Shown above is my newest project. It's a 1978 Cadillac Sedan DeVille that JUST turned 57000 miles.
When we first went to look at the car, it was sitting back in a garage it was too big for. The garage was a little damp, but the door was open, so that helped keep it reasonably dry. The car allegedly ran, but it was flat dead so I could not verify this.
Apparently these people won the car from a Crawford Auto Museum raffle that was held at the new car show at the IX Center (I remember 32V buying tickets for this car). The title shows that they took title on the car in November of 2004, and have only put on 600 miles in the four years they had it.
Not knowing much about the car, even after looking at it, I thought the $2500 asking price was too much. I thought that if I could get it for $800, I would buy it, so that's what I offered (and she took it to my disbelief!!).
Today 32v, johnny442, and I grabbed a tow dolly, 32V's Chevy, and an insufficient amount of tools and headed to Euclid to pick this car up one way or another. After exchanging payment for title and keys, we went after the task of starting the car. Being that it had a brand new battery and no power at all in the car we figured a bad ground. After some screwing around with a $.50 pair of pliers, Johnny was able to get the ground cable bolted correctly to the battery, and we were able to turn the car over. A quick shot of ether to give her a boost, and it started (yeah!). A couple more pumps on the pedal and it was running.
We drove it out on the street, put some air in the tires (one of them in question from dry rot), and some historical plates I had from my Vette. So far so good.
We made our way to the freeway, and this thing was running smooth. We couldn't drive too fast anyway since the empty tow dolly had a swaying problem, so we were keeping it under 55. The car was pulling to the right from the get go, but around the bend on RT90 east by 271, the pull was getting worse. Johnny calls me to tell me my RF tire was going flat quickly, so we pulled off to the side.
Being too close to the speeding traffic, we decided to air up the tire and pull up to the wiegh station to get off the road. Doing this used up just about the last of the air that we had in our tanks. Since we didn't have a spare, we were going to just load it up on the tow dolly, but flat tires and tow dollies don't mix as the flat tire lowered the car enough that the dolly hit the frame of the car, preventing us from driving up on the dolly. Now what?
About this time the local authorities arrived on the scene... the funny part about this is that the Willoughby Hills cop that showed up is my neighbor, so while I was having a friendly conversation with Matt and his partner, 32V was rummaging through the woods for a makeshift ramp to get our ride on the dolly. In this case, it was a large ROCK. By the time I was done jawjacking with the fuzz, the car was up on the dolly. With some quick adjustments, and after tying it down, we were finally on our way (again). (man am I tired of typing)
Anyway, we finally mad it home, inflated the sad tire up with my compressor in the street, and drove the car in the garage. More to come, but here's some initial pictures...
-BP
