78 Cutlass Wagon- "CopperTop"

Hey All-

A lot of you have seen my Pro Touring Pumkinator '79 Cutlass wagon build, link in my signature. Because of changes in plans along the way I have several leftover parts boxed up in the garage. My 15 year old son and I have been collecting parts for a 73 Nova I picked up for him a while back, but since it's a full frame off pro touring build it's evident it's going to be a while to build it. He's turning 16 over the summer and really wants to drive to school next year so we've kept our eyes open for something cheap, complete and running that he could drive. As fate would have it a great opportunity fell into our laps recently...

I first saw this car at a local grocery store. The family driving it looked like they didn't have much $, and the car was loaded like a storage unit. I felt prompted to chat with them about it, but I didn't want to bother them so that was that. A couple weeks later I saw the car parked in an apartment complex not far from our house. It sat in the same place for a couple weeks and I was half tempted to go ask the owners if they'd sell it, but again left it alone. Then after about a month the car was gone. I figured I missed out on a good opportunity, but such is life. About 3 months later I saw it parked in local store parking lot, with a for sale sign on it! This was right after Christmas and money wasn't all there so I just drove past it several times on the way home from work wondering if I should stop and look at it. After two weeks it was still there, so I figured what could it hurt to ask, and called and made arrangements for the next evening for my son and I to go drive it.

The owners owned a title loan type place and said they got it from a family that was having problems and needed cash to move out of state. They informed me it was original miles, just over 89,940! Everything worked on it, except the A/C belt was missing. Turns out it's an L code Chevy 350 backed by a TH350, fairly rare for a G body, especially a wagon. Almost everything under the hood looks original, even has the original hose clamps on the lower radiator hose! It had a few minor door dings and a decent dent in the tailgate, but there is no rust anywhere except for a small patch of surface rust where the paint is gone near the rear window. Judging by the sand/dust everywhere and lack of rust I'd say pretty good chance this car spent most of it's life in the south western states. I gave it a pretty good check over and found a lot of little quirky things that need to be fixed, but the engine and trans worked fine. I told them we were interested but was concerned about the cost of fixing everything to make it safe and driveable and asked if the price was negotiable. They said they were sick of looking at it parked in front of their house and if they knocked $300 off the asking price would I take it away? I seriously would've paid their original asking price but this was an even better deal, so we jumped on it and brought it home. My son was ear to ear smiles all the way home, he totally digs it.

More to come...

First thing we did was some planning of what needed to be done, what we wanted to do, and an inventory of what parts I have left over from my car. As far as appearance goes, I had the painter I work with at Speedtech Performance look it over and he thinks the factory copper color should buff out fairly nicely. With that in mind I went to work on a concept rendering. The car definitely needs some visual upgrades to get rid of the grandpa look. Black always does that pretty well but I don't want to go overboard and duplicate my car. Just the right amount should do the trick...



With it being copper and black and trying to achieve a tough guy look what better to call it than CopperTop. My son came up with the angry CopperTop dude so I just had to throw it in the rendering.

Eventually I would like to fix the door dings, get the body smooth and repaint it, but for now we'll go with a bit of the roughed up Street Fighter look. All the chrome is in surprisingly decent shape so we're going to use black PlastiDip to not making it permanent just yet. Later on we'll decide whether to powdercoat it or not. The lower stainless body trim is coming off and I'll have to grind down the rivets, so from the lower body line down will get semi gloss black paint. All other trim like the wheel openings and such will either be removed or painted black. Window frames, B and C pillars will go semi gloss black. The stripes will also be semi gloss black and will match the styling of mine. Eventually a cowl scoop will get put on and I have a spare set of single rib Salon grilles like the ones on my car that will replace the stock 3 bar wagon/442 grilles. The stock grilles are in great shape so they will be for sale on ebay soon. My son wants fender vents like mine, but I designed his to open vertically to be a little different. A ride height adjustment via some performance suspension parts and my old GTA wheels wrapped in 245-50-16s will finish the look off.

We took a bunch of "Before" pics to document changes. We took some with my car to compare stock to the pro touring changes I made to mine. I think his car should be as low as mine when we're done. 🙂

Overall the body isn't too bad. The worst part is the dent in the tailgate, but I can work most of that out and then bodywork finish it later on when I have more time.

Man this thing looks grandpa-y. Only whitewalls could make it worse, lol! At least the color is a little aggressive.



Looks like something was spilled on the car. Our painter at work said he thinks it will buff out, hopefully so. The white specs look and feel like house paint spatter, that or grandma's biscuit mix got splashed on it and never washed off. All that stainless on the rockers and the side door trim is coming off.



I was thinking to leave the roof rack on this one but my son insisted it needed to come off. We're keeping it just in case we want to throw junk up there for a road trip. That's just dust on the roof.

Here's the biggest (maybe only) redeeming quality of the interior. Surprisingly, along with the 350 rather than the typical generic 305 most G bodies get, this car also came with a Rally Gauge pack and factory Tachometer! What a weird combination for a wagon. This car was a great investment, I figure if I parted it out I could just about sell the dash on ebay for half of what I paid for the whole car! Lol!



Now on to the ugly. The interior is really gross. The seats are in fairly good shape for being upholstered in cloth and as old as they are. Unfortunately everything else is just nasty dirty.





Not sure what this is, but it smells like barf. There's more of it on the rear interior panels and floor. Eeew.



Nice steering wheel, eh? We'll be changing it out as well as replacing the key cylinder with a black one. We're looking into doing a floor shifter and stubby floor console so the factory column shifter will likely come off too.



We'll be needing a glove box lock as soon I can figure out how to get this one open. Probably have to drill it out. The wood grain look will be going away, as will the pillow top door panels.



More nastiness. Can someone pass the hand sanitizer please?



Not even going to comment on this.



This headliner shot should explain all the other issues with the interior. I'm surprised the car was void of duct tape anywhere.



We'll be turning the interior black so this carpet will be replaced. We'll keep the factory panels back here but probably cover them with some sort of material.

This was a nice surprise when I first saw the car up close. I had never heard of a G body that came with a Chevy 350, I thought the only V8 options were a Chevy 305 and some cars got the Olds 350 or 350 diesel. Thanks to the great guys at gbodyforum.com the "L" code engine option sticker, vin code and engine cast number were verified as the original 350 Chevy. Some folks said they've had G body El Caminos with a 350 but apparently a wagon with one is pretty rare. Every other car I've had got a 400 small block Chevy built for it, so this is my first 350 I've owned. Although I have another spare 400 waiting to be rebuilt for something, considering the originality of it, the 350 will stay with the car unless at some point we decide to convert to LS.



The air filter looks new as does the plug wires and plugs. Best I can tell the upper radiator hose and heater hoses are the only other things that have obviously been replaced along the way. Every wire, hose, and connection is intact. A/C belt is gone but the compressor isn't locked up and there is a little pressure in the system. I plan to get it working again, it gets mighty hot here in the summer. Since the car isn't registered or insured yet we haven't have a chance to get out on the freeway to test the cruise control yet.



The air pump was making an awful noise so we pulled the pulled it out and put a shorter belt on. Problem solved. Unfortunately it looks like the power steering pump is on it's last legs too so we'll be replacing that. The motor is pretty caked with dust and grease. The plan is to pull the engine and trans, clean 'em up and do a reseal. I will be replacing the intake with an airgap dual plane. While we have the timing cover off I will be installing a new timing chain and trying out a Summit cam to keep the car at a high school salary budget. The one I want is the 1103, I've heard lots of folks have had good success with it, and it's mild enough for a kid's daily driver. Plus it sounds good at idle which he hopes will earn him some big coolness points in the school parking lot. Here's a link to one in a 350 in an old truck- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_K-XV3Yum8k



Original radiator hose still has the tower clamps on it!



Underneath is pretty ugly. Here you can see the factory triangulation brace and larger sway bar. Upper ball joints are original, I suspect the rest of the front suspension is too. Most of that is coming out and will be replaced.



This car also has the engine bay fender braces. My wagon didn't have them so I think they're pretty cool. That'll help a bit, my son plans on autocrossing with me. We'll also be installing a 6 pt cage in this car to help stiffen things up a bit.

The first order of business was to spend some time cleaning the interior. We didn't mess with the carpet, I don't think there's any hope for it. Then we took it to the spray wash and hit the outside and engine bay. Hopefully we can buff the paint to look almost like this. 🙂



The engine cleaned up ok, there's that GM corporate blue paint. We've got some cool plans for engine bay colors and details. We don't have emissions testing here so all the smog equip will be removed. I'll be adding headers and a 3" single exhaust through a Flowmaster to replace the manifolds, huge cat and factory muffler. I plan to split the exhaust at the back side as my son wants the dual exhaust look. We're hoping the car will see low 15s/ high 14's at the track up here at 2800 ft altitude. A lot of that will have to do with what gears the rear has, I'll be checking that as soon as I can get it down to work and on the lift. At the end of the month is the first drag race day of the year, so we're hoping to run a few passes as it is to get a baseline before all the changes. My guess is maybe in the 17's.



That's it for photos at this point. We'll update as we start digging into it, likely next month when it starts to warm up a bit. Thanks for following along!