79 Cutlass Wagon G-machine build

[liquidh8]

Ben, quick question for you. I am doing my frame now, boxing and notching. Did you have any clearance issues with the brace you made for the rear at the shock mounts? I am doing something similar, gonna weld it in though, and am concerned with clearance. I should have taken pics before pulling the body off the frame I am running 3" tailpipes also.

Thanks

 

[SRD art]

Ben, quick question for you. I am doing my frame now, boxing and notching. Did you have any clearance issues with the brace you made for the rear at the shock mounts? I am doing something similar, gonna weld it in though, and am concerned with clearance. I should have taken pics before pulling the body off the frame I am running 3" tailpipes also.

Thanks

Sorry I missed this, for some reason I'm not getting email notifications that there have been replies. Thanks for asking. Yes, there was some slight clearance issues with the upper arms hitting the brace, something I didn't think of as I was building it. It's pretty mild, the rear suspension has to be fully compressed, which can happen with as low as mine is. My advice would be to triangulate the bars so that they're not in the path of the upper arms, easy to do if the rear is still in the car. Good to hear your wagon is making some progress.

 

[SRD art]

Sorry I haven't made any replies for a while. The only real updates since moving back to Utah have been lowering the front springs some more and installing Speedtech lower front arms to get rid of the factory boxed arms. Without changing anything else the lower arms brought in some more + caster. I lowered the front more because the lousy rear CPP springs are continually sagging and it was getting to be lower in the back than the front. I get a little bumpsteer at full lock now so in the near future I will be raising the rear about 1" and the front about 1/2". I also put it on the race scales at work, it comes in at a hefty 3550 without me in it. I'm a lightweight, so add about 150 to that for race weight. 3700 seems pretty portly for a stripped down G body, but I added a lot of metal with all the bracing and cage.

Other than that I've been racing it, at the drag strip and on the autocross. If the weather's nice the car runs 14.6s @ just under 98 mph. That's at 3000ft altitude with the factory TH350, stock converter and the stock 2.41 gears. It really struggles to come off the line hard, I really get groovin around 30-40 mph. I was pretty pleased with that, it's a full second + faster than with the cam and heads I had on it before. The mph is telling me it should break high 13's with a good rear gear and maybe a 22-2400 converter. The heads are "low performance" 400 heads that I went in and ported and the cam is a Comp 266 with about .480 lift. The car runs out of breath right about 4500 rpms. That's right about what I'm doing as I go through the lights in 2nd gear.

On the autoX it runs great. The last SCCA event I went to it was around middle of the pack amongst a sea of imports. There was a 2009 Vette that was turning mid 75's and my best was a 76.8. I couldn't touch the performance modified imports, but being that close to a new Vette made me feel pretty good. I was taking the slalom areas a little slow as that's where I have a tendency to plow cones if I get a little crazy. I think there's a little more to be gained as I learn better driving skills. So far I have learned a lot about driving and setting my air pressure and shocks, and think I am close to the sweet spot on adjustments. BUT, pretty soon the Pumkinator goes under the knife for a complete new suspension, so we'll see how that changes things. I'm switching over to all Speedtech parts and my son's CopperTop wagon will be getting all my current parts.

My son is working on editing all my video footage so I'll post it all when it's done.

Thanks for watching!

 

[SRD art]

One of the things I'm working on right now is swapping the 160 speedo into the car. I bought a second one off ebay because the font matched my factory gauges, but turns out it's just a little too big in dia. So I'm back to the Mallory speedo and facing having to change the font. Monday I talked to a local sign shop about my options and they gave me the idea that it's possible to do whatever I want to. I started playing with changing the face from black with white hash marks and numbers to burnt orange with black numbers and black needles. In this sample I changed the font to the Terminator style and added the name of the car and my Flaming Pumkin icon. I want to have "31" (think Halloween) as my car's SCCA/auto cross number so I threw on the T3100 for fun. If the sign shop can pull this off with a good crisp print I'll re-do all the factory gauges this way.

 

[SRD art]

Here's a little teaser of what I've been up to...

[youtube]IfdbWiHIWY4[/youtube]

 

[liquidh8]

Nice,

 

[crucial118]

Ben, I just read thru all 32 pages and I am completely jealous of all you have done to this car. Everything looks great and I am looking forward to seeing more pics and reading your explanations. Thank you for taking the time to detail every little item. Great build thread!

 

[slingshot]

Ben, many thanks for sharing the details of your wagon's evolution and work in progress. Your product proves a unique and fun car can be made with some creative thinking and ingenuity, without breaking the bank. Your build takes me back to the roots of hot rodding and how it all started. In addition to a GREAT build story, there is an interesting family story as well. You undoubtedly will have much future success.

 

[clean8485]

Hi Ben. How are you doing? I understand that you're probably busy, but I was just wondering if there is any recent news about your car. Have you been out to the strip or the autocross course yet this year?

 

[liquidh8]

Bump for Ben!