like this.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/transmount01.jpg

A couple minutes with the grinder smoothed it enough to weld. I think with keeping about 1/2" of the vertical sides it should be structurally strong enough to hold the tail of the tranny. To box and finish it I grabbed a scrap of 18 ga sheet, bent it to the shape of the void and welded it on. I could've stopped there but I wanted it to look like it was supposed to be like this from the factory so I took some time and metal finished it instead. Once it's painted it should look like it was formed that way. Here are a few shots from different views. I'm pretty happy with the end result.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/transmount02.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/transmount03.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/transmount04.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/transmount05.jpg


Tomorrow I start boxing the frame! :yes:

[SRD Art]

Someone on another forum asked if I thought the trans crossmember was strong enough the way I modified it. Really, with the front motor mounts holding up the bulk of the weight, there isn't much weight on the trans cross member. It's almost more like a resting spot to bolt down the trans. Just to be safe I had my good friend Jay stand on it for me. It flexed about 1/8" but at 260 lbs. Jay probably weighs twice what a TH350 does.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/JayonTxmem.jpg

[SRD Art]

Updates...

I went to the local metal supplier and bought some more 1/8" sheet stock and some sections of 1", 3/16ths wall tubing from the scrap area. 37 lbs total at .79 per pound.

First job was tack weld the trans cross member nuts to the member so that I don't need a wrench anymore to install the bolts. I then straightened the frame rails where a floor jack had bent them up a little and prepped them for welding by grinding the surface rust off.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/framebox01.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/framebox02.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/framebox03.jpg

A design cue and one issue to deal with here- Notice I put the sheet stock in the brake to bend it slightly, matching the design cues from the front frame rails. Just a little added visual touch that only took a couple extra minutes.

Also the body mount area needed some working. It's curved at the top and you need to leave it open so you can get a body bushing up in there. After welding on the longer sections, I made the smaller body mount sections using the table mounted plasma cutter. Once they were tacked into place it was fairly easy to get them to contour to the curved upper rail.

I'll have the open gaps where the factory boxed rails meet mine boxed in tomoorow, and then it's on to building some bracing into the frame...

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/framebox04.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/framebox05.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/framebox08.jpg

[waynieZ]

Nice work its looking good.

[Biggunns]

I started reading this and realized I've seen your Cutlass in the parking lot of the SS Walmart, and to top it off I'm the director of admissions at UVU, such a small world. I think it's awesome you are creating such a unique car, I have a 2wd lowered Tahoe in Utah and everyone thinks I'm crazy. Keep up the good work.

[SRD Art]

Wow, it is a small world. I live in the Ranches @ EM. If you drive the Tahoe a lot I've probably noticed it, a lowered truck looks very refreshing after seeing so many lifted diesels. :lol: I have a 2 wheel drive 77 Suburban that will be getting dropped 6" after the wagon's done. I also have a '76 Suburban that's lifted and I wanna sell it.

If you get a minute stop by the street rod shop in the automotive building some time and chat. I'm usually there from 9 am to 2 pm.

[68MaroSam]

It's all looking great Ben. Keep at it.

[SRD Art]

Thanks Sam! Unfortunately I will be finishing it up and heading back east shortly after. I won't be able to show it off on any cruises here this year. :(

Got my rear bracing finished up Friday. First I started by doing some measuring and with the table plasma cutter cut out some rectangular 1/8" thick plates. I tack welded them to the frame rails and then drilled some bolt holes.

Right side then left side...

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/rearbrace01.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/rearbrace02.jpg

Then I took some 1 5/8" tubing and bent it according to a design I've been working out. Got it welded in and started on the bars to connect the control arms. Again I started with cutting out some mounting plates and used the control arm bolts to hold them in place.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/rearbrace04.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/rearbrace05.jpg

I used the tubing bender to slightly curve some 1" tube, then flattened the ends in the press, and then welded them all together. Here's the end result. The smaller tubes on the cross tube go to holes that are pre drilled in the frame. I'm patent pending working out mass producing this brace so hopefully I can sell some in the near future.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/rearbrace06.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/rearbrace07.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/rearbrace08.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/rearbrace09.jpg

And I tried out some orange paint on them. On a black frame with orange suspension parts these should look pretty cool.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/rearbrace10.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/rearbrace11.jpg

My last little bit Friday I started on the heavy trailer hitch brackets. No school Monday so I'll wrap them up Tuesday and start bracing the front. By the time I'm done this car should be one rigid bad doggie.

[73GMCSprint]

Looks like you've making some good progress Ben! I'm really digging that rear brace. The Sprint might need something similar if it ever gets to this stage.

Don't know why I didn't think to look for you on this forum before now. Good to see the updates.

[SRD Art]

Got some updates-

I picked up a couple new used items. Mark at SC&C gave me a great deal of info when we talked the other day. One of the things he talked about is how ineffective the g-body rear sway bar is and how a link style bar is way better. To keep it budget minded I went to the wrecking yard again and found a 7/8" bar (same as the largest factory g-body bar) on an early 90's f-body. I also bought a pair of Cutlass Salon grilles off ebay. I like them because they're deeper than my originals. Unfortunately they're beat up a little more than the seller led on. He said there were "light scratches" but forgot to mention one of the bolt tabs was broken off, one of the grilles is cracked front to back, one has been melted, the chrome is peeling in areas on both, and both are warped as seen in the photo. Why can't folks just be honest? At $55 "buy it now" I pretty much think I paid too much. Oh well, I'll try to salvage them.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/Salongrille01.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/Salongrille02.jpg


I finished up the trailer hitch brackets. I bent a couple small lengths of 1 5/8" tubing and used some angle iron to make the bracket. To keep it sturdy I welded a 1/2" pipe through the frame for the 1/2" grade 8 bolts. It may not be suitable for a lot of tongue weight but it should pull (flat tow) just fine.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/framebolt.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/trailerbrack2.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/trailerbrack1.jpg

[SRD Art]

Got the frame notch knocked out. The plasma cutter made quick work of cutting it out. The cut out side was trimmed down just enough to slip between the top and bottom of the rail to help with support and to get a better weld. Again these are 274-40-17 on a 9.5" wheel with 5.5" of backspace and a 1/4" spacer between the wheel and drum. Before there was just a hair of clearance, now it has a little over an inch of extra clearance. While I was in there I beefed up the factory weld area on the top too.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/rearbrace08.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/framenotch02.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/framenotch03.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/framenotch04.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/framenotch05.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/framenotch06.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/framenotch07.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/framenotch08.jpg

[SRD Art]

Got some good and bad news...

First the bad- my professor has had some hereditary heart issues for most of his life but he never told any of us. After a recent check up the docs told him he needed a heart valve and part of his aorta replaced like yesterday. Sounds like it's common procedure but we may not see him for the rest of the semester. We're all praying for him that all will go well. On a side note the sub we have is there more to cover Cris' notes in lecture time and open the shop for us. They don't have Cris' knowledge and the shop now closes at 12:00 instead of 3:00 so I'll be dropping my weekly shop time by about 15 hours. As a result there will be a couple things, such as narrowing the 9" rear, I need to hold off on until I get out to Georgia and start working at Bulldawg. Joe has stepped up and has assured me that all the help I may need is waiting for me there. It's nice knowing I'm going from one shop to another, otherwise finishing my car would take a whole lot longer. I guess I just got a reminder of what it's like to build a car on the side as a hobby instead of basically full time. That's a bit humbling and a big pat on the back for all you guys who are persistent and get the garage builds done.

Now the good news...

More chassis work completed. First off I took a break from the rear half and fixed a common G-body problem: LS headers hitting the right frame rail requiring the header tube to be modified. For now I have a set of cheapie used Flowtech headers I got for next to nothing. I really didn't want to bang them up and cause potential flow issues and eventually I will switch to Pacesetters, so I opted to fix the issue itself. With the motor out, a cut off wheel, a 5lb sledge hammer and a welder anybody can do this simple mod. First I used the plasma cutter to cut a triangle shape from the frame. Notice I cut a vertical line to make room for the two sides to come together, and I scored the rail with the cut off wheel on either side to control the bending motion and make sure I didn't affect the control arm mount position at all. Once to this point I simply banged on it a bit with the small sledge hammer which closed up all the gaps and created about 1/2" of clearance.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/headerframe01.jpg

Next I did some preliminary welding and repeated the process to get a little more movement inward.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/headerframe02.jpg

Here's the end result after welding all gaps, score lines, and grinding it all smooth. It made quite a difference.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/headerframe03.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/headerframe01.jpg

[waynieZ]

Slick fix! Nice work.

[SRD Art]

Thanks!

Updates- I have had this week off for spring break and I'm going through withdrawal symptoms for not being able to work on my car. :( I am taking this time to get caught up on a bunch of client's car renderings though so it's been a good thing.

I did make a little progress on the car, sort of. The rest of my parts finally arrived from SC&C. I got the first shipment last week, in this photo you can see the Spohn adjustable rear upper control arms I ordered from them. I could have gotten them direct from Spohn but Marc assured me that when I buy from him it's a full package- not only do I get parts but I get tuning instruction / coaching. He encouraged me to set it all up, beat on it, call him and get some feedback and fine tuning instructions, and then repeat process until the car is doing what I want it too. We chatted for 2.5 hours on the first phone call and he filled me with knowledge and advice so I wouldn't doubt he meant that he'll be there to help dial the car in. You can't beat that type of customer service so I feel good about sending the $ his way. Spohn is still selling parts so it looks like a 3 way win here.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/Camarorearbar01.jpg

This week my front upper control arms arrived, they're the Stage 2 Plus kit, SPC adjustable arms with tall screw in upper ball joints and tall lower ball joints. These, besides the wheels and tires combined, have been my most spendy expense, over twice what I paid for the car itself, lol! They also weren't what I had wanted to buy when I called Marcus but after talking to him he obviously knows more about my car than I do so I eagerly accepted his suggestions. According to him these arms should bring my old lousy geometry pretty close to a new Vette, Camaro or Mustang. At this point I'm leaning more and more to make this thing a serious contender on the track rather than just a mild P-T car so as thrifty (read cheap and empty pocketed) as I am I'm feeling like the expense was worth it. At the very least I won't be spending more later on to upgrade from the less expensive upper arms I originally wanted.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/Frontuparms01.jpg

I also ordered a pair of these progressive rate control arm bumpers. As you guys know I first lowered my car about 3-3.5" by cutting springs. Eventually they sagged and they were resting on the now squashed rubber bumpers. Every decent bump in the road the car would rebound and bounce upwards. Marc said these absorb the bumps rather than rebounding and making the suspension bounce. The way it drove before got a little scary at speed so really that was a major factor in deciding on tearing everything down and starting fresh on the wagon rather than finishing my street-strip Nova.

I'm really excited about this project. I've had fast cars in the past but never have I done a build to this caliber. I think the day I parked the car in the shop at school, even then I didn't realize just how bad this car will be when I'm done. Recently I got a call from a friend that owns his own design agency and mentioned he had another friend that needs a graphic designer for his agency and asked if I was interested. I told him about school, my car project, and going to work for Joe at Bulldawg in a couple months. All he could say was, "wow, you're living the dream." I think it really hit me then how much my life has changed since last August and I got a real feel for what the future holds. Yeah, to say I'm stoked is an understatement.

[SRD Art]

Last night on date night my wife and I stopped by a store to pick up a few T-shirts for my son. I saw one there I couldn't resist so I grabbed it for myself. Although I have a degree from BYU and soon to be a degree from UVU, in honor of all my new friends in GA (and to try to somehow, when I move there in May, blend in with all those folks that talk funny)...

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/Bulldogs.jpg

If any of you guys are around the Atlanta area, I'll be in Acworth, NW of Atlanta, and I look forward to meeting "y'all" at events.

:) :)

[SRD Art]

Today's Friday March 30th. Last day of classes is May 19th, so I have roughly 3 weeks, or around +/- 52 hours to get a car that's completely disassembled back to a driveable vehicle. I'm scheduled to head to Georgia around May 15th, so I have a couple weeks at home to finalize things but I have a ton of other stuff to do to get ready for the move so really not a lot of car time. My hope is to get it to the point that last day of school everything will be ready to hop in and drive cross country, only the alignment needing to be set will be left for outside of school. I'll trailer it from school to a friend's garage where he'll knock out the alignment and then I'll start driving it a bunch around here to make sure everything is working the way it should. The countdown begins Monday...

My latest updates are with getting the frame and associated parts sandblasted, FINALLY! Cost was $198 for 2 hours of blasting. Spendy but worth it, the frame was pretty rusty and a bit scaly before. Now I get to start with a clean slate. I first coated the frame with gray POR 15 undercoat. Most folks like black but I figured if I did gray, I could see if I missed any spots when I top coat. It worked out perfectly and helped ensure everything was coated. My professor swears by Rustoleum for frames, so following POR's top coat directions I saved the cost of of their top coat by using 3 rattle cans of Rustoleum semi-gloss black. It turned out really nice.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/frameparts01.jpg

Next was the sway bars and chassis bracing. I had just a little black Por-15 left over from another project so I painted all these items with it. A little paint goes a long way.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/frameparts02.jpg

Once they set up I sprayed them with the VHT "Burnt Copper". This paint is metallic but also has a semi-gloss sheen. This is the closest rattle paint I could find to the Dodge Toxic Orange. The end result looks great and on the black frame they look way cool! Pics of the complete frame coming soon...

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/frameparts03.jpg

Finally a few more parts I will be painting at home next weekend, the bumper mounts, hitch, and rad support. More soon...

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/frameparts04.jpg

[73GMCSprint]

Looking good. Bet you're excited to start putting it back together again.

[SRD Art]

That I am. Even more so I'm excited about narrowing and installing the 9" rear and LS motor once I get to Georgia. The goal is to have it complete, hopefully painted and all, by the LS fest in September.

[dug]

I enjoyed reading through your thread. You're very thorough and have good pics to go along with it. I'm looking forward to seeing this thing go back together. Keep up the good work.

[SRD Art]

Thanks!

New parts came in...

Inside my fuel tank was pretty nasty so I opted for a new one. Best price I could find was from Rock Auto. It came with the filler tube soldered in.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/fueltank01.jpg

Next is my '98-02 F-body calipers, shown next to a g-body caliper. These also came from Rock Auto. Outright the calipers were slightly cheaper from the local parts stores but their core charge was as much as the calipers, whereas Rock Auto's core was only $10. I didn't have cores so I went with RA and saved a bunch overall.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/calipercompare01.jpg

[SRD Art]

Today I moved the frame from the collision repair shop back to the street rod shop. It's a bit of a truck around the buildings, and this cart from innovativetools.com worked great! They claim it can handle 125 lbs per shelf, and folds up for easy storage. The shelves can be attached on either side and raised or lowered to a bunch of positions.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/frameparts12.jpg

here it is back in it's happy home.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/frameparts14.jpg

A little closer view of the front frame rail brace.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/frameparts13.jpg

Here's a great idea for all those no partner or holes in the heel sport socks- they make great frame paint protectors for jack stands!

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/sock.jpg

And last for today I took the 7.5 rear partially apart to change the right side axle seal. Although a very small leak it made a mess in there. Luckily I nabbed the good brakes off my parts wagon so to swap this out it'll only cost the price of the seal and top off the gear lube.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/axleseal01.jpg

[dug]

What's with the tranny cross member? It looks all bent up

[SRD Art]

That's the way the factory designed it, it's pretty goofy. These cars are designed for single exhaust and for exhaust clearance the cross member follows the contour of the floor pan on the passenger side.

[Tony_SS]

Looking great Ben.. keep it up, hope to see you and the wagon here this year.

[waynieZ]

It looks great! Nice work.

[SRD Art]

Looking forward to it Tony!

Thanks Wayne!

A little more progress-

The rear suspension is mostly in, still waiting on shocks and springs. I did a quick clean and spray on the rear axle. Up close it doesn't look as nice as the frame, but when I swap the 9" in there I'll take a little more time to make it look nice. To save time I also left the Spohn control arms red for now. I'm a bit worried about the VHT orange paint not being very durable. I noticed that Eastwood has a burnt orange powder coat paint, so I figure if they have it, it should be available commercially as well. Once I get to GA I plan on looking into having all the orange parts powder coated, including the Spohn arms. Still havta fabricate a way to attach the rear Camaro sway bar...

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/frameparts16.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/frameparts15.jpg

I also got a shipment from Summit. Drag Bags for easy spring rate adjustments at the track and to help with keeping things level after packing my car for my move, Energy Suspension Body mount, front lower control arm, and 36mm sway bar mount bushings, some all black sway bar end links, and gaskets to put my 406 back together. To get the car together on the cheap I bought Moog springs for now. I've heard both positive and negative about these, but Summit sells them for $54 for the pair and I needed something cheap for now. They're #5660, rated at 598 lbs. A lot of guys run the 5662 which are 748 lbs, but that sounds a bit stiff and Marc from SC&C suggested something around 550 lbs is a decent rate for what I'm after. Once I get the fiberglass hood and swap in the lighter LS based motor they should be just about right.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/newparts01.jpg

[SRD Art]

My last part from Summit showed up today, from of all places their Atlanta, GA warehouse. It's an auger style "muffler". Apparently they're used a lot in circle track racing and I've read on on several forums when placed upstream of the muffler they help quiet down the interior drone of some performance mufflers. I have a single 3" exhaust with a 40 series Flowmaster. There's a ton of drone at certain speeds, so I'm hoping this will help a bit. I don't want to drive 2500 miles and be deaf at the end, lol! For $15 even if it didn't work I figured I wasn't out much.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/newparts02.jpg

[SRD Art]

Some updates- Camaro rear sway bar...

Once the rear suspension was all together I tackled the rear sway bar using the junkyard 82-92 F-body 7/8" bar. From what I can tell this is the same size dia. as the largest factory stock G-body rear bar, the advantage being it will be attached to the frame rather than to the lower control arms.

I thought for sure this was going to be a pain and require a bunch of fab work but I found just the opposite. I ordered an extra set of FRONT g-body sway bar links, guessing they'd be just about the right length. At my car's actual lowered ride height they are the perfect length.

With a mock up of everything bolted together I found it fit right up into the frame. Only mod needed was shaving down the side of the brackets for shock clearance (green arrow). Notice how they are positioned here, they need to go into the car like this, right and left accordingly.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/Swaybracket01.jpg

With everything mocked in place I marked the spot to drill the holes using the existing holes in the brackets. Then I drilled a pilot hole through both sides of the frame rail with a 3/16ths bit. On the outer side I drilled a 7/8" hole with a hole saw to allow access to the bolt. I then drilled the inner hole using a 3/8" bit. A 3/8" x 1" bolt and nylon lock nut finished the bracket bolt in. The outer holes are plugged off using plastic hole caps from Home Depot. Pretty simple actually, the hardest part was lining up the bracket at the right angle.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/Swaybracket03.jpg

In this final photo, (sorry it's a little dark) you can see where the bracket bolts are (green arrow) and overall fitment. Notice the angle of the bar to the link is off (red arrow). This is the only disadvantage to using the upside-down F-body bar, the angle on the ends is off. With the suspension dropped about another 1.5" or so, which is estimated ride height for my car, it's a lot closer to the right angle. This might be way off with a car at close to stock ride height though, you might be able to fix that with longer end links but I'm not sure how that may affect stability of the bar.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/Swaybracket02.jpg

The Camaro poly bushings and brackets that mount to the rear were in good shape so I just re-used them. The Camaro axle housing is the same or close to the g-body so it was a direct fit. With the 9" the axle housing is a lot larger, so when I get to installing it I'll use some 3" muffler clamps and fab up mounting brackets.

So here's the end result- sway bar and brackets from the wrecking yard- $15, end links with poly bushings from Summit- $4.99 ea., and bolts, nuts, and washers about $3, so for less than $30 I got it all set up. With the bar flipped I don't know how that may affect handling or functionality of the bar, however as I mentioned previously having it backwards like this is common on trucks so the assumption is it must work fine. Track time will be the ultimate test to see if it will be just as good as an aftermarket set-up that runs 4X as much $. At the very least it will be better than the factory bar that bolts to the control arms and it's keeping me in line with building on a budget. More coming...

[SRD Art]

Here's some more fab work. I saw some examples of boxed lower arms on a couple cars on the forum so I did mine as well. The way I cut out the plate allows space for installing the sway bar links and frame bumpers.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/controlarm01.jpg

Finally! After getting the front suspension together on goes the body with the energy suspension frame bushings. Been looking forward to getting this done...

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/assembly01.jpg

[SRD Art]

Updates- It's been a coupla weeks since I brought the car home from school using my trusty '77 454 powered 2500 Suby. This is my first big block vehicle, we picked it up for a great price about 2 years ago, and it tows fantastically! The wagon spent the first 4 days on the trailer while I excavated all the crap I've accumulated out of the garage. Since the Race Nova has some naked body panels and the doors are off, I unburied my son's future 73 Nova and moved it out to the driveway for now, leaving a space to work on the wagon in our two car garage.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/Home01.jpg

I am humbled with having to go from a huge shop with all the tools and machines I needed, back to essentially a one car garage to work in, limited to the tools I own or can rent from Oreily's. I salute all you that are doing this everyday.

[SRD Art]

Swapping on the LS1 f-body front brakes turned out to be a bit of a pain, the biggest problem here is owning a "step bast@rd child" 79 G-body...

My on-line g-body research told me we share the same front suspension from the control arms out (except spring rate) as an S-10 truck. Knowing this I ordered a set of S-10 hubs made from cut down rotors from a guy on an S10 forum. They came with new seals and new extended studs, $110 shipped. Being under time constraints this was quicker and less stressful than trying to find a machine shop that could cut down mine. After hacking up my 79 spindles to fit the LS1 caliper adapter bracket and painting them and the S10 hubs, I found out I just flushed $110 down the toilet when I tried to assemble everything. My 79 g-body outer bearings were too big for the S10 hubs. A trip to the auto parts store later revealed the S10 outer bearings were too small for my spindle. At this point I was getting a bit frustrated.

After a big fail with the hubs I did a little more digging. All listings for interchangeable parts, a drop spindle for example, list S10 and 1982+ g-body as the same part numbers, but no one could explain to me why that didn't include the 78-81 cars. Further digging revealed the deal-

All 1973-1988 A/G body cars and non-sealed hub S10s have the same inner front bearing and seal, part # 6 for the bearing.

All 1973-1978 A/G body cars have the same outer bearing and spindle pin measurements, making the 1978 g-bodies, which are actually still called A bodies, the original bast@rd child. This bearing has a smaller inner dia than the 79-81 cars, bearing part #2.

All 1979-81 g-body cars have the same outer bearings, larger outer and inner diameters than the 1978 g-body and S10s, i.e. a larger spindle pin. The rotors for these cars also have larger hub diameters. This makes these cars the step bast@rd child. Outer bearing part #3. A 1978 or an 82+ rotor will not fit a 79-81 spindle. How dumb is that?!

All 1982 and up g-bodies and S10s have the same outer bearings, using a smaller outer and inner bearing diameter, i.e. a smaller pin. Outer bearing part # 34. Everything seems to swap between these two vehicles.

On another note there were also wiring and a few other changes between 81 and 82 g-bodies. :hand:

At this point I had to still track down a machine shop to mill down my original rotors. Ended up costing me $133, not including new seals and extended studs (which I had previously already installed). Oh well, I guess I'm your g-body owner's friendly neighborhood guinea pig, lol! Once I got the new hubs made, everything went together easily with new bearings, races, and seals.

Here's a photo that illustrates to you g-body guys the changes to the factory spindle and the cut down rotor hub...

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/brakes01.jpg

And with all assembled...

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/brakes02.jpg

With the wheels on...

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/brakes03.jpg

and what folks will see as I drive down the road, lol! ...

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/brakes04.jpg

Funny how even though the 12" LS1 rotors look gynormous compared to the 10.25" g-body rotors, they still look too small in the 17" wheel. Dang it, now I gotta switch to Vette brakes with 13" rotors when I get to Georgia, lol!

[SRD Art]

Got my 1" bolt on spacers from TonySS. He used to have them on a Malibu g-body wagon that had the same wheels I have. He made me an awesome deal, Thanks again Tony! These spacers were built by Fred at http://www.wheeladapter.com/

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/backwheelspace001.jpg

Before the rear spacers my 5.5" backspacing wheels looked a little too tucked in and the front track width was a little wider than the rear. The photos don't illustrate really well just how goofy it looked but here's an idea...

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/backwheelspace03.jpg

After installing the spacers- My car will be fairly low so I rolled the fender lips. I had my wife jump on the bumper and it has to compress about 3" before any contact up inside the fender well. I think they'll work out great.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/backwheelspace02.jpg

[Tony_SS]

Always glad to help Ben..

[SRD Art]

Finally, an update-

I got the wagon together and packed it full and packed my father/son project 73 Nova full and loaded it on a car dolly for me to tow with the wagon. We also packed my 77 Suburban full, and my little import commuter car which we loaded on a tow dolly for my wife to tow, and headed for Georgia. The trip went relatively easy. It was very long and somewhat boring. My car only averaged about 11 mpg and the Burby averaged about 8 mpg so we burned through a lot of gas and a lot of cash. Overall the trip was right about 2,000 miles.

The wagon ran great, only problem I had was one of my Lakewood Drag Bags blew out before we even got out of Utah. The fender lip gouged the right rear tire a little, but a quick roadside fender lip mod took care of that. Unfortunately the Burby's 454 started burning a little oil along the way, but it got us here and still runs fine. I've been wanting to go through that motor and slip it into my 74 street/ strip Nova anyway so now I have a good excuse. I'm thinking the Burby will get an LS swap now before my wagon does. We'll have to see how things pan out over the next 6 months to a year as we get settled in here in our new life.

Working at Bulldawg Muscle Cars is great. I've been here about a week and a half now and have been working on a 69 Pro-Touring Camaro and a 70 Cuda that's getting a late model Hemi swap. I think there's a bright future ahead...

I have a bunch of final wagon assembly photos I need to post up but I haven't found the box with my camera in it yet. As soon as I do I'll get this thread updated. There's still a long way to go on the car, so there will be plenty more...

[SRD Art]

Couple photos from the road trip from Utah to Georgia. First photo was in Colorado, second was in Kentucky I think. Notice on the roof of my Daewoo is the new sub frame for the Nova, lol...

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Tow2.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Tow1.jpg

[SRD Art]

Ok everyone, I finally found the box that had my camera in it so I'll be posting more of the build items real soon. BTW since I had to sell my 5.3 to help fund the final items to get the wagon ready for the trip I'm looking into bigger inches options for the swap. There was a guy with a euro style Monte at LS fest that I heard has a basically stock LS1 with a truck intake that was running high 11s. Is he on this forum?

For now, here's a teaser of where it's at right now...

I was playing around with a can of orange spray paint for some stripes on my temporary rattle can semi gloss black paint scheme a couple days ago. The driveway at my new home made the perfect photo opportunity...

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/3-4shotsmall.jpg

[bonecrrusher]

Nice driveway shot - looks bitchin.

[SRD Art]

Thanks man, I appreciate that.

[barrrf]

I love these projects. Build what you have. Do it all yourself. Makes it totally unique.

Youre an inspiration.

[gbodyj]

Your a brave man, glad ya made it safely, what's your overall impression of the wag or was it hard to tell being that it was loaded down?

[srh3trinity]

There are some great details and ideas in this car. Welcome to the south!

[SRD Art]

Thanks everyone!

OK, finally I have some spare time for updating, going back in time to Utah and the front suspension assembly...

This shot shows the Speedway Motors circle track "spindle savers" installed. Not sure they're necessary but they're a little extra inexpensive insurance and should eliminate any potential flex in this area.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/spindle01.jpg

...and my custom front 10mm thick, hub and wheel centric spacers for the front wheels. Next to them is the universal 3/4" spacer I used with the GTA wheels. With the custom ones there's no slop in mounting, so there's no driving vibration caused by the spacers getting offset when mounting the tires.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/spacers002.jpg

I measured, re-measured, and repeated the process several times to be sure I had something that would fit without issues. It paid off, there's barely room between the caliper and the wheel but it keeps the wheel/ tire assembly neatly tucked under the fenders and now there's no rubbing while turning.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/spacers003.jpg

[SRD Art]

After I got the front suspension done I moved to the dash wiring to get the later model steering column and switches installed. The main reason for swapping these was because my 79 column was damaged pretty heavily when the car had been stolen and I really couldn't stand not having wiper delay.

I did a lot of research on this and read that it was kind of a pain to swap these over. I was a bit nervous about the whole process but once I got in there what I found was that it was a relatively very simple swap. Anybody with an early g-body could do this...

First off, the steering column wiring is almost exactly alike between my 79 and the 85 Cutlass columns. The 85 column had some sort of additional plug near the bottom that took a little research to figure out. It went into the engine computer and after a little debate on the g-body forum and a bunch of research with different wiring diagrams I finally found it safe to assume it was a simple gear indicator switch and I could leave it unplugged in my car. My guess was correct, it didn't affect function at all.

Next on the list was to swap the headlight switch wiring. The 79 dash had the typical push/ pull headlight switch with the dash light dimmer activated by turning the knob. The junkyard 85 Cutlass switch is a push button with a separate wheel that adjusts the dimmer. I think just this alone will give the interior a cleaner more modern look.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/headlightswitch01.jpg

Here's a photo comparing the wiring for the newer switch and the 79 wiring. Notice they're the same.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/headlightswitch02a.jpg

I pulled the pins from the 79 switch and trimmed and spliced them into the wires for the 85 switch. Pretty basic wiring here.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/dashwires02.jpg

The process was basically the same for the wiper wiring, wherein the wiper switch is now on the column rather than on the dash. I did this back in August, so if memory serves me right, the 82+ g-bodies got a re-designed wiper motor that has reversed polarity. To do this steering column swap YOU ABSOLUTELY MUST SWAP TO THE NEWER WIPER MOTOR TOO. On the right is the wiring from the column, the left is the 79 wiper switch. The main difference is the green delay wire, which needs to be wired directly to the green wire coming out of the newer wiper motor rather than spliced into any dash wiring. On the switch in the photo you also see a black and white wire that is the light for the 79 switch. I left this unplugged and eventually conveniently spliced into it as the power and ground for my aftermarket gauge lights.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/dashwire03.jpg

[SRD Art]

Pictured here is the 85 Wiper motor mocked up. One of the motor's mounting tabs, upper left as pictured, did not line up with the 79's mounting holes, see how it is offset about 3/4". Simply drilling a new hole and using a nut and bolt solved that issue. Everything works great, and having the switch on the column and using the delay system has been really nice.

Also pictured here is the later model master cylinder. The 79 came with a small bore iron unit. While at the junkyard I picked up a booster that accepts the later 1 1/8" aluminum master. I ordered the new master from Oreily's, punching an 85 Monte Carlo SS into Oreily's online website search for the part number. Unfortunately the factory g-body brake proportioning valve is mounted down on the frame right next to the header, kind of a dumb place to put it. When I install the disc brake rear axle I'll update all the lines, eliminate the factory valve, and use an aftermarket valve located away from the heat.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/mastercyl01.jpg

[SRD Art]

Installation of the newer column did require one slight mod- the mounting plate was mostly flat and the 79 firewall curves back on the lower right as pictured. A few light taps with a hammer curved the plate to match the firewall contour and all the bolts then lined up fine. As I said before, overall this was an easy install.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/column001.jpg

Once all the wiring and fitting it in place was done, I prepped the ugly brown 85 steering column by hitting it with 320 grit paper, then a quick once over with wax and grease remover and I rattle canned it with semi gloss black. My Grant steering wheel replaced the goofy factory unit.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/column002.jpg

Here's the final install. I'll be keeping my eye out for a column from a floor shift car here in GA, as I never saw one in the junkyards in Utah...

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/column003.jpg

[SRD Art]

Unfortunately I had to sell the 5.3 LS engine to help finance all the small stuff you don't think about when putting a car together. I kept the headers though, and will most likely be doing a 6.0 instead. Got a few other things the car needs before I can take on that again. In the mean time...

With the column done I turned my attention back to the engine bay. Remember the broken 406 from page two? I finally got around to seeing what I was up against after the valve spring broke.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/piston01a.jpg

Really there was no major damage. The valve licked the piston putting just a tiny dent in it, but nothing more.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/piston01.jpg

Another problem I found was that the factory harmonic balancer started to have issues, a good portion of the rubber ring was missing.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/balancer01.jpg

This motor had about 70K + miles on it but the cylinders all looked good, it doesn't burn oil and holds between 50 and 60 lbs of oil pressure so I decided to just clean it up go over the top end.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/piston02.jpg

To make sure there wasn't any damage to the cam I pulled it out and inspected it. No damage found so I reinstalled it with a new double roller chain. Then the cover went back on and I added a new balancer. Sitting in a dark corner I've had some heads I experimented on about 15 years ago when I was learning how to port heads. They're just generic GM 400 heads but with the gasket match, improved port flow, blended bowls, new guides and a fresh valve job, this motor was a perfect reason to dust them off and pull 'em off the shelf. I threw those on with the Proform airgap dual plane intake and the new 600 Summit carb. I painted the top end of the engine semigloss black while the bottom end was VHT "Metallic Copper" engine paint. I designed and had printed some stickers and applied a couple to the valve covers. As of 5 months later the stickers haven't been affected by engine heat and still look new.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/enginestickers.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/engine003.jpg

The cap is not one of those correct-a-caps, I simply bought a universal set of MSD wires where you make them to your own desired length and carefully set them up in a clean way. Here's the specs on the motor...

.030 400 small block Chevy, stock crank and rods with ARP bolts
high pressure oil pump and aftermarket pump drive
8.7:1 Eutectic pistons and plasma moly rings
Comp XE268 cam with true roller timing chain
ported factory heads with 1.5 /1.6 roller tip rockers, Comp's cam matched springs
air gap dual plane intake with Summit 600 Vac secs carb
factory HEI with Pertronix "Flame Thrower" upgrade kit and MSD wires
Hooker full length headers
Moroso alternator overdrive pulley, factory crank and water pump pullies

It's a pretty mild and basic budget build, though I'm guessing it makes about 300-325hp and 400-425 ft lbs at the flywheel. According to Comp Cam's online dyno speculation, it's torque peak should be right around 2200 rpms. Out driving it sure pulls hard from 2200 on up to about 4500, which is perfect for autocross. It'll do for now while I hunt down a decent 6.0 LS donor...

[SRD Art]

Here's one issue I had with the engine, the Hooker headers. I had a well fitting set of Hedman mid length headers on the car before but wanted the slight advantage of a basic long tube so I went with the Hooker name. Hooker doesn't have a specific G body part number, but rather the catalog lists this generic part number as one that "will fit" pretty much any GM chassis, including the listied g-body. I should've been skeptical at that, these headers are total crap. The tube alignment at the flange is off, the oval rather than round holes at the flange don't line up with the gasket at all and look like they would be a flow restriction, and worst of all they don't fit a g-body chassis without modification. In hindsight I should've sent them back, but instead I messed with them to make them work. What a pain it turned out to be.

First off I gasket matched them a bit, radiusing the ends as much as I could without taking too much out of the weld.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/exhaust04.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/headers001.jpg

Then I had to bang on the driver's side lower outer tube to clear the lower control arm. I didn't want to affect flow too much so I only dented it in about 1/4", but it wasn't enough...

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/headerfit002.jpg

I then got up underneath and trimmed the control arm mount several times until the header would finally fit without touching the frame. I had to whack off a pretty good chunk. Remember the braces I made for this area? Yeah there was no way they'd fit with these headers either. I didn't want to remove the bolts to get them out because I was under a time constraint and removing the bolts meant that the control arm, spring, and shock would have to come out and be re-installed, so I simply cut them out. I was pretty disappointed to have to do this.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/headerfit001.jpg

All in all I was very disappointed with them. I guess you have to buy Super Comps instead of their street header to get any sort of quality and decent fit. Boo on Hooker for being a big enough company to produce a decent product but rather to cut costs puts out garbage. I certainly wouldn't recommend them for anyone with a g-body.

[SRD Art]

Here are my trans and power steering coolers. The trans cooler came off a parts truck I bought for some parts for my Suburban, and the ps cooler of a 90's Caddy in the junkyard.

The factory tranny lines had been worked and re-worked, so I decided to start over and bought some straight tube and some fittings and bent some new ones. These tuck up close to the block, cross over to the frame near the fuel pump, then follow the contour of the frame towards the radiator support, passing under it near the mount bushing. From there they curve back up and over to the cooler, which is mounted to the Buick Regal radiator support X bracing. Ideally the electric trans temp sensor should be mounted in the pan, but since I didn't have a welder for a bung at home I improvised a little with some old fittings I had on hand. It does the job for now, and I just assume the trans is a few degrees hotter than the gauge reads.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/translines01.jpg

After cleaning thoroughly and repainting it black, the ps cooler was fairly easy to make work. I had to re-bend the factory metal tube to go the direction I needed, but mounting worked out perfect by using the front triangulated brace I made. I trimmed a hole to match the cooler in the bottom of the plastic factory fan shroud so the fan actually sucks air through it. It worked out great for just a few bucks from the junkyard.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/steercooler01.jpg

[SRD Art]

My 14 year old son started to take a bit of interest here, so I had him clean and prep the engine compartment braces I pulled from a junkyard 75 El Camino. He did a great job with them, and went on to help me with some other things for the rest of the build. This did something to him, as we arrived here in GA he's really gotten into cars and we've started working on one of my Novas I decided to give to him. We should make a lot of progress on it this summer. http://www.pro-touring.com/showthread.php?94010-Project-TangerMean-73-Nova-RS-Nova-teenager-build&highlight=tangermean

These braces fit great, they already had nuts welded on one end, so all I had to do was drill two holes in the cowl panel to make them work. Here's a few fitment pics... Again, a very cheap alternative to aftermarket.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/fenderbrace01.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/fenderbrace04.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/fenderbrace03.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/fenderbrace02.jpg

[SRD Art]

In this post I wanted to share how I fabricated a way to effectively seal the carb to the hood on a really tight budget using some really basic materials.

First off, I had this bucket laying around. You can buy it from WalMart for about $6.00. Mine was well used and had a crack near the top so instead of trashing it I went green and recycled it. :) There are several designs of these buckets, so make sure to get one that is fairly rigid and has a large enough base to allow the air cleaner to breathe well.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/cowlind01.jpg

Step one is to cut a large hole in the bottom, about 12" in dia. Then cut the bottom away from the top, in my case it was about 5" tall from the bottom.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/cowlind02.jpg

I then grabbed an old "flat" base 14" air cleaner bottom I had laying around which came on an old parts car. I've seen several of these in junkyards over the years. I used a metal blade on my jig saw and trimmed the center out, creating a large flat washer that had a 1/4" turned up lip on it making it plenty rigid.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/cowlind03.jpg

I then placed the ring upside down under the plastic tub bottom, then placed the base for my Summit 14" dropped base air cleaner on top of the tub and used 4 fairly flat self tapping trim screws to hold the sandwich together. Rivets can be used too, but I like to keep things easy to change later on if need be.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/cowlind05.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/cowlind04.jpg

Here it is at this point mounted on the carb....

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/cowlind06.jpg

For the seal I got some 1/2" thick foam with scrim backing to the length of the dia of the tub from the local upholstery shop. The ends were sewn together to make a round doughnut of foam. I then carefully cut the foam in half length wise so I could fold it in half. You have to be careful to not cut the scrim backing as this keeps it as one unit rather than two foam rings stuck together.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/cowlind07.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/cowlind09.jpg

Here it is slipped over the base. The second photo shows it after some black interior paint. The hood holds it in place and it works great. Yeah, it's sort of rednecky, but for the most part the foam covers the ugly base and gives it a nice clean professional look for cheap cheap.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/cowlind10.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/cowlind11.jpg

[SRD Art]

My factory tank had a lot of rust in it, and over the course of driving it a couple years before tearing the car down it had sprung several small pin hole leaks that I patched with gas tank patch kits from auto parts stores. This was only a temp band-aid so I got this new gas tank from Rock Auto for the rebuild. Their price spanked everyone else. A g-body forum member warned me after he saw that's where I bought it from that he had bought two of these wagon tanks from them and neither fit. I found this was the case with mine too, the filler tube wasn't even close. Luckily sheet metal flexes easily, and a few careful tugs and test fits on it, it lined up fine. I then pulled it back out, installed my sending unit and it was good to go back in. The factory fuel line was pretty rusty, so I custom fabricated the fuel line using a roll of 3/8" aluminum tubing from Summit and mounted it with some insulated clamps. The line was carefully routed away from exhaust in the front and rear, something of a problem with the factory line and a lowered car with headers.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/fueltank01.jpg

Finally the car was ready to fire up for the first time. I didn't let it run long as there was plenty more to do, but it was pretty exciting to hear it run after 8 months and a complete disassembly.

First 406 start-up (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lwa_1-q13qk&feature=player_embedded)

Not long later I had all fluids filled, the carb adjusted, and the car running great. At this point I was running out of time to get ready to move across the country very quickly. The car was crazy loud inside and I wanted at least some degree of creature comfort for the drive so I addressed the interior, sort of.

[SRD Art]

Original plans were to get a new complete dash cover, new carpet kit, have the seats reupholstered, do some custom work on the nice factory door panels I found in the junkyard, and replace the headliner. However most of my remaining budget had been spent getting the car to this point so I had to temporarily improvise. I couldn't afford dynamat so I found some foil lined mat at Lowe's. Cost me about $40 for enough to do the whole floor. All in all, I'm not sure it really helped much. Really I just need a different muffler to begin with, lol!

I didn't want the interior to look stupid or have the sun reflect off it while driving, so I broke down and decided to spend the $9.00 at Walmart to buy one 3x5' roll of that ultra cheap crap automotive carpet. Of course it wouldn't contour to the floor very well so I put to work the training I got during my internship at Kirkham's Upholstery in American Fork, UT. BTW Utah folks, they do great custom automotive work http://www.kirkhamupholstery.com/.

First step was covering the trans tunnel. Where the shape and contour changed I made a few cuts to help it lay flat...

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/carpet0012.jpg

Now onto taking what was left over from the roll and fitting the floor areas...

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/carpet002.jpg

I used my kids' sidewalk chalk (lol) and calculated where to make pie cuts and sew together...

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/carpet008.jpg

This is what the bottom looks like after sewing. I used my wife's Kenmore home machine with a wide stitch and a denim needle...

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/carpet003.jpg

To make everything look nice and finished I used some material I had left over from another project. I decided to trim it with a hidden stitch. This is a relatively easy process. First I cut a length of material roughly 2" wide. You line this up on the edge of the TOP of the carpet and sew the length about 3/8" inward.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/carpet007.jpg

Then you simply fold that trim material over itself and snug under the carpet. Very carefully sew the length right in front of the trim. The stitch gets tucked down against the edge of the trim and the pile of the carpet hides the stitch. It's virtually invisible and looks very clean...

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/carpet006.jpg

This is what it looks like on the back side...

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/carpet005.jpg

Here's the final product. One 3x5' roll barely covered the front floor area. On the outer edges the sill plates covered the rough areas. I used pro-grade interior glue brushed on to hold it all in place. For a little over $9 plus a little time, it looks a bazillion times better then the thrashed factory carpet which has long since gone to the land fill. Some cheap $15 black rubber backed protective floor mats topped it all off. Eventually it will be replaced by an aftermarket carpet kit, but it was good enough for the road trip and has held up great so far....

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/carpet001.jpg

[SRD Art]

For door panels, my car had some real winners from the factory. They were light blue and pretty puffy. These photos were taken just after I bought the car. The lower plastic used to be the same shade blue as the vinyl. Eeeew! :)

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/Doorpanel01.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/Doorpanel02.jpg

I found a great grandpa fresh 4-door Cutlass in the junkyard. This car had a broken diesel motor, but it only had 79,xxx miles on the clock and it literally looked like an old man's car. Even smelled like that aftershave they used, you know, like the smell in those old school barber shops. I grabbed all 4 door panels from this car. Too bad they were red, so I put Roman to work again, and he did a fantastic job prepping and spraying them with interior black paint. Eventually I want to do custom panels but these really look great for now. Below is a shot of the first red panel after painting black.

Earlier in the year I bought a few yards of black headliner material from the local fabric store when it was on a great sale. I had hoped to get it in the car for the trip too but I just plain ran out of time so it's in storage back in Utah for now.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/Doorpanel03.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/Doorpanel04.jpg

[SRD Art]

Finally I'm now driving the car, after much tribulation trying to resolve the overheating issues previously discussed. The goal was to have at least 200 miles on it before our 2000 + mile trip. Luckily outside of the cooling issues the car ran flawlessly.

One last thing to do before the road trip. Out of necessity and for protection from the elements I needed to cover all the areas where I started working on body work. Although still a bit rough I think my car is pretty cool considering all the mods I've done to it, and having it look this way I thought did it a serious misjustice. I also felt just spray bombing it with a little primer here and there wasn't gonna cut it. Poor ugly duckling...

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/paint01.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/prepaint01.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/Wagon003.jpg

At this point the budget was all but drained and most every penny we had left in savings would be going towards the trip, so my original plans of spraying it in a booth with epoxy primer was out of the question. An old boss I had used to brag about how he spray bomb painted an old Mustang and it "looked like a real paint job". I always thought he was nuts, but for kicks I wanted to see if he was for reals. I had the fenders off again for some reason so I grabbed one and a can of Rustoleum semi-flat rattle bomb and after prepping the fender laid down a couple coats. I did a light first coat, let it tack, then laid down a fairly heavy coat with about a 70% overlay. Much to my surprise the paint laid down pretty nice! I painted the other fender and had the same positive results. "Hmmm", I thought, "I could do this..."

I decided to go to Walmart and pick up a couple six packs to get me through this next adventure...

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/paint03.jpg

About $39 in paint and some tape and old news paper later I went to work. I first sanded the whole car with 320 on a da sander. I then blew it all off with an air gun, then wiped the whole car down with clean water and a wet rag, drying with a terry towel and the air gun. Then it was wiped down with wax and grease remover and finally a tack cloth. Lastly I bolted the fenders and hood back on thinking I could just blend the paint. This all took the majority of the day and the sun was heading down.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/paint02.jpg

After some dinner I put my painter's mask and some music on and went to town starting at the driver's front door and working around the rest of the car right there in the driveway. By now it was fairly dark, and with darkness comes lots of bugs. I swear they're drawn to the smell of paint! This was the first, it landed on the a pillar. Man was I mad to see it. Then one after another... I gave up counting at 12 and just kept spraying. A couple of them really pissed me off so I sprayed over them to really "seal" their fate, lol. All in all I think it was like 32 total bugs in the paint. By the end my son and I were laughing, "There goes another one..." Luckily most of them didn't really sink into the paint much and the next day after the paint was set they come off with a finger tip rub not leaving behind much damage to the paint surface.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/paint06.jpg

Some action shots of my fine painting equipment. I know for sure it came out so nice only because of the classes I had just gone through at school...

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/paint05.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/paint04.jpg

[SRD Art]

Here's the end result. Not too bad considering the way it was done. I wish I had had time to straighten the body but I'll get to it in due time...

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/paint08.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/paint09.jpg

I decided to leave the roof white. I figured the paint up there was fine, it would save me some time, and I wanted the car to have a bit of an old school look.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/paint011.jpg


The final exterior job was to apply a couple stickers.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/windowsticker001.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/windowsticker002.jpg

It rained the next afternoon, which made some cool photos. Roman took a few. I really like this one and the one above...

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/paint07.jpg

[SRD Art]

So here's my thoughts about spray bombing a car. If Hot Rod mag can house paint a car with a roller, then why not spray paint one, right?

A couple things to watch out for. First off is obvious, don't paint it at night in the driveway. Second look at the fender in this shot. Spray paint doesn't blend at all. I should've masked off the already painted fenders.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/paint010.jpg

To avoid dry spray I had to keep it wet and move from one panel to the next very quickly.

The new paint was close by so as one can started to give up the ghost and spray funny, even if it still had paint in the can, I'd quickly grab a fresh one and keep moving. I used 7 cans for 2 overall coats. The first coat was fairly light, the second quite heavy. I only got one slight run on the whole car, and by morning it had mostly sank in so I didn't even bother trying to fix it.

Holding a spray can vertically yields great results. Holding it horizontally, well, not so much. I sprayed the hood on the car and I tried and tried but still got some slight tiger striping. Even after 3 wet on wet coats. Bummer. Over the last 5 months it's faded just enough that it's a little harder to tell and looks fairly smooth.

Overall, Rustoleum gets 1 1/2 thumbs up.

[SRD Art]

Pretty much after painting I was done with the car other than hooking up the radio and trailer wiring. It had been a very mad thrash since school got out and overall I was content with the results. There is soooo much more I wanted to do with the car, but a new job and new life awaited on the other side of the country and we had to get rolling.

Originally I had planned on heading to GA alone and working for a month or two, saving the $ to move the family and all our belongings. The way it worked out I had several set backs on the car that ended making reassembly take longer. Luckily everything went south while still in the driveway rather than on the road trip. Because of all the set backs and getting down to the bear minimum of savings because I wasn't working between school and GA, we last minute decided to throw most of our belongings in storage and pack what we could and head out as a family.

This got real crazy. We have 4 kids ranging from 4 to 14, 2 dogs, a cat, and 2 parakeets. How do you take everything you need in a couple vehicles and drive away? Trust me vehicles got packed, then unpacked and repacked again. I wouldn't wish our method of moving on anyone, lol.

We packed our little Daewoo commuter wagon with all the important papers, electronics, sewing machine, and whatever else would squeeze in. I could barely fit in the driver's seat enough to drive it up onto a tow dolly. Once it was strapped down I added my 73 Nova's extra powder coated sub frame and my mountain bike to the roof. In true motor head fashion I couldn't leave them behind. This was attached to my Suburban, which was filled with boxes of clothes, some food storage, and other important belongings. Notice in the photo how much the rear sags, yet this is a 3/4 ton truck that has a normally fairly high stance. The back was packed tight and full to the roof, with only enough room for a 2.5x2.5' square with only about 15" to the roof behind the back seat where the two medium size dogs and cat slept. The back seat had several boxes between the two younger kids, and the floor was filled in the front where my 12 year old daughter sat. Her feet resided on the dash for most of the trip. The middle of the front seat was reserved for maps and a large box of snacks, paper towels, water, etc. and the bird's cage. My wife, who normally doesn't like driving long distances, had never towed before, and doesn't like driving in unfamiliar places was a real trooper to run this rig.

My wagon was lucky enough to bring all the left over junk. Things like brooms, mops, vacuums, etc. were visible through my back windows. How embarrassing, lol! Roman rode with me. The entire back was jam packed and junk food and lots of Mt Dew was packed in, around, and under the front seats. Attached out back was my 73 Nova, which was also completely packed full with all the parts I had to put it together. It was heavy enough that even at 40 lbs in the rear tires and with air shocks completely full it looked like a low rider with low air pressure in the tires. On the back of the Nova was a bike rack with 3 more bikes, and there was another small bike and my little rolling mechanics seat attached to a tow bar that was bolted to the front of the Nova. I tell you it was a nutty sight.

Here's a photo of Roman, you can see how tightly we had things packed...

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/tow5.jpg

[SRD Art]

Here are a couple more photos along the way. Before we even got an hour under way climbing up the hill towards Park City I had one of my drag bags pop, which dropped the car low enough that the tire would scrub on big dips and bumps. It tore up the right rear tire a bit but some road side redneck engineering got the fender lip rolled up. I crammed a hammer handle up between the sheet metal and tire and had my wife drive back and forth a couple feet until there was enough space to clear the tire. It made it the rest of the way to GA sagging on the right side but the tire didn't rub any more. :)

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/tow4.jpg

This photo was our first stop, just outside Denver, CO where we stayed overnight. Didn't I say it looked crazy?

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/Tow2.jpg

Overall the car ran great. The toughest part of the trip by far was in Utah and Wyoming, those up hill mountains just killed me. The car was already running rich and in some places running full throttle in 2nd gear just to maintain 30 mph on an uphill climb did wonders for my MPG average. There was one particular hill I used 3 gallons of gas in 5 minutes of driving. Running a bit rich you suppose? Look how black with soot the chain is behind the exhaust tips, lol!

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/tow3.jpg

With the Dan Howe fan shroud the engine stayed right around 190 degrees for the entire trip, although through the mountains the trans got up to 250 degrees a couple times and hovered around 210-230 for most of the trip. Normally it runs around 190 on longer trips.

We took it fairly easy, my wife wanted to keep it at or below 70 mph. This was about 2000 rpms for me. I wanted to go a little faster, my car felt better cruizing around 2200-2300, but a happy wife on a road trip is a good thing. I figured my gas mileage when we got to my in-law's place in Wichita Kansas, right about 10.5 mpg average for the trip so far. The Suburban was right about 8.5 mpg, even in all it's girth with a 454 and TH400 backed by 4.56 gears. I was a bit disappointed by my mileage but figuring I was hauling my car with about 500 lbs in the back plus a 3400 lb car in tow, plus the weight of the dolly, I guess that's not that bad. Outside the air bag fail we had a relatively easy going trip, not one other problem along the way.

This next photo was in Kentucky I think.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/Tow1.jpg

After the second day we got creative and realized that a trip to a grocery store for Lunchables was just as positive an experience as a happy meal for the little kids. Way to keep the kids happy and save money too haha. In using this method I discovered the fine art of manifold baking. Frozen egg rolls, deli sandwiches, hot dogs, yeah they heat up real nice wrapped in foil and placed on the intake for a couple hours. :)

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/tow6.jpg

After 6 days, visiting with family in Missouri and Kansas and a whole lot of gallons of used up gas, we finally made it from the Salt Lake City, UT area to Acworth GA. A couple key things that made the trip fun for me- spending a whole bunch of time with Roman, something we didn't get much of prior to this. Laughing as we'd ask each other at the end of a day of driving if our hearing was still muffled because of my ridiculously loud car, goofing off with my family in Super 8 motels along the way, visiting family, and getting a ton of compliments and thumbs up on the car along the way.

[SRD Art]

I've been so busy with work and with family since we got here I haven't done much to the car. I did change the oil and wash it not long after arriving. I also decided the black was too plain. One day after worked I grabbed some masking tape and paper and my VHT engine paint and had at it. I call it the anti what everyone else is doing stripe. I purposely put it on the rear 1/4 rather than the front fender and I varied the width of the stripes instead of having them symmetrical. Just doing my part to blend in while being different.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/stripe003.jpg

Ive posted this shot before but I like it so much here it is again.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/3-4shotsmall.jpg

I still drive it every day no matter the weather. It gets better mileage now that I'm not towing anything, and it's amazing how much more power I have at low altitude. It finally feels like it should.

I went to a local warehouse district and video'd the car to check how much body roll it has. It was pretty clear that the one tire fryer nature of the open diff limits how hard I can pull a turn. Still it stayed pretty flat throughout. The car shows up about 10 seconds into it...

body roll check (http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=iXXKL44XX8o)

With no traction we decided we couldn't really see what we wanted so we had a little leg stretching fun instead...

One tire fryer (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_PomV7g_Mg&feature=player_embedded)

In September Roman and I took a Saturday and ran up to Tennessee to watch the Run Thru The Hills pro-touring event. Man was that cool. Both Roman and I are stoked to get more involved. I should be racing there this year.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/RTTH-1.jpg

We also were able to attend Detroit Speed's open house in North Carolina. Wow what a facility!

[SRD Art]

I have since swapped in Varishock adjustable shocks and CPP rear springs I got from Doug "SicMonte" out back. Wow, what a difference in tightness and feel. I still need to get the front shocks in.

Besides getting the posi 9" into the car, the next mods include widening rims out back to fit 315-35s. I swapped the 275s up front and drove around a few days. They fit great with no issues. I did notice doing this that the front steering is off set. Notice how close things are with the 275s. On the front it clears the front right frame rail just fine at full lock, but the front left just barely makes contact. The right rear barely makes contact while the left rear isn't even close. Basically the car appears to turn more right than left. Is this because of a whack job at the alignment shop?? Or is this normal for some reason? Anyone else have this issue? Seems that the centerlink isn't really centered with the steering box? Photos...

Front right-

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/front275001.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/front275003.jpg

Front Left-

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/front275004.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/front275002.jpg

[SRD Art]

We had a 345-30-19 at the shop so while I was swapping the 275s to the front I tried it on the car. Oops, just a bit too wide, it's touching the frame on the inside and sticking out about 3/4". Now if only I had wider fender flares... buwhahhahaha evil laugh....

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/345001.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/345002.jpg

Oh well, I'll guess realistically I'll just stick with "little" 315s out back...

Another thing I discovered on accident while swapping tires- While I was building the car at school a lot of folks asked me how I thought my frame compared to a Schwartz frame in strength. First off my frame was free with the car and I spent a couple hundred dollars making my own bracing and boxing it. I understand theirs starts at around $10,000, but I would say that's fair considering the engineering, materials, and labor involved. Not including the roll cage I probably added a hundred lbs to my frame while Schwartz shaved off a considerable amount of weight. Realistically there is no comparison and it's probably not fair to compare my frame with theirs.

But one thing Schwartz (and all of us too) likes about their frame is that it's stiff. A and G bodies are known for having factory frame stiffness comparable to cooked linguine. Although again I say it's not fair to compare, while pulling the rear tire I noticed the jack, although placed in the back, lifts the whole side of the car like theirs does in their marketing video. :) This photo is not staged or rigged, I found this out by accident and at first it freaked me out a bit. The door opened just fine in this photo. I think if I placed it correctly I wonder if I might be able to jack 3 tires off the ground at once with one jack, I'd like to try that sometime...

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/Jack001.jpg

[SRD Art]

Here's a shot of the single adjustable shocks I got from Doug. Thanks again for the great deal!

The shock body was a bit larger than the stock replacements I put on there temporarily, and that required a slight trim on the rear sway bar link bracket. Doug suggested setting them in the middle at 8 and adjust from there. The ride is a bit stiff now, but not uncomfortable. I did notice a huge decrease in rear sway on quick turning. Nice! One of the front ones had the dial broken off so I'll be sending them back to get fixed up before installing them.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/verishock01.jpg


Here's a photo of the 275-40-17 on a 17x9.5 with 5.5" backspace on the front. Fits great! I wish I had just done 275s all around in the beginning so I could rotate them, but I originally thought a 255 up front would be better.

I think the widest I've ever seen up front on a g-body is a 285. I was looking at my frame and wheel/tire set up on Saturday and I can't help but figure that it won't take that much work to put 315-35s on 10.5" wheels up front. Something I'm going to have to really think about for the future...

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/275front01.jpg

[SRD Art]

Finally an update!

Things weren't quite what I expected in Georgia so after looking around I found an opening and was hired by Speed Tech Performance recently as a creative director and fabricator in the shop. Craziest thing is it brought me back to Utah!

Needless to say I'm loving it here! Speed Tech relocated from Western Canada to St. George, Utah in November 2012. When I came out to interview it was like coming home, even though it's about 4 hours away from the Salt Lake City area where we used to live. My wife has family up there so at least 4 hours is closer than 2200 miles away!

Thought I'd share a few photos from my road trip. Last August we packed as much as we could fit in our vehicles and headed out from Utah to Georgia. This time we were a little short on cash so I came alone in April, and headed back end of May to bring my family back. Much like the first time I towed my son's Nova project with the wagon.

I got started pretty late in the day, which may have been a bad omen, but was hopeful to get to Kentucky before stopping. When I got into Tennessee things didn't go so well. after climbing a large hill/mountain shortly beyond the Tennessee/Georgia line my right "drag bag" airbag blew out on the way back down the other side. As you may recall from earlier posts the right airbag blew on the way from Utah to Georgia. I guess these things are for spring rate adjustment and preload only and just weren't meant to help carry weight. This trip I had all my tools in the wagon along with other belongings so it was quite heavy. The car dropped enough that it rubbed the tire pretty badly in the couple seconds before I got off the road.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/trip003_zps7bf97236.jpg

With the wheel off I got up inside the inner wheel well and beat it with a hammer to get some extra clearance. Here you can see where it was rubbing.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/trip004_zpsfd09f272.jpg

Back on the road it wasn't long before the left bag started to slowly leak down and began to rub on that side on bigger dips and bumps in the road. At my next gas stop I used some redneck engineering and crammed my jack handle up into the wheel well and inched the car forward to bend up the fender lip.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/trip005_zps7ad8ee66.jpg

Normally my tires are close to the body and don't rub at all, but the extra weight pushed it over the limits.

Around 8:00pm I pulled into a Walmart to grab a couple items. When I came out I noticed that my turn signals weren't working. I went out back to check all the wiring and found that with my exhaust in the middle of the bumper, it got so hot back there the exhaust melted the wiring and fused the two halves of the plug together into one big blob. So I spent some time repairing that and replacing several fuses, and decided to call it a night and grab a motel room.

[SRD Art]

So I got the motel in Tennessee and camped out for the night. I thought for sure I could get an early start and make some good progress the next day. Not so...

About an hour out of the town I stayed in, just past the "Bucksnort Rd." exit I heard a noise from behind me and looked in the rear view mirror to see the tow dolly tire was smoking. Nice! I pulled right over but before I could get to the side of the road the tire came totally unglued! It was my first blowout ever. It also blew the light off the fender in the process.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/trip006_zps4fbdb814.jpg

I called Uhaul and they put me on a three way call with the closest Uhaul account service station, which was 45 minutes away. He was a nice gentleman but I had to laugh to myself as he sounded like he was probably wearing overalls and a straw hat waiting to get home to that fresh batch of white lightning he brewed the night before, lol! It was also funny when he said to the uhaul rep after she asked him to send help to me, "well that's a long way, so as long as it's ok with Uhaul we'll run a tire out there." I'm thinking, uh yeah, I'm stuck in the middle of nowhere with a blown tire, sending someone out would be a good thing. It was Sunday, so they had to call in one of their employees in to bring the tire, so 1 1/2 hours later the guy pulled up in the service truck. He did a great job getting me back together fairly quickly and said the tire on the other side was low on air and that's probably what caused the blowout. They didn't look all that low to me but what do I know. I had to sign the bill, the service call not including the tire was $250. Glad I wasn't paying for it. The Uhaul rep that helped me on the phone stayed in touch the whole time with phone calls and texts until I was back on the road. I've heard a lot of bad about Uhaul, but I'd have to say overall they all did a good job.

So now I'm back on the road and finally get to Memphis. Anyone ever traveled through there? Their idea of road signs, or lack of them, wasn't funny. I got all turned around and ended up lost downtown somehow. While getting gas I was a little concerned about the tire that was still rubbing sometimes on the driver's side so I pulled the wheel and got the hammer out to beat the inner wheel well on that side too. Glad I did, that west Memphis and into Arkansas has the worst roads I've been on for a long time. Another funny thing about Memphis is apparently they don't believe in making left hand turns at intersections. I found myself going into parking lots to turn around so I could get on the roads I needed to. What a pain that was.

Needless to say when I saw that welcome to Arkansas sign I was relieved to put the two day nightmare of Tennessee behind me. Here's a shot at a rest stop in Oklahoma I think. you can see how low it was without the bags working...

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/trip009_zps219bda04.jpg

[SRD Art]

I stopped at a rest stop somewhere in Texas. I liked this shot shot, this building was cool built into the hill with a huge star in the wall.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/trip011b_zps7921c168.jpg

Another cool stop was a gas station IIRC near the New Mexico/ Arizona border. Inside the gas station was a huge car collection area. Neat stuff in there, cars and paraphernalia. They even had several large screen TVs playing old automotive based TV commercials. Really neat place, free to browse around and a nice break from driving. One of the few places along the way that reminded me I was traveling route 66.

This was my favorite of the items on display. Looks like an old Chevelle magazine ad. It says it all.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/trip016_zpsd8049dcf.jpg

This was my favorite car on display. I really like the lines of the early 50s Chevys, and this shade of green was awesome. Dual carbs on the 6 banger and a BEAUTIFUL white interior. Super nice.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/trip018_zps237abea8.jpg

Some more cool stuff...

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/trip012_zpscc7b73e0.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/trip014_zps42e95f73.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/trip013_zpsccba5cdd.jpg

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/trip017_zpsd1c8bc1c.jpg

[RussMurco]

Ben,
Good to hear an update from you and glad to hear you're settling in nicely with Speed Tech! I'll be in Bonneville come September, maybe we could meet up!
Ah yes, the adventures of driving a hot rod cross country! Always gives stories to tell and the little hidden joints you come across are usually interesting!

[SRD Art]

When I hit Winslow AZ the highway was shut down because of 60 mph winds blowing across it and low visibility from all the dust. I was excited to see the town of Winslow because it's mentioned in the route 66 song. Unfortunately outside of a small downtown main street stretch, the town is run down and looks somewhat vacant. Too bad, I bet at one time it was a thriving little stop along the way. Well our option was to wait out the wind as many people chose to do, lined up parked along side both sides of the road. Another option was a detour south, go through the national park, and then back north to Flagstaff. I was already behind schedule so I chose the detour. I filled up on gas just in case and headed out. Fighting a 60 mph headwind wasn't fun, and I just watched my gas gauge drop as I rolled along at about 40 mph. Finally after what seemed an eternity I was headed up into the mountains and above the wind. Then it was a good long uphill climb. I started getting nervous on the way back down the other side as I got lower and lower on gas and not knowing how much further I had to go. I literally was on the bottom side of E when I got back to civilization and found a gas station. Glad I followed my gut feeling to fill up before I left on the detour. Once I hit Flagstaff it was a pretty smooth sail on through Vegas and up into St. George Utah.

All things into account, I'm glad to say my car served me well. I ran between 70 and 80 mph most of the trip. It never ran hot, had plenty of power to haul the load, braked fine even with about 3500 lbs behind me, and handled the drive fantastic. After about a 2100 mile trip twice within about 6 months plus daily driving in between, I say not bad for a car that was thrown together in 2 months of spare time from the point of an empty shell barely put back on the frame.

I used to really like daily driving my drag prepped Nova, but the pro-touring build philosophy is so much better, my Nova wouldn't have gotten far before I needed gas again and again, and it would've run a little hot along the way. No wonder the plans for that car are now my second pro-tour build... clickey for Trogdor build thread (http://www.pro-touring.com/showthread.php?98361-74-Nova-quot-Trogdor-the-Burninator-quot&highlight=)

[GregWeld]

Great story!!!


Now I'll have to go back and start at the beginning.


:thumbsup:

[SRD Art]

A lot of activity with the car, so I'll be posting regular updates soon. for now a quick teaser...

IfdbWiHIWY4

[LowNfast]

Great story man, Im in for updates in the future!!

[Ben@SpeedTech]

Thanks a bunch!

So much has happened since then, I just gotta find the time to post it all! Lol!

[liquidh8]

Ben, you have to get us up to speed, been missing you here and on g body.

[Radlark]

Any updates Ben?

[SRD Art]

Man. so much has happened since I last updated the thread. After 17 years and 100K + of faithful service getting abused in 3 different cars of mine, That 406 grenaded drag racing a year ago this past November. My 11 sec street strip Nova donated it's fresh 406 for Pumkinator and I've since slowly been in the middle of the serious motor swap, weight reduction and interior and exterior upgrade. here's a rendering I did to give you an idea of where it's headed. I'll get around to posting updates and pics at some point...

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/Pumkinator2016%2012%2096_zpsx2m9dj9d.jpg

[1360]

:cheers:

[Radlark]

Man. so much has happened since I last updated the thread. After 17 years and 100K + of faithful service getting abused in 3 different cars of mine, That 406 grenaded drag racing a year ago this past November. My 11 sec street strip Nova donated it's fresh 406 for Pumkinator and I've since slowly been in the middle of the serious motor swap, weight reduction and interior and exterior upgrade. here's a rendering I did to give you an idea of where it's headed. I'll get around to posting updates and pics at some point...

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/Pumkinator2016%2012%2096_zpsx2m9dj9d.jpg

Absolutely love it Ben!!!! Check out my mirrors I made with the turn signal when you get a chance!

[Ben@SpeedTech]

Since my son's Coppertop '78 Cutlass wagon got wasted by a negligent driver who crashed into him, we've decided to yank Pumkinator's complete chassis and slide it under his car to replace his bent frame. I'm picking up a spare frame this weekend and will start a fresh build for Pumk. Part of the plan is I have some ideas for new frame bracing designs and I will do a little more tweaking to the frame to tuck 315s all around on the car. All coming soon...

[Dr. Jekyll]

Man. so much has happened since I last updated the thread. After 17 years and 100K + of faithful service getting abused in 3 different cars of mine, That 406 grenaded drag racing a year ago this past November. My 11 sec street strip Nova donated it's fresh 406 for Pumkinator and I've since slowly been in the middle of the serious motor swap, weight reduction and interior and exterior upgrade. here's a rendering I did to give you an idea of where it's headed. I'll get around to posting updates and pics at some point...

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll86/73novars/Pumkinator/Pumkinator2016%2012%2096_zpsx2m9dj9d.jpg

WOW what an awesome rendering! A little nod to the 80's yes?

[SRD Art]

Back in the early 90s someone did a salt flat Syclone that has a similar paint design. I've always wanted to do that to a car but it never really fit. I think it works on this one.

The body color wheel hoops and blah blah all over the car leans a bit towards the drifter crowd. I'm a marketing guy so I aim to build a car that appeals to all car crowds. well, maybe the old street rod guys might not like it too much but I think most others will.

I also like overcoming big challenges and going places most haven't so since I had planned on using a burnt orange metallic vinyl wrap for the top half I get to show it can be done by cutting it on a plotter. :D

[SRD Art]

I finally had a few minutes over the weekend to try the new 315-30-18 sneakers on Pumkinator, man I'm stoked to have that much rubber on the ground. Pictured ride stance is a little high, I've been shooting to lighten it up 250 lbs and once I get the new frame in the car the tires should barely tuck at the fender lips. Traction for days! Yeah! This new set up is the first of lots of changes coming up.

https://i.imgur.com/wA4H7Lt.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/WGGVz2B.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/D76euIe.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/pewqY8K.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/DSuiOGj.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/4lsCQdj.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/49Fzv45.jpg

[SSLance]

That's two G bodys now with 315s... That thing is gonna stick...

[SRD Art]

That's the plan! My new frame will have a few new ideas too so hopefully it'll perform noticeably better than before.

I'm not so sure a G-body can really compete with say an F-body with an aftermarket subframe and full suspension but you (Lance) and a small handful of others have been really pushing the limits and have set a pace for G-bodies to become well respected in the pro touring/ autoX world. I hope my unique wagon will add to that reputation too and lead the way for more G-body folks to get involved in the community. :thumbsup:

[WSSix]

Nice, Ben! Wish I could say I have 315s on all four corners.

[SRD Art]

Between my full time day job, doing project renderings on the side, writing a book and making time for family I find I'm so busy sleep is now getting neglected and I'm averaging about 4-5 hours per night lately. Sound familiar to anyone? lol!

Well with all that going on Pumkinator project time has slacked off, or rather has been somewhat non existent for a while. I did get a few minutes with it this last weekend and snapped a few photos. Updates shown here are the new engine in place as well as the 315 tires. Still have to wire all the electronics and then plumb the fuel system. Pictured here is my "street" carb, a 750 vac Summit carb. This one's nice because you take the whole top off to change jets and tuning will go a little easier. I also bought a quick change spring kit for the secondaries. This carb also has the jets in the bottom of the float bowl which may be better for autoX. For drag racing I have an 850 double pumper to swap on. On the firewall next to the 6AL is my MSD timing control which will allow me to adjust it on the fly. I won't drive it daily anymore but a couple times a week to work is in order, and with 12.5:1 compression this control along with a water/meth kit will help make running on pump gas a little more realistic. More coming soon...

https://i.imgur.com/38hFTRX.jpg

[malibu795]

Very nice

[Ben@SpeedTech]

Thanks Adam!

[syborg tt]

Dang Ben this is an awesome project.

[Ben@SpeedTech]

Thanks Marty!

It's slowly coming together again but I keep running into that "well I'm this far into it I just as well get this other part too..." disease and the car is getting more and more aggressive, the wallet is getting more and more drained and the build time more and more stretched out. Soon...

On a side note I'm building another Cutlass wagon for my daily, 5.3/4L60E powered and will be posting more on that as I really ramp it up over the next couple months too.

[jarhead]

I just went through every page, I didn't realize until the end it was "Ben at Speedtech" lol

great car and story!