Hello. My name is Colin. I'm 30 years old from Salida, CA. I'm an avid motors enthusiast (I own a ton of toys, go karts, 1000cc street bike, dirtbikes, pocket bikes, 2010 camaro, 600hp nissan 300zx drift car, much more... anything goes as long it's fast or fun). I just bought my bs23 1973 'cuda 340 4speed pistol grip about 5 months ago. The car hadn't ran in years, sat in a california barn. Very manageable amount of rust. I've already replaced the entire cooling system which includes pump, tstat, cap, upper and lower hoses, coolant (after power flushing), bypassed my leaking heater core, and replaced the radiator with aluminum. I've also rebuilt my carter TQ, and installed an aluminum eddy intake as mine was cracked at the temp sensor housing. After changing spark plugs, new fuel filter (ran into a 5gal tank under the hood temporarily), I changed all the fluids in trans, engine, differential, etc. It ran pretty good, and I drove it around the block a bit. Sounds like it had some rust to grind off the clutch.
I've since gutted the interior, which just included (as of today) my dashboard (and I did a small write-up on it, here in someone else's newb intro message).
I've also dropped the gas tank and started replacing all the fuel lines. I've also started cutting out the 5 or 6 small (less than 8 sq. inch) areas of the worst rust and started welding in some 18 gauge home-bent patches (the only patch panels I will need is passenger rear quarter). Soon I will be brushing out the bare interior and hitting the whole thing with por15 on the light surface rust before I drop in my new carpets.
Additionally, my car needs: some electrical gremlins sorted out, new front bucket seat covers, and my '73 with disc front has a proportioning valve with some kind of safety brake mechanism, which is preventing fluid from going to the front discs. The safety valve seems to think they are leaking, but i've since "capped" off the front lines and applied the brake (which is supposed to trick it into thinking the front is working and make it unstuck, but isn't working). As for paint, not sure how "good" of a resto I am planning to do yet. I can either take the motor out and have the whole thing sandblasted and primed while I straighten it out for paint, so I get the engine bay painted right and all, or I can just tape off the engine and semigloss black the engine bay and just straighten out the few small areas I made patches and have the exterior redone. I haven't yet decided. I am thinking sublime green exterior.
Anyways, I'm a talkative (see above 3 paragraphs) easy going guy. Feel free to chat me up about anything! My dream car (well out of what my wife's claims we could afford) is a 1968 dodge charger.
Topic: Newb from Salida, CA. Resto on 1973 'cuda 2nd owner california car. (Read 1366 times)
