Value? My Father-in-laws 1971 Cutlass Supreme Convertible

[njsteve]

Thank you!

[njsteve]

I saw those and cringed at the cross contamination, as well. :-)

[njsteve]

Heading up on Wednesday to get the Olds. I'll update with new info and photos this weekend.

[njsteve]

13 hour round trip . We got my Father-in-law's Olds home. I confirmed the original engine. Only took around 50 tries with the camera and light source from an equal amount of directions. The last two digits are too faint to capture well on film but everything else is visible. "31M100191"

[njsteve]

Original transmission too

[grantprix]

As expected.

[njsteve]

I spent the day changing the oil and crawling around underneath (found the transmission VIN numbers, as you already saw). I sent an oil sample out to Blackstone Labs for analysis. That usually takes a couple weeks for the results.

I completely flushed the brake system of the old fluid, fully bled it and now we have a nice firm pedal. I adjusted the parking brake because the brake light was staying illuminated until you pulled the parking brake pedal up the last 1/2 inch. Once I adjusted the cable under the car, it works correctly now. I found a cross-threaded rear wheel stud and replaced that. Transmission fluid is at the proper level now and I checked the rear diff fluid and got doused in gear oil because someone along the way overfilled the diff by about a half a quart! That explains why there was a oil spray pattern under the tunnel but the seal isn't actively leaking when parked. It didn't help that the axle vent was covered in undercoating and not venting properly.

I cannot overstate how much factory and dealer-installed undercoating is on this car. I definitely saved it from the Buffalo winters but My Lord, it's inconceivable! BTW, all the body seams and the rocker seams are beautiful and original. No swelling or crustiness anywhere. The frame is covered in undercoating too, but totally solid. The only frame flaw I found was in the drivers side rear where somebody way-back-when, used those dreaded "J-hooks" to tie it down and made a 3/4" stress rip from the hold down hole.

[njsteve]

The insides of the rear quarters: look at the seams and the trunk drop offs!

[njsteve]

Wheel wells and tons of undercoating. Do they look like original assembly line drums? I think the front rotors may have been replaced. Opinions?

I also have to fix the gas gauge. The gauge has E to F on the top of the circular gauge in the 11:00 to 1:00 position clockwise, but the needle is pointing to 3:00 o'clock. When I was under the car I saw the ground is correctly attached and not broken. Bad sending unit in the tank? I initially thought maybe the tank was empty but I tried to add 5 gallons and only got 3 in before it was full.

Tomorrow I will do the compression check. And one of my friends loaned me his pressure washer so I can get some of that "extra" chassis grease off the front suspension. It looks like whenever they attempted to lubricate the suspension pieces they decided that "on" was just as good as "in" the zerk fittings. (Keep in mind those front end photos were after I spent 20 minutes with a scraper, removing the globs of old grease just so I could find the zerk fittings.) Thankfully all the front end componentry was tight: idler arm, tie rod end, ball joints, etc.

Stay tuned!

[grantprix]

Someone is going to get a nice, well sorted car!