And please put in your location. It helps finding parts and having other Hambers to come over to help when you are stuck on something
Looks like a pretty solid and complete car! I have a soft spot for Pontiac’s and that looks like a great find. Congrats!
Looks like a good start. Just wondering, how'd it tow with the car on the trailer ass end first? With all the weight of the straight 8 at the rear of the trailer you couldn't have had much tongue weight.
I towed it with a 1/2 ton Chevy 350 and my hitch was/is too low to the ground so I eased up on the tongue weight by using the 8 to balance the trailer. If you look at the axle set on the trailer, they are placed further back than most. If I went nose first with the Pontiac, I would have plowed asphalt all the way home.
That’s a good way of describing it. The upholstery is a bit of a shitshow so I took everything out and cleaned down to the floor pans. I’ve got a good upholstery guy in town so that will get done over the winter. “Before” pix of upholstery:
Thanks, good to know. I’m looking forward to refurbishing the woodwork. I’m not 100% but I think it’s maple over mahogany.
Thanks. Couple of holes in the floor pan in the usual place but metal is pretty good overall. Love that high desert metal.
I cleaned out the Pontiac last weekend. There was a tub in the back seat and I filled it with any stray car parts that I found while cleaning. The rest of the junk, mice nests, loose cotton batting, chunks of old upholstery, wasp nests, Hanta virus, etc, etc, went into the trash. At the bottom of it all, lying on the floor pans, was an old newspaper. Usually, when I’m restoring an old car or house and I find an old newspaper, I stop what I’m doing and read it. But I’ve been so busy this summer that it’s been hard to find the time to do anything. I tossed the paper into the parts bin so I could read it when I had a minute to spare. I woke up well before dawn this morning and I couldn’t get back to sleep. Might as well get up so I did and while I was making coffee, I remembered that old newspaper so I fished it out of the parts bin. I don’t know why I do this, read old newspapers. What good is old news? The paper was fragile and stiff so I carefully unfolded it and saw the front page. It was volume 101, number 103 of the Pueblo Chieftain, no relation to Pontiac as far as I know, and the date of the paper was Friday, August 25, 1972. This month has been a blur and I didn’t know what day it was so I grabbed my phone and hit the button: Wednesday, August 25th 2021. It was a timely coincidence so I did the math. The paper was 49 years old to the day. It was the Colorado State Fair Edition, 100th year. Space travel still felt new in 72 and the fair had an Apollo theme. I flipped through the paper, reading the stories, the pages making that vague crinkling sound as I turned them. Both the pages and the sound were more brittle with age, the newspaper smelling the way that only old newspapers smell. I checked the weather: high near 70 with the low in the upper 40s. I hit the weather app on my phone to check out todays weather in Pueblo; a high of 96 with a low of 62. On the back page, the Jess Hunter Ford dealership was having a sale. It was August of 72 and the year was getting long in the tooth. Time to clear out the lot and get ready for the 1973 models. Time marches on..... I always have the same thought when I read old newspapers: where was I on that day? In 72, I was just a kid in Chicago. School at St John Bosco had either started or was about to begin. I was still three years away from my learners permit. When you’re twelve, three years seems a long time away. Now it feels like tomorrow. Somewhere, a half a country away, some stranger was driving the Pontiac around the streets near Pueblo Colorado. He was driving a car I was destined to own, my car, around a place that I’d never been to. Seems strange is all. I wonder if I could go back to that day, would I find my younger self and warm him of what was to come? Would I tell him of his future which is now my past? Seems unkind to burden a young kid with so much, so, no, I probably wouldn’t do it. Better to let sleeping dogs lie.
Thanks so much for taking the time to describe the paper. Very cool and also happens to be the year I was born.
The Jalopy Journal
