THE 1975 OLDSMOBILE CUTLASS SUPREME PROJECT
Note: U can Click on any of the Pics & they will get much bigger
I would like to Thank Rich Merrill
for his help and use of his facilities on this project.
If I had know all that was involved before I started this project......
I'm not sure I would have ever started.
Naw.............I Love the Rockets.........What can I say.
The first thing that I had to do was rip out the interior.
The car sat in a field on a farm for a few years.
Had mice and ( Big Black Ants) not to mention the smell.
Next up on the project was to clean up treat and
seal the floorboard. A standard Wire Wheel on a drill was used
to get rid of most of the rust that was present, luckily there
were no holes. Next I used (Bullet) Rust treatment
and toped that off with undercoating.
Next up was to get the Engine Compartment
all cleaned up for the engine.
Above are the Before & Below are the After.
After doing the Engine Compartment I was all excited to get an engine
but I did not have one at the time. What to do about an engine.......
Humm...... Should I go with the original 350 that the car had in it.......
or better yet how about a 455........Yeah 455.......
But which one....Pontiac, Olds, Buick. Would they all fit......
Which one would be the least likely to give me troubles...........
Decisions Decisions..... After Much thought & my pocketbook
making the decision for me, I got a really really good deal on a 1973
Buick 455 & a Turbo 400 (long neck) Tranny. The engine
was in really good shape and so was the Tranny.
Below are some Pics of the Engine all Cleaned up & ready to go.
Needless to say the Engine and Especially the Tranny turned out to be quite a feat
Once I got the right Mount Trees for the motor then everything was ok.
I didn't even have to drill any new holes for the trees.
One Major problem that we ran into on the engine.......
When we were cleaning the engine we sat the engine down on the legs of the
picker and wound up bending the oil pan.
I Did not know this until I fired up the engine and we had a loud ticking noise.
We could not figure out where the noise was coming from.
Needless to say I had to pull the oil pan................
I Did not have to raise the engine.....Yahoooo.......
Fixed the problem and re-installed the oil pan.
Next, we had an oil leak that I thought for sure was coming from the front seal.
Damm, I was getting irritated at this point.......
Oh, By the Way... when we went to put gas in the tank,
it poured out all over the floor.......hole in the tank....
nothing a little J.B. Weld won't fix..........
We pulled the font end to fix the Seal and at this point I fell in Love with Buick.
These engins are so so easy to work on........
Replaced the front Seal and did the timming chain while I was there.
Put it all back together and fired it up.
That is, once I got the distributor back in right :)
I took it out and ran it around the block a few times and broght it back.
I will be damned if the oil leak wasn't still there.
I crawled up under the car with it running and had Rich rev it up a few times.
I noticed that oil would spray out when it was reved.
Come to find out that there was a bolt missing from the timming cover
that was never there originally.
Found out later why it wasn't there.
It was stripped so now I was depressed.
Then I got a bright idea.... J.B. Weld..........* Love that stuff *
J.B. Welded the hole shut and now I have no oil leak.
The Tranny turned into a real deal also. I put the 400 Turbo long neck into the car and
needless to say it was not designed to have that long of a Tranny.
I had to have the Drive Shaft made which wasn't that big of deal.
The crossmember on the other hand turned into a nightmare.
A few cuts here and a few welds there fixed the problem with the Crossmenber
for the Tranny.
ARE WE HAVING FUN YET? LOL
Geez, are we finally ready to do Body Work?
Yes I think so........Below are a few Pics of the body work in progress....
More will be added later and also more fun stories of the project.......
OK, its later........
10-26.2004
More Pics of Body Work In Progress.......
FINALLY.......YAHOOOO......Body Work Is Done !!!!
On to the Interior....
OK, Its time to Change the Interior.....Originally I was going to keep the gold color but then decided
to change it to a Blue.
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