79 Olds Cutlass Wagon school project...

[73GMCSprint]

Looking good. Bet you're excited to start putting it back together again.

[SRD Art]

That I am. Even more so I'm excited about narrowing and installing the 9" rear and LS motor once I get to Georgia. The goal is to have it complete, hopefully painted and all, by the LS fest in September.

[dug]

I enjoyed reading through your thread. You're very thorough and have good pics to go along with it. I'm looking forward to seeing this thing go back together. Keep up the good work.

[SRD Art]

Thanks!

New parts came in...

Inside my fuel tank was pretty nasty so I opted for a new one. Best price I could find was from Rock Auto. It came with the filler tube soldered in.



Next is my '98-02 F-body calipers, shown next to a g-body caliper. These also came from Rock Auto. Outright the calipers were slightly cheaper from the local parts stores but their core charge was as much as the calipers, whereas Rock Auto's core was only $10. I didn't have cores so I went with RA and saved a bunch overall.

[SRD Art]

Today I moved the frame from the collision repair shop back to the street rod shop. It's a bit of a truck around the buildings, and this cart from innovativetools.com worked great! They claim it can handle 125 lbs per shelf, and folds up for easy storage. The shelves can be attached on either side and raised or lowered to a bunch of positions.



here it is back in it's happy home.



A little closer view of the front frame rail brace.



Here's a great idea for all those no partner or holes in the heel sport socks- they make great frame paint protectors for jack stands!



And last for today I took the 7.5 rear partially apart to change the right side axle seal. Although a very small leak it made a mess in there. Luckily I nabbed the good brakes off my parts wagon so to swap this out it'll only cost the price of the seal and top off the gear lube.

[dug]

What's with the tranny cross member? It looks all bent up

[SRD Art]

That's the way the factory designed it, it's pretty goofy. These cars are designed for single exhaust and for exhaust clearance the cross member follows the contour of the floor pan on the passenger side.

[Tony_SS]

Looking great Ben.. keep it up, hope to see you and the wagon here this year.

[waynieZ]

It looks great! Nice work.

[SRD Art]

Looking forward to it Tony!

Thanks Wayne!

A little more progress-

The rear suspension is mostly in, still waiting on shocks and springs. I did a quick clean and spray on the rear axle. Up close it doesn't look as nice as the frame, but when I swap the 9" in there I'll take a little more time to make it look nice. To save time I also left the Spohn control arms red for now. I'm a bit worried about the VHT orange paint not being very durable. I noticed that Eastwood has a burnt orange powder coat paint, so I figure if they have it, it should be available commercially as well. Once I get to GA I plan on looking into having all the orange parts powder coated, including the Spohn arms. Still havta fabricate a way to attach the rear Camaro sway bar...





I also got a shipment from Summit. Drag Bags for easy spring rate adjustments at the track and to help with keeping things level after packing my car for my move, Energy Suspension Body mount, front lower control arm, and 36mm sway bar mount bushings, some all black sway bar end links, and gaskets to put my 406 back together. To get the car together on the cheap I bought Moog springs for now. I've heard both positive and negative about these, but Summit sells them for $54 for the pair and I needed something cheap for now. They're #5660, rated at 598 lbs. A lot of guys run the 5662 which are 748 lbs, but that sounds a bit stiff and Marc from SC&C suggested something around 550 lbs is a decent rate for what I'm after. Once I get the fiberglass hood and swap in the lighter LS based motor they should be just about right.