battle_tram_front

These are old pictures from my phone (taken in front of my home last spring, shortly before I bought this).

I bought this 1978 Eleganza last spring from an ad my wife found on Craigslist.  Turned out it was in indoor storage for most of the last 30 years and had just 41500 miles on the odometer  It was in beautiful shape.  I did have to be wary for some of the tings that might go bad when something is that old.  So far, though, she has run beautifully.  Our family has so far used it last summer to go to Northern Michigan, the Outerbanks and pile of weekend trips too numerous to mention.

 

So far, I have only done relatively minor fixes to it.  Off the top of my head they are:

 

1 - New batteries

2 - New power converter (which I also rewired to charge the chassis battery as well).

3 - New fresh water pump

4 - oil, filer brake fluid changes, etc.

5 - Topped up the dash AC (it turns out to have been converted to R134...   Even topped up though, I find it a bit anemic)

The is by far the coolest vehicle of any description I have ever owned.  For this spring, I want to :

1 - Replace the right side manifold (it\'s cracked, which is probably not much of a surprise to memebers of this stie)

2 - Change the front calipers from the current 70mm piston to 80mm.

3 - Replace the interior shag carpeting - Even though it has a working vacuum, we have a large, hairy German shepard, and when we go to the beach (we live near Cheaspeake Bay) the sand and hair NEVER gets out.

 

Longer term, I\'d like to:

 

1 - Retofit the forward tanden axle brakes to a pair of disc brakes (the configuration leaving the rear pair as drums seems to make the most sense to me

2 - Replace the airbag with the 4 bag configuration (though I hope I won\'t need to do this for a while....  the current bags I have are in pretty good shape).

 

3 - Replace the carb with and AFI SFI fuel injection system...  Though, its realtively small 403 engine, I might want to couple that with chaging the engine for a Cadillac 500CID - Does anyone know of a suitable FI system for such an engine in a GMC?