Thought I'd use this as a sort of a build log, and see how far I can get before I throw in the towel at the amount of body cancer, and decide to part it out. Hopefully it doesn't come to that, especially since Oldsmobile only made 5,540 of them, and this would have to be close to the only one in Australia at this time.
Images following.
Picking it up from my brother's warehouse.
Slotting it into my garage.. took a bit of moving things around to get it in there, since the car is 2 metres wide, and 5.5 metres long.
There's a serious amount of sheet metal in this thing.
Cancer in the front left chassis rail.. fixable, but never fun to find.
This one might take a bit more work, but still fixable.
Not a fan of the colour, but this gives you a rough impression of how damn big it is. And how pretty it could be.
Oh look.. what's under here?
That.. is.. big. 7 litres (425ci) of GM thumping power! They were supposed to produce about 370HP out of the factory, but I'm pretty sure this one lacks a few ponies by now.
The bonnet (hood) is shagged, rusted and bent in so many places.. not sure what to do with this. Finding a replacement is not going to be cheap, and fixing it is close to a no-go. We'll see.
Original left hand drive, and the interior is in fairly good condition overall.
Seats are great, no rips or tears in either fronts or rear.
Rear bumper is all but shagged, but there is a mob in Canberra who claim to be able to fix it.. but the cost is almost the same as finding one in the States and importing it in. Flipping coins on this at the moment.
The boot is a write-off, but I can import a new boot from the States for about $300, and just weld that in instead.
If you look closely at this, you will see.. pop-rivets. This is the left rear quarter as seen from inside the boot. Dude thought this was the best way to repair it obviously.. leave the rust there, smack a bit of sheet tin over the top, pop rivet that sucker on, then bog and paint. Excellent.
So.. there you have it. Something that will be costing me thousands of hours, and I dare not think of the overall dollar cost involved. However, being (most likely) the only one in Australia, I just have to at least try to bring it back.
Thoughts and comments welcome.
Still, as you say it should be a pretty thing and no matter what sort of car it is, I can appreciate the work that goes into something like this.
