New member, new project Cutlass..

[LWillmann]

My Grandmother gave me this 88 Cutlass Supreme Classic recently. She paid cash for it brand new and has driven it since. It's got some minor problems now, but I think it'll make for a fun project...

It's got the factory Olds 307 in it, the car is totally stock, and all original. It's got 223k miles on it, and outside of some hefty oil leaks, the car runs pretty good considering it's age.

Since I'm married and have two kids, I don't get a lot of money to devote to the car, so for now, I'm going to clean up the 307, get it running good again and get the car driveable for a while. I'll be building <gasp> an SBC 350 to drop into it, as they're cheaper to mod, and easier to source parts for, not to mention easier to find. I will have the trans rebuilt, probably but a 3200 RPM stall in it, stick a posi or locker diff in the rear with some better gears, maybe 3.42s or 3.73s.

I'm hoping to locate a set of the Rallye Pack gauges for the car, as I'm not a big fan of the long, wide speedo and otherwise gaugeless dash, and I'd rather not go mounting a bunch of other gauges all over the place to get the standard information.

I will also be building the suspension a bit, with better control arms, new bushings, and steering linkage and such. Haven't really decided on shocks/springs yet, but I know that I want to lower the car a bit, as it looks just way too high right now.

I'm having some difficulty deciding on which wheel/tire/suspension 'look' to go for. I could go with the standard fat/skinny drag-racing inspired look that so many go with, or I could go with a big wheel small sidewall, with the car hugging the wheels look (Pro-Touring). The drag inspired look is really common, and I'd like to be different, but dont' want to be different at the expense of straight line performance.

The car will be first and foremost a street car, driven regularly (maybe even daily), and will see some drag-strip action. I don't expect to hit any AutoX or road-racing type of stuff with it, but I want the car to handle well in the corners. I do love a good twisty road now and then!

I'm coming from a 1996 Formula so if I can get similar cornering characteristics out of the Cutlass without breaking the bank, I'd love it. But I fear that might be a tall order with the size difference of the two.

Well, I suppose I've rambled enough. Here are a few before pictures of the car, It's living in my garage now, out of the weather, and awaiting the TLC for the 307.

[Hdesign]

Great car! I had an ultra-low mile 88 Cutlass Classic Brougham with a power moon roof about 6 years ago. It was gray also. I loved that car! That was the first year for the crappy FWD replacements...BLAH. The RWD's were all called "classics" because they were leftovers I guess.

Who needs a toyota/honda when you can get 223K out of one of those? That's awesome! Good luck with it.

[Ssynister13]

Great car! I had an ultra-low mile 88 Cutlass Classic Brougham with a power moon roof about 6 years ago. It was gray also. I loved that car! That was the first year for the crappy FWD replacements...BLAH. The RWD's were all called "classics" because they were leftovers I guess.

Who needs a toyota/honda when you can get 223K out of one of those? That's awesome! Good luck with it.

But mine was better! I mean beer cans and bondo, what else do you need to hold a rocker together? I miss that car! If I only knew then what I know now!

[Hdesign]

That was a riot! Gotta love Bondo!

[3kidsnotime]

That was a riot! Gotta love Bondo!
Ben You will not be able to give input on the body work for the project now :eek:

[Ssynister13]

Lwillmann where are you from? Do you have to worry about the car meeting smog tests if you change out the motor? I know in Mass the 307 was it because it had all the pumps and hoses on...make it a complete dog...but I had to pass emissions.

[Ssynister13]

Ben You will not be able to give input on the body work for the project now :eek:

Awww, thats not fair...he can sand bondo like nothing you have ever seen!

[Hdesign]

Dude, you're killing me....SHHH! You're devulging all my secrets...I knew this was a mistake to tell you about this site... :rofl:

[Hdesign]

As long as he's not in CA or MA I think he can pretty much do what he wants. Are there any other states that require 88s to pass an emissions test?

It used to be that once the car was more than 15 years old, you only had to pass a safety inspection. Ah, those were the days.

[Ssynister13]

You had to start somewhere...right? Im just here to make sure I can provide some ammo...your welcome!

[LWillmann]

I live in a small town in Tennessee, and there is no testing down here.

[ProTouring442]

When a car is saftey inspected for tags up here in Maryland, they are required to look for the emissions equipent. It has to all be there and hooked up. I don't know how far back our emissions tail piipe test goes.

Shiny Side Up!
Bill
'72 442 "Inamorata"

[Ssynister13]

I live in a small town in Tennessee, and there is no testing down here.

Lucky you!

[BThibodeaux]

Great car to start with! Save that sheetmetal and get some paint on that thing fast. Cheap paint. Ugly paint. Any paint.

They love smog in Tenessee. It's a delicacy. :rofl:

[LWillmann]

Holy crap, long time no updates!!!!

Wow, where to start?

Well, being one guy working pretty well solo with the occasional bit of help from the wife and oldest (9 year old) son, it took a while but I got the 307 and 2004R out of the car.

It took me about a year to get around to this point because I didn't have a lot of time, or drive, to work on the car

http://www.willmannwebsolutions.com/personal/cutlass/engine_bay/engine_removal_1b.jpg

After I got the engine and trans out, I got to work on assembling the new engine. I purchased a preassembled shortblock from a friend that was destined for a car of his but he changed directions. The engine has an XE274HR cam in it ground on a 110LSA, so it should be pretty mean.

I got a set of heads from an 88 Trans Am to use for temporary to get the car on the road, and had them cleaned up and better valve springs put on them. Got the heads painted and bolted to the block. The newer heads means that the center bolt holes are drilled at 90*, so I needed a different intake. So I ordered a Summit Stage 1 intake, an Edelbrock 1406 (600cfm) carb, and an air cleaner, for the engine.

I decided I want to run a serpentine belt setup from a late 80's F-body, so I got the brackets and such, and the engine was looking good with black and silver, so I had the accessory brackets wheelabrated at work and painted them black. I painted all the pulleys black too. Painted the HD water pump silver. I had the black OE center bold valve covers sand blasted and painted them silver, and used black bolts on them.

I picked up a set of $75 long tube headers for the car, that were in a semi-rusted condition, and rather than spend $300 to have them coated, I spent $20 to have them blasted and painted them myself.

So here's how the engine looks nearly fully assembled on the stand:

http://www.willmannwebsolutions.com/personal/cutlass/new_engine/almost_done_4.jpg

I have received all the parts I need to rebuild the 2004R to handle some decent power, and I have the 3200 RPM lockup torque converter here too.

I have a 3.73 posi rear from a Monte SS in the garage by the car, waiting to go in, with a girdle cover for it too.

Just got some suspension parts too:
Bilstein HD shocks front and rear
Eibach Pro Kit springs
and Suspension Techniques 35mm front and 25mm rear sway bars.

I'll post about the adventure on the front sway bar later... Got to run for now.

[G-Body]

These G-boys are fun cars to work on and they look good no matter what way you build them heres my 84 i just sold awhile back!
http://i229.photobucket.com/albums/ee87/Fleetline48/MyCars024.jpg
http://i229.photobucket.com/albums/ee87/Fleetline48/MyCars018.jpg

[tyoneal]

My Grandmother gave me this 88 Cutlass Supreme Classic recently. She paid cash for it brand new and has driven it since. It's got some minor problems now, but I think it'll make for a fun project...

It's got the factory Olds 307 in it, the car is totally stock, and all original. It's got 223k miles on it, and outside of some hefty oil leaks, the car runs pretty good considering it's age.

Since I'm married and have two kids, I don't get a lot of money to devote to the car, so for now, I'm going to clean up the 307, get it running good again and get the car driveable for a while. I'll be building <gasp> an SBC 350 to drop into it, as they're cheaper to mod, and easier to source parts for, not to mention easier to find. I will have the trans rebuilt, probably but a 3200 RPM stall in it, stick a posi or locker diff in the rear with some better gears, maybe 3.42s or 3.73s.

I'm hoping to locate a set of the Rallye Pack gauges for the car, as I'm not a big fan of the long, wide speedo and otherwise gaugeless dash, and I'd rather not go mounting a bunch of other gauges all over the place to get the standard information.

I will also be building the suspension a bit, with better control arms, new bushings, and steering linkage and such. Haven't really decided on shocks/springs yet, but I know that I want to lower the car a bit, as it looks just way too high right now.

I'm having some difficulty deciding on which wheel/tire/suspension 'look' to go for. I could go with the standard fat/skinny drag-racing inspired look that so many go with, or I could go with a big wheel small sidewall, with the car hugging the wheels look (Pro-Touring). The drag inspired look is really common, and I'd like to be different, but dont' want to be different at the expense of straight line performance.

The car will be first and foremost a street car, driven regularly (maybe even daily), and will see some drag-strip action. I don't expect to hit any AutoX or road-racing type of stuff with it, but I want the car to handle well in the corners. I do love a good twisty road now and then!

I'm coming from a 1996 Formula so if I can get similar cornering characteristics out of the Cutlass without breaking the bank, I'd love it. But I fear that might be a tall order with the size difference of the two.

Well, I suppose I've rambled enough. Here are a few before pictures of the car, It's living in my garage now, out of the weather, and awaiting the TLC for the 307.
======================================
FWIW: I had a 85 Cutless a number of years ago, and a 455 olds will fit in that car, and if you attach the smog trees to the exhaust manifolds and hang the "Stock Airpump, a/c etc", on the front it is really hard to tell the difference between the two when looking at it. The width difference between the two is a 1.75 inches total, and the 455 hasn't been made in such a long time, many people wouldn't automatically realize that what they were looking at wasn't a stock oldsmobile.

I think the olds engine for that year is still flat across the top and wide just like the older ones were. I know in my old car, if you sat both engines side by side it was remarkable how similar they were. Paint them the same color and run the same air cleaner. That with the smog trees, the air pump etc. will give you a really neat sleeper of a car.

Ty

[LWillmann]

Well, it's been a REALLY, REALLY long time since I've been here... Almost a year since my last stop in...

Before I go any further, let me tell you all about the sway bar experience. I ordered the ST sway bars from Summit. They showed up one day, just two days after I ordered them, and I noticed that the box for the front bar had a hole in the end of it and the bar would poke out because it would slide around. Well, I get the bars inside the garage and open that box and discover that the bar was broken! I had never seen anything like it before in my life. I'll let the picture speak for itself:
http://www.willmannwebsolutions.com/personal/cutlass/new_engine/new_parts_21.jpg

I've gotten a bunch done over that year, but not near enough to get the car on the road to be honest. But the end is in sight, I think.

I have lots and lots of pics of the whole experience so far.

Once I got the factory engine and trans out of the car, we rolled it out of the garage and degreased the engine bay. Then after letting it dry for a day or so, we rolled it back in and put it back on the stands and went to work on the rear suspension swap.

The old rear was a 2.73 open diff. The new one is 3.73 posi out of a 87 Monte SS. Before installing the new rear I cleaned it and undercoated it. I pressed all the old control arm busings out (223k miles, I figured it was time for new ones), and had the arms sandblasted, then undercoated them as well. Reinstalled the rear with new Bilstein HD shocks and Eiback ProKit springs. After this, I installed a new pinion seal, followed by a TrickFlow cover/girdle and Suspension Techniques 1" solid rear sway bar. That should round out the rear suspension.

Oh, taught my 9 year-old son how to do drum brakes on the car. He did one side on his own!

A few pics of the rear suspension stuff:
http://www.willmannwebsolutions.com/personal/cutlass/suspension/controlarms1.jpg

http://www.willmannwebsolutions.com/personal/cutlass/suspension/finished3.jpg

http://www.willmannwebsolutions.com/personal/cutlass/suspension/finished4.jpg

Then I moved to the front suspension. I replaced the stock shocks and springs with Bilstein HD's and Eibach Prokit springs, installed a Suspension Techniques 35mm solid sway bar, and center link, idler arm, inner and outer tie rods on both ends so I'd have fresh steering hardware.

A few pics of the front suspension:
http://www.willmannwebsolutions.com/personal/cutlass/suspension/front1.jpg

http://www.willmannwebsolutions.com/personal/cutlass/suspension/front2.jpg

http://www.willmannwebsolutions.com/personal/cutlass/suspension/front5.jpg

A buddy came to help drop the engine and trans into the car, but we ran into problems. The driver's side motor mount wouldn't fit. It just wouldn't line up for anything. So the next day I pulled the engine back out of the car and got to looking at the part numbers stamped on the mounts and got to looking around and found that some people used the same number as one of mine on both sides of the engine so I ordered a matching pair like that one. Once they came in, I cleaned them up painted them and bolted them to the block.

http://www.willmannwebsolutions.com/personal/cutlass/engine_install/drv_mnt1.jpg

http://www.willmannwebsolutions.com/personal/cutlass/engine_install/drv_mnt2.jpg

Here you can see that the two mounts were different, the longer one was the driver's side one:
http://www.willmannwebsolutions.com/personal/cutlass/mount_probs/new_mount.jpg

[LWillmann]

Had to split this up because of all the pics...

With that completed, it was time to strip rust from the front frame rails and get the engine bay painted for engine/transmission installation. That took me a few days, but I got the black stuff black again, and was ready for install. I mated the transmission to the engine, and proceeded to slide the engine and transmission down into the car. The slid down into place and with just a little coaxing on the driver's side, it dropped right into place and the bolts slid right through the motor mounts.

http://www.willmannwebsolutions.com/personal/cutlass/engine_bay/empty_bay_1a.jpg

http://www.willmannwebsolutions.com/personal/cutlass/engine_bay/empty_bay_1b.jpg

Became:
http://www.willmannwebsolutions.com/personal/cutlass/engine_bay/bay_painted1.jpg

http://www.willmannwebsolutions.com/personal/cutlass/engine_bay/bay_painted2.jpg

http://www.willmannwebsolutions.com/personal/cutlass/engine_install/eng_in_car1.jpg

http://www.willmannwebsolutions.com/personal/cutlass/engine_install/eng_in_car4.jpg

http://www.willmannwebsolutions.com/personal/cutlass/engine_install/eng_in_car5.jpg

We put the trans crossmember up under the trans and set it on the frame and the car has set like that since. I haven't really messed with the car since then. I haven't had time to touch the car for the last couple of months.

I'm one guy with a muscle disease (Muscular Dystrophy) and have problems getting time and energy to work on the car by myself. So it's taken a long time to get to this point.

I have gotten one more significant (to me) part of this project completed, and that's my gauge panel. The car had a single long-arm speedometer with idiot lights, and I'm replacing them with a custom gauge panel with 6 gauges. Most people just use the rallye-pack gauges, but I'm going further by doing my own custom cut aluminum panel and Autometer gauges with LEDs for turn signals, high-beam, and transmission gear indicator.

Gauge panel pics:
http://www.willmannwebsolutions.com/personal/cutlass/gauges/mounted_1.jpg

http://www.willmannwebsolutions.com/personal/cutlass/gauges/mounted_2.jpg

http://www.willmannwebsolutions.com/personal/cutlass/gauges/mounted_3.jpg


Let me see if this posts and I'll go back and pics.

Hopefully, this is the last edit:

I have my G-Force crossmember now. I also have what I hope to be all the small wiring, my split-loom, and connectors for my gauges too.

I need to install the tranny mount, install the new crossmember, driveshaft, do the wiring on the engine and gauges, install radiator, hook up the fans (dual electric) and finish out a few other odds and ends and I think it'll be ready to drive before TOO long.

Oh and I need tires for the IROC wheels I'll be using temporarily. Need some 245/50-16's for these wheels.

I want some 17" Torque Thrust II's for the car, but don't have the money right now.

[deuce_454]

======================================
FWIW: I had a 85 Cutless a number of years ago, and a 455 olds will fit in that car, and if you attach the smog trees to the exhaust manifolds and hang the "Stock Airpump, a/c etc", on the front it is really hard to tell the difference between the two when looking at it. The width difference between the two is a 1.75 inches total, and the 455 hasn't been made in such a long time, many people wouldn't automatically realize that what they were looking at wasn't a stock oldsmobile.

I think the olds engine for that year is still flat across the top and wide just like the older ones were. I know in my old car, if you sat both engines side by side it was remarkable how similar they were. Paint them the same color and run the same air cleaner. That with the smog trees, the air pump etc. will give you a really neat sleeper of a car.

Ty
there was a guy in town when i lived in fergus falls MN that had a 455 powered 85 cutlass, called it the gutless... and it was anything but gutless, had the fortune of driving it a couple of timas and it was a awesome

anyway, the gauge panel is looking great, as is the rest of the build

cant wait to see it finished

[ElkyZO6]

Keep up the good work and keep the pic's coming:thumbsup:

[LWillmann]

Well, last week I did a test fit on the gauges in the dash. I just sat them in there to see how they look and this is what I found.

http://www.willmannwebsolutions.com/personal/cutlass/gauges/fitment_1.jpg

http://www.willmannwebsolutions.com/personal/cutlass/gauges/fitment_2.jpg

http://www.willmannwebsolutions.com/personal/cutlass/gauges/fitment_3.jpg

So, I found that I should be able to see everything just fine once the spacers for the gauge plate are in and everything is wired up and screwed into place like it should be.

I also did a little work on the car this weekend...

Installed the transmission mount, new crossmember and driveshaft. I then modified my old LT1 dual electric fan shroud to work on the Cutty radiator and set the radiator in the car and test fir the fan shroud in the car to see how well it will work, and turns out that with the fan shroud turned right-side up the bottom fan (driver's side) hits the steering box, but if I flip it, it is fine because the other fan sets furter from the edge of the shroud. The only bummer at the moment is that the wiring is up top, but maybe I can flip the fans in the shroud and put the wiring back at the bottom again. I hope the mounting holes aren't at odd locations on the fans.



So that's what I got done yesterday in a few hours, wasn't much, but it was something. Here's a few pics of the crossmember and the beefiness.

http://www.willmannwebsolutions.com/personal/cutlass/xmember/xmember_1.jpg

http://www.willmannwebsolutions.com/personal/cutlass/xmember/xmember_2.jpg

http://www.willmannwebsolutions.com/personal/cutlass/xmember/xmember_3.jpg

http://www.willmannwebsolutions.com/personal/cutlass/xmember/xmember_4.jpg

It's a hefty sucker, that's for sure. The 'humps' for the exhaust tubes are made from 1/2" thick steel. It's certainly a serious crossmember!

After getting everything up and in place, I cleaned the floor plan up getting all that old oil and road grime out of there. It looks a lot better under there now.

Still a long way to go, but a little closer at least!