History
We are strong believers of recycling , we purchased the Cadillac straight off the container in Melbourne back in 2007, the previous owner was a 90 year old California senior citizen who bought it new in 1961 and had it garaged its whole life, he could not longer drive it so it was our turn.
The old fella had the car resprayed back in the 80’s and this is when he had the roof sprayed black, we liked this as it makes the car different from the normal straight away, the body was very much how you see it, the engine leaked heaps and had done goodness know how many miles and the tranny was tired, all the seals were stuffed as were a lot of the suspension bits and pieces.
We like to have something different and planned to not keep it original, we like to personalise the car and make it our own, we drive it nearly every 2nd day so the first thing to do was to convert it to Duel Fuel so we had a custom installation done. I can’t tell you how nice it is to fill it up for $35.00 and cruise for a few hours before you have to fill it up again. I replaced a few of the seals and polished the paintwork then took it to a custom wheel place in Melbourne to have some custom fitted Smoothies made up with a new set of white walls, this gave the Cadillac a real nice look about it.
Then we decided to move to Queensland in 2008, several trips back and forth from Ballarat Victoria to the Gold Coast the old tired 390 Caddy motor did us proud, never missed a beat, when we settled on the Gold Coast (where we used to live 13 years before this) I found an old mate, he is the best engine builder I know, so we got him to rebuild the tired old 390, the boys did a great job fully rebuilding this engine and now it runs as smooth as silk and has had some special attention to make sure it runs well on either LPG or Petrol.
We also had the old standard 4 speed jet-away transmission rebuilt as well, then everything else from there to the diff was replaced as well.
Modifications
We had the single exhaust pulled out and a custom 2 inch job was fitted minus any mufflers, just a resonator (hot dog) each side which gives this thing a real nice note. I then had my steering wheel Pearled by Pearl Craft and I replaced the old white headliner with a new black one, the carpets were replaced and a stereo fitted, parcel shelf leather bound but the seats still are original, they will be reupholstered soon. The dash board was cracked, so I shopped on ebay and found another un-cracked one for US$25.00, a bargain that’s for sure. Then we had the windows tinted, the old guy had this ugly old tint on them so it was nice to update this to limo black Tint. So now to make the outside look a little more different, I hated the original grille, so I pulled it all out, sprayed the grill matt black then put if back in, then started to s**** in polished stainless steel bullets
to give the grille a real different look from stock, then larger bullet caps were placed on the indicator lights as well, then at the rear I grafted 59 Cadillac tail light bullets onto the original 61 lenses, and chromed the rear lower boot panels. I also fitted a triple Stainless Steel trumpets from a freight train, its loud man! A new leather Interior was fitted and we bagged the rear end and put on a tow bar to tow a 59 Cadillac trailer that I had just had built, it the rear end of a 59 Cadillac.
My 61 has never been off the road for a full resto in its 52 years of being on the road, so she has done very well.
We are heading off to the Caddy Nationals in Perth 2014, with a US TV crew in tow, trying to take as many Caddy’s across the Nullarbor Plains as we can, so keep an eye out for us, check out the website www.ccctn.com.au
