Guess what I bought!

Messing around with my 1990 Chevy truck has been frustrating the hell outta me.  Wiper motor pulse board is no longer available so I sent it out for  rebuild.  NFG.  Sent it back, they had it for six weeks, it worked once.

Nice truck but it's time to move it along.

Bought a 1995 Chevy wagon, 5.7 automatic, cruise, all that stuff, pretty clean with 86,000 miles.  $3650 and it lives 20 miles away.

For now the only "build" involved would be to lift it slightly, stiffen it up a bit, maybe air shocks.  Definitely an Impala SS type exhaust.

Suggestions greatly appreciated.

Very nice!

I have the set of Impala SS wheels you need. If you cruise it down south, give me a shout. I'll make you a deal on them. 

That thing looks CLEAN!  Dash even looks intact!

When I was shopping these and Olds wagons before buying the hearse I found a nearly identical car being sold at an estate sale.  It was super clean with only 60K miles on it but it had a 4.3 so I passed.  Kinda wish I had bought it and LT1 swapped it considering how stealth it would be compared to driving around in a hearse.

Nice find 

Thanks Toyman, but I'm leaning toward Baby Moons. 

So jealous!!!!!

I love this wagon but the cliffnotes of "an early 90s chevy pissed me off so i sold it and bought another one" is ironic. 

Congrats on purchase!

914Driver said:

Thanks Toyman, but I'm leaning toward Baby Moons. 

Baby moons kill brake cooling, not for me.

How so?

In reply to 914Driver :

That confirms it. Everything looks great 2 inches off the ground.

That wagon is sweet.

Noice. I love my Oldsmobile. Since we’re giving wheel suggestions, I think mine looks great on these old Buick wheels.

That wagon looks great!  Can I have a quick sidebar on the subject of wiper motor pulse boards?  Dorman p/n 88136 ("made of durable plastic for year after year of service") says it fits Silverados 88 to 99. Ships today for 36 bucks Cdn.  Would that help/have helped/help the next guy?

Thanks Stealth, but that's the same part the Stealership insisted fit my truck.  $150, I told the Counter man tht I'd donate $50 to his Christmas Fund if he got it to fit.  My part is 2.5 X 3" and fits in my shirt pocket.  To use that Dorman part I would have to pay $450 for a new wiper assembly.

Yours:

Mine:

Went and got the wagon this morning.  Runs well, slight exhaust leak, cruise control is smarter than me but everything seems to work.  It kinda floats down the road but when I got off the highway and hit the 270' ramp with gusto, it seemed to be pretty level with no real bouncing.

Got a set of snow tires for my truck that I'm going to put on, going for Baby Moons and put them on in the spring.  Any idea where to find a fiberglass or plastic sun visor?  You've seen them on vans.

I am very tempted to bid on the one on BAT but hate the fake wood 

I prefer the clean lines of yours 

Hard to see in the above photos, but there's a 3/4" gray strip with a tan rubber nerf bar below it, the whole length of the car.  I'd like to replace the gray, but sand and clean the rubber strip and cover it with [contact paper?] a woodgrain finish shelf covering paper.  Light colored wood like yellow pine, not as light as birch, not as dark as maple.  Thoughts?

Hmmmm.....    Swapped out the rear wheels for some snows on Chevy truck rims today.  For some reason the factory wheels have 1/4" back spacers.  Why?

The Chevy truck rims with tires that are only 10mm wider than the summer tires, hit the frame rail without the spacers.  With the spacers they look closely but don't touch it.  Wonder what the backspacing on the summer steelies are vs whatever came with the car in 1995.

Time for some Diamond Racing Wheels?

Suggestions?

Oh, and why is the speedometer off some much? 

Several name brands of D-window wheels around now, suspect they're all from the same factory.  Available in 5x5" because of the Jeep JK and from 15x7 up to 17x9.  Soft-8 wheels seem more popular and may be cheaper.  Downside is they weigh a lot.  I have a 17x8/17x9 staggered set on my Delta 88, the wheels themselves are almost 40 lbs each.  You can probably get a set of 15x8s for $250 shipped on ebay.

914Driver said:

Oh, and why is the speedometer off some much? 

Maybe it's a b-body thing?  Mine reads somewhere between 5-10mph fast.

Speedo is +10 @ 45 mph, but +19 @ 65 mph.

Truck is still in the garage, this week I will decide what to do but I'm thinking about sending the wagon down the road.  If I can get near what I paid for it, the truck will see another season.

I foolishly put some Luca power steering fluid Save-the-Baby in just because I had it.  Now that it's cold out, the steering is very manual; slowly replacing the fluid via turkey baster and new fluid.  Fixed the exhaust leak.  The tan line down the side is a rubber rub strip that was body color, going to cover it with wood grain.

Dan

Not sure about newer Impala Wagons, but on my '77 I went to a junkyard that had a lot of old police cruisers.  Just like the Blues Brothers, I upgraded to cop front brakes, sway bars and coil springs, put on a fresh set of Bilstein shocks and some Goodyear GT radials on steelies.  It still handled like a pig, but it was a huge improvement over the worn-out stuff that was on it when I got it.  Mine had the 350, so I also scored a better carb from the junkyard that put the MPG into the single digits when fully loaded.