so i just finished up the 63 Cadillac that i built for my wife, more or less. I'm cruising through the morning ritual of the surfing the net , hamb, craigslist,lbcc, etc and come across a 60 chevy wagon. i sent an email and get no response. send another one 2 days later, same deal. so i decide to call the dude, kind of pissed. if you sold your shit then at least remove it or have the respect to email me back. he still has it and is talking to a guy in California about it. i go look at the supper clean no rust kingswood, buy his description. of course when i get there and inspect i see a few rust holes right away. but knowing that these are getting harder to find i forge on. the floors are rusted through in just about every well. I've seen way worse. but not supper clean like described, but are they really ever? after pointing the rust out to the guy, and informing him that if he where to send this mid west car to the cali guy, he'd more then likely have a cali visitor really soon, as for cali standards this is junk. i get home and show my wife the pics. she absolutely has to have it. try to explain to her the amount of work it needs, but you can fix it! like trying to talk to a walll. she sees the final result and has to have it. she already has a name "helen", so with the push from the wife i work out a deal, and go get it. it has been sitting in a field since 96' and has had allot of creatures living in it. had my son helping clean it out, untill he ran into a mouse skelton. first stop was the car wash. $15 bucks later motor cleaned up pretty well. got it home and did some more scrubbing and got the moss that was growing on the car removed. nice patina. pulled the interior,and inspected the floors. dash is uncut, not one wire has been wire tapped or cut and fixed with some form of tape. amazing shape. had a good buddy come over and spent about 1 hr messing with rigging up a fuel tank, roll her over a few times by hand, check spark, hot damn this ol thing may run. give it some ign. a few sputters and little fire later she is puring along. a little lifter clatter, some smoke and in about 2 mins shes smoothin out. wounder if the trans is any good. set the emergency brake there's reverse. hot damn. rebuilt the brake system and drove it to lunch after owning it for 4 days. trans was shifting hard. pulled the drive shaft to find out there no rubber left in the center support bearing! rebuilt the drive shaft and now it much better.
Wow, all in one piece and sitting pretty level. And it has AC, which should be fixable. Lots of parts available, so the floors, etc should be a piece of cake. Rust repair is not my bag, I'd have to pay someone to fix that, lol. Bob
Bad**s, and you're wife is pretty cool too! I'm not sure how I missed that one since I regularly canvas CL too. Nice find for sure, the last few I've seen were absolutely hopeless but the Owner's wouldn't admit it. What are your plans, just drive?
Nice!! My first car was a hand-me-down from my parents when I got my license at 14 - a 61' Brookwood. Wish I had that car now........
Good Score! What's with the strange dents on the Fenders above the Headlights? The Hood looks like it has no Damage.
aren't they all theres anyways? i missed it too at first. it was posted for 4 days before i ever saw it. did a search looking for a 60 cadillac and it came up? im going to do it up mild for now, since it runs and drive fine. paint, interior, bags some wheels, new frt bushings and balljoints and add soem seat belts for the little ones. it was from the og owner in vinita ok. rust in the upper eyebrows. hood is great.
I love wagons, kind of a sickness, but I don't want to get well. My first car was a '63 Mercury Comet wagon.
You've done well on two counts - a wife who shares your passion for automobiles and a nice '60 Chebbie for you to build. Congrats!
I'm kinda a clean freak, so once i knew the motor would run i decided i had to clean it up some. some more greaser and spray paint! made up some new battery cables, fuel pump, water pump, boiled out the radiator. had some various air bag parts laying around the shop from previous builds, so i decided to do some suspension work. ripped out the whole front end and replaced all the bushings, ball joints, etc. plated the bottom a arms to except the bag mounts and made up some top cups. then i modified the stock rear arms. when i get ready to really do this thing up I'm going to fab up all new link arms and probably ditch the top banana link, instead using a triangled 4 link or split wish bone set-up, or watts link. any ways here she is with the temp bag set up. so now im on to the rust repair.
Damn you don't mess around, nice wagon. I love me a kingswood! How's the rear tailgate? Your making me want to bag mine!
the tail gate is suprisingly pretty solid. theres only one pennie size rust spot right in the center, although we'lll see that truns out to when i strip it all off!.
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