While repairing and replacing the interior my dad and I decided to take her for a spin with just one seat (I sat on the floor). We took her out at night on the back country roads trying to avoid all police activity since it wasn't quite up to the standards of a road worthy car yet. We spun tires all over the place and checked to see if the four barrel was working properly :) Here is is moving under it's own power for the first time.

Next up were the wheels, although two were still in fair condition I decided to redo them to look brand new. I set up a sand blast booth outside of my garage and sand blasted all four wheels. I bought the repaint kit from Performance Years and repainted them to look perfect. Here is a shot of my setup.

Here is a picture of the car with the wheels redone, proof that the wheels make the car.

At this point I had finished the interior, the sheep skin cover is overtop of the seat because it was ripped to badly to repair to show quality, otherwise all of the other interior pieces were patched and dyed to look brand new again. Here is a picture of the interior.

Next up for redoing was the rear quarter panel on the passenger side. Whoever owned the car prior to myself, decided to Bondo the heck out of it, leaving several inches of plastic just piled up on the corner. My guess was so that it would pass inspection. I began chiselling away the Bondo to find nothing but swiss cheese metal. I got a patch panel from JC Whitney and began cutting away with my air cut-off tool. Here is picture of the Quarter skin removed. I POR-15ed the rest of the metal to prevent further rusting.

Next, I ground the cut out area to match the patch panel and then flanged the existing metal so that the patch was "set in" from the surface. I clamped the new panel up and drilled holes for rivets and then rivetted it together. Bondo was applied, this time with reserve and patience. After several coats with sanding in between the finish product was primed and painted. Here are a few pictures of the job.

Next up was the Exhaust. I was a little unhappy with the stout Olds 350's performance so I decided the quickest and easiest way to upgrade power and torque was to change the whimpy exhaust system. The stock original exhaust consisted of cast iron manifolds that crossed to a y-pipe through a single catalytic converter to a single inlet, dual outlet muffler. Every pipe was 2". I decided to buy something a little more muscular. I purchased Ceramic coated Dynomax Headers, Dynomax Super Turbo mufflers and cat-back system with h-pipe and finally two high flow CatCo Catalytic converters. I cut and unbolted the old exhaust system only to be rained upon by millions of tiny rust pieces. I bolted up the new headers and fired it up. HOLY!!! What a sound, uncorked exhaust is now my favorite music in the world. The only work I've had done outside (other than my dad and I) was having the exhaust welded up at a local muffler shop. This guy does great work, plenty of custom stuff and he is really cool to talk to. Here are a few shots of the work he did.

Since the exhaust system allowed more flow than stock I decided to allow the engine breathe a little better at high rpm's so I bought a new more wild camshaft, one that allowed the engine to produce well over 4000 rpm. I decided to buy the Crane PowerMax series camshaft, 268H duration, 462, 484 Lift. When I did the job I bought all new Comp Cam lifters, pushrods and valve springs. I also had the heads hot tanked, knurled, and milled for clean-up. I bought comp cam rocker arms too. Here is a picture of the job.