1968 Hurst/Olds

Thank you!

I took a break from finishing the seat trim today and decided to drain/inspect the rear end, since it was slowly dripping fluid onto thefloor.

I counted pinion turns, and there were more than 4.5 turns per one tire revolution. Thinking I was losing it, I had the wife come out to watch the tire. Sure enough, 4.7 turns. Check the rear gears, they are stamped 9A42. 42 / 9 = 4.66!!!

Somebody swapped a set of 4.66 gears into this thing... no wonder the original engine is gone, lol. It makes me even more curious to try to research the history on this car.

Unfortunately, there are two chunks out of the pinion gear, 1 piece out of the ring gear, and the cover took some damage too. Looks like I'll be searching for 3.91s soon to use with the original 672 carrier.

Got the original OW trans back from the rebuilder, who did an incredible job rebuilding and restoring it. A good friend also spent time helping get the refinishing done, which made it look awesome without any painting. Here's a picture of the before and the after. I recreated an 'OW' ink stamp on the bellhousing this weekend and started refinishing the dipstick tube. Unfortunately, after clearing, a bunch of the tube turned dull/white, so I'm going to have to re-do that.

Paul's (Hairy Olds) reproduction trans tag decal is outstanding. It installed very easily and looks awesome. Unfortunately, I let it sit for 5 days before trimming the rivet hole while we were out of town, and some moisture was trapped around the rivet that I used for setting the decal. This caused it to rust a little bit. I bought a second decal just in case, so I'm debating re-doing that as well.

Last picture with a question... does anybody reproduce an original-appearing vacuum modulator? Trans guy wasn't aware of one... picture of the original vs reproduction one is shown below.

Time is flying, and progress is... crawling... house projects, the serpentine project, and other priorities have kept me away from the '68 for a while.

I have been collecting parts, and need to start sending stuff sent out for restoration soon like the booster and master.

I added some pictures of parts...

Got an NOS grille and a bunch of small missing engine parts from Randy, found a correct '68 trans pan (need to figure out how to properly restore the bare metal finish), obtained an original '68 emblem for my decklid, and also got NOS OAI hoses from Dean. You can see the NOS hose on the bottom vs the reproduction from Fusick on the top. The difference in sheen is noticeable... but the NOS hoses are short, hopefully they work on a BBO.

Really want to find a correct date coded 1100767 alternator, but haven't had any luck.

Wow, can't believe it's been 3 months without any updates. Engine is approaching completion at the machine shop, but I really don't have anything photoworthy to post.

I've had the opportunity to land quite a few NOS or nice parts for the car recently, so that's where most of the progress has been made.

Picked up NOS trunk trim with mint used end pieces from Greg at MCACN. Also got an incredibly nice rear notched bumper from marxjunk... it looks perfect in pics, but will need a few dings worked out and replating for show use.

Dean put together a package of rare NOS parts from his collection, which included marker lights, turn signal lenses and bezels, HVAC control head, door handles, interior knobs and dash cups, rear view mirror, sill plates, quarter glass chrome, ashtrays, spiral shocks, and a ton more... parts I would never even dream of finding, let alone having. These will take the car to a new level someday, thanks again Dean! The pictures below only show part of it, there was another two plastic bins off to the side.

I certainly appreciate everyone who has either sold me parts, offered them up, or tried to find them for me. There's a lot of great people in the Olds community, and I've been learning a lot.

Have you decided if you were going to keep the bullet hole that was in the trunk lid? haha

Lol, that's still TBD... depends if we roll right into full body restoration or if it stays this way for a while with all the mechanicals done.

I completely updated Post Number 3 in this thread, where it contains the history of the car....

Late last year, I talked to the good friend of the owner from the 1970's until his passing in 2009. He also remembered the name of the original owner from the Waterloo area, and I ended up talking to the original owner today.

It turns out this car was raced heavily when new in central Iowa (NEITA Raceway), it went through three engines. It had the Holley 3310, street dominator intake and hooker headers installed early in its life.

This is so cool... I'm sending pictures to the previous owners to figure out what the mirror sticker means. The original owner has a few pictures of it from back in the day as well.