James

Ben - So... do you still have it? (I haven't been involved here enough to know everybody and their stories.) James

. Thanks First Born, Durant and Buicknutty. Three good posts, all different! I hope others will continue to post in with more opinions/suggestions! All helpful and appreciated. James P.S. I love that picture, First Born. What I think when I see that picture is... that guy must have felt like a king out in that car. (how different from the tupperware cars of today!) .

. Hey Everybody, Well... on the one hand, it hasn't been a good year, car-wise... very little progress. On the other hand... some recent events bode well for some rapid progress and maybe a finished car before too long. (...not in time for the Oldsmobile gathering in Cartersville in October but we'll get there!) I do have one question about a decision I need to make very soon: All the wiring on my car was pretty deteriorated, and so I need to get a new wiring harness. And I'm trying to make a "philosophical" decision here. - If you're building a show car, you want everything to be N.O.S. or as faithfully reproduced as possible. - If you're rodding a car, well then there are no rules, do what you want. I am neither of the above. I am not rodding the car. But neither am I building a car to show. I'm just restoring my Grandfather's old Olds. But I am trying to do it "right" to the extent I can. Worked hard to get the original color back on it. Going to do the interior authentic. Etc. But on the other hand... I have taken a couple of shortcuts, for convenience, or to save money. - I put in a non-original, not to spec, gas tank - put on an auxiliary electronic fuel pump - didn't take the engine out and rebuild it (runs great as is!) - didn't take the body off the frame and do that level of restoration - etc. So what about the wiring harness? I'd be happy to use a gen-u-ine authentic reproduction cloth wrapped wiring harness, but, man, the first one I priced (YNZ) was $800! What do most of you guys do when it comes to a wiring harness? Should I try to respect the car as a piece of history and cough up 8 bills for a cloth wire harness? Or do you guys just wire it with "good" wire (but not expensive period reproduction wire) and that be just fine? Opinions? Thanks guys. Jim P.S. This picture has nothing to do with my wiring harness question. But pictures make posts pop, so here's a picture! .

. Hey everybody. I'm at loggerheads with the issue of getting glass for my car. For some reason I thought it the thing to do to post THAT question in the OLDSMOBILE CLUBS -> Oldsmobile - Technical . forum. Here is the link to it: 1937 Oldsmobile (F) GLASS REPLACEMENT information/help/advice please My conundrum has to do with logo-ing, legal requirements versus originality, etc. If any of y'all have any knowledge, opinions, advice about this, please go there and chime in. I need glass (past time for it) but am perplexed about all this. Thanks, James .

. Hello all, I've had this thread -> ( My Grandfather's '37 Oldsmobile ) running for four years in the "Our Cars and Restoration Projects" forum. (I just looked it up, my word! has it been that long?!?) But I thought I'd come here for this question. It's time (past time! I need glass!) for me to get the glass for my car. My Question Is: Please tell me about LOGO-ing glass. My struggle is to understand/resolve a) what I am told by some is a legal requirement that a shop is REQUIRED to put THEIR logo on the glass ... [has to do with public safety, liability, blatty, blatty, blatty] versus some/most of these logos are just butt-ugly, stand out like a sore thumb and are, if nothing else, WAY non-original Breaking the law, risking getting sued, etc. sure don't seem like a good idea. But having twelve (12) ugly logos strewn 360˚ around my car sure ain't that appealing! What's the truth? What do us guys (you guys) do? What do y'all recommend? Much obliged! James .

. Thanks everybody. .

Jerry, What a great looking car. 1- just for the record, we almost got the same car, your's is an L, mine is an F. 2- I really enjoyed seeing your interior. I've been to their web site and all, but to see the cloth in the car, yep, that looks just right. 3- And I'm missing an emblem too, on an F there is a "T" emblem that sits down below the grill, just barely higher than the front bumper. You can see it in the opening post of this thread, that's the car still sitting in my Daddy's basement before I ever moved it. Somebody (twarn't me) evidently ran into or got backed into by something that came just over the bumper and tore up some steel and the emblem. I hope this isn't going to be too hard of a find. James .

. And btw, just one quick one out of many... We are starting to put 'er back together. There's a local Oldsmobile chapter that has a "Gathering" a few towns over from me every autumn (Sept? Oct?). My goal (pray for me!) is to be ready to drive the car over for it this year. .

So Jerry, you don't say and my "eye" for some of this isn't as expert as most here... Is that a '37? Same as mine? Do you have pictures of the whole process? If you do and could post any, start your own thread?, I would sure like to see them. James P.S. I've got SO much admiration for all of y'all who are able to do your cars yourself. I'm just not/can't. Very thankful to have some friends and saintly workers who have made this a reality for me. .

Jerry - Thanks for reading the thread, and happy you enjoyed it. My car indeed had had a fairly easy life, especially compared to yours it seems :-( But it had had some boo boos that had been filled with lead that had to be cut out. And a few places that some bad rust had gotten into. So there was a bit of "lacey" lead that had to be cut out and new pieces formed and welded in. Here's the bottom of a door. The picture is the old piece that had been cut out laid back on top of the area under repair. James

JEFF! Hey Man! Good to hear from you. Hope you're doing well. I really enjoyed meeting you that day, and, as above, yes we ought to reconvene. Yes "see how she looks with her new paint" and we can also crank her up! Can't go for a drive yet (pedals, wiring, seat to sit on! etc.) but we can crank it and listen to it purrrrr. Stay in touch and lemme know when a time sorta feels right for you. Jim .

Hey Paul, Billy's got the 39Buick, I'm the OP, James (Jim). No worries, I know these threads jump around a bit, just clarifying. To answer your question, we painted the manifold with some HIGH temperature paint, and were just curing it with a little heat. The heat from the bottom flowed up pretty naturally. We didn't try to get it cherry red. Just a little bit of heat, then kill the flame, turn it back on, heat it back up a little, back and forth. Thanks for asking. Jim .

Hey Billy, Yep, it's Santone Cream, Oldsmobile paint code 131. And OH! did we go round and round about the color! My only goal with this car, from Day 1, was to just "fix up the old Oldsmobile." (...and, of course, that's easier said than done, as in you can't "sorta" re-do the interior, or "sorta" repaint it, or "sorta" re-plate the chrome, etc. It's much more a case of "in for a penny, in for a pound", but I digress...) But as re: the paint color, I just wanted to put it back original. 1- well, we had the paint code, and you can get the original DuPont color mixing formula for all those old colors, so no problemo, right? Nope, those old formulas aren't really applicable into today's paints, today's paint mixing systems. 2- but never fear, the Dupont rep said that they could cross the old formula into a new formula. So, he did, and we got us a test quantity of it, and sprayed up a piece of sheet metal and... DIDN'T LIKE IT :mad: In a word, it just wasn't "right." 3- So my saint of a paint/body man took his Official DuPont Paint System Paint Analyzing Camera and took a picture of the inside of the trunk, figuring that that would be the purest, least weathered or faded paint we could find. Produced a formula, mixed up a test quantity of paint, sprayed it on a piece of sheet metal... DIDN'T LIKE IT :mad: Didn't look "right." 4- At one point somebody realized that there was fresh paint underneath the big tag light/ornament thingy. note: the car had been repainted at sometime, and I think they had just repainted it "by eye" and not by any formula, and it came out more tan than cream. So some virgin factory paint under the tag light was a great discovery! So we photographed that, produced a formula, yada yada yada... :mad: In summary, we must have painted up six-eight pieces of sheet metal, none of which I liked. Then I realized that there was actually the whole question of "what was I looking for?" The original color of the car? (which I may have only seen when I was real young? ever?) Or the color of the car that I learned to drive on, took off to school, etc. which was the re-paint color. At any rate... One day, I walked into the shop, and there the car sat where mister Andy (body shop saint #2, oh! how I am blessed!) had, just on the side of the car somewhere, gently sanded down through the repaint color to the original paint color. And from the door as I came in, maybe 25 feet away from the car, it was just... boom!, there it was, the color I had been looking for. And we photographed that spot of paint (that's what's the second picture below) produced a formula, mixed a test quantity of paint, sprayed up a piece of sheet metal, blew it dry, held it up against the spot on the car, and you couldn't tell one from the other. Ooh-rah! And I said to Kelly, "Paint the car." And we did. And the car painted up just like I had had it in my mind from day one. It was just a long road to get there. (But I just wasn't going to paint it a color that wasn't right; I'm stubborn that way.) I will say one thing about the color. It's one of those colors that changes with the light. A little darker, a little lighter, a little more tan, a little more cream. And I LABOUR over every batch of pictures I take to try to get the color of the car looking right. The main challenge is to keep the car from looking yellow in photographs, which it isn't. I am very conscientious with my WB at the time of taking the pictures, but no matter, that paint still photographs a range of shades. But, I enjoy the challenge! Jim P.S. I'll be looking forward to seeing Sequoia Cream on your car. (...wherever you get the formula from, and however you get the paint made up :cool: ) I gotta guess that GM kept some sort of "cream" color in their color chips from year to year. Nudged the formula a little each year and changed the name. But I would guess 1939's Sequoia Cream was pretty close to 1937's Santone Cream. We'll see I guess, huh? P.P.S. For any 1937 Olds sleuth's who read this and come back and say "Santone Cream was NOT an F37 color!" You'd be right. Santone Cream was a standard color for the 1937 convertible line. But would have been available, of course, as a special order color on other body styles. (see how green-ish this looks! /\ I never could get this particular shot to look just right; no matter, the car does) .

. In this old shop where the car's at (actually the shop just moved, same guys, new location; this is "the old shop") there's a big area where a lot of wrecks and body work, sanding, scraping and grinding takes place. But for project cars like this, after they are painted, there's this skinny little part of the shop where they go to get worked on toward putting them back together. It's a little more sedate, and they're a little safer. The last picture I posted was just as the car was getting moved from the paint booth. This one is from a different angle after all the re-juggling of the cars was finished and all the cars got situated. I sort of think of this as The Old Car Lineup. Actually, it is mostly the old Truck lineup. Mine is the only passenger car, all the rest trucks; this is rural, mountain territory, after all. :cool: .

. Well, y'all have stimulated me to attack ALL these unprocessed raw photos. Process a few of them anyway. Here's the car fresh out of the paint booth (and I mean fresh, it was!) Jim P.S. Me looking at this photo, I'm just remembering... When we got ready to haul the car out of my Daddy's basement (see page 1 of thread), it hadn't been driven for 40 years or so. And my Daddy had maybe tried to keep the tires aired up for a while. Even though it wasn't being driven, they look so sad sitting on the rims. But he had given up at some point, so I'll say it had been sitting on the rims for at least 30 years. I know those flatbed haulers can just wench a car up. But I just hated the thought of watching the car being scrubbed along the ground. So undignified. So, a few days before we were to tow it, I went by my father's house with an air pump just to see... "I wonder if these things would hold air?" And they did, we we able to .r-o-l-l .it up onto the hauler with the grace it deserved. And four years later they are still holding the air (no re-pumps). Who woulda thunk it! . .