1973 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme 350      This is a 1973 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme I just purchased on eBay. My wife is pregnant, so I'm trying to reduce the number of projects and expense. It may not make sense that if I wanted to reduce my projects, why then would I buy another one? Well, the 1984 Porsche 944 needed a few more things to finish it. Probably another grand worth of parts to make it perfect, and some paint work. The Trans Am realistically needed at least another $8,000 to get it back into the condition where it would run and drive, and I don't even know if that would have included paint. So... this car is basically an 80k mile original car. The paint is not original, and it was hit from the rear, but the car is basically immaculate everywhere else. It runs, it drives, and the A/C even works. I can repair the rear with minimal effort. My goal is to repair the rear-end of the car, and get it back into good serviceable condition. I'll keep it's 350 in there for now, but once everything else is taken care of, I'll likely install my new Oldsmobile 455 big block in there. I don't have the car yet, but here are pictures from the auction. 11/02/2008 - Status Update / Repairs. It's November 2nd... two days from election, and Lewis Hamilton wins the Formula-1 Championship this morning... but I thought I'd make some time to do a quick update. About a month ago, I did some temporary repairs to the rear-end, you can see in the attached images that I've straightened the frame somewhat, but also installed a temporary bumper. This makes the car look a bit more "acceptable". I've been busy at work, but when I get a free Thursday afternoon, I plan to drive it over to the frame shop down the street. In addition to body work, I've also rebuilt BOTH carburetors. I rebuilt the carburetor I found in the trunk (the original). Unfortunately, there was so much rust and gunk in it that even after rebuilding it, the motor ran horribly. I believe the idle stop ports and the primary jets are clogged. The replacement carburetor (that came on the car) was in good shape, but having sat for 5 years, the accelerator pump cup gasket was worn, I replaced that and the mating gasket and the car runs much smoother now. Performance is very smooth, and hesitation has been completely eliminated. The only exception is that, from a dead-stop, there is slight bogging. I may need to adjust the secondaries. One other thing to note, I gave the engine bay a good cleaning. The gold paint on the valve covers is actually in really good shape, as is most everything else in the engine bay. The intake manifold however, is fairly rusty and nasty. Since I plan on replacing the engine anyway, I won't bother painting the manifold until I've pulled the motor. I intend to keep this motor, but put it on an engine stand and clean it up. As it stands, the car runs really, REALLY well. The tank is still dented, but I don't plan on installing the new one until I've got the frame straightened. 09/30/2008 - Car is home, and work starts. The damage isn't that bad, but in some areas it's a bit worse than I thought. As it turns out, the frame is actually bent. Although not bad, it is preventing the body from being fixed. The rear-right most section of the frame was pushed in and up, this in turn is what tweaked the passenger side quarter. I'm hoping to have a frame shop look at it near the end of this month, or this weekend. overall, the car is in really good shape. The chrome and trim are all intact, with only a few odds and ends missing. The interior is in good shape as well. Having sat for 5 months, the dust really collected, but it cleaned up very well. I still need to go back through it again, but the seats and panels are excellent. The engine is surprisingly powerful too. I keep thinking of everything in terms of a 455, so anything other than a 455 is small. But the 5.7 liter Oldsmobile motor really isn't that small! It has excellent power in passing maneuvers. This past weekend, I changed the spark plug wires, cleaned the plugs, replaced the air filter, added some carburetor cleaner to the engine, and flushed the radiator. Unfortunately, there is TONS of rust in the radiator. It looks like it was mostly water, rather than coolant. It came out like brown water. I've replaced it with a 50/50 mix. I've also installed some exhaust manifold gaskets since it appears the manifolds have warped slightly over the years (this is normal for a car that's 35 years old). The car runs MUCH better now. It runs smooth, and has plenty of power. I've also taken off the original bumper and replaced it with a spare one I got. In the mean time, this will have to do until I can get the frame straightened. I bought a few more things which I'll take care of this coming weekend. I plan to change the oil, transmission fluid and filter, the carburetor fuel filter, the belts, and the heater valve. I'll post some pictures as soon as I can get them up. 07/20/2008 - Won the auction, it's mine now. I've just won the auction. It has some damage, but it's otherwise a very solid car. Here are some pictures from the auction: