I found this walk around on Youtube and it's my old car!! I'm just wondering if the new or previous owner comes in here. So many things give it away as my car including the '68 fender on the driver side, the missing windshield trim, the row of dents in the drivers quarter, the gauges and shifter, the silver showing through on the drivers side armrest where I vinyl dyed a replacement armrest. I haven't seen the car in about 15 years and I was stunned to see it on Youtube for sale in Texas. The video link, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=boftRYsMDHc&feature=related What it looked like when I owned it,
Must be a small world. I am pretty sure that is my car now. It has the 68 driver side fender and row of dents along the drivers side rear. When I first got it the trim had been stripped off and was in the trunk. The car had been painted silver. Two weeks after I got it I crashed it (first car at 16) into a tow truck and put a new passenger side fender and a GS hood on it. I have owned it now for 10 years. I had started losing interest in it and was going to sell it awhile back (youtube video), but luckily came to my senses and didnt. I think the name of the guy I bought it from was Brian something. Not sure if that rings a bell. It would have been in 1999. When did you sell the car?
BTW, if it was your car...Da*n you for keeping the 455 and 12 bolt posi! The 350 is still good though, the 10 bolt peg leg isn't....:laugh:
Hey, glad to see you here. I responded to your e-mail earlier and I hope you don't mind but I'm going to just copy and paste what I sent. Heres a history of the car as far as I know it. I bought it in the late 80's from a guy that brought it here to Minnesota from Georgia, the cars early life in the South explains why it's so clean underneath. I'm not sure what the "claimed" mileage is/was but I bought the car with 148,000 miles on it, I do know one subsequent owner tried selling it as a real low mileage GS so the actual mileage may have been lied about over the years without anyone knowing the truth. He had pulled the blown up original 350 and replaced it with a 430 and after driving it up here the 430 blew up and he stuck it in the garage, I believe he was the one that pulled all the heater parts out of the car which again saved it from rusting away being driven during the winter here. When I bought it I had another '69 no where near as nice as far as the body went but I had built a 455 and TH400 and was looking for a better body to put them in and this car was it. I swapped in my 455 and TH400, installed a set of bucket seats, the shifter, gauges (I used to have them in the radio opening because the radio was useless with the big block). I also added all the GS emblems including the quater lights and door trim panel emblems. I also installed the carpeting, one other big clue for me was the way the drivers seat belt is bolted to the floor without a retractor. When I bought it the drivers side had the '68 fender on it, I also had a '69 GS hood that I sold with the car but I didn't use it much as it had bent corners up by the windshield. I drove it that way for a few years during which time I blew up three stock 10 bolt rear ends before finally installing a Chevy 12 bolt with 3.36 gears. The car was an absolute BEAST with the big block and as you know the manual brakes were not particularly effective. I did notice you installed power brakes. Eventually I found it very hard to keep buying winter beaters every year and finding winter stoarge for the car and the 8-10 mpg fuel economy was killing me. One of the guys I worked with had a fairly nice '71 GS350 so I worked a deal with him for cash plus his entire drivetrain and since we worked at a lincoln dealership we just pulled them in stalls side by side and swapped everything from the radiator to the rear axle. Thats also when the e-brake got screwed up because I let him swap rear ends when I wasn't there and he being less than a genius didn't think to pull axles and leave brake backing plates alone. So I'm not sure what gears they were but they're stock GS350 gears. After getting it going with his drivetrain I found that his 350 had a burnt exhaust valve so I found a junkyard 350-2bbl and swapped the GS350 4bbl intake and carb onto it and it ran really well. The guy with the '71 still has the car with my drivetrain in it and the engine has never needed rebuilding since I did it. I've always watched for that car to pop up somewhere and I was stunned to see it on Youtube. Before I post pics I'll give a few more of the details that made me sure it was mine, missing windshield trim, missing side trim (it had cheesy stick on trim when I bought it), gauge installation, floor shifter, shiny spot next to the headlight switch, silver/light blue under black vinyl dye on drivers armrest, drivers seat belt bolted to the floor (it's actually a rear seat belt), the '68 fender was the first thing that really caught my eye, the row of dents in the drivers quarter that everyone always thought was bad bondo work until I gave them a magnet to check it and I could probably go on but that should be enough. I built the 455 myself, heres the details. '71 455 block '71 low compression rotating assembly '70 Riviera small chamber heads ported by Tesar engineering locally Poston 113 cam Poston headers Poston rocker kit T/A SP1 intake Holley 850 Stage 1 fuel pump Kenne-bell oil pump Stock distibutor with Mallory point Accel super stock coil-not the big yellow one, that went in the car with the 350 Trans was a built TH400- It would break them loose hard shifting into 2nd Rear end was a 3.36 12 posi bolt out of a '67 Chevelle. From a dead stop you could punch it and roast the tires off all the way into third gear and it would completely cover the road behind you with smoke, It was a bit of a handful due to the manual brakes and the fact that I never fitted a power steering pump until the 350 went back into the car. Are you selling it now or keeping it? Not that I could afford to buy it back anyways but I'm curious. It was always a great car for me and I did my best to keep it nice and it appears that you've done pretty well with it as well, I'm really surprised it has never been restored and the bodywork fixed but I guess if that had been done I wouldn't have recognised it. Thanks for e-mailing me and feel free to stay in touch, I have more pics including pics from when I first bought it but they haven't been scanned so if you want more let me know. Take care and enjoy the car, it may just be a Skylark Custom but for the life it's lived and the miles on her shes a special car. Again, I'm just really glad to see that my baby is still around. :3gears:
By the way, both bumpers, the grille, headlight trim, the dash pad and various other bits on your car came from this car. That car was a major sleeper and a bit of a rat, I never understood why the rear end never blew out in that black car until after it had been scrapped. The black car was a Canadian built car and from what I understand they all came with 12 bolt rear ends which would expalin why I never broke that one but blew out three 10 bolts in the green car.
