PontiacBonnevilleClub.com

Since the car made an appearance at the summer Michigan Meet, I figured it was time to let the cat out of the bag.

After the major holes were found in the Buick's front frame rails, I almost gave up on the whole thing until a conversation with my girlfriend made me start thinking about a body donor. I put out feelers almost nationwide looking for a car that needed work for a reasonable price. Of course a Buick came across the radar but it fell through quickly. But a fellow forum member posted something about wanting to downsize his collection about the same time. One thing led to another and about a month later, I towed my new project over 1700 miles to its new home.





The first thing attended to was the floppy suspension, the front struts and springs were found to be original to the car. The Sensatrac / Moog cargo spring combo was finally been pressed into action and the front sway bar was swapped in.

So stay tuned, and much work will finally happen which has been years in the making.

*Subscribed*

Here's hoping you don't get waist deep into it, only to find a bunch of hidden rust all over again.

I would be terrified of that possibility if I lived up there.

Did you snag Matt's winter beater?

And I know what you mean by floppy suspension. If it's anything like my Olds was, it's so bad that the suspension can't even keep up with the 16" wheels/tires I put on it.

Can't wait to see pics, and to find out what it is, and how many doors too!

Really hoping for a 2 door!

I took a leap of faith with this one.. So far the worst has been surface rust.

I will be watching this too.

Matt, You'll be seeing it at the meet

The car has had a couple of drivability issues that I traced to leaking vacuum lines in the evap system. They looked fairly nice at first glance but had a lot of cracks in them upon closer inspection. Along with this, I threw in the fuel filter that was so graciously sent with the car. I think it was needed.





Also at this point, I have already reached the end of my patience with the factory radio that had a sense of humor.
The speaker that it played out of was the driver side front, and then turning it up added the rears, and finally the passenger side front. This is before randomly turning itself down for no reason.



I wonder why this sounded so bad, lol.

Got the new suspension pieces in the car and even before the alignment, it is like a whole different car. Hopefully, the alignment will allow me to give the old tires one last trial by fire before they get replaced next year.







One interesting thing that i have found between this car and my Buick even though they are technically sisters is the rear sway bar. The Buick had one equipped even though it had FE1. This one did not :/





These got pulled out of storage to rectify at least one of these issues. F41 Sways

Hopefully there is some 16"+ rims lined up for the new tires, that will probably make that much more difference too. The 14/15" stock rims that come with FE1 are really good at roasting rubber mighty quickly, especially when you really get up on the wheel and do naughty things. I find I am driving on my sidewalls more often then I care to admit.

I have 2 sets of 16" wheels even though the nice set has some iffy tires. That will end up being a winter project.

I still have some 18" Mustang wheels that would look good on whatever this mystery car may be...

You don't realize how enticing that sounds.

Catching up. After this weekend and reading a couple threads...everything makes sense now lol

BonnieBoy08 wrote:Catching up. After this weekend and reading a couple threads...everything makes sense now lol

Pretty funny to read this now

BonnieBoy08 & bs009: I'm glad that you found it humorous which was a bit of the intent.

Welp, now that the cat has finally been debagged, I will chime in on this. It has been very interesting getting covert status updates while the project was under wraps. I am glad it went to a good home, you deserve it!

Since I haven't posted a proper update in a while, the car has been pressed into summer daily driver duties which was part of the plan. It has so far covered 3600 miles and except for some suspension noises and other random knocks it has been going well.

I have been working on swapping in a set of leather buckets that I had laying around for the Lazarus build. So far everything but the power controls are working although my console still needs some tweaking.

hi

hi

Since the meet ended, I have been slowly been working on adding things to the car. I had a 92-99 exhaust pipe laying around that finally made its way on to the car. Sadly the tailpipes were a bit too long, since they were designed for an early SSEi. Barring the typical exhaust leaks, and the new clunks which i am thinking is due to a lot of failing bushings.