Sorry for the lack of updates – I’ve been working pretty much 6 days a week and logging just about 50 hours each week so I haven’t been on much.

I ended up traded my 1964 Pontiac Catalina that was my daily driver for this 1950 Pontiac Chieftain, the first week of March ‘10. If you have already browsed through the visitors Pontiac’s page, you probably saw it posted there as this car belonged to George whom I got it from out of New Jersey.

The car is pretty much original and has a Straight Eight engine and the Hydramatic transmission. It appears it has been restored at some point, but sat a lot. The engine in it knocks due to a spun bearing. I changed the oil and it quieted the knock down and it picked up some oil pressure and I did manage to drive it to the post office and back.

As far as plans for the car go, I have bought a 1961 Pontiac 389 engine with a 4 speed hydramatic for $250 that will replace the pounding flathead and wake this old Chief up.  The engine is stuck right now, but I got the heads and intake off it and it’s soaking in mystery oil. Hopefully once I get it free’d up, I’ll finish the tear down and get it hot tanked and start the rebuild. I hope to have it ready to drop in by fall or sooner.

And now for some pictures…

Heres a shot of it I took at a gas station on the way home.

Tail-gating…

Here it is sitting in my back yard before I put it under the car port. I robbed the tires and wheels and stuck those on my 52 for now until I got some new whites for it. I also stuck an old visor on it, not sure if I’m going paint it up and leave it on or not. Also stuck some old caps on it that I had laying around.

Interior is in decent shape.

Back shot

I’ll post more updates as I work on the car. Right now my main focus is to get the 389 built and ready for the swap.

Picked her up for $1000. Came with 5 new coker white wall 7.10×15’s, a new master cylinder, wheel cylinders, shoes, and brake hardware. All the trim, the grill and bumper that is removed in the pic, was in the car. The engine has been machined, but not assembled due to the machine shop finding a cracked crank. There was a EGGE master rebuild kit in the car, along with 8 new EGGE .030-over pistons, new timing gears & chain, reground cam, oil pump, etc. Pretty much everything to put it back together, except the crank. The plan is to get the brakes put together, check out the steering, and put a 350/350 in it TEMPORARILY, until I can get the straight 8 put back together, so I can drive it. My previous employment was as the head tech in a restoration shop, and now I sell Snapon Tools, so hopefully I can get old girl driving in a couple good weekends of work.

1952 Pontiac "Flame Job"

Well, I got bored and drew out some flames on my car a few weeks prior to painting them. I drove it around for a while with the sketch on it until I finally got the nerve to mask it off and spray them. They’re painted on with Krylon paint (cans) and I think they turned out pretty good.

I basically made me a pattern on some cardboard paper and used that to keep both sides symmetrical… I think they turned out decent for my first time ever trying to paint flames…

It was getting dark out when I finished so these pictures are a little fuzzy.

1952 Pontiac "Flame Job"

Here are a few pictures of Marcs 1953 Pontiac Gasser project.

Hi Dave,
Here’s mine…..I’ve had it for 4 weeks. These are truely beuatiful cars.

I’m currently stripping it down. I yanked the straight 8 and 3 speed trans. The engine isn’t running but turns over. Its been sitting since 68.

I am going to try my best to describe along with the images what was done at the point it was taken. For some reason
I didn’t take pictures of the actual work being done, never thought to? But I did take pictures of the finished work.
My car has NO bondo at all in it filling any holes. A little was used to cover over light pitting and to smooth welds, but other
than that it’s ALL METAL

And the story starts:

I found this car listed in the local trading paper listed as a 1953 Pontiac. I called and decided to check it out.
Once I pulled into the lady’s driveway, dad wanted to leave right then because what he saw is what you see in the first picture.
It looked rougher than it actually was though, I convinced him that I was doing the work and he wasn’t so I looked at it and knew
from first glance it WASN’T a ‘53, but rather a 52 because of the body style and split windshield which changed in 1953 to a solid wind
shield and a body style similar to the 53 Chevy.

I bought the car as seen, it had no wheels on the front, the drums were buried 4″ in the ground. Most chrome was there, but missing pieces
were the 2 strips for the drivers side door, rocker stainless, hand strap for the back seat, and the sending unit for the gas tank, the person
threw away… gas tank was really rusty. The back of the car was blocked up with jack stands. It was a project alone to just get the car out
of there.

This is what the car looked like the day I bought it.

I took the rims that were laying beside it in the first picture home
and mounted some tires and went back and dug the car out of the dirt and
put them on it.

Here’s a back shot

There was a lot of junk in the interior of the car.

This is the original 268 Straight eight, and still has the Hydromatic transmission.