Oh Grant !!!!!
 

Are you going to show us what you drug home ?

----What he said, Grant!......Bill S

This all began back in March when I first learned of this GTO and I waited over 4 months to finally see it. On July 30th, I was finally able to see the car and meet the original owner "Rex" in the South Sacramento area where the car had remained since it was purchased new. Rex purchased the car at Lee Pontiac in Davis on Aug 30th of 1967. He had just got out of the service after being drafted two years prior and was looking for a '67 Chevelle or GTO. Being that late in the model year, there weren't many new '67s left, but he did find this particular GTO by making a phone call to the Pontiac dealer in Davis that had this one available and he bought it. Rex drove the car sparingly until 1986 when he simply parked it in his garage where it just sat and hadn't seen daylight until recently. The car has 35K original miles with "most" of its original paint (I have since found a few areas where there looks to have been some old paint work done), a beautiful original interior and its matching numbers drive-train. Rex installed the mag wheels, steering wheel and tach shortly after buying the car. The car itself is in great condition overall, but will need lots of work to get it running and back on the road again. I'm looking forward to getting behind the wheel for its first drive in many years!

Nice....:worship:

Neat car !

WOW - I love that car - Congrats!

Beautiful survivor. Congrats!

Very nice!:headbang:

Survivors like that are the best!! Congrats!!

Love these unknown survivors. Congratulations and look forward to hearing an update when you fire it up!:beers:

242 on the plate fits the car perfectly!!!

was the guy very emotional when it left? got to feel really sorry for him. but im sure he realized he would rather know where it went than to die wandering what happened to it when he was gone???

great car.

Hey, someone caught that! Also, Z for the Fremont Plant code.

Not really, he was ready let it go and had no interest in investing time and money to get it back on the road. He never thought he would still have 52 years later, it just happened.

Thanks for all of the nice comments! I'll try to post some more as bought photos later, I need to resize them all first to post them here.

Factory Pinstripes
 

The pinstripe guy at Fremont that day was a little sloppy...

Engine Compartment
 

Clean oil, good sign.

Misc.
 

Wheels, Tires (second set and have around 20K miles on them), the original wheels & caps (he painted the rim faces black at some point before the mags went on), the original inner air cleaner ring and T-3 sealed beams (looks like the driver's lower was replaced, no lines in the triangle).

Firewall Markings
 

They are faint, but you can make out 223, Black and a large G.

WOW........Time Capsule. :beers:

Terrific score Grant! She doesn’t look like she’ll need much to get back on the road other than a good mechanical inspection & some maintenance items. Congrats.

May I ask what the backspace is on those Torq Thrust wheels, and are they 14x6? I’m trying to determine what size and backspace will fit in the wheel wells of my ‘67. Thanks!

Wow Grant - GREAT score. Love it! Congrats!!!! All the smog stuff too!!! Nice time capsule in so many ways!!

Paint & Chrome Cleaned up.
 

I first used a mild paint cleaner and then some liquid carnuba over that, came out really nice. For the chrome and stainless I used Quick-Glo fine polish together with fine Bronze Wool. Here's some new photos when I had it outside the other day. Need to work on the wheels next and see how well they'll clean up.

Some interior work.
 

I carefully removed the old Sun tach from the far right pod and installed a nice original "dummy plate" back in place, looks much better now. Was glad to see Rex took the time to wrap an old rag around the tach before installing it which prevented marring up the inside of that pod too bad. I also removed the crumbling upper dash insulation that was making a mess and then vacuumed everything real good. I just wiped down the interior for now, but still need to do the seats & panels with #40. I found the Soft Trim Broadcast sheet just lying on the floor after removing the rear seat bottom to vacuum under there. Also a piece of headliner material with a tag attached and a cut-off piece of rear window trim. There always seems to be a few assembly treasures under a back seat.

You're a great custodian of that car Grant!

Nice find! Thanks for the pics,,gotta love the survivors!

'

Cool updates also very fortunate for the car that it found you too!
:beers:
~ a Pete

.

Cleaning up nicely. Thanks for the update and keep ‘em coming!! :eek2:

now that's my kind of car. just cant beat an unrestored original. congrats and enjoy.

Lovely!

What stunning colors and overall car.

Saving the original paint on wheels.
 

Looks like I may be able to save the original paint on the wheels that were sprayed over with black by the original owner. My friend suggested trying lacquer thinner and it worked quite well. I carefully removed a layer at a time and it all wiped off. I then used a paint cleaner and wax over that. They wont be perfect, but will remain original paint this way. Also cleaned up one of the worst caps, that came out nice too.

Well done!

Jason

Moved to the engine bay.
 

Day off today and its raining here, good time to post some more photos. Started in on the engine a week or so ago. It looked really nasty initially after removing the original water pump, but there must have been just enough coolant in the system that all of the crud came off easily and didn't damage the timing cover or pump. The divider plates are toast, but those are easily replaced. It looked to have the original thermostat in it that reads "Delcostat". As I expected, the original aluminum/nylon tooth cam timing gear was still in place, but the nylon was completely gone! I've heard over the years that many of these Pontiac nylon gears failed under 20K miles and were done under warranty, but somehow this one kept running and never jumped time. And check out this "storage" decal that I found on the passenger cylinder head behind the smog pump bracket, never seen one of these before.

Some of the markings and date codes on various parts.
 

All of the dates are pretty tight on this car even being a late '67 build. Most everything is E or F dates and just a few weeks before the build date of 06D.

Removed one Torq-Thrust.
 

Took one wheel off to get photos of the back side. These old redline tires are from OK Tire, I remember those stores as a kid. They look to be reversable, white stripe on one side and red on the other... pretty cool!

I have never seen that storage sticker what do you figure that was all about?

If the nylon is gone, it is all currently located in the oil pump pickup, clogging it. That was usually the reason the engines were warrantied at 20,000 miles back in the day. Especially in the Northeast. I remember back in high school, the first cold day of the year, was always referred to as "Pontiac Extinction Day", when one good backfire would shatter the brittle nylon and send it all into the oil pan. If the owner kept trying to start it, all that cranking would just suck the pieces into the oil pump and the bearings would suffer as a result.

Are you planning on dropping the pan and flushing everything out?

(That would be a hint from a brother Pontiac-er)

My friends and I have been discussing this very thing. I'm trying to not take apart more than I have to with this car, but I do understand the importance of making sure that pick up screen is not plugged. The engine appears to be very clean inside from what I've seen so far. Even the 30+ year old oil that was in it came out clean. I have flushed the oil pan twice with 6 qts of paint thinner, the first time I let it sit for five days to loosen any sludge or pieces of nylon that might be in there. I then drained it into a clean bucket and then strained it into another container and I got absolutely nothing other than darkened thinner. I did a second quick flush just to be sure and got the same result. With the drain plug out, you can see the outer portion of the screen just behind the hole and it looks clean as well. Most of the screen has a shroud over it which is very close to the screen itself and I really don't see how it would be possible for larger chunks of nylon to enter inside the covered portion of the screen. Another thing I did was run a wire tie (it would only fit in there flat between the screen and shroud) and ran across the entire screen and there were no obstructions while doing that either, just the sound of plastic running across a screen. And lastly, my friend took a close look with his borescope and saw nothing either. So, did all of that nylon get drained out with frequent oil changes? The warranty/POP booklet shows where Rex wrote down the first three oil changes which averaged 1100 miles per change. If he continued that pattern (or close to it) to 35K miles, that certainly would have helped. While the timing cover and valve covers are off, I will fill it with fresh oil and run the pump manually to make sure its working like it should and go from there. Crossing my fingers!

I love your methodical cleanup and exploration of your goat. Keep us posted Grant!