Another  Welcome to the site   I have enjoyed your site many many times.. Watch out for our leader TODD  He's a very nice guy, BUT seems to be obsessed with 69 Laurentians.. lol 

Hello Dave, welcome to the site.

Your "original" site was one of the reasons I started looking for the car of my youth, and spent many hours just looking at and enjoying it. Ended up with a Parisienne ragtop instead of a 2+2, and presently am attemting to resurect it.

Your resto is really somthing to behold Dave, and will be wicked.

I once bid on a perfect non air heater control, but missed it by a few bucks. Only ever seen one in the last 4 years.

Cheers and good luck,
Mark.

Thanks for the warm welcome!  Someone asked for more details about my car, so here they are... it's a long, but not necesarily interesting, story

About the time I was born in 1968 my Dad had a black 1961 Laurentian 348W, and when the new 69s came out he wanted one.  He couldn't find a black one, so the dealer took a blue one and did a complete color change (you'd think a dealer trade would have been easier, but oh well).  Although it had every lighting option and a number of weird upgrades like deluxe chrome seatbelts, it was otherwise a vanilla 350/250hp Powerglide car.

The car then has been black with a white top since it was a month old.  Dad drove it sparingly, putting on 50K in the next 16 years.  When I turned 16 he gave me the car, and over the years I put another 50K on it (mostly one lap of the local cruise circuit at a time....).

I made all the requisite mistakes on the car, and it went through a couple of repaints, a 396, 4.11 gears, headers, and so on.  When I moved down to the US in '93 I left it behind, but had it shipped out a few years later and started working on it.  Even though I had gone through and "redone" most of my teenage work, the urge to have a full restoration back to factory appearance overtook me.  I figured either John Balow's Musclecar Restorations or perhaps Legendary Motorcar would be the best, and I knew from watching whatever TV show they have that they'd worked on a '69 2+2, since I saw it in the background a few times.

A collector in Ontario sort of warned me off Legendary (warranted or not, it was all just rumor and conjecture), so it went to Musclecar Restorations where its been ever since.

It's a complete frame off, nut and bolt restoration, as people call it.  The body was soaked in the dip tank for a month to ensure no residual rust, and then soaked in the rust prohibitor/undercoat, and they went to work on the metal.  It wasn't too bad, but if you've done one of these cars then you know their unique nature means nothing is really available in terms of panels, so it was English wheel and hammer and dolly to form whatever new panels they needed.

Since the car was nothing special (to anyone but me), I opted to make it into the 427, 2+2, 4-spd hybrid as described earlier.  That meant welding up all the side trim holes, converting to 4-spd linkage, and host of other changes.  I had also put on a JL8-style rear disc conversion which we're keeping.

When its all said and done I'll have $225,000 into a car worth $10,000 on the open market, but it'll be more fun to me than a Ferarri F430, so there you have it.  Explaining to the wife what I thought would be a $70K restoration turning into almost a quarter million was no easy task... but as I told her, I love them both but in all fairness the car was there first  

When I was little kid each year we took a photo of my Dad, me, and my brother putting on the new license plates, number 116.  I have the same plate (116) down here in Washington, and we take the same photo every year (when the car's here), so its a 40-year old tradition.  I won't post my baby pictures here, but you can imagine its a sentimental tradition (my Dad passed away in 96).

Anyway, I'm eager to have it back and have a car that's better than new and fully sorted out and dyno tuned... I'll probably be too scared to drive it and just sit on a lawn chair in the garage and stare at it

And while I'm at it, might as well mention a few others I've owned:

- I had a green '69 Parisienne 350 as a winter car.  Wound up parting it out, it was a $150 car when I bought it.

- I had a blue '69 2+2 350/300 that had been hit.  It too was parted out, and the buckets and console are now in my good car (recovered of course).  Some of the emblems also made it, but since I couldn't figure out how to get them off, I didn't keep the louvres.  Those aren't easy to find nowadays!

- I bought the red '69 2+2 350/300 mentioned in the other thread, and kept it in Saskatchewan to drive during the summers when I returned for a few weeks each year.  The months of inactivity made it high maintenance for the two weeks of use, so I wound up selling that one on eBay.

Dave's avatar photo was the inspiration for my small block knock off decal. I actually printed the photo he has as his avator in full size, cut it out to fit the air cleaner then took it to the manufacturer who did my decals.....and that's the truth.


-- Edited by 73SC at 23:21, 2008-09-28

73SC wrote:

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Dave's avatr photo was the inspiration for my small block knock off decal. I actually printed the photo he has as his avator in full size, cut it out to fit the air cleaner then took it to the manufacturer who did my decals.....and that's the truth.

-- Edited by 73SC at 19:32, 2008-09-28

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That's awesome!  Where'd you get them "printed"?

I'm sure the company that I bought those repro decals from has the 350 Astro Jet repros too (though they're red).  Did you want the blue specifically, or did you not know about the existing 350 repops?  Either way, nice work!

I was reading on your page Dave that except for the 390 horse 427, the cars came with single exhaust in 69. I had a 69 Grande Parisienne 4 dr ht 335 horse 427 years ago, and it had duals. Could it have been an option, or do you think it was added? It was sold as a 2 month old GM Zone Manager's car and sold to my neighbour through the dealership I worked at. I was under the impression it always had duals. Could that have been original?

Ok, that makes sense, thanks.

Welcome aboard Dave, glad to see you make it over here.  I see my 69 Bonneville wagon is still listed on your site; it hasn't changed much since I sent you those pics.
Check out my 70 Laurentian (Green Monster) in the Members Rides section, I think you might like it.