I bought my 1983 cutlass about 6 months ago for $3,000. It had a Chevy 350 in it, with a 350 turbo trans, a deamon carb, long tube headers, All MSD, B&M slap shift kit, 373 posi rear, true dual exhaust, traction bars, grant steering wheel, and 14'' cragars.
It was my daily driver since the day i got it, and i had no problems at all with it. the motor ran great, and started up every day. i did some exterior mods to it, and kept the engine in pretty good shape. the only flaw about this car, was the oil dipstick. it was a piece of crap dipstick, that would always give inaccurate readings, and eventually caused me to blow the motor. i was on the parkway one day, and little to my knowledge i was running on very low oil, about 1 1/2 quarts. i was messin around with a corvette and i could feel the car wasnt right. when i got to my destination i heard a slight knock in the motor but i figured it was the headers getting loose and clanking against the block. on my way back home, the knock got worse and i had to drive slower and slower. eventually, the motor made the worst noises you ever want to hear, there was a big bang, a puff of smoke, and then nothing. i waited a couple hours for a tow, and once i got it back home i started to prepare to part it out because i knew it was blown. i got in contact with a friend of mine, who had a way of getting me a motor, and a shop to do the swap in. i jumped at the opportunity because i didnt want to let the car go. about 2 weeks after the motor blew, i had a heated shop to work in, with every tool you could ever imagine, and a used but good chevy 350 from a 77 chevy pickup. the motor came from a junked pickup that still ran. the guys at the yard said that it ran real well, and they were driving the pickup all around until the body gave out.
we started taking apart the new motor and realized that it was in excellent shape and looked like it was recently rebuilt, and bored 30 over. the lower end of the motor looked really clean, but everything about it was awesome.
So with a like new motor ready, the work starts:
As for the old motor, when we started pulling it out of the car, you could see what happened. To sum it all up, it looked like one tie rod went up, and several went down, reeking havoc on the lower end of the motor.
One piston was almost completely shattered, I snapped the cam almost clean in half, and bent several more rods. When the rods went down into the lower part of the motor, everything got torn up, and thrown around tearing up the oil pan as well.
Before the new block could be painted, we steam washed it, along with the tranny, and intake manifold that would also be going with the new motor.
We got the motor and tranny out of the car, and took care of the old exhaust in just one day. But of course taking things apart is the easy part.
Besides the motor swap, the other big projects were the entire interior, including rust spots, and lastly paint. I only knew of one rust spot on the drivers side passenger floorboard. But of course once the motor was out, and the entire interior was stripped, I found another problem spot by the pedals:
Im lucky these are the only rust spots on the entire car. Theres no wheel well rust at all, and very light surface rust in the trunk.
These are the upgrades ready to go into the car once the motor gets in:
Flowtech headers stainless coated
Borla mufflers
Full new dual exhaust system exiting at an angle after the rear tires with chrome tips
Comp cam and lifter kit with valve springs
Wieland intake manifold
Deamon carb
Chrome air filter
Chrome valve covers
4 mint condition black trans am GTA wheels 16x8 on brand new yokahoma z-rated tires (picked this lovely package up for just $500.)
Entire 7 autometer gauge set-up
All gaskets and seals to go with the new motor
New interior
And of course rain x wiper blades, and a k&n wrench off oil filter
This is a pretty premature list, ill have a complete one when the job is completely done.
I was trying to do as much of this restoration on my own as possible with some help of course, but I just couldn’t reupholster the interior seats and panels myself so I had to send them out to a place. Im planning on keeping the car black on the outside, with 2 pretty thick silver metallic stripes going down the entire car. I wanted to keep this color scheme in the interior as well, so I had all the plastic match the color of the stripe I wanted on the outside, and I got all of the interior carpeting in black fabric. Now for the seats, I had 2 vinyl striped run down a black fabric seat much like the outside of the car, and it came out really nice. The bash and headliner will be painted black. The interior was the worst part of the car, and now I think its going to be the best. I sprayed the panels with a matching color to the stripe on the seat, and had black carpet inserts put in. they look brand new.
I had to run all over the place finding stock interior replacement parts like switches chrome accents and panels, but I found it all on lovely long island, and the interior is about complete with 4 new speakers as well, but its just waiting to be put all back together.
I sent the new heads out to get ported, so were just waiting on that for now. Im working on the project every spare moment I have and im expecting to get it done by the end of January, then ill break in the cam and all that good stuff, then upload some videos. Ill post more pictures as I continue with the project.
