Fitzy

Thanks, mate. It's Issue 478, May. There's a white VC Valiant on the cover. My article is at the back just before the Car Club listings. It's now been superseded by the current issue, but your friendly local newsagent may have some old copies. The Pontiac enamelled metal sign is a repro (made in China!) but they have done a great job on the rusty patina. I reckon I'll be waiting a while before the Taupo RCC sign starts to rust.

Home again, thank goodness. What a week. Last night on the plane coming home I'm reading the current issue of Unique Cars - as the name suggests the main body of content is anything to do with classic cars, plus cars for sale and all sorts of articles. I get toward the end of the mag, turn the page and I see a red 1965 Grand Prix. Then I realise it's mine and there I am standing next to it! My 15 mins of fame. I forgot to mention last week that a mate came up to mine for a visit (on his Ducati Monster) and presented me with a Pontiac garage sign. He said he found it in a curio shop in Tasmania. Nice.

I believe that 15s are a minimum requirement.

As we all know I elected to rebuild my Carter. It runs fine. At about 60mph I give her a little gas and the car just surges forward. Since the rebuild, I can adjust the idle with the large single idle air screw and it now responds - it never used to. The fact that Edelbrock actually based their carb on the Carter was good enough for me to persevere with it.

Power and Brake - love it. Just in case you're ever confused as you're sliding sideways down an icy road, you can glance down and be assured of what action you want to take. Poor Russell doesn't have a Power pedal. I feel his pain as I went globetrotting to track down my stainless trims, which by the way are featured on every Pontiac on this forum. Mine must have been a special delete option...I doubt it - they probably rusted away.

Ames should have a replacement. Sure, you could use adhesive but you can be assured that one sunny day as you're cruising with the top down, the clouds will come over and you'll smile to your honey and assure her she's gonna stay dry and the switch will come off in your hand as the rain drenches the two of you. Get a new switch.

Yep - sounds scarey to me too but you have experience with this, so off you go. I've said it before: nothing beats EFI and if you can retrofit it into an old car then it's gonna be worth the effort. So, what about the throttle linkage? Is the new engine designed with electronic throttle control? Do you adopt that or Frankenstein it into an analogue cable system?

Huh? What? Where am I? All I can see are cows bopping along to some woman dressed as a cow eating a pie. Am I in the right place? Where are the Pontiacs? Why am I hungry all of a sudden? Yes, as Russell said - good luck. If NZ was more Third World, you could take along a bottle of scotch to ahem 'help the process.' That way if it turns pear shaped, you can hoe into the scotch. Win win.

I have been saving furiously for the paint and have a 5 figure amount now ready to dedicate to it. If it's going to exceed that, I'll buy 4 litres of red paint and a coupla brushes.

You can tell which one is Kiwi - the red eyed one who looks stoned. The dummy with his tongue hanging out, yep, looks just like me except Kiwi is about a foot taller than me.

I had a VERY quiet day today, didn't even make it to the front fence in a bout of extreme pottering. Most of the pottering was domestic crap around the house & yard but I also managed to remove the light mould that had formed on my headlining - the tropics aren't ideal for car storage. As I was circling the car looking at it's paint I decided that it MUST get painted. Unfortunately it'll highlight all the bits that aren't perfect but maybe I'm the only one who'll notice whilst regular punters ooh & aah at it's shiny new coat. There - I have made the commitment ro the wider FP audience so am now accountable to follow it through. Where's my beer - there it is. Cheers.

Let me guess...you're going to replace them with Pontiacs buried nose first a la Cadillac Ranch. Nice. The Boss is going to kill you.

Uh, no. It's my second show - same venue just a year later. I'm simply going to park up, open the hood and all the windows and field questions & comments from mostly old men who rattle on whilst I can feel my life draining away! It was a really good event last time (remember the Cortina on a trailer for sale?) and I'm looking forward to it - it's about as social as I get these days.

I only just saw all this - amazing work. Those bloody steering wheels...as you know after weeks of mucking about with mine I gave up and got a Grant. Bolted straight on - done. Can you jump on a plane and paint my GP? I read all the words you use but have no idea what any of it means. I briefly entertained the idea of painting my car myself, but then came to my senses and slapped myself about the face until I was dizzy. Painting should be done by professionals. So...you comin' over?

I agree, Kiwi. That's why I'm in such a lather over the impending paint job. As I've said, I like it's weathered look but...there's nothing like running your hand over shiny new paint. The dilemna continues. If rechroming had been just a bit cheaper then of course that would have been my chosen route, but the cost is prohibitive. Never mind - it's done now. The Atherton Car Show is on in a few weeks' time and although I'm rostered on, I have been given permission to be absent, so they're going to fly me home a few days early that week. At least the car will be a bit more presentable this time.

I promise these are the last pics of my land yacht - they are for Wrongway to assist in his decision re chroming. I took one of the back to put real chrome in context. In the sunlight, I guess powdercoating is somewhere between really shiny silver paint and weathered chrome. All things being relative it's a vast improvement on the ratty old chrome. On a different topic - is anyone else experiencing weird image stuff going on? Ringo - you might not be aware of it but if I expand a photo, all sorts of pixellated detritus comes up. FYI I use a tablet.

That's how mine looked after it's rebuild. Don't worry, Paul. After a few thousand clicks, it'll settle down with a little oil mist, some dust and some road grime. Looks damn fine right now.

I'm sure we're all sick of looking at my car but I'm almost done with this job, besides these are research pics for Wrongway. The rest of you may turn away if you want. Bolted the brackets back on and manhandled that behemoth back onto the car. I supported one side of the bumper whilst I wrestled with the other. Coupla tips: ensure your bracket to chassis mounting bolts have been removed, derusted and lubed so that you can spin the nuts on with your fingers whilst 60kg of bumper is balancing above you. Secondly, if the factory punched square holes in the bumper have seen some activity over the years and are a little chewed out, you may want to upsize to 1/2" bolts. Some of my new M10s were just a little too small to stay put so I had to recycle some of my better original bolts. By the time I finished the job, the sun had gone for a beer too, so I'll get some outside pics tomorrow. These ones were taken with a flash. Once again: Super Chrome Plus from Prismatic Powders.

Here's a bit of luck. I 'thought outside the square' last night and decided to look for similar bolts for the bumper reattachment rather than special bumper bolts. I made a list of all the relevant nut & bolt suppliers locally, dedicated an entire day to it and set off this morning. The very first place I went to had exactly what I wanted. Admittedly when I asked for 7/16" he looked at me like I had just parked my spaceship in the carpark, so I settled for M10 which made him happy. Total cost: 20 Australian pesos for 10 stainless steel bolts and nyloc nuts. Happy? Beer will be consumed later to celebrate this occasion. Wrongway - I'll reattach the bumper and get the car out in the sun and get some proper pics for you.

Here in Australia, we suffered through all sorts of stuff from the US that was obselete 10 years before we got it. My Three Sons, I Love Lucy, Bonanza, Hogan's Heroes interspersed with Aussie gems such as Skippy (The Bush Kangaroo) and our godawful police shows that were cringeworthy when they were new - now totally unwatchable no matter how stoned you are. In saying all that, one of my favourite movies is It's A Mad Mad Mad Mad World. There's heaps of old 60s cars in it and is a hoot to watch.

Once again I have returned from work and picked up the bumper today - that was far quicker than I could have imagined. The finish is really nice - almost like real chrome. For my old warrior it's defo good enough. One thing I wasn't prepared for was that after they blasted it, the pitting caused by the rust is still present and the powder has been applied over it. So, it's not perfect but neither is the car. So, info for Wrongway specifically, it's a great result and is probably the closest thing you'll ever get to real chrome. Just be sure to properly prepare the metal to eliminate any surface imperfections. If I had known this, I would have done so myself. Cost? Less than a quarter of chroming, plus no shipping costs because the guys were local. I'll post some more pics later.

Wrongway, as you can see from Allen's Fasteners the actual bolts are only about 80c each, but $44 to ship 10 bolts is just silly. If one of their employees went to the post office and bought a padded envelope, it'd probably cost $10 to send to me. I found a pack on ebay for about $20 but it's another $20 to post. I know - $40 isn't much, but for 10 bolts it is. I can't find the correct size ones in Oz, well not cheap enough anyway - Holden ones are too small and anything else is priced like gold. Maybe I should find a cheaper hobby, like share trading. What could go wrong there? Oh, I tried to pry the little stainless caps off my existing bolts and it's impossible. Does anyone know why they even went to the trouble in the first place? I'd be happy to remove those caps and hand the bolts to the powdercoater and have them done as well.

Okay - the minimum I need is 8 x 1" & 2 x 1.25 (or longer)." The longer ones sit just above the indicators on my car, ie. that's the upper ones inboard. Anything outside of and underneath those are 1", all 7/16" diameter. I don't need washers or nuts. Let me know how you go - there's no hurry. Thanks, man. I found a nice little website called Allen's Fasteners where they are cheap as chips but the shipping is ridiculous. I also found the other extreme - try $74 for ONE PAIR. Check out the screenshots. Okay...Yee Haa! Hillbilly Paint Shop was open today. Gave GP front hidden sheetmetal and bumper braces & horns a good coat of rustproof paint, loaded the bumper into the ute and off it goes tomorrow. I also wirebrushed, cleaned the threads and lubed up the old bolts, washers & nuts I can reuse, so they'll certainly go on much easier than they came off.

I'm ex Melbourne so know Victoria very well. Got sick of the cold and moved to Cairns. Your convertible Parisienne must be a rare bird in Oz. I know of only 2 other 65 GPs (like mine) in the country. Your paint looks like the way mine should. Is it the factory Montero Red?

We went there, went downstairs to the foyer but there was no way to buy physical tickets, you had to go online. Our temporary NZ SIM cards decided that was the day they were both going to be stubborn and unhelpful and no matter how many times I tried, I could not purchase tickets. That's okay - just another excuse to come back for another visit. Only the other night I mentioned that I'd love to go back, only this time we'll go way down the bottom of the south island to Invercargill and then way up the top of the north. I'd do anything to once again immerse myself in those beautiful hot pools at that resort just outside Taupo. I'll let you know when we're coming so you can make up an excuse to not be home!