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Welcome to my 1965
Olds 442 Page
My car is a 1-owner
1965 Olds 442 The car was a dealer
showroom car that was pretty much a stripper for drag racing. I understand it's a pretty
rare-optioned car; It's a holiday coupe, with the Back in the day my
dad swapped the quadrajet carb for a Holley 850 CFM that he converted to
mechanical secondaries. He still has the original carb in a box somewhere
that only stayed on for about 6 months. The car was his dream
car and he drag raced it, proposed to my mom in it, and drove it every day
until the summer of 1984 when he was hit in the rear end by a dump truck.
With a 12 year old son, and the
pressures of family he couldn't justify the cost of repairs, and my
Dad is really particular about stuff, and the damage to the car just wouldn't
make it "original" any more, so he put it in a barn. Before doing
so, he did go out and have 1/4 of
another wrecked 442 cut away if he ever wanted to fix it. And when I
say 1/4 of a car - I mean a QUARTER of a car. He got way more material then
he needed. Flash forward 19 years later to February
2003, when he called me out of the blue and asked me if I wanted it. This was
a monumental event in my family because we NEVER spoke about the car. It was
like a beloved childhood dog or a brother lost at war; still sitting in the
barn, wasting away, but my dad could never bring himself to get rid of it.
And the car had deteriorated to the point where he couldn't afford to fix it. At any rate, it was a pretty big deal and I
immediately jumped at it. I always wanted that car as a kid, and I'd dreamed
about restoring it someday; so I flew down to CA, spent the weekend with my
dad digging the car out of the barn, pulling the old quarter of the Cutlass
out from under a tree where it was buried with dirt and had flowers and weeds
growing out of it, and put it on a trailer. My two favorite
stories from that weekend. First, was trying to find the keys. My mom and I
looked EVERYWHERE, pulling boxes out of storage, looking in old desks,
looking in my grandparents old stuff, looking in jewelry boxes and
nightstands. After about 2 or 3 hours of searching, you know where the keys
were? On my Dad's keychain in his pocket. He had totally forgotten but those
keys had been with him for 20 years. He told me, "That tells you how
important this car is to me. I've kept those keys on me the whole time and
didn't even realize it." The second story was
putting air in the tires. The car had been in a barn with old oil, chemicals,
etc. and had lumber around it. The tires were shot, flat to the ground with
huge gashes in them where the rubber had totally cracked and deteriorated. I
was thinking, "Crap, I'm going to have to get under this thing, put it
on jack stands and take the wheels off, and then have new tires put on these
crappy wheels. What a waste of money." My dad says "C'mon, let's
just put air in them. They'll air up." I tell him "BULLS**T! These
things are shot. No freaking way." But my Dad lumbers off and pulls out
the airhose, and proceeds to air up every tire. And sure enough, each one
rose up and held air. I was floored. He looks up at me, smiles, and says
"I think she wants to see the open road again, son." And you know what?
Those tires held air as we pushed it out of the barn, up the trailer, all the
way from CA to Since then, I've
worked almost every weekend on the car, like adding Disc brakes, getting the
engine running, new bushings, etc. etc. I’ve put a Custom Autosound stereo
instead of the old AM radio. Little things like that. A new set of heads with
roller-rockers and maybe a fresh cam, and a new Holley 750 CFM double-pumper
to better match the engine. Basically some little things to make the car
"mine" - but every step my Dad's been involved because I want his
input on every change. At any rate, I've spent over a year getting
the car going again. Lots of Year One, Fusick and Supercars Unlimited orders
and way too much time on Ebay getting parts! It's back from paint and I ‘m
just waiting on some parts back from the chrome shop. This site documents my progress so far with
pictures. You should definitely start
in “The Barn" because that's what it looked like when we started. |
E-mail me with comments,
questions, or if you want to send me free stuff. I love free stuff.