A Seabee's 1971 Skylark...

[KFD]

Howdy Pro-Touring!

My name is Kelly, and as of right now, I am stationed on Camp Leatherneck, afghanistan, I am coming home in the next ten days back to Sunny Southern California.

I will tell you about my car. I first saw this thing as an eleven year old on a bicycle in a small town in Colonial Beach, Virginia. Just new to cars in general, I knew it was from the seventies. A few years later, my parents buy that car! It was a little old lady special, Stratomist Blue, white vinyl top, 350 2 barrel, column shift auto bench seat, and 50K on the clock.

My mom drives it for a few years, and around the time I entered high school, the old 350 gave up the ghost. My stepdad, being the PT Barnum that he is, sells me the car with a dead motor, and 20,000 more miles for the same price he paid for it... $300. I worked all summer to save up for that thing.

I bought a Buick Century the next summer with the money from my first job. It had a healthy 350, with the later heads, better bearings, and about 75,000 on the clock. It took me three months and a cheap 40 piece tool set, but the Skylark was on the road.

Fast forward to my senior year. We moved from the small town in Virginia back to my Pop's native land of Florida (he is one of five people originally from that state). Enter a fun equation here: 17 year old, rear wheel drive nose heavy car, left hand turn, rain, bald tires (whatever, my car looked cool with those late seventies Camaro Turbines, who needs tread!?). Yep, the answer to that equation was a bent frame.



One Chevelle frame later, that car went from hitting a curb in August to me spending all night christmas eve putting the final touches on the car, and doing burnouts before unwrapping my presents.

That car was my daily driver, I looked high and low for an affordable set of Chevelle SS396 Rallyes (I loved Magnum 500s), only to never find them, sport mirrors, and scored a set of bucket seats for it. The rallye gauges and GS tach came next.

I graduated high school, told my Pop to never sell the Buick, and I played with Forwardlook Mopars and Italian motorcycles on the west coast for about a decade.

I joined the navy the year prior to getting a duty station in Panama City in 2009, and for the first time in years, out to my parents home in Rural North Central Florida. To my surprise, my old friend was waiting in a chicken coop, largely in the same shape I left her.

I spent the next year on weekends tinkering. I did an Afghan deployment... Then a move back to California, along with, you guessed it, this deployment I am currently wrapping up...

In that time from 2009 until last summer, I tuned the car up, put the bench back in it, got my SS396 wheels on it, and now the car is running smoother than it ever did when I was working on it as a crazy teenager. More than once I have been cursing at my seventeen year old self for doing things that the twenty-eight year old self doesn't understand.

What is the plan for it now?

Get it to the west coast (should be happening here soon), make it drivable, and drive the hell out of it until the wheels fall off. I might get around to restoring it, but bills take precedence, and as long as it fires up and runs reliably (Pop fired it up last week, on the first crank!), I am fine with that. Hey, rat musclecars are the "in" thing, right?

Well, it does have typical A-body rust, but thats what MIG welders are for! So I got a few friends from my Mopar days that are going to help me with the welding chores, and while my plans when I was younger was to make it a GSX-wannabe, I am not so crazy about that idea now. Yeah, I do have the GS hood scoop inserts from a totaled hood, and I do like the idea of a wing, it's going to be largely stock... I am thinking of putting "Skylark" badges back on the quarters. It will be a Skylark, with a lot of GS stuff, but weren't the Olds Rallye 350s just Cutlasses with 442 stuff on them?

One of my dreams is to put a T56 in place of the Turbo 350, unless I get my hands on a 200-4R first. My eye is still open for that floor-shift column. I have always wanted a bench seat manual car. I have a few other parts I want to find: Cutlass plastic inner fenderwells, a correct BOP 8.5 rear (I have a chevy 8.2, with 3.54ish gears, I want a 2.73 unit, call me crazy), I can go on and on.

I really love the whole Pro-Touring movement, I find setting up cones in an empty parking lot way more appealing than watching a bunch of old guys in fold-up chairs sitting around their cars listening to "Mustang Sally".

Like I say, my main ride has been my Aprilia RSV motorcycle, I am getting a little tired of riding in the rain, and like I say, I needed to do something with my high school sweetheart. I want to keep on building a ratty driver's car, pick up where I left off ten years ago, this time with a little more money, patience, and experience!

Later

KFD

[KFD]

Tartar Sauce! I forgot pictures!


A few months after I replaced the frame, ripped off the white top and the wheelcovers (April, 2001).



Hi, remember me? Yeah, I have been waiting for you for ten years!



See those Camaro Turbines? Yep, one of those was replaced because of a run-in with a curb. Just over the car's decklid is the pole barn seen in the previous picture, taken a few weeks earlier.



I can't even express the joy I had in bolting those wheels on the car. I always liked them over the Buick Rallyes. This was taken August 2010.



As soon as it gets to California, I am painting the inserts black like they are supposed to, and yes, even though I learned drum brakes in and out on my Forwardlook Mopars, I want discs on this thing, all the way around. I hope that blazer or firebird rear discs will have enough clearance for these wheels.

I also want to get lowering springs, air shocks for the back (hey, I gotta tow that bike sometimes), and a laundry list of other goodies. I might repaint the car-I will at least fix that rear quarter...

Yes, I do have the rear seat. I know that was the first thing you noticed!



One last photo. I miss that Sonoma, I regret selling it, rustholes, stinky cat and mismatched tires! That is my Aprilia in the back...



Later

KFD

[Nessumsar]

Bitchin story Kelly, welcome to the board!

Thank you for your service.

[KFD]

Haha. You are welcome. I am close to you, my bike, wife and dog are in Hermosa Beach! I commute from there to Oxnard on my bike every day...

KFD

[Nessumsar]

Oxnard is one heck of a commute, good thing you have the bike.

Car looks good, a little rough, but it'll do.

[NYC]

Welcome to the board and thanks for your service!

[The Stickman]

WElcome to the forum and thank you for your service. That can never be repeated enough to all that serve.

[KFD]

Thanks again, everyone! I leave this rotten country tomorrow, and I will be sitting in Kuwait for abotu a week, THEN HOME!!!!

Woo-Hoo!!!!