Is there a doctor (GM tech) in the house?

[turbojimmy]

Originally posted by troGNman
Wow, that was a major undertaking! I'm glad you had the patience to finish the job. I never could have pulled that off.

I noticed the front grille of the car looks a little different than stock. I see what looks like two Caddy crests, hood/grille. The grille 'hole' was usually reserved for cars that got the "nightvision" option.

See if you can scrounge up the chrome rims for that car. My neighbor has the same year car in red with the chrome wheels and it is stunning to say the least.

Enjoy the car and excellent job!

Good eye. The car originally had night vision. At some point in its life, however, the camera must have failed. Since it's $3,000 to fix they removed the camera and replaced the night vision grille with a standard DTS body-colored grille. When I got the car the LCD screen and heads-up display were still installed. Since it is part of the dash, but useless since it was flooded, I gutted the heads-up unit so now it's just an empty black box with a clear plastic cover. I could put a hinge on it and stash stuff in there I guess.

I'm going to remove the emblem on the hood because it's redundant with that grille emblem installed.

The car I originally chose from the lot of flood cars was an identical car (white diamond DTS) without the carriage top and with chrome rims and the vogue tires (wide white wall and gold pin stripe). It was not a night vision car, though. They dragged it in, cleaned it up and when they went to change the oil they saw a connecting rod through the block. It got sent back to auction - I should have swapped the rims and tires while I had the chance. I prefer the car without the carriage top, but he only had the 2 DTS', the others were base Devilles. Once you see a base and a DTS side by side you can really tell the difference.

Anyhow, thanks for the kind words. I may put a set of chrome rims on it eventually but they're pretty pricey. The first mod is going to be a Corsa exhaust system - they sound really nice and perk it up a bit.

Jim

 

[gn85]

Wow.. that's amazing. I hate when I see projects like this... gets me to thinking.

I suppose there are a lot of plusses in the fact that the car is 'brand new'. Unlike restoring something that's 15-20+ years old.

You really have a nice ride there. Good luck.

 

[gn85]

Originally posted by TurboJim
I dont even like going that far when I'm getting PAID to!

You are talking about working on cars, aren't you??

 

[turbojimmy]

Originally posted by JoeNational
I have to say that is amazing. i would never even think of doing that, if you dont mind how much did you spend in total i mean i know the car was 7k when you bought it. i give you a whole lot of credit for doing something like this, the car looks great. good luck with it.

I've got about $9,200 into it including the purchase price. That includes shop manuals, new 6-disc changer, and some other 'optional' stuff. I haven't paid the dealer yet, but I owe him around $1,500 for work I could've done myself for about $500. But, he was the only guy who would get near the thing so I figured I'd throw him the business. GM really has you over a barrel with the software on these cars. Only the dealer can reprogram them. So it will be about high-$10k all done. I could've cut some corners to keep it under $10k. Blue Book is $20-$28k for a similarly equipped car. I know the car isn't worth anywhere near even the low end of that range, but I use it as a gauge when I cost things out. Actually, the car probably isn't really worth anything to anyone else, so you have to pick one you like if you're going to do something like this.

I wouldn't do a Caddy again. There are too many electronics and doo dads. Plus the parts are expensive - it may as well be a BMW for gawd's sake.

As far as old vs. new, the only real advantage is you don't have to deal with any rot and theoretically parts are plentiful on a new car. But the electronics are tough - the Caddy has 40-something 'computers' throughout the car. Everything is controlled by some sort of electronic device that uses "class 2 serial data". There is literally a hub-n-spoke LAN inside the car with multiple hubs that collect data from various modules. Some hubs share information with other hubs. They check the status of each other as well as VIN numbers and IDs of all of the modules. If it sees inconsistent information it will throw a code and put a message up on the "driver information center". My car had over 70 DTCs stored when I first lit it up.

Like I said, I learned a lot and this deal turned out better than some of the collision-totaled stuff I've gotten in the past.

I'm glad it's over - for now. We'll see if it's actually reliable.

Jim