We bought this barge several years ago when our son Matt wore-out the old Chevy Van he was using to commute to College.

It had vinyl seats, factory air, a 4-bbl. Rocket 350 (non-HEI ignition) with T-H 350, and a 10-bolt rear.

The '74 Cutlass has partially returned to the earth it came from now! After getting a bad tank of gas and having a back-fire blow out the exhaust I gave-up on driving it - the gas milage was not that good and I didn't want to pay for more exhaust work on it! I have pulled the body off the frame, which is still solid and has the same wheelbase as that '55 Chevy 150 wagon shell out in my backyard. This summer I hope to make exhaust repairs to the Cutlass chassis and transfer the '55 shell to the Cutlass frame so I can fabricate body mounts, steering column mounts, wiring harnesses, etc. to make it a '55 Chevy-Mobile! For what it's worth I will keep the description of the old "Lime Green Love Machine" below on-line until I have progress to report on the Chevy-Mobile project!

When we got it the car had 40,000 original miles, the interior was like new (except the carpet, which was an awful faded green color). As far as I could tell, the only work that had ever been done on it was some minor body repair and replacement of the timing gears and chain. The only rust on the body was surface rust around the mounting-points for the body side moldings and the bottom of the trunk lid had rotted-through on one corner and had a little bondo and a "fish-eyed" repaint job . It had a small dent on the passenger's side rear door and the vinyl inserts in the body-side molding were shot.

The car came with all the original documentation (including the window sticker!) - it was purchased at Tarpon Chevy-Olds in Tarpon Bay, Florida and had only recently been titled in New York. The man we bought it from was a jeweler and had taken it as a down-payment on a piece of jewelry, he was going to restore it but really wanted a convertible. He said it had come to New York by way of California. We bought it for $1600 and it provided Matt with very reliable transportation for several years - in fact he put over 70,000 miles on it before the front-end got so bad that I made him stop driving it. The only serious break-down he ever had with the car occurred when the harmonic balancer exploded - apparently damaged by removal during the timing-set replacement. Fortunately nothing else was damaged but these things always happen in the dead of winter and my one-car garage is full, consequently, I paid our neighborhood garage to do the repairs rather than laying in the snow myself to do it - it was too big a job for Matt who is NOT a mechanic!

We found another car for Matt and the Olds reverted to me, sitting-out a year or so before I decided it might be a little more economical to drive than "Godzilla" (the GTO-powered Buick Skylark). I let the neighborhood garage put the front-end in shape and that set me back $600 - the rubber bushings on the upper control arms were completely rotted-out and most of the rest of the articulating joints needed to be replaced. I redid the front brakes, and replaced the valve-cover gaskets that were leaking like a sieve - the engine was so saturated with oil from those leaks that it took several thousand miles for it to burn-off!

This thing ran and handled better than most new cars, although the body took a beating from Matt's driving, I think there was a dent in every fender. I had to get a new front fascia from a '75 in the junkyard to replace the one he mangled (the '74 grill doesn't fit the openings on the '75 fascia right!), and the New York road salt has finally eaten-up the trunk lid, passenger's side rear door, and the bottoms of both front and rear fenders. I stripped all the ugly trim from the car except the aluminum strips on the rocker panels and the scripts. I bondoed the holes in the hood left by the pitted die-cast center spear but most of the side moldings are attached to welded pegs that were easy to cut-off and smooth-down.

The next vehicle Matt went through was a '77 Camaro stick-six. It was a rusty wreck when we got it and it was ready to fall-apart in a year, I stripped a lot of the good parts off it to use on the Olds. Right now I am using the "sporty" Camaro steering wheel and dual stream-lined rear-view mirrors as well as the underhood light. The 14-by-7 Camaro Rally Wheels are on BlueBelle (the '67 Nova four-door) and I replaced the 14-inch Olds Rallies that came on the Cutlass with my 15-inch '69-vintage Keystone D-spoke mags. These wheels look just like the American D-spokes and I bought them new for $15 apiece to use on my '55 Chevy - they need a thorough sand-blasting and refinishing, maybe someday...

I a put new black carpet in the Olds, and a new black vinyl pleated front seat-cover from J.C. Whitney, then painted the door panels and rear seat and garnish moldings to match . I got about 7000 trouble-free miles on the car without any problems after its resurrection. It used no oil and the new oil pressure gauge I installed read over 50psi hot, although the temp guage reads over 220 all the time it doesn't seem to get any hotter even at close to 90 outside...,

While I had the Olds on the road I made a run to a local mall Sears store to return the year's broken Craftsman tools and a new car dealer was having a tent sale in the parking lot. As I cruised down the driveway one of the salesmen saw me coming and hollered-out, "Hey, its about time you traded that in on something better!". Just then I turned a corner and he got a look at the full side-view, his jaw dropped and he exclaimed, "Holy Jesus!" I hope he won't be punished too much for taking the Lord's name in vain because I got a great laugh out of that!

WELL, THE "LIME GREEN LOVE MACHINE" IS HISTORY NOW, AUGUST 2004! I RIPPED THE BODY AND FRAME ASUNDER AND HAVE RE-DEPLOYED THE FRAME UNDER MY '55 CHEVY WAGON BODY! THIS HAS BEEN A REAL INTERESTING PROJECT SO FAR, I WILL PROVIDE A LINK WHEN I GIN-UP A PAGE FOR THE '55 WAGON. MEANWHILE THE RUSTY OLDS SHEET METAL IS RETURNING TO THE EARTH FROM IT IT CAME - R.I.P.