199? Custom Cruiser , I'm told $200

ah crap! Now I REALLY hate you!

How do you know it has rust through, Fat. Owner tell you? It sure didn't look that bad from what I could see. If you fall through the floor on the drive home maybe I won't hate you so much.

 

I guess my hand blured the pic a bit, but attmpting to look under I saw holes, if you look real hard just obove the flower you can see a few holes in the floor.....those really dark spots are holes

 

I was in the same boat you were. When I bought the car my wife about shot me because it looked so bad. The fact that it had 42K miles on it made no difference to her...it LOOKED bad.

I looked around a bit for replacement wood. You could, and can still, buy rolls of 3M wood decal, very popular with Jeep Wagoneer restorations, but the car has such a LARGE amount of wood on it, that option was out of my budget. I also considered "painting" the wood, but thought the finished product would look too...sorry for the term...redneck.

SO I decided to try to remove the wood. It's a big project, let me tell you, but it CAN be done and the results are worth well it.

Here we go. Get some WD-40, a new pack of razor blades, some polishing compound, wax, and a hair dryer. And it helps to have fingernails as well. Fingernails will not scratch the paint...razor blades can.

My car was owned by an older lady, and sat in an open carport where the passenger side was contantly in the afternoon sun, which totally dried out the wood decal, and is why that side looked so bad, where my driver's side looked pretty good.

I removed the headlight chrome trim and tail lights to get to the edges of the wood decal, and then, sitting on a folding chair with a hair dryer in my hand, heated up the decal and carefully peeled it back using my fingernails to start it.

On the driver's side and the tail gate, the decal came off fairly easily. Lots of tugging, stuff is STUCK ON WELL, fingernail scraping, swearing, sweating, burned skin, but it came off in larger strips on this side. The paint under the wood was PERFECT and looked brand new. It just took a lot of time and patience to get it all off.

Now the passenger side was another story. The wood was totally dried out and was too brittle to peel, it just broke off when I tried to peel it back.

No amount of heat from the dryer would help the sunburned side. I started where the wood was torn on the doors, and it would not peel, it would only break off in small sections. I would break a little off, spray the edge with WD-40, go to another area while the WD-40 soaked in, and then come back and break another piece off. Had to use razor blades on this side, and it took a LONG TIME to get it all off.

For the razor blades, a couple things to keep in mine...other than being really careful. First you want to scrape from top to bottom (up and down), not from side-to-side. Going from top to bottom, the blade will sit flat against the body panel. From side to side the body panel has a curve and you'll likely scratch the paint at the "ridge" of the curve. Hope that makes sense.

Also, razor blades tend to have a rough side and a smoother side to the blade itself. Most people don't realize that, but it's in the way a blade is sharpened when it's made. You can't look at it and tell, you can only find the sharper side by trial and error. Got slowly, one side will slide easier and cut better. Not making this up, was told by a body man friend and it's totally a fact.

When using the razor, spray some WD40 on the paint first, this will help the blade slide on the paint and prevent scratches as well.

I WAS able to peel the lower body area wood on the passenger doors fairly easily...most of the really dry stuff started about mid-way up the doors to where the chrome trim is.

Oh and if you have the chrome/stainless trim along the lower part of the doors and body, the wood does go under that, but you do not have to remove it, I didn't. Carefully use the razor blade and score the wood decal along the trim edge...getting as far under the chrome trim edge as possible. Unless you get down and look closely, nobody will ever know there is still wood under that trim. Ditto the upper chrome body trim. Just go easy, you do not want to cut into the paint or you could have rust issues. Just lightly score the decal, and when you peel it, it'll tear where you scored it.

It took a full week of after-work evenings to get it all off, working from 7pm to 11-12. My fingers hurt like hell and it was not a fun project, but MAN it looked better once done.

Oh, and if when you peel or scrape the wood off you see a "ghost" image of the wood in places, don't panic, a little white polishing compound will get it right off. Ditto any light scratches you put in the paint using the razor blade. Just be careful and take your time. Even if you DO put a good scratch in the paint, a little touch-up paint will most likely hide 90% of it. I love white cars...the color hides a lot.

There IS a little paint work to be done after the wood is removed. On the one rear 1/4 panel, GM painted the area around the gas door and the gas lid there itself brown before adding the wood. I took the car to Maaco and had that one 1/4 panel painted white for $75. It looked perfect when I got it back.

Also, there are two plastic pieces on the tail lights that are wood colored, between the red brake light and the white reverse light. I removed those pieces and bought some correct color Dupli-Color white spray paint at the auto parts store, and shot those white. They looked perfect when done as well.

The plastic bumper fillers are painted brown on cars with woodgrain. My front fillers were good, but my rears were broken and missing. I finally found a full set of rear fillers off a rusty northern Caprice Wgn (1977-90 rear fillers are the same on ALL GM wagons, good tip when yarding..(Olds/Chev/Pontiac/ect rear fillers will interchange). I took all my fillers to Maaco and had them painted white with white flex paint, and that was another $75.

Had to remove the rear bumper to install the new fillers. Fun job. If you are good with a rattle can, you most likely could paint the fillers yourself and save a lot of money...but I wanted my car as perfect as possible. That part is up to you.

Lastly GM used the same wood decal around the rear tailgate window. This area got a lot of sun as well and this wood was really dry. It took a lot of razor blades and elbow grease to get it off, and once I did, I had scratches. I lightly wet-sanded that area smooth and then taped it off and rattle-can painted it Satin Black. This area is painted black on Buicks from the factory and I thought it looked fine on my Olds in black.

I spent a full week removing the wood, and in paintwork to the 1/4 and the fillers I spent $150. Figure another $25 in razor blades, WD-40, wax and misc stuff. Dor for under $200 and a lot of elbow grease you can totally change the look of your wagon. It was well worth it to me.

That's it! If you do it, please take pics and keep us in the loop on how it comes out. Good luck!

-Mike

 

The gauges were optional outright, but not commonly ordered that way. They were tied to the tow package and that's the reason most cars got them. I really missed them on my car! I just had a wood panel there...it's where I installed my CD changer controller. Ha!

 

Okay, 80-82 corvette center caps, but what lug nuts did you use?

 

Just noticed something in my dash pics above. The first pic was taken with the stock Delco cassette radio. The second has the Delco/Bose stereo with the graphic equalizer I yanked out of a salvage yard FWD Caddy DeVille. That was a neat upgrade that looked stock.

I really miss my Cruiser.....

-Mike

 

OK...I sort of see them. I didn't think those were holes. The rest of the underside pix that I can see look really OK. Odd that the rust is so isolated in a certain area. Maybe it was caused by the way it was parked, or, what it was parked over in those areas. I'm telling you, compared to a Wisconsin rig...that underside looks good!

 

I got the lug nuts from Discount Tire. It was actually a lug nut and a flat chrome washer together. They are made for mag wheels with flat mounting areas...you do NOT want to use acorn lugs on GM Turbines, and can be found at most parts stores as well....for some reason Discount Tire just had the best pricing on a full set of 20. The parts stores sell them in packs of 4 lugs and washers each (?)

The factory GM lugs for these wheels were one piece, but are hard to find now, and when you do, they tend to be crummy looking or rusty.

As a side note, the 77-82 Corvette's used one piece flat-bottom lug nuts on cars with mag wheels. These might work on our wagons, but not sure if the Vette lugs were the same size/pattern. I thought about that after I bought my 2-piece aftermarket lug nuts.

Oh and if you do order a set if Vette center caps, they do pop into the stock Tubine wheel opening, but a good rule of thumb is to add a little 3M "gorilla snot" trim adhesive to the wheel before snapping on the caps. I learned this trick when I owned a 79 Corvette and would lose these caps now and then on large bumps. Using the 3M I never lost one on my wagon, and as long as you don't cake the 3M on you can still remove the caps for tire changes and such.

Good Luck with your projects!

-Mike

 

I guess I was wondering if rust can be ground off in mild cases and the metal sealed?

 

Yes...there are many products out there now that allow you to "dissolve" rust, treat the metal and then paint it with a product that will contain any rust that is left and protect from further rusting. POR 15 is one product line that is popular and works well. The best product I have ever seen for stripping rust from metal is Evaporust. This product will take rust off right down to the bare metal. It works best with parts that can be dipped into the Evaporust.

 

Tedy, whats the round gauge on the bottom of the dash just to the left of the steering column?

 

Thats real good to know, I have 2 origonal Buick caps and have been hunting for more and or other...

I use neopreem caulking, a little dab will do ya.

 

That is a volt gauge, I guess the dash one failed at some point.

 

Thanks so much for taking the time to type all that up, Mike. I don't have the time right now to start into a project like this, but hopefully in the near future I will. It's gonna be a lot of work, for sure. But I'm getting sick of looking at that peeling wood grain. I'd really like to get the Griswold looking good again. If/when I get the project underway, I will be sure to start a thread to document my progress.

 

Fat...I see the dump truck sitting there and the big hitch on the wagon. What business is/was the owner in? I'm trying to figure out what he MAY have been pulling with the wagon. Is that a trailer brake I see under the dash?