Interesting find from my car
 

I'm in the process of restoring my 68 GTO, that I've had since '94. A little back story, when I got it, it was clean and you could say restored. I drove it all through college and in the early 2000's I started to restore it. I'm finding out now that what looks to be a really clean well restored car, can be hiding a lot of bad restoration work. There must have been a restoration done on it in late 80's early 90's before I got it. I've discovered that the quarters had been redone on it at some point, and man they did a half assed job. On the bottom rear of the quarter where it meets up the the trunk floor extension, they didn't even cut away all the rusty original quarter! At first when I was trying to diagnose what was rusty, I couldn't even figure out what I was looking at. I ended up replacing the back lower half and the trunk extension . So to my find.. underneath all this mess I found a section of the original quarter, and what appears to be a pretty cool 70's style paint job. It looks like a black metal flake pin stripe and the bottom of the quarter was done in black metal flake also. In the third pic I held it up to where it was on the quarter, and you can see some of the original verdoro green that it was painted. I though it was cool, and wish I could have seen some pictures of the whole car painted like that. I imagine someone maybe street racing it, as it was originally a four speed car and is now a turbo 400 automatic. Has anyone else discovered anything cool while restoring their car?

Yes, years ago we bought a 69 Firebird coupe, with the hopes of making it a 69 TA tribute car. The car was originally a 4 speed car, but owner changed it to automatic. Long story short we thought the car was a 350 car nothing special about that, then we decided or rather I decided I had to have a Bandit TA, so decided to sell this coupe.


Fast forward, we learned the car had some orangish paint in the trunk. Hmmmmm and some OHC hood emblems as well which would explain the unusual holes in the hood where these emblems were. I still have thosehood emblems. Ran the numbers, turns out the car was born a carrousel red OHC HO car. :jaw: sold it anyway to a member here who I believe is turning it into a pro touring 69 TA paint theme.

This was the car when I had it. Here with my 69 400 convertible.

That is a cool story and discovery. It’s nice that you can follow the progress of the new owners build.

Is that 69 carousel red, or does it just look like that in the picture? Mine was painted that color when I got it 18 years ago. Somebody, somewhere probably has a photo of your car from 35 years ago with the fresh paint job & stripes :) I have been trying to find previous owners of my 68 for nostalgic reasons like this, but its been fruitless. Cool Find!

Back in the '80s, before I knew much about "de-coding" cars from VINs, codes, etc., I bought what was advertised to be a '72 Trans Am, with a non-original 455, out of West Virginia. Solid car, white with black interior, in good mechanical condition and looked nice. After a little while, I noticed some of the black interior color flaking away from the rear interior quarter trim, and white panels underneath. To get the panels out to address this, I had to pull the rear seat. And under the rear seat was a build sheet (sort of rare to find one in a Norwood Bird, I now know). Lo and behold, the car was originally a Lucerne Blue / White interior Formula 400. Loaded car, w/ 15" Honeycombs , sport suspension, rear spoiler, A/C, deluxe interior, rally gauges, etc. Made me wonder how/why/when that transformation happened on a car that was then only a bit more than 10 years old....

I think everyone was anxious to make their cars standout from the rest. I'll bet a lot of these cars got mods & stock parts tossed the week after they were bought new. :)
Nobody thought or cared about orignal back then I suppose. Only rare thing I ever had was a 69 firebird 400 4 speed. Bought it for all the 4 speed parts. it was partially disassembled & rusty, but fixable. I hd zero interest in the car, just wanted to change the 78 T/A I had at the time to a 4 speed car. Then decades later I am watching a 69 400 4 speed car go through mecum & they were talking about how they didn't make a boot load of those. Oooops. Shoulda restored it. was yellow with black interior & black vinyl top. Would love to have a mulligan on that one.... :(

Nice to know that 68 GTO had a style treatment huh.

We bought an OO Judge but it was painted all White. Why?...so we had to revert it back to OO. Cowl was untouched so that stayed all original paint and cleaned up to resto qualities.

Lando, I find it interesting that I’ve had my ‘68 GTO since about when you got yours (got mine in ‘93). I lived nearby in Medford and rarely saw any ‘68’s. Did you make/keep a copy of the old title? I used that to track down the original owner of my ‘68. Found a phone number and called him. He had lots of great stories about the car including racing it and driving it cross country. He shed some light on some of the mods that were done to it. Maybe you could do the same. Btw, I never found a build sheet for mine. Did the PHS to confirm options.

When I got my 75 Lemans, there was rubber bungee straps stretched from side to side under the dash. A buddy told me that's what drug dealers did to secure and hide their stash.

TinInjun, I lived in Burlington when I first bought the car, however I had several friends out in Medford so I was occasionally in that area. I may try to see what paperwork I have for it in the old files. I bought the car from a guy out in West Chester area of Pa. It's funny cause the day I bought the GTO, I had also looked at a 57 chevy wagon, that was also in my price range at about 5 grand. When I saw the Goat, the wagon didn't stand a chance! Also, never found the build sheet on mine, but did PHS as well. Pretty sure it was sold in Wilmington , Delaware, so has been in this area it's whole life.

That is really cool!