I knew a storm was coming, and the house of cards started falling days ago. I expected to start priming on day 1, but I found more roof rust, then it took me 2 days to mask, ....and the storm was to come soon. The day I primed was the last day I had to spray. The weather said the following day(alleged paint day) would be sunny and warm with a slight breeze. What I missed was the update, which turned paint day into a 30mph gusts and blowing dust. It was almost the worst situation and I was desperate/stupid enough to actually mix and try spraying paint.

It did not go well. Anything I did spray has tons of little leafs and sticks in it. Too dark to see the dirt thankfully. but those were removed panels, like the wheel covers and the front cowl cover.
I sprayed a "fog coat" on a few panels of the car and that became a magnet for blown trash, I thankfully stopped and will more than likely respray those car panels in primer, then start from scratch with the paint.

 

Painted today, 63ºF.
Looks good enough, will not be buffed.

 

11-30-25

Got some stainless sheetrock screws to hold the front headlight bezels on, of both sides of the car, there's a combined 8 screws, and one--one--was correct, all the rest were a hodgepodge. Looks good enough for this neighborhood.

 

Like many people, I've had varying luck/misfortune with Quadrajets.

When I was getting ready to fire the 500 on the homemade test stand, I had probably 8 different Qjets from a myriad of cars/trucks, all bought from local junkyards. I randomly selected 3-4 to be my test group, and threw the first one on at random. That carb was a Quadrajet 7045504 more than likely from a 1975 chevy truck with a 350.
The engine test went smooth and the carb appeared to work well....well enough that I didn't test the other qjets I had in the study group.
When the car was to be first driven, I simply thought I'd try the carb that was already on it.

It quickly became apparent that it had its issues. It would start off idling great, super smooth, and it'd cruise fine. But it didn't like heavy throttle/acceleration. ...And then all of the sudden, one red light I'd be idling and it'd idle great, then 22 seconds later at the next red light it'd idle very poorly and never recover till the next time I drove the car.

I bought a qjet allegedly from a 1985 Chevy truck 350, 17045001. This one was interesting because it's from a 1 ton truck, and therefor it was exempt from all the "electronic" crap found on many 1985 qjets--it looked like any older mechanical qjet. It was very clean and had the least amount of shaft play I'd ever seen.
Slapped it on the car and it had a whole other set of problems. 1) idled too high 2) accel pump shot, bogs when first hit the gas, but once it picks up it accelerates very well 3) most notably it wants to die if you take any kind of turn or brake to a slow/stop.

The third carb I had actually came with the 500 I bought, it dates properly to a 1975 Cadillac, but apparently it has 1 year only APT setup that is not ideal if it can be avoided. I set it aside and never ran it.

The last hope was a carb I bought at least 7-9 years ago, set it in a bag and I never touched it. Ironically it was from a 1979 Cadillac 425, 17059530. Dirty outside but lets give it a try. On 12-27-25 I installed it.
At first it idled poorly but ran decent otherwise. I figured I'd mess around and simply raise the idle at first just to make it more livable at stoplights. But to my surprise after driving it about 100 miles over 2 days, it seems to be running better and better. Starts cold great. Idles hot great. Accelerates perfect. I think I'm gonna run this carb as-is for now and not rebuild it.
So far I think I'm getting 7-10 mpg. Not happy but what did I expect....

First day driving it with newest carb, I think it's daily driver ready.

 

Starting in post 45 to about post 55 I spent a few weeks fixing the window glass channels among other things, from rust damage. I then had the glass installed, I tried my best to seal stuff up with weld, filler, seam sealer, and paint.
Apparently I didn't do a good enough job because heavy-ish rain came yesterday and I'm getting drips right above my lap in the drivers seat, and removing the interior trim shows it's not coming through the sealant caulk, its from the metal seam(my work...)

Gonna have to figure that out somehow.

Today the passenger inner tie rod castle nut came off and the wheel turned the opposite direction, on a rainy morning. Great start to the year. Car needs brake adjustment in the front, too much drag. Needs the transmission mount readjusted, needs new seals for the power steering pump.

 

As classless as it is to have cheesy race gauges in a Cadillac I couldn't stand not being able to read the metrics so I carved some holes in a garbage fabricated gauge panel and used some gauges I have sitting around of which all gauges are electric sender type, however I've not yet driven the car with the setup so hopefully it works ergonomically; I may fill the last vacant gauge spot with a trans temp gauge.

 

In February I decided the engine and trans were leaning too far back, too steep of an angle, so I jacked up the tail of the trans only to discover the cooling fan was running into the radiator. The radiator was a thick fat 4 core/row.

I had purchased a much thinner radiator made of plastic and aluminum, that says it is meant for a 1976 Cadillac that originally came with my engine--it should be enough.

It pissed me off to remove a perfectly working super heavy duty radiator, but I looked at other options to creat more clearance between the fan/rad: 1) set engine back further would require lifting engine and somehow carving out a notch where all engine/trans bolts go....nope.
2) moving radiator forward--I spent about 2 weeks doing that in September and was not about to do that all over again for another 1/2".

3) use skinnier radiator that is allegedly enough to cool my giant engine. Yep that's gonna be my solution.

Everything fits fine but it's been cool weather. Should be 90º next week so we'll see if it hangs through the summer--if not Ima be in a tight spot.


I got the Gear vendors wired in February but it didn't want to work, I bled it and it works intermittently.

Car gets about 10mpg--tough with us starting another war with Iran again.

 

Gear vendors still intermittent.
Car is not overheating but weather cooled back down, we'll see when it gets warm again.
A/C still not up and running; gas prices making me rethink driving this car. At this time caddy is my daily driver.

One of the first things I did to this car in December '24 was work on the rear passenger window so I could lower it to mores easily get the seats out and reupholstered. I found that the contacts to the motor were totally FUBAR and with a good amount of TLC, rewiring terminals, and lubricating the window tracks with a really old can of "Lubriplate"(a really old kinda white lithium grease...?), the window worked much much better, if not darn near perfect.

Now it's March 2026 and I have put off the other three windows. Drivers front works the best as-is but is still slow and never seems to go high enough. Glass is also leaning inward too much....

Passenger front works poorly and most often needs assistance pulling it up with your hand.

The rear drivers side was a whole different level of failure: nothin
Not a squeak, not a rattle, nothin.

So I started with the front doors. The wire connector terminals that go to the motor is in a different position and both front doors terminal plugs were perfectly clean with no rust or crust. So I lubed the motor gears and the tracks and that seemed to improve things quite a bit, but neither are perfect. They need the engine running at speed to generate a true 13V before they act well. If the engine is off they are very sluggish still.
I failed at adjusting the drivers front glass properly but gave up and will have to re-address it later.

Now the fun one: rear drivers. The terminals on the motor wire plug were completely rusted off. Tracks were the crustiest and driest. I was able to procure one single window motor before RockAuto removed their part numbers from their website so I guess they are totally obsolete now.

The one motor I could get was thankfully for a drivers door. So in the new motor went. I had to really lube up the tracks well. Seems tow work well.

Sadly those door panels have all been removed many many times and many parts of the plastic reinforcement frame that screws go through were cracked. But it's ok and they work as intended.

 

When I first bought the car, I noticed the radio antenna in the fender was up about 70% and later when I needed to briefly store it under a tarp this became a problem, so I eventually just removed the power antenna assembly from the car and threw it in the footwell.

I was tired of storing it on a shelf and decided I'd simply bolt it back into the car for easiest storage.
But I wanted that damn antenna all the way down first. Then I got a wild idea: just plug in the antenna wire and see what happens.

I plugged it in and the previously inactive radio actually caught a station--so it was the lack of antenna and not a radio failure.
Now I wanted the system working, but I was unable to hammer the antenna down no matter what I tried. However the motor itself worked fine.
I cut the top third of the antenna off and retracted the antenna all the way, installed it, and now I have a working radio with only the front speaker.

The single rear speaker doesn't work.

 

Last Wednesday the speedometer stopped working on my way to work, It slowly failed.

Ironically a day or so later, I had unhooked the speedo cable to avoid any harm being done and for some reason after a day of driving it like this, the OD started working perfectly. I have no idea what happened or why.

So now I have a find running OD and no speedometer, I have not investigated it further yet.

Discovered a new clunk I believe to be in the rear end area, thing shocks are toast. Maybe those weird 4-link bushings.