'79 Cutlass Pro-Touring Wagon, Mad Wagon II

[SRD Art]

Hey all- I'm at it again! With my Pumkinator torn down for some serious updates that will blur the line of street/ autocross car a little more, I needed another car for a daily driver. I've been driving my 454 powered 2500 '77 Suburban for over a year now and I've about had enough of big and clunky mixed with horrible gas mileage. I rescued a '78 Monza station wagon earlier this year and planned a 5.3 LS swap driver for it, but as much as I like burning the curves there just isn't much aftermarket suspension support for these cars so I wasn't totally sure I wanted to follow through with this one...

As many of you also know my son's Coppertop '78 Cutlass wagon got creamed by an elderly driver with her brain turned off, and a year later we're still fighting to get an acceptable insurance settlement so it's been on hold. To make Coppertop's rebuild a little easier though we picked up a '79 parts car from a kid down in AZ. Recently my work hired a a really good new paint and body guy who took a good look over Coppertop and says he can fix it without needing the rear 1/4 panel off parts car. With nothing better to do than get myself neck deep into another 1st gen G-Body Cutlass wagon build things have started to come together to resurrect the parts car!

For the first phase build of Pumkinatror click here. I'll be updating that thread as I upgrade a bunch of stuff on that car too.

[SRD Art]

So the story of the Mad wagon- A nice kid down in AZ bought this car and over time customized it to his liking with a Mad Max theme. I remember cringing when he first started bolting stuff to the outside and saying to myself as soon as you get bored with it please let me give it a good home. After a while I started to appreciate that he was doing his own thing and kept my thoughts to myself. In time he eventually had a healthy motor in it and then found a 2 door Malibu so he swapped the drivetrain over, and the wagon sat in the back yard for a while.

After Copper got hit I contacted him to see if he wanted to sell it and he gave me a great deal hoping I would get it running again. That wasn't my plan at first but I didn't have the heart to tell him. For close to a year it's sat in my driveway waiting for me to decide what to do with it. Eventually I did a rendering of what I would do with it should I ever put it back together, and based it on the first look for Pumkinator with a color change. When my 17 yr old daughter saw it she asked if she could autocross it with my son and I and that was that, it was a done deal.

To Pay homage to the car's former life I decided to keep the Mad Wagon name attached to it and am calling it Mad Wagon II. Obviously the Mad Max theme is nixed, but after watching the Mighty Car Mods guys say "mad" to describe what we US guys might call "bad" I figured it all works out. Here's also the artwork for "haul in the family"...

[SRD Art]

A couple years ago Roman bought a wrecked Tahoe for a 5.3 swap into Coppertop. He bought a Texas Speed 224R cam and some other parts for it but thee accident put all that on hold. A few months later I did some artwork in trade for a 6.0L LS and I decided that Roman could better hit Copper's performance goals with the 6.0, so we traded. So the general plans for MWII are-

Box and notch frame with a few basic bracing mods.
Mostly stock 5.3 with the 224R cam plus headers and a good flowing exhaust.
4L60E from the Tahoe
Pro Touring suspension, I haven't decided how far I want to take this one yet.
My old 17x9.5 MB Old School wheels and 275-40s all around
98-02 Camaro brakes
7.5 rear with an aftermarket posi center.
Bucket seats and a console with an interior upgrade.
Body work and paint.
Drive and enjoy.

[SRD Art]

When we went to AZ we also stopped by another G-Body wagon guy's place and picked up his old frame. He's doing an independent rear suspension full build with a different frame on his Malibu wagon and setting it up for the Silver State Classic. I read a while ago that back in the day drag racers liked the Vega wagons because they were more stable at speed, so maybe there's something to that.

Here are some pics of the old frame. It's been clearanced for rear brake calipers, dual exhaust and has a thrown together trailer hitch. I will be starting the frame notch and boxing it after work today and then building a better hitch. At that point I'll get on to some bracing. Over all it's in decent shape, no real bad rot or anything. More soon...

[grendel]

Interesting trailer hitch attached to the frame.

What are you doing with the CJ grill?

[Ben@SpeedTech]

Yeah I think that hitch was a quickie get 'er done job by the previous owner so I'll be building a proper one like the one on my Pumkinator.

He kept all the body bolt ons, I surely didn't have any use for them.

[SRD Art]

I've made a little progress on the wagon frame, I got it all boxed and and got working on the notch too. The boxing of the frame went great with my new Eastwood 175 welder. I'm not a welding expert by any means and haven't really welded since hot rod school near 6 years ago, but this welder worked flawlessly and I was able to do some fairly decent work with it.

The frame notch wasn't as pretty. Rather than buy a kit I simply moved the outer rail face inward. I used a plasma cutter to cut the side of the rail off, and I found it was a little bit of a challenge to draw a straight line. I still have to finish this up so I'll post more pics when the job's all done.

Next up is finishing the notch, some bracing and a better trailer hitch design.

[gofastwclass]

Nice to see you getting dirty again. I've seen the move the outer section of rail over trick for years. It's a simple way to get a wider tire in the back of a G-Body on a budget.

Speaking of budget, I like to see the big dollar builds but I'm a DIY guy at heart. One way to get straight lines is to clamp a straight edge to the panel and run the plasma cutter against it for your cut. You may need to practice a bit on scrap to get the position right but it makes your cuts look like they were done by a pro even if you've had too much caffeine.

[rixtrix1]

Hey, Ben( sorry I couldn't remember your name in the PM, so I came here), this is looking to be a fantastic project and you definitely have the right idea for what that frame needs. Ditch that "hitch" for sure, lol.. I'll be following along! PS, I like "your" shop. It's a little bigger than my 323 sqft.