Bumpers FINALLY!!

Well its been awhile again but school has taken away my time for working on the car.  I still need to clean out the garage so I can push the car in to work on it before winter hits.  I have also lined up a guy to do my engine work (porting heads etc) then I will do the actual build.

Anyway I went back out to the yard and they were moving the Regal to get it in line for the crusher sadly.  Well I got thinking about it and I’m having them pull the bumpers for me.

Now some that read this are going to point out the regal bumpers are WAY smaller than the stock Cutlass ones.  This is a good thing!  I hate how huge the stock bumpers are.  So what I’m planning is to cut the bumper shocks down a little so that it pulls them in.  This should get the bumpers to sit almost flush with the front end, actually it will stick out about an inch.  This will give a look much more similar to a 60’s muscle car over the bloated bumpers of the 70’s.

More parts gathered

Well this week I was planning on having my shop cleaned out so I could start stripping the car down and get the new engine.  Well unfortunately I have spent the last few days laid up sick so I have yet to clean out the shop but it will happen soon.

Aside from that in the beginning of the week I went back to the wrecking yard with the dimensions of the  stock rear seat for the Cutlass.  As I posted earlier I pulled the leather seats out of a Pontiac Grand Prix GTP, well I measured up the rear and it was darn close so I grabbed that as well.  Today the local farm supply was having a big sale and I picked up a few tools I needed including a new chop saw to cut some braces for the car.  Also they had cans of rattle can paint for tractors and industrial, it gives a heavier coat and provides a tougher finish than regular rattle can paints.  I got just regular old gloss black but still need to get some primer as they were out.  The exterior of the car will be painted gloss black and the engine bay and interior will get a coat of flat black.

Alright finally getting to it…

Well it has been a few months but things are finally starting to roll in for the Olds so that I can get the project under way.  School and a severe lack of funds has kept it sitting basically untouched for a few months.  Well there was one exception my girlfriend and I cleared out all of the weeds from under the hood.  Yes I do have the coolest girlfriend ever.

Upon clearing out the weeds I discovered the engine under the hood was quite the lump, a ‘78 or ‘79 Pontiac 301, it was a sad sad day.

On the parts front the first thing I got was a set of aero mirrors off an ‘83 Cutlass from the U Pull It down in Tigard OR.  My buddy John was helping me that day and we would have pulled a front bumper as well except at the last minute john noticed that it was twisted.  I have made a deal with the guy I got the car from for an engine and transmission he had in his shop that I will pick up soon.  This week I made my first exploration of the local wrecking yard only to find only two G bodies in the entire place.  I did manage to pull the core support cross braces from an ‘83 Regal.  On another note I also scored a set of black leather seats from a Pontiac Grand Prix GTP.  Going to go back and look at the rear seat to recover my existing back seat.

More to come.

The Cutlass has landed.

Welcome to my build log.  This site is being put together to produce a log of my current project car, a 1980 Olds Cutlass.  This project has gotten the name “Bandit” for a couple reasons, first I made out like a bandit because I got the car for free.  Secondly as we were loading the car up on the trailer my uncle started singing “East Bound and Down” the theme from the Smokey and the Bandit movie and well it stuck in my head.

The car started off as a diesel and has had a Pontiac engine swapped in however that engine has thrown a rod (or so I’ve been told), so I’ll be hunting down a new engine to become the soul of this beast.

In following posts I’ll comment on progress, new parts going in, things that have worked and not worked as well as post pictures of the progress.  There will also be some dedicated pages to some subjects like the engine etc.