Bodywork in progress pics

[85 Cutlass Brougham]

Well, I am finally getting around to finishing the bodywork on my Cutlass. I quit my job last week and don't really start my new one until next week, so I have time on my hands until then. I had to strip the roof using a combination of an angle grinder, a die grinder and sand paper by hand. The trunk was mechanically stripped with a jitterbug sander and the hood is aluminum and was stripped with "Aircraft Remover". I hope to finish it in the next few weeks and paint it with Diamont base/clear in 2002 F body Navy Blue Metallic.

 

[78mali350]

sweet progress is great!

 

[kevinrocks]

Nice.

Are those wheels from a turbo 6 t/a?

 

[STLRegal]

Atleast we know your car wont be a hooptie forever. :lol: Whats also funny is that there is a cutlass around here, that looks almost identical to yours. except the snowflakes are silver instead of gold. Its all the different color blues and greys and everything.

 

[85 Cutlass Brougham]

The wheels are actually aftermarket Enkei 92's from way back. I have thought about replacing them with something else, but I really don't have $1500 to get the wheels and tires I want right now. 3 of them are bent, one from running over a parking stop one night at 45 mph while going through the parking lot of the Domino's I used to deliver for, the other two also got pizza related injuries. Yes, the Cutlass was once a pizza delivery car, 355 SBC swap and all. It got replaced for that duty by the white Nissan Frontier pickup that you can see in the background in 1998. It now has 266k miles, btw. Oddly, now that I am back in college, I am back to being a pizza delivery driver...

 

[STLRegal]

good luck, Im not sure what your neighborhood there is like. But our delivery guys always get robbed. Its insane that you did it in a g-body, did it look like crap enough so they dont want to steal it?

 

[85 Cutlass Brougham]

Well, I don't work in bad areas for the most part. The Pizza Hut I just got hired at only has middle class neighborhoods or higher in it. I live in one of the poorer neighborhoods in the delivery area and my house has more than doubled in value in the last 5 years. I delivered pizza for 10 years and never once got robbed despite having delivered in some of the "Ghetto" areas of the stores I worked in. In the 10 years I delivered, I have only heard of a driver getting robbed in a store I worked in once. If your inside people are smart and can recognize the signs of a robbery waiting to happen, things can be done to insure the safety of the driver and the run does not get sent out. I was a Domino's General Manager until last Sunday ( did it for 1.5 yrs) and if a private line came in, I made sure the number was called back to establish a link between the call and caller. That makes it easy for the police to trace them. We also had caller ID and no one was allowed to change the number that came in on the caller ID for the same reason. We also had a policy that if the driver does not feel the situation is safe, he can choose not to take the delivery. I did this once in the ghetto when the house I was delivering to had a bunch of kids hanging around in the street in front of the house. I called the customer and explained the situation. They told the kids to get lost and I took the delivery.

As for the car, I had painted it before it was a delivery car, but it got hit 2 weeks after it was painted. It looked nice from one side, but the dent in the 1/4 made it look bad on the other. I did use it to deliver in more recently, but that was because I was stuck driving it due to a difficult to trace misfire in cylinder #3 in my truck. I also had wanted to do it once more for old time's sake.

 

[kevinrocks]

The wheels are actually aftermarket Enkei 92's from way back. I have thought about replacing them with something else, but I really don't have $1500 to get the wheels and tires I want right now. 3 of them are bent, one from running over a parking stop one night at 45 mph while going through the parking lot of the Domino's I used to deliver for, the other two also got pizza related injuries. Yes, the Cutlass was once a pizza delivery car, 355 SBC swap and all. It got replaced for that duty by the white Nissan Frontier pickup that you can see in the background in 1998. It now has 266k miles, btw. Oddly, now that I am back in college, I am back to being a pizza delivery driver...

Man, if they wernt all banged up......I think they look pretty sweet.

 

[85 Cutlass Brougham]

Yeah, they look better in pictures than in person. The gold really needs to be repainted as the aluminum is corroded in the spiders, and the lips need to be re-polished. There's a place in town that straightens wheels and I may see what they want to redo them. I am thinking of painting them the gold color GM used on some 2002 Camaro's in keeping with the F body color theme. There's also a similar gold used on Hyundai Elantra's in the last few years that is similar and I have thought about that color too. Plus, with the looming swap to B body spindles/1LE rotors, I will need at least 1/2 in more backspacing as the swap sets the wheels slightly outboard of the original spacing. I dunno, now that I am a starving college student, refinishing the old wheels just may be what I do. They are a 2 piece wheel, so maybe the wheel place can cut the welds on the spiders and move them to change the backspacing. If I do replace them, it will likely be a set of 17's or 18's in a 5 spoke design, preferably chromed or polished. I like the Torq Thrust II, but it's kinda played out. I figure they need to be bright and shiny with some sharper edges in them to pick up the lines of the car and compliment all that polished stainless and anodized aluminum trim that the Cutlass Brougham came with. I have all of it in great condition and want to use it because it's part of the car's original character. I am skipping the ding strips, and all the emblems except for the front bumper Oldsmobile emblem and the hood ornament. I don't have them and feel it cleans the car up to not have them.