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Black Beauty a 66 Satellite E-bay find

Don Frelier

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Location
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A car I had no plans to buy…

I used to occasionally look on E-bay for parts for my 66 Charger. Years ago I found my center grille with a buy it now price that was quite good, so ever since I will check occasionally. Well sometime mid-December 2016 I was searching for parts and noticed a shiny black Satellite at the bottom of the page under “other people also viewed”. Wow that looks nice, why not take a look?

The description to go with the car is intriguing: 2nd owner from California originally, then Florida now in New Jersey (not too far from upstate New York). I put it on my watch list, no reserve I think the price was like $3,500 auction to end in a couple days. Well a couple days pass it’s 12-21-16, I get reminder from E-bay. (Of all places) an item you are interested in is ending soon.

I had mentioned the car to my son, even printed out the description. The price is still only $7,200 he says “Dad you should bid on it”. No way what am I going to do with another car? I don’t have enough room now… But then I thought you can’t buy a decent used car for this price, much less a straight shiny 50 year old classic with a big block, red interior, console and a Plymouth. Life is short so I bid on it, and crazy as it seemed I won. We will cover the wife's response in the next segment of this saga. So Merry Christmas to me.

Pictures from the Ad:

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God that paint looks like you could dip your fingers into it.
 
Think I would have bid on that one too .Looks like a great project with your son to work on .
Great score I love red interior cars .
 
Chapter 2 – The aftermath

My son and I are still sitting at the computer again studying the pictures and description in the advertisement. I haven’t bought a fun car in over 25 years. Somehow my wife figures out that I won the bid. Oh boy now I’m in trouble. DON YOU BOUGHT A TOY CAR? YOU DON’T REALLY NEED A TOY CAR DO YOU?

****.

This isn’t going to go well at all. Probably took 2 months for the heat to cool down, but time heals all wounds.

Now I have three problems:

1. I need to pay for a car I’ve never seen.

2. I need to figure out how to get it home in the winter.

3. I need to find a good storage location, and hopefully one I can work on it at least somewhat.

Well I paid the $500 dollars and later worked out a bank transfer with the seller. Nice guy and in the end almost everything advertised about the car turned out to be accurate. He’s pretty anxious for me to come pick it up so I’m trying to figure out a way. My nephew has two enclosed trailers and nicely offers to let me use one. My son’s friend agrees to tow it but then later backs out of the deal. So I set up an auction and found a local guy who agreed to meet me there with a dedicated enclosed trailer, haul it to NY the next day and help me unload. Pricey but he did a great job!

I was worried about what to do with that perfect looking hood. I think my son suggested making a deck in my Dad’s chevy truck to go above the wheel wells. He has a cap on it so we drove that down to meet with Russ the towing operator. One of our good friends had some space in her garage and despite my offer to rent it she insisted I was not going to pay to use it. But I did order some stone since the cement floor was only partly completed before her husband passed away. Later last fall I helped with the floor completion to help “earn my keep” over there.

January 13 we drive down, nice 63 degree sunny day in northeast Jersey. Worked out well, stopped at my daughters house in Binghamton on the way back for a visit.

Pictures of the pick up and drop off the next day, skinny young man is my youngest David:

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Glad you got the car. Only 2 months in the DOG HOUSE.
 
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Chapter 3 – A Parts List, a Wind Storm and a guy named Jeremiah

Several times in February (2017) I stopped over to sift through the various boxes of parts, trim and manilla envelopes with fasteners that came with the car. After a few trips I discovered that what appears to be fairly well organized envelopes from the teardown often were missing items or did not contain what the envelope indicated. In RoadKill style fashion I made a cardboard list of some missing items to hunt for:

· Drivers side turn signal indicator (one year, one model)
· Door seals
· Trunk seal
· Dual Master Cylinder and distribution block (upgrade to 67 style)
· U-Joints and straps
· Hood letters (two were missing)
· Rear Deck lid emblem
· Door lock
· Power steering pump, I was kind of pissed about this one
· Alternator
· Forward wiring harness (original was pretty butchered)
· Headers maybe (set up for 3” collectors)
· Sun visors
· Molding clips for upper trim and rockers
· Cooler lines
· Front windshield and gasket
· Rear Windshield gasket

Other items I was looking for included a carpet, taillight lenses, a radio and maybe a front bumper. There were several parts that were stripped but not painted when the car was done: Quarter panel extensions, front valence and hood hinges. Luckily I had the paint code and one of my local body shop owners was very accommodating they painted everything for under $100 and it looked nice.

So the fun of searching for parts begins. My first goals were to replace the door seals, finish the trim and get working brakes with an installed driveshaft.

(So I could safely move it home and park it, my driveway is on a hill)

March 8, 2017, huge windstorm hits Rochester just around 1:00 PM. We took some customers out for lunch and on the way back you can feel the car getting jostled and pushed around. Pull in the lot behind the building get out and a huge wind gust hits! CRACK, CRACK. Wow the utility poles in front of the building just snapped. Boom, transformer blows up I tell the boss we aren’t going to have power for several days we are on a main road with heavily laden wiring on the poles. So we evacuated the building but it was still pretty warm and so I had a chance to do some stuff on the car.

I travelled down near Carlisle PA for work in late March for a couple days. While I was down there I scoured Craigslist to see if I could find anything, sure enough found an ad for 66 Belvedere II parts. Rechromed bumpers, headers, window rollers, front parking lights and visors. So I called and spoke with Jeremiah he had a nice Belvy II he was converting to a race car. I inquired if I could stop on my way home? Sure he says I’ll be out in the shop. So I stop and he’s got everything including a nice flat hood. Great big sweetheart of a guy. I want to buy it all, but I only have about $120. We make a deal for the turn signal housing, visors and window rollers. I really want those bumpers and maybe the headers but the wife has barely recovered from the E-bay deal. Life is full of tough choices.

Just a few days after returning home my older son calls and tells me he is boxing in the USIBA Nationals in Virginia Military Institute. Right away I’m thinking if Jeremiah still has those bumpers we could swing by on the way home. Sure enough he had them and we made a deal to include the headers. On the way back we picked them up and got a chance to see the race car along with a 68 C body that now was home to the 440 from the Belvedere. It couldn’t have worked out better!

Some more pics, here you can see the trim pieces added a bit at a time, master cylinder swap and rear extensions:

IMG_20170218_153945116_HDR.jpg IMG_20170415_200226875.jpg IMG_20170513_160341158.jpg IMG_20170515_170419983.jpg IMG_20170528_173213451.jpg IMG_20170528_182229142.jpg IMG_20170528_184617411.jpg View attachment 675026 IMG_20170603_151859712.jpg IMG_20170729_130411477.jpg
 
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Fran, this is a rewind of the project from the past couple years it runs, drives etc... keep following you will get to see it all.
 
How'd it end up getting the brass 90 degree Hemi pressure fitting on top of the PS pump?


pic6-jpg.jpg
 
You mean the steering gear correct? That's the way it came. I put a new supply hose on it that was the original. 50 years is about as long as they last. I know because I blew the one on the charger about two years back. I left the fitting since I liked the way the hose routed.
 
5th digit in your VIN isn't H by any chance? In 66 H = Hemi.
 
Nope, it's a G. 383-4 barrel,727 with a 3:23 gear. Identical drivetrain to what came with my Charger.
 
Chapter 4 – A little behind schedule

I was hoping to get the trim, windshields, brakes and driveshaft installed and get the car home around July 4th. Well that didn’t happen. I did pick away at the door seals, trunk seal and had most of the trim on by mid May. In June I went fishing for a few days in Canada with my brother and my Dad. July my son and I went to Carlisle with the Charger. I had some work out of town for a couple weeks and in August we went to the Thousand Islands, but I did get the windshields installed. Finally in early September my son helped me trailer it home. I immediately began working on the engine and under hood stuff. Throughout the summer I’d been collecting parts and cleaning and painting the majority of them.

I’ll try not to complain too much about the headers. I painted them and test fit them and they looked fine, but after wrapping and installing them again the driver’s side hit the starter. Took it out caved it in a little, still hit. Once more and it still touched but I ran out of time last fall. (It still leaks slightly)

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Chapter 5 – A warm and dry fall

Luckily last year was the complete opposite from this fall. It was unusually warm and fairly dry.

Each evening and weekend I was working to get the engine together. A little bit each day, the water pump housing had been blasted and looked pretty good. So I just painted that. I picked up a nice powers steering pump from one of the members here along with a great looking alternator. I ordered a new power steering hose, wiring harness, voltage regulator, positive battery cable along with a host of other odds and ends throughout the summer. Apparently the previous owner ran an electric since it came with a block off plate. One of the simple things was to put a fuel pump on it. I found the fuel pump pushrod from my Charger pretty easily and attempted to test fit it. It must have been a late night, somehow I forgot that you need to remove the pipe plug from the block to install it. Dropped that sucker right into the bottom of the pan.

****. What a stupid *@#||'n thing to do, not happy.

But, it turned out to be a good thing. After jacking up the engine and pulling the pan, I found that the bottom 3/8” of the oil was a greasy mess. The previous owner must have routinely put some type of additive in it. The oil seemed fairly thick and clean, but that stuff on the bottom of the pan was like thinned wheel bearing grease. If it had got into the oil pickup the engine would not have lived very long.

After carefully assembling and testing the ignition. (And installing the headers 3 times) The day finally came to run it. I got home early one day maybe 3:00 and timed the distributor by running the starter with all the plugs removed. Then I installed the plugs, primed the oil pump and poured about an ounce of gas down the carb. It immediately tried to start, ran about 5 seconds.

After dinner my son and I rigged up a can to the inlet of the fuel pump. I assured him it was ready to run.

I poured a little more gas down the carb and wham away it went. Ran just about perfectly except for a lifter that didn’t pump up right away. Then the smoke show started I’m talking a massive cloud like I’ve never seen. But there was a reason for it…




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