1973 Olds 98
Back in the 80’s I was looking for a car. I saw an ad in the Detroit News for an Olds 98. I got my brother to drive me into the city and looked at the car. The owner wanted $300. He said it burned a lot of gas. I didn’t care. There was no rust on the car, and it ran. I gave the man the money and got the title, then drove it home.
When I parked in the driveway I noticed the smell of gasoline. Under the fuel tank was a small spot. The tank had a leak. I went to the hardware store and bought a couple packages of epoxy and some fiberglass cloth. I siphoned the gas out of the tank, cleaned off the spot where there was an obvious pinhole. I screwed a sheet metal screw into the hole and covered the repair with fiberglass and epoxy. No more leak.
The car was heavy, and the tires were bad. I bought a set of retread bias plys for $90 and had them installed. There were a lot of hoses on the 455 CID engine. Certainly a car this size did not need so many hoses. I got a vacuum gauge and figured out what the different hoses coming from the manifold and carb were supposed to do. I removed a lot of the unnecessary emissions controls. I found the port that supplied vacuum to the secondaries on the carb. I hooked up a T-connector and ran this hose to the vacuum advance on the distributer. Now, when I stepped on the gas it would advance the spark timing. Now, the car ran like crazy and left a black streak behind it as the tires spun when I stepped on the gas.
I did a number of other service things to this car. It had no thermostat, so I got it one. I changed out the spark plugs. I did a tune up on the distributer and got it new filters and changed the oil. The car was in good shape otherwise. Even the power seats worked. That car was so wide I could lay down on the front or back seat and neither my head nor feet would touch the doors. Even as big as it was, the Olds 98 would handle well and would pass anything in like two seconds.
I drove that car for a couple years. It got something like nine miles per gallon, but the gas tank was huge. I ran out of gas once and had to walk four miles to get a gas can full of fuel to get me to the station. I once got a speeding ticket for doing sixty in a fifty zone something like 50 yards after a complete stop. That car had a lot of power.
The end of the 98 came one night on the freeway. I was driving home and the engine lost power. A horrible clanking sound was coming from the motor. It was a bad knock. I limped home and parked the car in the driveway. Apparently, I had spun a bearing. I had no major money to rebuild such a huge engine. I parked the car out by the barn, where it sat for about a year. The junk man finally came for the car and gave me $50 for the wreck.
Even though it was a nice car and didn’t cost that much in the first place, the Olds 98 was probably a bad idea. It cost a lot of cash to keep it in fuel. It was a good ride and drove well, but it was huge and a bit of a pain to park. I’d say I got my money’s worth out of that vehicle. It was my one experience with driving and owning a luxury car from the era of the gas guzzlers.
