My donor body tub will gladly donate this piece for the cause. I have no inner and outer cowl panel for this side, so it’s probably not getting any. Welded in and done. Man, it’s ugly. Thank god a less ugly fender will hide all this.
Driver’s side fender is on. I’m glad I added the bottom mounting flange. Also started chipping away at the headlights. Really start to take shape, and I can start to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Wife came in to check my progress. She said I should call it the driving color chart.
Rocker trim is on. More rust covered up. Installed a decent overflow jug and washer bottle. Started routing the headlight harness. Waiting on the little white plastic headlight bumpers to install the passenger side buckets and bezel.
Last update for now. This sorta pains me. I need to get this thing running and up to temp so I can set the timing and tune the carb. That means I need to button up the cooling system. The parts store had the belts, but nobody had radiator hoses. For the millionth time, I had to get into the stash. I found an upper hose that I think is actually for the car. If it’s not. It’s close. The bottom hose started as, you guessed it, a stock lower radiator hose from a turbo regal. I chopped about an inch off the rad side, and about 7” off the engine side. Fit is better than expected. Clutch fan, I believe is from an 87 regal with a 307 olds. The clutch feels nice, and it’s a 7 blade. The most painful part of this whole thing is the fact that I had to install my mint oem 70 fan shroud. I’ve been squirreling away this jewel for at least 10 years, and it’s always been for this car. Down the road, I’ll end up swapping it out for one of Todd’s reproductions, but for now, I need to see progress. I didn’t get any pics of the parts, but here’s a couple of it all together.
I lied. One last update. Might be taking a few days off, as my bride wants me to knock out some stuff in the house. I feel like I’m getting away from the roadkill theme a little, especially after installing a $1000 fan shroud and an original coded 70 radiator. However, this build is all about using what I have at my disposal with minimal trips to the parts store, even though I have a good bit of time and money invested in tracking all this stuff down over the last 12-13 years. Getting back to the current task of getting it running. About a year ago, I decided I wanted to make an engine run stand. Started making the cart, put wheels on it, etc. I even bought cheap NAPA oil pressure and temp gauges. Fast forward to today. The run stand stalled out months ago (see what I did there?), so the gauges made their way into Goldie. Made the bracket from aluminum. Drilled the holes to line up with the radio bezel holes so there was no harm done to the dash or bezel. I gotta be honest, it looks terrible. But we’re all about function here, and who needs a radio when you have a 455 breathing thru Mickey Thompson headers? This will likely all be temporary just to get the car running and watch the vitals. Later down the road, I’ll get better gauges mounted in a better location, and maybe even a radio block off plate. All that’s left now is to knock another hole in the firewall and finish hooking them up.
Tim, if your interested, I have the perfect fan shroud for that car. It's a 70 but it needs a little repair. I actually have 2 of them. The good one has a big chunk missing out of the bottom. The other one is the "Donor" shroud. I had plans of making the repair using Dave's plastic welding method just never got that far down the "I gotta get to that" list
Haha. Well Stan, if I decide to bring it down, it will be without a truck and trailer. I will have to renew my AAA before then, though.
Yeah don't make to nice..you're just going to use it to pick up beer lol All it has to be is reliable Oh.. and burnouts in the parking lot
Pressing forward, next job was to rebuild the rear brakes and install the new wheel cylinders. Then onto the front with new calipers. Also checked and repacked the front bearings. I’m getting anxious to get the car to finally move under its own power, which it hasn’t done since 1975. I had my son up in the car pumping the brake pedal. Found that 3 of my 4 flares on the metal lines on the rear axle won’t seal. Very frustrating. First thing I did was order new correct lines from inline tube. The next thing I did was throw away this piece of $hit flaring tool. Got the front end mostly tidied up. I have 2 decent front bumper cores, and this one lines up the best. Bumper is on. I even reinstalled the rad support cross braces.
