How did you get started with your G-body obsession/restoration? Here's mine. Show me yours.

[Streetbu]

My dad's very first brand new car was a '78 Regal he ordered. Black out side, white vinyl bucket seats interior, no console, column shift, 305 four barrel, F41 suspension. He drove 32 miles one way to work, six days a week, for 33 years. He sold it to a co-worker in 1988 with just over 200k miles on it, still looked and ran perfect. That guy had a couple of two door Malibu's. One was a '79, the other an '81. Both factory stick cars. One was a 305 four barrel, other he put a 400 sbc in with Corvette rallies two tone grey with a red interior. My dad replaced the '78 Regal with a brand new '86 Pontiac 2+2 in 1988. Yes, two years old and brand new. He still owns it too but its been stored in his climate controlled garage and not driven since 2000 when he lost his eyesight. That's how I fell in love with g-bodies.

 

[CDUNIGAN1981]

I bought a 79 Ttop Grand Prix in April 1998.
Then I went to college while it sat in my parents driveway.
Now, I am paying the price for letting it sit for so long outside.

I got out of college and slowly started.
Now I am gainfully employed and am all the way back in it.

My fear is that I won't be able to find anyone to do the necessary bodywork but I'm sure as hell trying.
But this forum is a wealth of information. I'm amazed at some of the members garages and all the tools and know-how.


Corey

 

[Bonnewagon]

I absolutely HATED the rear of the G-body wagons when they came out. FUGLY!! Then I forgot all about them. I was a Firebird guy but with a young family I needed a station wagon too. I had a 1975 Matador wagon with the 258 straight six and it was a pretty decent family car. When that rusted out from under me I wanted another wagon. In 1993 we had the "winter of 16 snowstorms" here. The snow was piled as high as the houses on the streets. While delivering Parcel Post I always kept my eyes peeled for cars for sale. As the snow melted I spotted a station wagon slowly emerging from a huge pile. Darn, it was one of those FUGLY POS GM jobs. A 1981 Malibu wagon, full gauges, no AC. When I looked in the window I saw a manual stick shift on the floor. Huh? I popped the hood and there was a Chevy 229 six. Yuk. Base car, V-6, manual 3 speed. But there was so much room in there I thought right away of plopping a Pontiac V-8 in it's place. I tracked down the owner and bought it for $300. I rode my mountain bike over and stuck it in the back (lots of room!) and slapped some phony plates on so I could sneak it home. When I got it home I looked under the seats and found a hog-choker roll of parking tickets the guy never paid. The next day I saw the City Marshal towing scoflaw cars from that same neighborhood. I saved that wagon from the pound! I ran the POS 229 until I was ready to put a Pontiac 350 w/Saginaw 4 speed in. I never looked back. I had 5 different engines in that wagon before it disintegrated. Then I pestered a 93 year old guy to sell me his original owner 1983 Bonneville wagon which I still have. The 231 Buick engine snapped so I put a Pontiac 301 w/Saginaw 4 speed in this one using all the manual trans parts from the Malibu. And that FUGLY rear end? I got used to it.

 

[500/600]

Back in the late '70s as a 10-ish year old I remember looking through a Guinness Book of World Records (yes a real book), I remember seeing 'the largest passenger vehicle engine', a 500 Cadillac. I remember thinking at the time "what if that BIG engine was in Dad's '67 Nova?" Several G-bodys came and went over the years with several engine combos. But I never got over the 500 Cadillac. My love of G-bodys and impression of that engine never died, so I finally put one together.

 

[wonderboy24]

my first gbody was in 91. a buddy had a 81 cutlass with factory sun roof. it was a nice car. i always bugged him to sell it to me. it took 2 years. he finally sold it to me when the v6 locked up on him. i then put a 403 in it. drove the heck out of it. i got t boned. sold it to a friend he wanted the engine. so a couple years later i bought a rusty 80 gp with v8. drove it till the frame rusted out. 2 years after that i bought a 83 gp. drove it for a couple years. then had kids so had to sell it for a bigger ride.13 years ago i bought my 86 cutlass i have.the guy i bought it from said it had a blown head gasket.i bought it for 100.00. got it home a couple weeks later i seen it was low on antifreeze so i filed it up found out the water pump was bad replaced it then drove it for 6 months and never had a problem. then the friend i sold the 81 to in 93 called me and asked if i wanted to buy the 403 back.he bought it for a car he had but the car was junk. so i gave him 250.00 for the engine and trans back. then i decided to rebuild the 403 and had the trans rebuild. and installed them in my now 86.

 

[melloelky]

growing up my dad's friend(let's call him Wally)had a later el camino ss the four headlight,two tone.Wally didn't know anything about cars,loved vette's(suuuper yuppie he was)i remember my dad taking the passenger door apart and getting the regulator working again by greasing everything up.freeing up the window.we used the car for the rest of the day and i couldn't get enough of it.the old man said "this is a gentelman's pick up rite here,just enough room for you and your honey"with a wink.few years later my brother tried to buy it from Wally but he sold it to a state trooper because "i might get in trouble with the vette"...and the rest is history.

 

[Texas82GP]

But the car took forever to come in. Nearing the Christmas '84 holiday period, home on leave from the Navy, the car still wasn't at the dealer. So for fun, I test drove 2 leftover '84 H/Os and a NEW 85 442 (white/blue) at the nearby dealership. Contrary to popular belief, not every limited edition car flew off car lots. I ALMOST bought one of those 84 H/Os because they were going to knock off plenty for me to take it home. It was tempting. I even put a very small deposit down to hold it until that Monday. But before I bit, I called Arlington plant to find out if my car would get built (thanks for the phone number and build plant information, Dad), got routed around until I finally talked to someone in scheduling, gave them my order number, and they said that car should have already been built but somehow didn't get in the system. WTF. Can you believe that crap? They estimated after the holidays it would be hard scheduled and she said she would make sure it got pushed through (maybe since I told her I was in the Navy home on leave and her son was in the Navy had something to do with it. I dunno). She asked me why the dealership didn't run a status request for outstanding orders report or whatever. I don't know. I didn't know how ordering cars worked. To me it was like this- I walk in, sit down with an option check off list, mark it up, hand it to the salesman, then pay my down payment, and pick up the car when it arrives. Simple. Anyway, I just let the deposit on the 84 go.

So when I finally received my 85 442 in February 1985, I already had contemplated its eventual restoration in the future (Back to the Future hadn't been released yet until July). Who the f**k does that? So what do you do? I decided that I wasn't going to go through that route of Hemming's, a phone call, and a prayer again. You start buying GM parts for it...and you could only do that at the dealership. The first parts I bought were the factory floor mats and the grilles. The grilles IIRC were around a whopping $35 each!!! Wasn't sure if I wanted to keep the original grilles though, as it was a lot of chrome, so I purchased a set of new 84 H/O grilles. They were actually a few bucks more than the 85 grilles. Never put those on, though, so I traded those for something else for the 72. Not sure what it was, but I needed it. Once I got hold of a microfiche parts book for it from the local dealership after the 85 model year, it was off to the races. I then had to find a fiche reader, which at the time, wasn't hard to do. But it didn't have a print feature. So that sucked. Those cost a lot of $$. And I was more than capable of writing down numbers.

Thus, it started me down the road of looking up GM part number and getting what I thought I was going to need. And now, I have a mountain of NOS GM G-body parts. Even the nuts/bolts. People thought I was an idiot for paying dealer prices (I did get a healthy discount, though) for parts when you could get the generic stuff from NAPA or whatever. I never listened to them. I told them one day this crap might turn into gold. And then a funny thing happened. G-body parts started drying up from the dealerships. Now some of the junk I've amassed is worth as much as 10X or more what I paid for it. And the paint job? I sold off some of the extra NOS parts I have and now there's $11K in the bank waiting to pay for a decent paint job. And although I can't ever say I have every part known to G-bodies, I can pretty much bet there's a very good chance I have it if it pertains to a black 85 442. If I stumbled on something that I thought I could use and I could get a fair price, I picked it up. For instance, I have two complete tail and backup lamp sets for it. Or 3 complete air shock setups. 2 sets of quarter windows. Got fistfuls of Olds emblems. A few ACDelco carburetors left after selling some. And a big box full of ACDelco V8 HEI distributor rotors I got for cheap. I may have went a bit overboard with the stripes/decals. I got enough to do 5 black cars. And all this crap in the GM boxes.

Over the years, the 85 accumulate 60K miles on it. I know. "That's a lot of miles!" But not really. The car isn't a low-mile queen. It was my only car for a while. So several trips from Charleston, SC to Illinois and back to see my parents got racked up fairly quickly so the miles did too. In 1986, though, the miles went on much slower, as the car was parked in the then-new father-in-law's garage while the Navy moved us around. When I got back to Charleston in 1987, I knew I would pretty much be there for a while, so I went and got the car in 1988. The car got limited use until 1995, where it pretty much got parked and seldom used. It's always been garaged and they put that underbody sealer crap underneath so I'm pretty confident there should be no surprise rust waiting for me. No guarantees, but nothing has shown me there's going to be a problem there. A few paint nicks here and there, but a straight body (as Oldsmobile sent it to me, anyway). Now it sits in the shop waiting for me to do the rebuild of it. It's all there, and ready to be dismantled and stuff replaced. And in due time.

So even doing "replacmentication" of a G-body still takes a lot of time and a lot of upfront work to get the parts you need, because they have to be specific for your car. If I added it all up, I've probably spent at least as much, maybe more, time hunting down the pile of parts for just one car as Donovan has done doing the body work on his car. I'm not minimizing his efforts at all because the results are fantastic. But regardless, as a G-body owner, you pick your path and it takes time no matter what you do. This is why I don't buy the line of customizing a car necessarily takes more time than restoring one to factory stock. I'll still be test fitting and ensuring the part going on is the exact replacement of the part coming off. And I can't simply choose another route if the factory stuff looks goofy. If there's an extra tab on there, I have to make it work and can't simply cut it off to fit because it looks better.

And I know some of the stuff I take off the car will still be better than most people's current parts they'd like to replace, so I'm sure I could sell the good, used parts to someone that needed it, or restore the part if possible and put it on the shelf for my own use. And just because I have a new one doesn't mean I'll swap out the old one if there's nothing wrong with it. Depends on each part. But most of the time, I think I'll have a choice. I'll figure it out when I get there. My goal is to have the most expensive G-body stock restoration out there. Not necessarily the best. Just the most expensive. But it's never about the money. Not on this body style. It can't be. Or you'll cry in disappointment. At this rate, I have a good chance of making that. I've never seen a straight up stock complete frame-off G-body resto before. Maybe 88hurstolds' white 85 was a close one. He did a great job on that but I think he did everything but take it off the frame. He's about the only other crazy person out there I know of that would do something like that. Hutch's 87 442 is coming along nicely as well, but not a whole lotta mechanical stock on that car when he's done.

So what's YOUR story?

Sorry, I digressed. Probably didn't need to tell the saga of the "Rise of 69hurstolds", but we all had to start somewhere. And this is how I started down the NOS parts stash path. And for the most part, we all started in different places, but we all still return back to the garage in the end.

I really enjoyed your story. Thanks for posting it. I appreciate and admire how you can seemingly always come up with a GM part number and are quick to help folks here with the part numbers and even find the parts.

I have to ask, respectfully, does a 60k mile car need restoration? I'm guessing it's pretty damn clean isn't it? Do you want it to be showroom condition again? If so, that's totally cool. To each, their own. I'm guessing at that point you won't drive it much? I'm just curious about what you want from the restoration and then what happens next?

 

[69hurstolds]

I really enjoyed your story. Thanks for posting it. I appreciate and admire how you can seemingly always come up with a GM part number and are quick to help folks here with the part numbers and even find the parts.

I have to ask, respectfully, does a 60k mile car need restoration? I'm guessing it's pretty damn clean isn't it? Do you want it to be showroom condition again? If so, that's totally cool. To each, their own. I'm guessing at that point you won't drive it much? I'm just curious about what you want from the restoration and then what happens next?

Yes, it's pretty clean. And more importantly, it's all together. So when I start, I just invest in Ziploc baggies and Sharpie markers and look out. But the paint is 80s GM lacquer. It's "ok" but there's some crazing going on in it that it will definitely need a repaint. It hasn't been abused, but it hasn't been in a storage bubble either. I tried to keep the paint decent, but it's thin in some areas and the crazing I just couldn't do anything about. It sucks.

Mechanically, I may not rebuild the drivetrain. Jury's still out on that. I'll check things over to make sure it's going to work. May do a rear main rope seal just because while the engine is out. But not sure. Have to see how things go in that area.

My goal is a showroom example, or as close to it as I can get. I want it to ride down the road just like it did when I drove it off the lot. I remember it was nice and tight like my shipmate's sister. Nothing rattled except my teeth when it chirped 2nd gear. After years of hoarding parts for it, there's really no reason not to. NOBODY that I know of has resto'ed a 442 from the ground up without modifying it in some manner. Because everyone ends up beefing something up like extra braces, better suspension, poly bushings, etc. But not me. I'm going to stick with what the good General gave it. There may be a seal or fastener here and there that I couldn't obtain from a GM source, and I know some things will need to be restored and reused because GM never serviced the parts or I just can't find that part. But not much I won't have. I even have NOS Eagle GTs for it, although I'll probably end up using the repro Eagle GTs for obvious reasons. It should be the most expensive bone-stock restoration on a G-body ever. I know it will never be worth what I'll have in it, but that was never a consideration with me.

And drive it, I will. It won't be a MCACN entry or you won't see it roll across the stage at a Barret Jackson auction. But rest assured, it'll be out there and seen. I'm going to be building my time machine.

 

[Clutch]

I grew up the youngest and least likely to succeed in a all gm car family my uncle had a 30 acre junk yard with 24hr towing a body shop mechanic shop and dealer's license mom was a hot rodder loved Impalas and cutlasses my brother was 7 years older than me and always had cool rides 69 Camaro with a firebird rear clip my uncle built 69 Z/28 that went 11.72 on street tires with a full exhaust back in 84 2 68 GTO convertibles. Everybody had a hot rod. But as I got older that died off and the gm A-body cars that I loved got to expensive for me to afford. When I was very young I can remember my uncle's daily driver a green 69 442 with red fender liners and a 4 speed I loved that car even when it was laying in his junk yard left for dead. Anyway my first G experience was a 78 Cutlass brougham he bought at auction to reconstruct nymv907a back then that's how we made are money in this family ny salvage reconstructed in Pennsylvania would bring back a branded title so you sell it to a family member in Jersey and the R went away. (Can't do that anymore) lol I helped put that car back together and fell in love with them especially when my cousin and I realized if you knew what you were doing just about any GM engine bolted in them and they were clean and expendable because there was so many of them. It wasn't until high School when I was a used car dealer in the Asbury Park area that I actually got one of my own a white 83 Cutlass 3.8 auto on the column with a rod knock like the crank was going to fall out lol I did a SBC conversion using a 78 Impala with a paper problem on for a donor 305 th350 that I proceed to pull the pin on a regular basis and I would constantly put the car back together again several SBC s and at one point the junk yard cut me off for th350s lol 15 in one month all had the same converter and shift kit. Send break repeat. It was the old man John who let me register my business through his dealer's license sold me Lauren's Hurst Olds back then when my car was broke. Not a bad deal eather $500 and I gave him $50 a week back then I was just learning to make an honest buck inside the lines "ish" the car lot was basically a group of hot rodders that needed to make money to have hot rods and the G-body was very popular and still had loan value so we moved hundreds of them. So you see for me the G was a cheaper alternative to a rotted A and usually 1000 lbs lighter and with the right combo pritty competitive light to light or off the flashlight even on nights I scattered it. That cars long gone and honestly I've no idea how the H/O is still around but it will get done hell that green 442 my uncle had rotting away took a concours gold this past summer. I'm hoping this summer is a turning point for my cars I need something to get my adrenaline flowing once in a while.

It may all seem like rambling but if you read into it you'll get where I'm coming from

 

[Doug Chahoy]

I always liked the 81-88 G-bodies. All 4 brands. I liked the wagons and El Caminos. Back in the 80s when I was still working autobody , I thought of making a 2 door wagon with the El Camino B pillar. Slow forward to 2016, the bug bit me for another project. I’d just finished building my garage with a 2nd story for a bigger living room and master suite. Remodeled the rest of the house. So I was ready. I looked for a wagon for months with no luck. An ad on CL caught my eye for a 77,000 mile lady owned El Camino rust free, for a fair price. So I figured why not go the other direction. Get a wagon roof and tailgate and fab it into the Elky. It took me 5 months to find a wagon ( the body was shot ) that I could buy/cut the roof and tailgate off of. So over 3 years later and every extra dollar I’ve gotten has gone into my ADDICTION. !!!