April Longroof of the month

Well I was asked to do the April Longroof of the month. So rather than wait for tomorrow because i'll forget and in case that damn virus is real i'll do it today. So I guess I will start off at the begining. I bought my 1984 Oldsmobile Custom cruiser last year. here is what it looked like after buying it.



For a little bit of back round I am on Disability for migraines. Now you're asking yourself what does that have to do with my wagon. Well two things actually. One last year was when I started getting my disability payments so we could actually afford to buy me a car. And second it's the main reason I bought this car. See people who have migraines tend to be very light sensitive. And well this car has dark tint on all the windows but the windshield. Now normally that would be illegal. But I actually have a doctor's note saying I can have them. The other thing is if I get an attack while I am out I have a place to lay down as the efects of the migraine on me make it impossiblee to drive for many reasons. To long to really go into here. So that made this wagon perfect. We had seen it sitting in the same spot for months. We had asked about it when we knew I was getting money and when we got the money we went to look at it. It was in really good condition. Pretty stock despite the outward appearance. But it did have the red Wheel vintiques 15X8 wheels with baby moon hubcaps plus a fifth one for a spare. It also had the satin black paint. The only other thing it had was a 3 inch tach. Now some might say why have a tach in an auto but I will tell you it is pretty cool to watch your RPM's when going down the highway considering the wagon has a 2.73 rear gear and a tall overdrive. It's also cool to watch how much of a drop there is from drive to OD. Here is a Youtube vid I made of that.

Now I am one that can never leave things well enough alone and has to tinker and modify things. So First off I bought this Oldschool Oldsmobile Batwing aircleaner. It's not the old oil bath ones but is a repro.



Well the next thing was a radio. We went to one of those electronic expos and found this neat touch screen radio/CD/DVD player.

Now one other reason for getting a radio like this was to add a backup camera to the wagon so I could see what was behind me.



And that was all for a bit.

Now the car came with a 307 with the computer controlled carb. Well that simply wasn't going to do. So I found a 350 Oldsmobile engine on Ebay. He bought it for his Chevy truck thinking a 350 is a 350 not know there was a difference. He said he paid like $700 for it but started his bidding at $400 thinking it would go up, and it should have. But in the end I was the only bidder. So some friends went toget it for me and here it is.



It had an Edelbrock intake on it which is what led me to the engine. I thought maybe I might just get an intake for now and an engine later but when I saw that I could have an engine with an intake for little more than it would take me to conver mine I jumped on it.

Now the guy also said he thought it was cammed up. I would have no way of telling this to be true. But once the engine was home we took the valve cover off and low and behold roller tipped rockers.

And guide plates, so a cam sounded more likely.

It wouldn't be till after I had the engine in to hear that the Cam part sounds to be true. Give a listen for yourselves.

The next thing I got was pure happenstance. I was walking thru a u-pull-it yard and found this aluminum radiator with fans out of an LT-1 Caprice.

Only problem with this radiator is that you have to run a separate resivior with radiator cap on it plus an overflow. That will be changed soon as I hope to get aluminum tanks welded on in place of the plastic ones and have a cap put on one side. That will clean up the engine compartment nicely. Now since I was replacing the radiator I decided to add a tansmission cooler as the trans was kinda acting up. So I added this



It's a 24 inch aluminum heatsink type cooler. I took the plastic spoiler thing off and mounted this in it's place. All in all it's worked well and did clear up some of the trans problems. I also need a way to control my fans on the new radator and added this controler that allows me to control when I want the fans to kick in. Right now it's set at about 190.

Here are some pics of the radiator installed.





It still needs a better way to hold the radiator in. It works but doesn't look great. But all in all it is much cleaner I think.

Now I still haven't instlled the engine at this point in the story but I knew that when I did I would have dual exhaust. And then I would need a dual hump crossmember. Part of this is made worse by the fact that the passenger side floor is higher to make room for the cat. But I figured a way to make a crossmember that would work. We had a piece of steel U channel laying around. And my wife is a welder so I had her take it to work, cut it out where the pipe would go and weld in the channel. It worked out pretty well I think.







Now for those of you that don't know how Oldsmobile runs there stock exhaust let me fill you in. Normally it goes from the driver side exhaust manifold under the oil pan to the passenger side exhaust manifold. Then dumps out the back of the passneger side manifold. So the passenger side manifold has two holes. So the one from the driver side has to be plugged. So again my wife comes to the rescue. You will notice this trend all through this story.







Now after that I knew the engine had a Holley mechanical fule pump that came with it but running wire braided fuel hoses to it with the angles and such using the A/C brackets wouldn't work. So I had my wife make me a block off plate at work to cover the opening where the pump was.

I had planned using a Holley carb but couldn't get it to work so I bought a Quadrajet. Which meant all the planning and routing of fuel hoses and the regulator would have to change. Well after all that we got it running. Now for refernce. Remember I mentioned my migraines? Well I get them everyday. It just depends on how bad. Well that engine change that should have taken me a weekend to a week tops, took me almost 4 months total because of the migraines getting in the way. But here's how it sounds without the exhaust on it's first startup.

Well the next thing had to be the true dual exhaust as I couldn't run without it. So we took it to a Meineke that we know does good custom set-ups and they made me a great system. Now I wanted flowmasters but we couldn't afford them at the time. But you know what. This exhaust sounds great as is. It is quiet enough inside to have a nice conversation But loud enough out the back to sound mean.













Ok Peoples I need a break. My migraine is making it hard to type at the moment. I keep having to go back and fix goobled up words. I'll finish the story laters.

Ok back for a bit. The next thing I have tackled was the interior. First off was to change out the big plastic steering wheel with the typical cracks for a leather Fiero steering wheel. It is a bit smaller in diameter. But the wheel itself is thicker and nicer to grip.



Also note the 5 inch tach. That replaced the 3 inch tach. I bought a circle track modified because I wanted the engine for another project and this came with it so why not use it..The next thing was seats. Sorry but for this type of car Bench seats simply aren't as cool as buckets. So I bought 4 of these.





Now it took a bit to get them mounted as I had to wait for some warmer weather. But here are some mounted pics. I only have the front two munted at this time as my wife's welder broke and we had to wait for a new tip and lining. So the other two should be mounted this week.











Now as soon as all 4 get mounted then I will start on making a full length console from the dash to the back of the rear seats. It will house guages, switches, My shifter, an electric cooler that willdouble as my arm rest, cup holders, and I plan on having heater/A/C hoses that will bring heat and A/C to the rear seats. Now here is the shifter that should also be installed this week.

Now I also installed a Mallory Distributor and MSD coil and wires that I got off of Craigslist for $100.

It really did improve power and help drive ability. But i also picked up a Billet MSD distributor for $175 that will be going in as soon as I get an MSD box as it must have one to work. My choices are to have a 7AL-2 box that I have rebuilt or to buy a MSD-6AL.

I have my wheels and tires here and I only have to get he last two tires mounted. The wheels are 18X9 Boss 304's

The tires are 275/40-18 BFG G-Force Sports

here they are compared to my 255-60-15's

Now to mount them on my car I was faced with some clearance problems as they have a 5 inch back space. So for the rear I tried a 1.5 inch spacer using the old tires as they come out the same distance being 8 vs 9 inches wide but having a 4 inch back space vs 5. Well the fender lip cut into the tire. So the fender lip got rolled. In the front I tried a 1 inch spacer but had some rubbing when turned and on bumps. So my final decision is to take the 1 inch spacers and run them on the rear. And run no spacers on the front. But to do so I will need to add some material to the turning stops so the wheel won't come so close to the swaybar and the bracket holding the bake line/hose connection. This doesn't bother me as the car will trub very tight despite beingvery long. i had to do a U-turn last week and surprised the hell out of my room mate. So that is what will be done.

Now for the last post I will address what still needs to be done. The interior(seats, console and shifter mentioned earlier)including painting or dying the plastic panels. Painting the door jams, new carpeting and headliner. I have a shift kit that needs to be installed. the front suspension will be totally redone. That means new ball joints, shocks and poly bushings. I will also cut down the front springs about an inch and a half. The rear will get Afco Coilovers mounted where the shocks normally go using custom brackets my wife is making for me. I am hoping to also have her make me some custom rear control arms. i also want a set of bigger swaybars front and rear. I am sure I have forgotten things but that is what I can recall.

Cool story for a cool wagon, thanks for sharing.

You have done a great job on it so far. Looks like a very clean and straight wagon

Great writeup! Quite a transformation.

Sweet write up man, I am digging your all business boxy wagon.

cool write up and even cooler wagon. Looks the a good car for the MIB

Sweet looking ride indeed something for the rest of us to shoot for

nice write up, wagon looks good, love the changed you did. keep up the great work and congrats on the LROM. take care

matt

Thanx for all the compliments. Here is a mild update. I finally have all 4 of my wheels and tires mounted. SInce last week i lowerd the front. At first I thought it may have been a tick to much but I am loving it now. I took the Eibach's out as I thougt they were softer than my F41 springs. So I took a coil and a half out of the F41 springs and got the tire up into the wheel well. Now I also put in new Energy Suspension bushngs, New endlinks with ploy bushings, all new ball joints, plus new shocks. Today I got alignmentdone today when I got the last 2 tires mounted. Now I had planned on mounting my coilovers on the rear as my wife made me the brackets. That was until I noticed the coilover bodies are too long for where I wanted to put them So I guess I can't use the Nice aluminum body Afco's that I have. I will have to by regular shorter ones. It sucks to have something you can't use. I think the rear needs to come down atleast an inch more. Anyway here are the pics. I still need to clean them better and polish the lip.



















Here is about how low I want the rear with a little help from a friend. Maybe i tick more.

Lookin' good! I think the stance looks good just as it is.

I agree, the stance looks awesome.