bcubed's 1978 Malibu

[bcubed]

Since I was a teenager my late Uncle Dan had always had Malibu's. He bought his first one on here from Mike Nutt on this board. I spent a lot of my youth working on that car and cleaning it up for shows. I went the college route and had a vehicle that was transportation and nothing more. Don't have many pictures of it, but a few do exist.





And unfortunately that car met it's demise at the hands of my cousin. (The T-bird next to it was my transportation back in those days).



Everything salvageable was pulled off that car and put onto a different Malibu. The engine and transmission was freshened up and cleaned up and the car was painted and interior done (The ground effects and turquoise paint, it was the 90s)



We showed it for many years, but eventually my uncle's health started to fail and the car was parked and not driven. Eventually my uncle gave the car to me as he knew I had spent more time on it than anyone. I did a few things but it didn't get the care it deserved. Sadly about 3 years ago my uncle passed away and I started restoring the car in his memory. I did this while going back to Grad school and I did get some done but not complete. I just graduated in December and my hope is to get the car back on the road this summer. So with that said I post some pics of the progress so far.

When we started the car pretty much looked like this, it looks a lot better in pictures than it did in person. The engine was tired and the paint was dull.



We took the car to my brother's house, bud1300. First order of business was to pull the 350 out and to put in a 327 that Mike Nutt had built for me years before and had sat ready to go into my '55 Truck, that never happened so I had decided to put it into the Malibu. It's a pretty nicely built engine, nothing crazy but not stock either.





The car was somewhat driveable again, but it needed new brakes and suspension and the dash was ruined, and only half the dakota digital gauges worked anymore. So it sat around again for a little while.

In the meantime I had built myself a garage and moved the car over to my house. bud1300 gave me some nice tires, but they wouldn't fit the rims. So for now I picked up some 16x7 Cragar Soft 8's in black and wrapped them in the tires. Also at this time I pulled off the ground effects, which were pretty rough and the fiberglass hood which was cracked.









Before the 16x7's I tried a set of 16x8 but they rubbed on the rear frame and in the front they barely cleared.




My hope is it to soon look similar to this one.