Thread: 68 pontiac lemans convertible

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i'm bored so thought i'll post some pics of what i've done to the ponty over the last few years i've owned it and what stage it is now!
i bought it off japanese e-bay through a jap used car importer in nz. it had one jap owner and one owner in florida and also had a japanese equivelent of our w.o.f which mean't it had to be fairly good condition as they are very strict.



it had a little bit of surface rust underneath so i had the complete bottom sandblasted and sprayed with chassis rubberised paint and then stored the original ponty wheels hubcaps and fitted some torgue thrust d's.
drove it around like this for a year until on one of the earlier beachhops with my wife(sober) driving and me an another couple drinking our way around the corromandel coast-we lost brakes (original drums alround)coming down a particulary knarly hill and scared the heck out of her enough that she refused to drive it again.
so i ordered a complete disc front and rear system from classic performance products in usa and fitted that.great kit and included 2"drop spindles which made it look great(got rid of nose high look) but the disc/caliper combo mean't the torque thrust's wouldn't fit back on so went back to original wheel/hubcap combo with new cooper tyres.

Nice!!! :-)

after another year decided to remove the vintique air con unit that the jap owner had fitted (why???? in a convert??) and put an original heater/blower back in.



you can see the extra holes drilled in to the firewall unit to let the aircon hoses go thru!


new 2ndhand unit fitted along with associated inside unit.




also around the same time fitted a new performer manifold instead of the old one with a 2-4 barrel adapter

after another few years driving it most days ,where the only things i did was replace balljoints and then had too do front a-arm bushes where i found a broken front coil spring so got a local spring maker too make up new set and fitted them.


you can see broken coil between my fingers.

more driving until while on a family trip to tauranga coming down onto a bridge at speed, the lowered front caught up with us and it bottomed out and split the sump next to the sump plug dumping oil on the road and neccessitating a couple of hours in a local garage using a borrowed hoist and some knead it to get it good enough for us to drive it home.
this was a blessing in disguise as it had been leaking over the garage floor from a rearmain seal for ages and i had been putting it off for years so decided out with mtr to fix sump and replace rear rope seal.i also had a set of headers i had bought awhile ago to fit as well.this shouldn't take long!!!!!!!!!!!!
took the motor out in june last year ready to have it back on road for summer(dec onwards)----yeah na





the new manifold was looking real old so sent it off for acid washing

Nice car My oldest boy had one we put a 396 Chevy in it What a ride

pulled the sump and welded it up and dropped the crank out to do the rear rope seal as we couldn't force it around in place.spot of luck here!!! the bearings were just worn thru into the copper on a couple of mains and one rod so decided to replace all them.left the heads and pistons alone as they looked fine from the bottom and i had enough on my plate without worrying about a full rebuild.time will tell wether that was agood decision!!!




this rubber grommet for the pcv in the valley cover was heat-hardened an i couldnt find another one so welded a washer in there to fit a smaller more common chev one

also painted in the engine bay with some black rattle cans and found some 15"ralleys/ caps and new tyres and fitted them.
painted the mtr pontiac blue an refitted it.

and now we are up to date!!!!!!!
missed summer altogether!!!!!!
i rebuilt the distributor-points worn out and vacuum advance was seized,bought some alloy valve covers and am picking up the 600 holley this afternoon after having it cleaned and rekitted.
hopefully back on the road soon!

Looking good! While you were right there, did you replace the timing chain? Or had it already been done? Pontiacs were notorious for tossin' timing chains.

Nice car and it's cool to see them clear down there! You're doing some great work to it. It looks like you have a nice little collection. I think I saw a Model A, and a 67-72 chevy truck, and then there's the car with stripes.

timing chain was replaced along with oil pump etc-water pump was fine.

i do have abit of a collection of vehicles but some of those photos were taken at work where i had a qualified mechanic help me-i'm only a bush mechanic!!!
an the striped one is a hilux wellside-not mine!!

Nice car! Pontiac has always been one of my favorites and the drop tops are at the top of the list!

Those rally wheels definitely look nice on there as well!

Originally Posted by cffisher

Nice car My oldest boy had one we put a 396 Chevy in it What a ride

HMMMM that car is it dark green and is it a 396 /375hp. from bay city Mi