Fixing up a '71 Grand Safari

I purchased a '71 Grand Safari last week that will hopefully be my wife's daily driver for a while. I have the initial pictures in the introduction section of the forum.

I'm building my wife a '37 Chevrolet with a newer LS motor and tranny, but until that car is finished we're planning on this being the daily driver. She is currently driving an old '79 Caprice 4 door that I've had for about 12 years. It only has 70,000 miles on it, but since it sat for quite a while, once my wife started driving it daily it began leaking oil, tranny fluid and radiator fluid.

The ultimate goal is to just make a decent daily driver, certainly not a show car. The body on this car was pretty straight. It needs some attention to some details but first is to yank the 455 4 barrel out and freshen it up. It smokes like a steam engine.

After work I come home and usually work on the '37, but today I just worked on the '37 until the shade was in the driveway and started in on the Safari. I'm used to working on old cars with not options, so it was a bigger job than normal to have to pull all the accessories off this car. This is as far as I got today.



Brandon

 

I guess I could add a pictures of the entire car

 

This is going to be one of my favorite threads on here. There haven't been too many Safari clamshell project chronicles!

 

Boy can you show a girl a good time or what!

If I brought home a 41-year-old car that was the size of the Queen Mary and told my wife I intended it to be her daily driver, I would not be married five minutes later!


On a more serious note, I agree with Bull. I hope you'll post photos as you go along so we can see how your restoration goes. I have a particular interest because I have a clamshell myself, a '73 Olds Custom Cruiser.

 

There's one just like that Olds in town

 

Love it! My dream car. Looking forward to the progress.

 

I remember these old 71 Safari's well from my gas station days as a kid. Gonna be fun to see Brandon redo this old wagon. Brandon, gonna go for a factory looking restore? Post up plenty of pics during the process please!

 

Cool! Have any photos?

 

No daily fix for the '71 project? Where is the tweaker smiley? I'm jonesing!

 

No progress in the last two days. The engine is practically ready to pull out. I went to my father's barn where I have the engine stand stored when not in use (it was behind a washer and dryer and had two 327 small blocks sitting on it and was a HUGE PAIN to get out). I got it over to my garage. I talked to the guy that's going to help me rebuild it and he said he's going to take this weekend to clean up his garage so I'm hoping to finish pulling the engine Friday or Saturday if I'm lucky and get it on the engine stand. That way I can go ahead and degrease it because the bottom of that engine is FUUUUNKY.

I can go ahead and start to clean up and organize the engine bay while I'm at it. When I get some progress I'll take some pictures.

I got the transmission linkage finally finished on my wife's 37, but unfortunately the website I use to upload photos is broken and hasn't been allowing any updates for the last few days.

Brandon

 

Man, sounds like that engine stand was taken prisoner!

I certainly understand how limited time and conflicting demands impacts a project's schedule. Just know that you have people here who are pretty excited about this endeavor of yours.

 

That's cool Brandon. Have you found any good Pontiac specific forums for tech info on that big ol' 455?

 

The Performance Years website will be the best choice for that.

 

Rain Delay

Well, my dad and I were going to remove the hood tonight after we got back from Church but it was raining. I'm not sure if I'll have help tomorrow. Guess we'll have to see.

Brandon

 

I am sure that hood is monstrous. When I was young and dumb but strong, I pulled the hood from my '77 GP by myself. That was a big hood. I can't remember how I did it now. If I had to remove a hood like that by myself today, I'd probably put a couple thick blankets between the hood and windshield and the hood and fenders, wrap some rope or straps around the hood to make a sling, and lift/support it with an engine crane or some apparatus attached to the ceiling.