I've bopped around on ForBBodiesOnly.com for a bit but just found this forum. I've owned my wagon only since mid-May but I've dug in quite a bit already. It was really an impulse buy... well, kind of. I'd gotten bored with parting out my friend's wrecked Miata, but I'd also wanted an old car quite a bit lately. I trolled Craigslist for a few weeks for anything made before 1970 until I saw this car - I went to the bank as soon as they opened. This is the car as I bought it - it's riding stock ride height in the rear now but the lowering blocks are going back on after I replace the rear shocks. I'm leaving the front higher as it was riding within half an inch of the (cut) bump stops when I bought it. Here's how it's sitting now: Previous owner had manifold-back dual Flowmasters installed that sound pretty good: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OULvSwbGAM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1S03UPpsEg Lord am I lucky I got this car. I was the first person to check it out and snatched it up, same as my Miata from a few years before. I bought it with not even 103,000 miles. Smooth-running 318 upgraded to orange box ignition (looks like the original coil though). Everything bodywise on the car is original aside from the carpet and the front left fender, which was taken from a Coronet 500 and color matched to this car. When I bought it, everything worked aside from the rear window motor and the radio, though I soon discovered some serious need-to-fix stuff. The first thing I fixed was the window motor (broken wire behind the bumper support) and started dumping money in soon after (I'm not actually in that much out of my own pocket, my friend's Miata's parts supplied most of the funds so far). I've since replaced the front ball joints and shocks - one ball joint was so far gone it was actually turning the grease fitting back and forth. Also did the front bearings and shoes, tailgate weather seal, and rebuilt and retuned its Carter BBD 2-barrel. My latest "you are an idiot" fix was putting the return spring for the transmission kickdown linkage back on - it previously had been flopped back in the WOT position and shifting hard and late half the time. Can't believe it took me 3 months to notice that... The body is in pretty good shape, the only place that's rotted out is the bottom of the spare tire well. Everything else just has some light surface rust, if anything. Only real major need-to-do stuff is cleaning out the intake manifold heat crossover (after everything else I've fixed it's got to be why this thing won't get more than 12 mpg) and having the steering box rebuilt. It has the super-huge non-adjustable 11 inch police drums so it stops okay for a manual brake drum car - I'd do a disc upgrade but finding junkyard parts seems impossible and new conversion parts are $$$$$$. Anywho, that's my wagon.
Welcome to the forum, great write up on a nice wagon. With your obvious knowledge look forward to your future posts.
