The Build: 1972 Satellite

[Impatient '71]

After 10 years of searching and many projects later (1969 Austin Healey Sprite, 1970 MG Midget, 1972 Oldmobile Cutlass Supreme, 1969 Schuster jet boat and a couple of houses) finally purchased a 1972 Satellite. I picked it up about 8 hours from my house in Hemet, CA on my son's birthday and barely made it back in time for his party on 23 December. Car is a floor shift, AC, EV2 car. After several stops along the way, I got it home late Christmas day and made room for it in the garage with barely enough room to squeeze by on each side, as my wife thinks the garage is a great place to put her junk. Anyways, the guy I bought it from stated that it had a carburetor problem, but otherwise was a solid car. Today, I put in a new battery hoping that it was a carburetor problem and after reassembling the carburetor linkage, which was disassembled and replacing the ignition lock got it to turn over. After some diagnosis found out that I have air and fuel, but no spark, so proceeded to replace the cap and rotor, coil, ignition control module and went to fire it up and the starter relay fried. Went back to O'reilly's picked up a new starter relay, put it in and all I hear is click with a charged battery. At this point it's too late to go pick up a new starter or starter solenoid so I'm stuck. Anyways this was a great first day, I haven't had this much fun in months working on a project.
The plans for this car are to keep it hemi orange with the automatic, restore the interior (which I currently need a drivers seat for) and replace the 400 with a 440-6 fuel injection setup. I'll be posting pictures of the car as soon as I get a chance to take them and will update this blog as I make progress, just got to adopt my stepmothers view that there ain't no such thing as too many pictures.

 

[Impatient '71]

These are the pictures from the ad

 

[Impatient '71]

More pics

 

[Bill Monk]

After 10 years of searching and many projects later (1969 Austin Healey Sprite, 1970 MG Midget, 1972 Oldmobile Cutlass Supreme, 1969 Schuster jet boat and a couple of houses) finally purchased a 1972 Satellite. I picked it up about 8 hours from my house in Hemet, CA on my son's birthday and barely made it back in time for his party on 23 December. Car is a floor shift, AC, EV2 car. After several stops along the way, I got it home late Christmas day and made room for it in the garage with barely enough room to squeeze by on each side, as my wife thinks the garage is a great place to put her junk. Anyways, the guy I bought it from stated that it had a carburetor problem, but otherwise was a solid car. Today, I put in a new battery hoping that it was a carburetor problem and after reassembling the carburetor linkage, which was disassembled and replacing the ignition lock got it to turn over. After some diagnosis found out that I have air and fuel, but no spark, so proceeded to replace the cap and rotor, coil, ignition control module and went to fire it up and the starter relay fried. Went back to O'reilly's picked up a new starter relay, put it in and all I hear is click with a charged battery. At this point it's too late to go pick up a new starter or starter solenoid so I'm stuck. Anyways this was a great first day, I haven't had this much fun in months working on a project.
The plans for this car are to keep it hemi orange with the automatic, restore the interior (which I currently need a drivers seat for) and replace the 400 with a 440-6 fuel injection setup. I'll be posting pictures of the car as soon as I get a chance to take them and will update this blog as I make progress, just got to adopt my stepmothers view that there ain't no such thing as too many pictures.

Congrats on the new project. Just a note, I would do a voltage drop test on everything before buying that starter.....ask me how I know

 

[YY1]

can you "jump" the relay or the solenoid with a screwdriver?

 

[Impatient '71]

Bill, thanks for the advice on the voltage drop test, but I replaced the battery cables as I had a pair that I had bought for another project I didn't end up using. Anyways got the starter in this morning and she fired right up. So, I'm not positive whether the problem was the cap and rotor or the ignition control module as the cap and rotor were pretty worn, but I think it was the control module based on not getting spark.

 

[NoCar2023]

I've been watching that car on Craigslist, good luck with it.

 

[Bill Monk]

Bill, thanks for the advice on the voltage drop test, but I replaced the battery cables as I had a pair that I had bought for another project I didn't end up using. Anyways got the starter in this morning and she fired right up. So, I'm not positive whether the problem was the cap and rotor or the ignition control module as the cap and rotor were pretty worn, but I think it was the control module based on not getting spark.

Glad you're up and running. Keep us posted on the progress

 

[gibber]

Congrats! Always nice to see another fuselage style Satellite destined for restoration! I bought my 72 SSP last Feb, 65K one repaint. 318 numbers matching with AC, PS, PB, Slapstick Auto,Black interior. Decided for a change to buy one already done, lol....

Mark

 

[Impatient '71]

Gibber,
That's a nice car, I wish I could afford a finished car, but my time is worth less than my money at this point, so here I am...

 

[Impatient '71]

So after talking with my uncle, who is a professional body man right after I bought the car I ordered some pulling clamps that came in today to fix the biggest issue I can see with the car so far. Hopefully tomorrow I will get the opportunity to hook this up and fix this trunk gap with a come along and these pulling clamps.

 

[YY1]

I wish my uncle was a professional body guy

 

[Impatient '71]

Started pulling out my passenger side quarter today to fix my trunk gap. Here is my pulling setup I welded together some 1/4" steel to 1" square tubing and bolted it to what I assume is the strongest part of the trunk. As you can see my trunk gap was pretty bad. At some point I believe the car was hit and a botch repair job done.

 

[Impatient '71]

As you can see after pulling the trunk gap closed up however after sanding some of the old Bondo off and getting down to bare metal my trunk gap is still bad at where the body turns down. This is due in large part to the gutter not being straight. At this point I need to figure out whether it makes sense to try to repair the quarter at the same time I replace the gutter or not to even bother trying to repair it and just replace the quarter.

 

[Sedanman]

She looks like a good start. I also bought my 72 Satellite for my Xmas present and have about the same amount of room in my garage as so lol. I have learned from a few that some of the parts are 72 only and they don't repop them. I'm on the hunt for parts in my area and beyond and if there is something your looking for don't hesitate to hit me up

 

[Impatient '71]

So I built myself a glass holder out of some pvc pipe and will be using it to safely store my glass during the restoration. Along with that purchased a used rear bumper, as the current bumper is badly damaged.

 

[gibber]

Gibber,
That's a nice car, I wish I could afford a finished car, but my time is worth less than my money at this point, so here I am...

Just saw someone on here got 32K for a restored SSP (400). Best of luck with the project!

 

[Dibbons]

Just saw someone on here got 32K for a restored SSP (400). Best of luck with the project!

I am restoring a '72 SSP as well. I notice that on the Hagerty website, The Satellite Sebring Plus model is not listed when one looks up market values (only has Road Runner and Satellite Sebring-not SSP).

 

[Impatient '71]

So this is how I started the day

 

[Impatient '71]

This was about mid day. Key notes are the outer bolts for the rear seat belts are slightly longer than the inners and for the interior trim around the rear window the two bolts on the vertical pieces are also longer than the rest of the bolts.