79 Cutlass Wagon G-machine build

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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.

 

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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.

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.

 

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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.

 

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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?

 

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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!

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!

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.

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.

 

[Longroof79]

Ben,
I'd be one of those happy "old men" working on their project cars, had I had access to a cool well equipped facility like that one.
There appears to be some interesting projects going on.
The '37 Hudson Terraplane for one..and I like the '53 Chevy 4-dr sedan led sled project. You don't see many guys chopping the top on a 4-do'.
Keep up the good work, man. You certainly have alot of good ideas in store, and know what you want before hand. That's half the battle. Some project's plans flip flop so much, it's a miracle that they ever get completed.

Once again, nice facility. I'm jealous...
BTW, congratulations on earning your scholarship.

 

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Thanks! I'm pretty lucky to have the school so close to home, it's only about 20 miles away. Had I know about it I would've gotten involved sooner. Maybe the time just wasn't right until now, sort of like all the stars are aligning or something. 🙂

 

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

 

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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.

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.

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

 

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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.

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.