'79 Cutlass Pro-Touring Wagon, Mad Wagon II

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Hey all- I'm at it again! With my Pumkinator torn down for some serious updates that will blur the line of street/ autocross car a little more, I needed another car for a daily driver. I've been driving my 454 powered 2500 '77 Suburban for over a year now and I've about had enough of big and clunky mixed with horrible gas mileage. I rescued a '78 Monza station wagon earlier this year and planned a 5.3 LS swap driver for it, but as much as I like burning the curves there just isn't much aftermarket suspension support for these cars so I wasn't totally sure I wanted to follow through with this one...



As many of you also know my son's Coppertop '78 Cutlass wagon got creamed by an elderly driver with her brain turned off, and a year later we're still fighting to get an acceptable insurance settlement so it's been on hold. To make Coppertop's rebuild a little easier though we picked up a '79 parts car from a kid down in AZ. Recently my work hired a a really good new paint and body guy who took a good look over Coppertop and says he can fix it without needing the rear 1/4 panel off parts car. With nothing better to do than get myself neck deep into another 1st gen G-Body Cutlass wagon build things have started to come together to resurrect the parts car!

For the first phase build of Pumkinatror click here. I'll be updating that thread as I upgrade a bunch of stuff on that car too.

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So the story of the Mad wagon- A nice kid down in AZ bought this car and over time customized it to his liking with a Mad Max theme. I remember cringing when he first started bolting stuff to the outside and saying to myself as soon as you get bored with it please let me give it a good home. After a while I started to appreciate that he was doing his own thing and kept my thoughts to myself. In time he eventually had a healthy motor in it and then found a 2 door Malibu so he swapped the drivetrain over, and the wagon sat in the back yard for a while.

After Copper got hit I contacted him to see if he wanted to sell it and he gave me a great deal hoping I would get it running again. That wasn't my plan at first but I didn't have the heart to tell him. For close to a year it's sat in my driveway waiting for me to decide what to do with it. Eventually I did a rendering of what I would do with it should I ever put it back together, and based it on the first look for Pumkinator with a color change. When my 17 yr old daughter saw it she asked if she could autocross it with my son and I and that was that, it was a done deal.

To Pay homage to the car's former life I decided to keep the Mad Wagon name attached to it and am calling it Mad Wagon II. Obviously the Mad Max theme is nixed, but after watching the Mighty Car Mods guys say "mad" to describe what we US guys might call "bad" I figured it all works out. Here's also the artwork for "haul in the family"...

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A couple years ago Roman bought a wrecked Tahoe for a 5.3 swap into Coppertop. He bought a Texas Speed 224R cam and some other parts for it but thee accident put all that on hold. A few months later I did some artwork in trade for a 6.0L LS and I decided that Roman could better hit Copper's performance goals with the 6.0, so we traded. So the general plans for MWII are-

Box and notch frame with a few basic bracing mods.
Mostly stock 5.3 with the 224R cam plus headers and a good flowing exhaust.
4L60E from the Tahoe
Pro Touring suspension, I haven't decided how far I want to take this one yet.
My old 17x9.5 MB Old School wheels and 275-40s all around
98-02 Camaro brakes
7.5 rear with an aftermarket posi center.
Bucket seats and a console with an interior upgrade.
Body work and paint.
Drive and enjoy.

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When we went to AZ we also stopped by another G-Body wagon guy's place and picked up his old frame. He's doing an independent rear suspension full build with a different frame on his Malibu wagon and setting it up for the Silver State Classic. I read a while ago that back in the day drag racers liked the Vega wagons because they were more stable at speed, so maybe there's something to that.

Here are some pics of the old frame. It's been clearanced for rear brake calipers, dual exhaust and has a thrown together trailer hitch. I will be starting the frame notch and boxing it after work today and then building a better hitch. At that point I'll get on to some bracing. Over all it's in decent shape, no real bad rot or anything. More soon...

[badolds]

Thank you for saving that wagon from the current abomination that it is. That kid deserves the firing squad for what he did to the car lol. BTW I love the St. George area, I am considering relocating to that area in a few years. Anything I should know before moving out there from Texas? Does the Smog from Vegas and Cali come into that area very often?

Dan

[cornfedbill]

Well, it's not a Nova, but still kind of cool. Keep up the good work.

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Dan- Yeah I cringed a lot after I saw the clean original slowly get transformed into what it was. But after a while I remembered back in high school I drove a light blue 4 door 73 Nova with black SS stripes, air shocks, and Western chrome modular wheels with white letter BFGs, some of my friends drove cars even whackier. After that memory I started to appreciate that he did what meant something to him. I am glad I got to rescue the car though and am looking forward to getting it straightened out. :D

Bill- A dark day has finally arrived to my garage, I've owned Novas since 1987 and they were my passion for a long time (and still are) but on my income I can only afford one project at a time and I'm so deep into the G bodies right now I can't bail on them. Both of my Novas have been lifeless for longer than they deserve to be, so soon I will unbury them from the garage they'll be going up for sale to hopefully go to a home where the get built and used. :/

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Finally some updates- My son has been saving $ for his V8 S10 project and yesterday we dropped his block at Snow Performance, the local machine shop and race engine builder. We're having it bored and will have them putting in Keith Black eutectic flat tops and Scat rods with the larger 7/16s rod bolts and then do all their magic on the short block. We'll put the top end together so my son gets that hands on experience. This engine will be a roller motor, fairly close in specs to an IMCA circle track engine so it should be roughly 425-450 ponies at 6500. Should be a lot of fun in a little S10.

I've made a little progress on the wagon frame, I got it all boxed and and got working on the notch too. The boxing of the frame went great with my new Eastwood 175 welder. I'm not a welding expert by any means and haven't really welded since hot rod school near 6 years ago, but this welder worked flawlessly and I was able to do some fairly decent work with it.

The frame notch wasn't as pretty. Rather than buy a kit I simply moved the outer rail face inward. I used a plasma cutter to cut the side of the rail off, and I found it was a little bit of a challenge to draw a straight line. I still have to finish this up so I'll post more pics when the job's all done.

Next up is finishing the notch, some bracing and a better trailer hitch design.

[cornfedbill]

Ben,

Looking good! You're putting me to shame.

Bill