1960 Oldsmobile Dynamic 88

1960 Oldsmobile Dynamic 88
This Site is Dedicated to Carla Who Puts Up With Me.

Intro and Background

The blog covers the restoration of my 1960 Olds Dynamic 88. The car spent its early years in the Ohio/Pennsylvania region. The car has been in the family since 1984, when my uncle began restoration #1. That round included a good deal of work by Bob, who towed home little more than a parts car when he bought it. From the pre-resto picture that I saw it looked like it had been parked out in a field and neglected for quite some time. He got the engine running, replaced a fender, added new dual exhausts, exterior body work and paint, re-upholstery, and got all of the mechanicals to function properly. He had it for 20 years and then I purchased the car in 2004, with 58,200 miles on the odometer, and it has been in Arizona since then. Restoration #2 includes returning it to as close to OEM original as possible while maintaining a reasonable budget so the total expense remains close to the book value when complete. This is my first restoration so everything is trial by error and learning along the way.

The car's claim to fame is that it appeared in the movie Kingpin. It served as a background car and you can see it (for only a short time though) during the opening scene of the 1996 movie that starred Woody Harrelson and Randy Quaid. It's being serviced at Munson's garage as the movie opens. Check out the Internet Movie Cars Database (IMCDb) link in the right panel.

Interesting tidbit: the license plate on the front of the car in the above picture reads "60 OLDS", and is in Pennsylvania state colors, was actually made at the Pennsylvania State Penitentiary by inmates in the machine shop.

It has a 371 cu in Rocket V8 with 2-barrel carb producing 240 hp and automatic Hydramatic transmission. It has the original driveline. It's painted the original copper mist poly with white top.

10/14/09

Interior Work

The seats and headliner had been replaced in 1985, and were still reasonably okay.  I decided to put the seats off for awhile and revisit those in the future.  The carpet, rear deck, dash lenses, kick panels, arm rests, and floor pan needed major attention though.  The floor pan looked pretty much like the trunk in regards to corrosion.

This is where my friend Tom came on the scene and helped in a major way to complete the interior items, finish up the trunk, tune-up the motor for the first time, and then fully detail the entire car.  There were many late nights and cases of Coronas poured into the restoration!  He's working on a '54 Hudson complete resto right now.  Check out his blog: http://www.1954hudsonhornet.blogspot.com/

Floor pan primed and painted with new under-seat liner, hardware, and rubber:



Passenger side kick panel, pretty bad shape:


Restored kick panels with upholtry to match the new carpet:



Rear deck before.  Although double mono sound was offered as an upgrade on the high end Olds, I wanted to put in the OEM Delco tube AM radio which only uses the front dash speaker.  The before shot shows the fading and scratching:


Package deck after.  New molding strip was fabricated using vinly.  Bulldog worked great to get the paint to adher to the vinyl.  Everything painted fawn mist per the OEM paint sheet.



Arm rest chrome looked pretty bad.  Checked on having them re-plated but the guy said it could not be done well on that kind of plastic, probably destroy them.  So I solved that by using one of the paints from the interior paint scheme:


Arm rest after:


The dash lenses were cracked due to age and replacements were found on ebay for both the speedometer and the glovebox cove:


Speedometer lens replaced with a used one:


The glovebox cove lens had a crack in the center which didn't look very good:


Used lens found on ebay:


New carpet installed.  Copper/red from the original factory selection list with matching mats with the Olds emblems was selected.  I thought that was a good mix with the copper exterior color and the interior tones.