BUILD THREAD Do I get a membership card now?

[81cutlass]

Wagon is out of storage! Was parked in my mother in laws garage up in the woods over the winter and Dad took it back to his place for a few weeks until i get my paperwork lined up. Filled a flat tire, splashed in a quart of ATF, connected the battery and it fired right up.

I didn't have current plates since the DMV's are super backlogged (expired last Sept and I was too much of a tightwad to re license it when it was sitting all winter.....) , no proof of insurance since I called at 3pm Friday, I found out I lost my drivers license card (no friggin clue where it went since I hadn't been carded in 3 months with everything being closed, and I had a nail in a tire so I REALLY didn't feel like running the car 3 hours back to my house on a sunday night. I was going to break every law in the book to get it home and I had no idea if it would blow a tire or puke a trans input seal so I punted and had Dad drive it the 45 minutes on county highways.

Probably grab the car over 4th of July and get some work done on it in June. Hopefully power tour won't get cut and I can take it on a stop or two.

 

[fleming442]

Wagon is out of storage! Was parked in my mother in laws garage up in the woods over the winter and Dad took it back to his place for a few weeks until i get my paperwork lined up. Filled a flat tire, splashed in a quart of ATF, connected the battery and it fired right up.

I didn't have current plates since the DMV's are super backlogged (expired last Sept and I was too much of a tightwad to re license it when it was sitting all winter.....) , no proof of insurance since I called at 3pm Friday, I found out I lost my drivers license card (no friggin clue where it went since I hadn't been carded in 3 months with everything being closed, and I had a nail in a tire so I REALLY didn't feel like running the car 3 hours back to my house on a sunday night. I was going to break every law in the book to get it home and I had no idea if it would blow a tire or puke a trans input seal so I punted and had Dad drive it the 45 minutes on county highways.

Probably grab the car over 4th of July and get some work done on it in June. Hopefully power tour won't get cut and I can take it on a stop or two.

Sidebar for Power Tour: Norwalk was a stop (possibly start?), and they neglected to open this year. That was also the turn around for Drag Week. You heard about any work arounds?

 

[81cutlass]

Sidebar for Power Tour: Norwalk was a stop (possibly start?), and they neglected to open this year. That was also the turn around for Drag Week. You heard about any work arounds?

No. I hadn't been paying attention to Drag Week stops besides the one in Rockford Ill that was closest to me which I was intending to drive down to spectate for the day. I can't imagine DW will get cancelled but maybe because it's more rental, Norwalk will be open?

The other odd part is there are 3 stops for power tour in Illinois (east st. louis, Univ. of Illionos, & chicago brubs), and lately it seems the more 'blue' a state the more tight closure regulations have been, and the more 'red' the more lax. I don't see Illinois being a very friendly place for an event like power tour.

I'm not sure if they will reschedule locations for power tour or just cancel it outright. No news yet. They did reschedule the last stop from Madison WI to Chicago (which sucks for my drive) and one or two stops in between, but there has been no news. Since it's motortrend hosted, I don't have a ton of hope since the Roadkill knights in Detroit burbs got cancelled. I'm no help.

 

[81cutlass]

I had a buddy pick up a reciever hitch for this car off marketplace last week. It was on an elco and $50 so not bad.

I picked it from him yesterday and holy crap is this thing HD. It's a 2" reciever unlike the 1 1/4 that was on my 2+2. It's not a curt or reese so I don't know who made it and although the weight makes me feel a little bad putting it on the wagon it's nice I won't have to cut the small reciever off for the big one so I can use the same hitches on all my junk.

I need to clean it off and repaint it before it goes in.

 

[Longroof79]

I had a buddy pick up a reciever hitch for this car off marketplace last week. It was on an elco and $50 so not bad.

I picked it from him yesterday and holy crap is this thing HD. It's a 2" reciever unlike the 1 1/4 that was on my 2+2. It's not a curt or reese so I don't know who made it and although the weight makes me feel a little bad putting it on the wagon it's nice I won't have to cut the small reciever off for the big one so I can use the same hitches on all my junk.

I need to clean it off and repaint it before it goes in.

I think U-Haul used to carry a similar hitch like that. You can't beat $50.00, though.

*Take a look at Blake's hitch. He might have the same one.

 

[81cutlass]

Day late and a tire short but the wagon is home and out of storage.

Was parked the winter at my mother in law's and took it back home Sunday. Got about 2hrs into the trip and a little over an hour from home and I heard a whistling sound, got a vibration and pulled off into a gas station. Look outside and crap, drivers rear is flat.

No problem, I have spare and Jack. Open hatch for spare and it has air, awesome! But, I can't pull it out. Look and it has a bulge in the tread. Efff. I've had that spare tire kicking around for 10 years and it was old when I got it so it's probably from the 80's judging how old it is.

So I leave it and hop in the Rainier since the wife was driving that and go home. Grabbed a spare and Jack from home and rescued it today after work.

Tire picked up a chunk of aluminum. Had maybe 8000 miles in the set and it's through the cords so no patch on that one. Don't want to wait to go home and use dad's tire machine so I'll probably take it to a tire shop and overpay on markup to order in a low volume tire and overpay them to mount it. Blah.

 

[81cutlass]

Well no reason to keep a car down. I called around and disco tire is going to have a 235 cobra here in 3 days so might as well get some stuff on the car done in the mean time.

I found my epoxy primer and got the trailer hitch ready to clean up and paint. Pulled the to bumper shock bolts out that share with the hitch and those snapped obviously. Now I gotta pull the whole bumper and drill them out and weld on a nut on the inside. No biggy but more work.

Also noticed the frame right under the bumper shocks is starting to rust out and expanding, probably from dirt packed in the rail since it was a gravel car for part of it's life. I'll probably cut the rusty spots out and weld on new metal just to preserve the rails. Car is in good shape but those spots on the frame are about all the rust just getting dirt packed.

Also swapped a few broken interior pieces that I grabbed from the yard last time. Replaced the broken rear seat latch and cracked b pillar trim on the driver's side. The old trim was in good shape, not faded or dry rotted but it was mildly broken and dad finished it off the week he had it getting out so it was time to replace. New one is a little dry rotted and faded but it's not cracked so it's a mild improvement.

The pooch helped a bit too

 

[81cutlass]

It was 94 balmy farenheights today and I am working from home this week since some of my test parts for work are at a supplier getting machined.

Got bored at 2pm and since I'm home and mostly out of work until my parts show up I played hookie and decided to sweat a few pounds off in the garage.

Sanded down the reciever hitch and shot a couple coats of epoxy primer.

Also welded up a bike rack since I'm too cheap to pay for a parking pass on campus and am biking the last half mile to work these days. Bike won't fit in the back of the wagon so getting it ready to be the new daily.

 

[81cutlass]

Pulled the bumper off today. I broke the 2 bumper shock bolts that also mount the hitch so I had to pull it out and drill the old bolts anyways.

The car is pretty rust free but it spent part of it's life in rural northern MN on gravel so it stayed off salt but the gravel packed in the bumper and rear most portion of the frame between the bumper shocks and held moisture and rotted the frame out. Decided if I'm putting a hitch on I better fix the rot.

There were no holes at first but it was pretty bulgy so I hit it with a hammer and it pretty much evaporated. Drivers side needs replacing and passenger side is just starting to bulge. Not sure if I want to do the passenger side but I'll probably cut it out and do it while I'm there.

I need to replace the bumper cover also as the chrome is peeling pretty bad in the bottom. It was packed with gravel dust behind the tail light lenses and again held moisture and rotted out. I only looked so olds wagons at the yard last time I was there and all were as bad or worse. I didn't check the elcos or pint/Chev wagons last time since I assumed they were different. However the repop bumper for $200 is tempting. Not a high priority as of now but maybe a winter project. My bumper fillers are wasted too and I broke one of the replacements I had so I gotta hunt another one down.

I'll weld on the patch I cut into the drivers side tomorrow and weld up some new nut brackets to attach the hitch to.

Saturday I plan to shoot the hitch in black I have leftover from the Rainier rust repair last summer and get it installed Sunday.

The bumper shocks are a pita to get off with saggy body bushings!!

And broken bolts

Had a mouse nest in the passenger rail

Which of course held moisture and rotted the 2nd rear most body mount bolt in half. Great...

Passenger rail is ok

Drivers not so much

A cut and a poke later

It's not terrible, pretty localized and I have welder to fix it. I probably should cut farther in and replace more metal but I have to pull the body mount bolt to do that and I'm not prepared to tackle that.

 

[85ss/85gn]

Rear bumper for El Camino and wagons are the same