RSMS
Active Member
I'm going to take MPGMike's advice and start a "preservation" thread on this car. For those who haven't seen any of my previous posts, this car was parked in 1989 by the 2nd owner in a makeshift barn/shelter. He had the foresight to place rolled asphalt roofing material on the ground before parking the car to do his best to preserve the car from corrosion damage. I bought 3 cars from this family including an extremely original 1 owner 56k mile 1982 Toyota Cressida wagon that I'm just now finishing up on its preservation. Unfortunately, I missed by about 2 weeks an absolutely beautiful 1957 2dr Bel Aire that the father bought new, from the pictures it was at least as nice as this GTX and still wore its original paint, it also was sitting in the main barn next to the Toyota. Moral of that story is, there are still some really nice cars waiting to be found with wonderful stories out there. This GTX's original female owner specially ordered it and traded in her 1969 GTX for it. It has never been painted, restored or molested and is very original to how it rolled off the assembly line. The son I bought it from, bought the car from her in 1984 he believes and luckily only added air shocks, a flex fan and craggar sst's, he kept the original rims which I got with the car. As of now that's all I have discovered not on the car when it was delivered new. The car was bought new in Tampa Fl and supposedly it's never been more than roughly 100 miles from there it's whole life. The cars B5 blue paint is still original although it's had a little DupliColor touch up sprayed on it along with several spots that have been primed due to weak paint, no accident damage. He evidentially thought about painting it when he parked it and removed the grill, headlight buckets and a few other misc parts and got a little carried away with the primer. I will be documenting this car to the best of my ability both with pictures and video, my goal as with all of my survivor cars is to keep it as original as possible while making it fully enjoyable. I'm a car guy and have been doing this as a lifestlye hobby since I was in high school, I appreciate all unique, special and original survivor cars but I have a special love for hi-performance low production muscle cars. I've owned numerous cool MOPAR's thru out my existence, but they are by no means the brand I'm the most knowledgeable on so hopefully those with much more knowledge will help guide me thru this to help preserve this very special car. I will be posting many pictures, documentation and links to videos if anyone would like to follow this car's journey to hopefully a car that can help document what a 1973 B-Body was like when new. Keep an eye on this thread if you like the fuselage body style cars and as soon as I get a little further along in seeing where I stand with the car, get the 35 plus years of dirt and mold off of it and determine if it will start without any engine dis-assembly due to its prolong sitting, I will start adding lots of pictures and many more details. I have posted the fender tag in the 71-74 era forum for those who would like to see it. Today is the 1st time I've spent any real time with the car and I have a few questions to ask from doing so.....1st-Once I got the car out of its resting place and on my trailer, I noticed the drivers front corner was very low, it has a broken torsion bar which I just removed. After doing much searching, I'm starting to realize this could be an issue that is hard to solve with OEM parts, what should I be looking for, a good used one (equalize them with the adjusters) or is there a similar appearing aftermarket solution? 2nd- I looked for and found a broadcast sheet under the passenger bucket seat. It's not in the greatest shape and I have no practical knowledge of reading and making out all the information from a damaged sheet. I can make out a lot of it, but the springs damaged the places where they were on top of it. Is there a good known copy of one that I could use to possibly try and fill in the parts I can't make out what the line items are? How is the best way to get all the information from a broadcast sheet? 3rd- this is one I feel I should know but I don't so I will also ask, there is a plug with a long thin metal strip that almost looks like a heating element (don't think that's what it is) or possibly a seat buzzer? attached to the springs. It was unplugged so maybe its a buzzer but what is this? This is a very long post with no pictures but this will change very soon so stay tuned and if you have any good answers for these 3 questions please chime in, I'm like a sponge on old cars and love expanding my knowledge so don't be bashful in offering anything you feel I'm incorrect on or something I don't seem to know about. Thanks and I look forward to learning and sharing about this very unique car.
