How "fixable" are our wagons?

My long standing worry about driving any "older" car in nice condition is that the next idiot, inattentive driver or what-have-you will be right around the corner. Having finally gotten myself into what I'd consider a nice B-body wagon, I've been thinking about this even more. I wouldn't say I'm afraid to drive and enjoy my wagon, only that I'm cautious when I do.

My dad has a 1979 Cadillac Deville Phaeton that was in great shape until he nailed a massive deer on his way to work one morning. The hit almost certainly would have totaled a newer car. He drove on to work with a half-busted front end and mangled fender. Finding parts for this car has been a battle. We're still fighting this battle...we've got the major parts, the frame has been repaired, but now we're waiting for the right repair person to come along and to have the money to finish the job.

As it happens, I was tooling down the highway yesterday, longroofing it in style when this dizzy woman in a Saturn thought she'd pass a semi without regard for how much distance one needs to safely pass. Fortunately, I was able to bring the mighty blue wagon down, nobody was behind me and I would have been able to pull off the road if needed. I made known my displeasure by way of the horn and this woman kind of looked at me like I was from Mars.

I see conflicting information here on the forum regarding parts availability. My guess is that things like body panels are probably no longer available new, and I've read that some of the glass can be hard to come by. Yet others say that parts cars are relatively common. So, that's pretty much my question...if and when something bad happens, and the car is not a total loss, are parts generally available to fix these cars? If it should ever go off, are things like the air bag still available?

I think it depends on where you are. Happily here in Texas, people were crazy about full-size cars, so at least on the sedan side, there are A TON of Caprice's out there. The wagons are harder to find here....with no rear a/c they had trouble keeping up in the summertime.

That said, check out these pics from the Pick-N-Pull in San Antonio. They have a HUGE section of just large GM cars.




Roady wagon




LT1 Sedan


Monte Carlo LS


Chevy with familier colors!


95 LT1 Roady.


Very complete G-body Cutlass


And Cutlass Wagon


Kicking myself here. This GP had all four 15x7 Rally II wheels. They were only $9.99 each....and I didn't nab them! Stupid!


More Roady Sedans


VERY CLEAN and SOLID 91 Olds Custom Cruiser. I got my exhaust heat shield off this car.










Another Roady Sedan


Very complete and solid Cutlass.



Burned Roady Sedan. Ouch!




Another G-body Cutlass


LeSabre Sport Coupe


Solid 78 Caddy


9C1 Caprice


There are other lots in Dallas and Houston with similar large GM sections, so at least for the near future, used rust-free parts are out there.

Also keep in mind the 94-96 Impala SS still has a large following, and there are a lot of websites and forums that cater to those. Many Impala parts are shared with wagons.

-Mike

god i want a cutlass wagon

Mike, I think my phone exploded.

koopa wrote:

god i want a cutlass wagon

here you go the price is right, if it were closer it would be in my driveway....

http://www.stationwagonforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=16494

Anyone got an answer to the original question? For what it's worth,,here's a partial opinion.

It seems the biggest issue is if you get rear ended, and crumpled, it could easily be all over for your wagon. Front fenders, hoods and grills, are easy to get from donor sedans.

Keep in mind given the age of our cars, it's all a numbers game. Most insurance companies will want to total the car, as it isn't "worth" much to them. $3000 repairs to a car valued at $2400 isn't worth it to them. If it's $30,000 car then it's to their advantage to fix it. Rarely does anyone ever make out well as the beneficiary of their goodwill.

I'm not paying for insurance to repair the wagon. It's pretty certain that the first claim would total the car. So I'm not sending them that money.

Have you had Shamoo appraised? I bet that it would be appraised at a lot more than $2400.

I expect that parts will become rarer and more expensive. I bought the car just when C4C hit, and the junk yard was full of good parts cars. That won't happen again. I haven't seen a B-body wagon in the U Pull and Pay for a year and a half. When someone threw a rock through the rear quarter window, the replacement came from a yard 350 miles away. I like the car, and Mrs Danger wants to keep driving it, but there will come a time when the parts will become too hard to get for a daily driver.

Nick You have have a good idea. I have been thinking of getting Shammoo appraised and insured for an agreed value. I know they will not honor sweat equity, but at the same time it's value should be greater than an average 19 year old vehicle is worth.

Your other point about the costs of replacement parts amplifies what I had said, that as the value of the overall vehicle diminishes and parts for it go up, the Insurance undewriters are more likley to total it than repair it.

One day soon, the junk yard parts supply is gonna run out on these cars.

There are basically zero parts available through the aftermarket. Sure, there are some but not much, especially for our wagons.

lakeffect wrote:

Nick You have have a good idea. I have been thinking of getting Shammoo appraised and insured for an agreed value. I know they will not honor sweat equity, but at the same time it's value should be greater than an average 19 year old vehicle is worth.

Your other point about the costs of replacement parts amplifies what I had said, that as the value of the overall vehicle diminishes and parts for it go up, the Insurance undewriters are more likley to total it than repair it.

Sweat equity in the car when appraised is included in the value, because it is "as is". The only time they do not allow sweat equity is if it is wrecked, and you do the repair work.

They will total a car when it reaches a damage cost of 80% of the replacement value.

A friend of mine had a 1970 Chevelle SS. He got hit by someone running a stop sign. The insurance company tried to total his car, because it was a nine-year old Chevy. He pulled out the appraisal, which showed that it was worth a lot more than book value for an ordinary sedan. The insurance company paid for repairs.

This was a decade before those old muscle cars got valuable. But he had a genuine SS, and he had done a lot of work on it.

Um did anyone else notice that 91 Olds Custom Cruiser has the very hard to find class III hitch. Mike needs to hook a kook up with that thing. Go get it man.

But back to the thread at hand, depending on the damage done the fixing up can be cheap and easy or intensive and costly. If you don't have very many yards that have replacement parts there's always www.Car-Part.com. But eventually things will be harder to come by and we will just have to start fabing up our own new parts. Right?

Parts here are pretty easy to come by (one local yard has 2 OCCs and about 10-15 RMS and 20 (at least) bubble caprices. Same for the boxes...2 caprice wagons and more boxes than I've ever seen on the road. Too bad I can't find an intact 77-90 caprice fan shroud if my life depended on it.

Oh man...I seriously need the gate and tail lights out of that white wagon.. They would go on a 93 caprice wagon yes?

randumnumber wrote:

Oh man...I seriously need the gate and tail lights out of that white wagon.. They would go on a 93 caprice wagon yes?

The gate would fit, but the trim is different. The tail lights have longer "bezel tails" on them. They would probably bolt up, but may interfere with the rear bumper cover. You need tails from a 92-96 Caprice (91s have a red tint to the bezel, 92-96 are black), and a 91-93 gate from a Caprice. The 94-96 gate latches are a little different.

Last December 2011 in NY state they use to total a car once it hit 60% but have bumped that number up to 75% within the last year since to many cars were getting totalled.

I'm more concerned about the wood trim wagons. Most of that trim is unavailable and is an automatic total as a result. I recently passed on a very very clean '94 RMW because it had a big dent in the left rear fender and the amount of work to make it look right was basically a total.

I would honestly feel better driving a no-wood wagon around. Then it's just paint and bodywork.

Dave, I would highly recoomend you get Shamoo appraised and look for an Agreed value policy for it. My Mom's mint 1 of 500 Jaguar was totaled backin October from the rear. She is STILL fighting with the insurance co for the other party. The collector value on the limited edition car per NADA is 11,500. After three months of arguing with the insurance company they have gone from 3000 to about 5000, using 'like cars that currentyl for sale'. Well considering they only made 800 of them and 500 the year hers was built there aren't many for sale. I did find two that sold at auction this year (Meecum, and RM) for 7K and 8.5K, but the insurance companies don't recognize auctions as they say usually auctions are for chairity and drive the price up. Didn't want to hear that collector car auctions are not for chairity. Anyway, I had prodded her to get the agreed value and she didn't pursue it and through no fault of her own, she's getting ripped off by Allstate.

As for availability of parts. As the cars age and more are crushed....wagon specific parts will become harder to come by. I did a production number thread somewhere around here and if I recall correctly, there was about 110-120K total wagons of the bubble years. vs. millions of sedans. Considering the Olds only had about 11K units built, they are the hardest to get parts for. Of course most mechanicals are the same and anything from the B-pillar forward is the same on a sedan (with a couple of minor differences), so mechanically, it's easy.

Not sure if you saw my other thread - got rear ended and had some minor damage. Basically needed a new bumper cover and new hydraulic bumper piston on one side. No damage to tail gate or anything else. Insurance totaled the wagon since paint, bumper cover, rental car, etc. would have been more than $3,000.

I am currently driving it unrepaired since it is just not worth the cost and I have not had time to deal with it myself.

koopa wrote:

god i want a cutlass wagon

Amen,Brother... 

God its saddening to see those cars like that especially the cutlass wagon(front end looks similar to my custom cruiser) and the white custom cruiser both still look beautiful

Get a spare car. They are cheap right now & fairly plentiful. So get a spare or 2 & you'll be all set.
Of course you need a place to park them.

I wish a place like that was in California, for some reason the B-Body isn't as popular on the west coast. I might buy a 92' OCC. I am going to get a Buick speedometer and put it in so it will work. It has a new transmission. hopefully i can find a Roadmaster interrior to put in it. Do you know of any places in So Cal that part those cars?

You may be able to replace the circuit board on the back of the cluster and retain the original face of the OCC cluster. The RM cluster is a lot more plain looking. You can use the circuit board from either a sedan or wagon. I have also seen a few OCC clusters available on the forum from time to time, if you do not want to delve into the circuit board replacement. If you do swap the whole cluster, I would like you old OCC cluster.

If you can get the spare cover and right D pillar from a 93 RMW, they fit a lot better than the originals. The difference that requires the D pillar is where the latch/thumb screw is located was changed in 93. They still made the Dark Maple Red in 93, as well as the Dark Sapphire Blue and I believe they made Camel too. There are some Ruby Red, and Dark Tan RMW interiors in 93, so make sure your colors match. I believe the storage compartment will fit better as well,, and I would get the D pillar for that side just to make sure the parts work together.

If you get the standard RMW front passenger seat with the electric recline, the connector for the recline function is already in the OCC. You just have to hook it up.

Thanks Fred Kiehl. I will most likely just swap it. I can't wait till I get myself that OCC. The body work is in great shape. It' rides very smooth too!

Swapping the circuit board only takes about 15 minutes. The only caution you have is that the screws need to go back into the original threads, or they will strip out.

Ok, I'll see what I can do. Hopefully the mechanic I'm buying the wagon from will do that. Ok I'm just worried that he will mess up and I will now have two busted speedometers.

I would worry more about the mechanic removing the dash front. It is easy to break the pins that hold the woodgrain to the colored part. I remove the glove box door to make it easy to remove the tang behind the left door stop arm. The access panel under the steering column must be removed first, so that you do not break the clips on the top of it. There is also a screw above the parking brake release handle under the edge of the dash. This is are large fragile part made brittle by age and sun exposure. If you have trouble getting the glovebox light to go out, you can adjust the door at the hinge.

I have extra boards if you break one. I had a tach and a speedo go crazy, and have since disassembled and reassembled numerous clusters without breaking one. The circuit board has sockets for pins at every gauge. Work gently, and they will come apart. You should also check or replace all of the bulbs while you have it out. It is not fun taking it apart again to change a burned out bulb.

You can swap the odometer while you have it apart, to maintain the correct mileage on your car. The RM and OCC odometers are identical.

Thanks for letting me know. I will be sure to let the Mechanic know about the board and hopefully he can put the OCC speedometer back in. I'm the kind of guy that loves original parts.