Our little Bluesmobile story...

[77granfury]

Thank you, cynot! I'll try! We got the car in May 2021, what I'm posting is mainly what we did from May to Halloween 2021.

[77granfury]

Just a slightly-off-topic side-note. I'm sure many of you have kids, and one of the biggest challenges there is - is raising your kid the right way, giving them a balance between modern childhood where everything revolves around a screen, and good ol' elements of the book of "Oldschool Raisin' of Kids" where you teach them to ACTUALLY do things, i.e. with their hands, like sanding a car, building a shed or carving swearwords in the neighbor's maple tree with a 12" Rambo knife.

If they try hard, you motivate them and reward them, but sometimes when they're not listening, you can't always let it slide either. When we were kids, we got beatings. And boy, did we deserve them. But that's not today's practice anymore, so what I found out that works the best is a simple threat:

"That's it, I'll make Blinky out of the Bluesmobile!" For the youngest one it works every time. 100%.

That's Blinky:    






I'm not sure if this was shared before, but I live in the GTA/Greater Toronto Area, and the Toronto Police used a few Fury's as cars to "explain road safety to kids" - Blinky was able to "blink" and stare at you, and when this monster looking thing told you not to j-walk, you better listened. What an odd way to ruin a C-body?!?
Police cars were yellow in Toronto back in the 70s. They changed the colour to white after tourists kept hailing down Police cars thinking they were cabs - and there were always a lot of tourists in Toronto.

[77granfury]

Add ons to 7. PAINT

...just because I kept working on the paintjob way after I was officially done and I have a few details worth mentioning.

1. The Brougham trim line between white roof and black quarters. I believe most if not all of the Bluesmobiles in the movie didn't have that trim, but correct me if I'm wrong. Our car "was" a Brougham and had that trim, and honestly, I found it to be quite useful - to give me a clear line on where to split the white from the black paint.

2. Trim in general was fairly easy to remove, I didn't put most of the trim back on, especially the "stainless around the window trim", wheel opening stainless trim, the side strips etc, and I was lucky that none of them was screwed to the body - all was either glued or crimped on, so no holes to fill!

3. The "POLICE" letters on the trunk. I'm not 100% sure how the law situation is, but I'm pretty certain that you can't drive around in any vehicle rocking "POLICE" on your trunk. Unless it's a band sticker. So I tried to sand a lot of it off so that I could tell the arresting officer that the word on the trunk is the Italian word for "sweet" - DOLCE - but I'm not Italian and not sure if I'd be convincing enough.
The charge here is called "impersonation of a peace/police officer" and it's quite serious. I think once I have the push bumper welded up and ready on the bumper, I'll drive it to the Durham Police headquarters, have them come out and tell me what they would change - if anything. Crossing fingers they know the movie, thinking of keeping a folder in the glove box with pictures of the movie so I can show in the worst case scenario... We have to be aware that if dealing with police officers under the age of 40 - or worse - under 30 - , the chance that they don't know the movie is quite high.

4. The rear end is a dead give-away for the trained eye that this isn't a Monaco. I know that the tail panel has to be modified to get Monaco specific lights/trim etc. on the car, however, I believe it's do-able and will attempt it this year. I have a rather rusty (most is under the license plate) Monaco rear bumper, the correct taillights with trim, the correct (wayyy shorter!) Monaco fuel door and will buy along the way the rear quarter/metal extensions and from a junker the sheet metal that goes around the taillights - like eyebrows if they were eyes. Furys/Gran Furys don't have this. Also - the mounting holes in the tail panel for the taillights are completely different. That will be quite a job but I think it's do-able.



AND...another pass of wet sanding some of the details. I wasn't happy with the rear quarters for a long time. If you have a Blumo and kids, you have free car washes for life.



The following shot, well, I just liked it. 85% Bluesmobile, 15% Christine. On this picture only. I was still rocking the poverty caps, I think they were one of the last things I took off before I considered it to be ready for daily use.

 

[77granfury]

Sorry for the delay, this was NOT St.Patrick's Day related. I wasn't able to "Add Attachments"/pics via forum any longer, so I had to finally look into a pic sharing program - and how to do that - 
for the first time of my life... Thank you, Steam, for the recommendation - I found postimg.cc to be super easy to use, even though I'm in my 40s. But back to some pictures and progress.

By now it was September, the paint was finally where we wanted it to be - (unlike my finances...), the worn graphics as well. My plans to mix sand with different shades of rust-brown paint and paint it on the car, like around 
the door handles and all the typical spots have to wait for a nice weekend in spring 2022/this year. It was time to enjoy the car with my co-pilot, and the moments of him taking the wheel on my lap were - to say the least - quite rewarding. 
It was HIS Bluesmobile, and selling was never and option. He got a little camera for his birthday - with suction cup mount of course - and for the remainder of the year we had the camera mounted on the hood, filming him at about 7km/h doing Jake impersonations inside the car and climbing out the passenger window to wipe the windshield, just like Belushi after their windshield was covered in oil.
I had to pick him up from school with the Bluesmobile after teachers asked me to see what he's talking about and drawing all day - and some even knew it.
It's unbelievable what crowds a Bluesmobile draws. A quick trip to a drug store at night ends up with people taking pictures and filming the car in the parking lot - letting them sit in it and start it up was like giving them roughly 1.2lbs of kryptonite?! Mind you: This was a rather mint Gran Fury with shiny paint before, it got a lot of looks, but nobody would have swarmed it to take pictures and videos - so there must be something magic about the Bluesmobile itself, because honestly, nobody came to complement my paint-job, asking me for business cards. Is it the black and white? Maybe for the same reason I've always loved the looks of it. 



Yes, the poverty caps came off. Your trained eyes will notice immediately numerous other things:

1. Wrong front bumper, leaves a gap and is shaped like if it was a '75-77 Gran Fury bumper?
Correct. This is on the 2022 to-do-list.

2. Missing push bumper, missing stainless trim above the grille?
Correct. While the push bumper comes right after the bumper this spring, the trim is a different story: I wrecked 2 or 3 of the 5 clips for the trim piece and don't want to risk loosing it. PM me! lol

3. Body lines seem to suggest that this is NOT a MONACO!!!?
Correct. The moment I found a almost completely rustfree C-body for just under 5 grand 4 hours from home and no Monaco nationally for sale, the bodylines were not my primary concern.

4. Your tires look as if you have a NASCAR fetish. 
Incorrect. I had them laying around at home for my other project, a Trans Am. Trans Ams need raised white letter tires. Bluesmobiles don't. I'll get some 235/70-15 soon.

5. Your antenna isn't a coat-hanger and why is there no dash-trash?
Not sure yet what I'll do with the Antenna, but dash trash is in the making. Just bought a few 70s Budweiser cans off ebay and printed/laminated a few pieces of ID at work, including Elwood's driver's license. Post is coming up in a free moment...




And above one of the clear give-aways that this is Monaco's sistercar, the Gran Fury: the rear end, regardless how many "D O G E" letters I carefully place into the correct barrel clips - into the WRONG fuel door. I must say, I like the clean look better than the Monaco rear end, it looks a bit more modern, however, because Bluesmobiles weren't sistercars, I'll see what 2022 brings in terms of rears...



Yes, you guessed right. We went on a rip to locate as many mud puddles as possible to dirty up the car, because I had to hear all week that the Bluesmobile shouldn't be shiny and daddy shouldn't have overdone it with his new goddamn toy, "that DA". What you don't see on this picture is that about 5 minutes later while driving down a dirt road, a mud puddle appeared on the right side of the street. It was deep. The passenger window was open all the way, and a head and right arm were both "extending the interior borders of the passenger door".
I think girls pay lots of money for those face creams and masks out of mud... 

[77granfury]

PART 10: Mud and Bulletholes

None of the above is 100% movie-correct, but it's the kind of improvements where you can give your wallet a day off. Free-ish mods. I mentioned the mud at the end of the previous post, and believe me, if you try to mess up your car it's almost impossible, but we tried hard and long enough and here's the proof:
BAM!!!


You can see where the Good Ol' Boys left some marks in the trunk lid. One day, if I have nothing better to do - and if I find a spare trunk lid for next to nothing, I'll paint it and take the shotgun to it for some movie-accurate bullet holes (before mounting it, of course), but for now, my little helper placed bullethole stickers to wherever he thought they hit:



It's cheesy. I know. Looking at those stickers today, they've already faded so bad after just a few months, that I'll either take care of them with my planned "artificial rust treatment" or plain and simple remove them.

[77granfury]

And then came Halloween!

If you have kids, you need to go all out.
If you have to watch your spendings, you can't go all out. But you can "efficiently place your vehicles as decorations on the front lawn"...

My wife still wanted spooky music and not the Blues Brothers Band, but that didn't ruin what I thought was an awesome decoration. Next year the Blumo might run a few Illinois Nazis over while the movie is projected on the roof, WITH sound. We'll see. It always depends on the weather, and this was the first year in a while where it didn't rain.


 

We tried to make Jake sit up by zip-tying him to the Antenna, zip ties held Elwoods hands on the steering wheel, and the Jack in the bottle was iced tea because I know my neighbors.
In daylight it looked alright,... (What's in the picture there, some light? Does Jake see it?)
 

...but at night it really looked awesome. I know that these Chinese headlights aren't everybody's choice, maybe not even ANYBODY'S choice, but they will stay in the car until I figured my front marker light situation out. 



It looked awesome. Our house was popular, which leads to the downside: if your place is a kid- and adult-magnet, make sure that you don't run out of candy an hour into trick-or-treating. Because THAT would be embarrassing... We had to sort through our kids' candy and hand out the ones they don't like...
Next year: everybody gets a slice of toast. 
 
 

[77granfury]

We're all caught up. After Halloween we didn't drive much, and over the winter, we didn't do much. This year I hope to post a few updates, we already started on some dash-trash, drivability issues (FUEL PUMP!!!), push bar and bumper, and much more, but most importantly, I'll take my little one to Chicago, just him and me, for a week or so. He's excited about re-creating the opening scene of the movie, and I'm just excited in general lol - but we're doing what the plan was from the very beginning...creating some memories. Just guys. No girls. No trouble. Unless our Bluesmobile decides to be female and create some troubles along the way...  
It might take us until June to get it all lined up, we'll leave super early in the morning, like at 4am, to have him sleep for the first half of the trip, then it won't feel too long. Because....It's 850km to Chicago. We'll have a full tank of gas, i'll sneak in some cigarettes, it'll be dark and we'll be wearing sunglasses...



At this point I'd just like to thank everyone on this forum for the warm welcome, the support and help. I'd like to thank especially markinblues and steam, both live close-ish, know our area and have helped me many times with advice and great ideas. A special thanks to markinblues for convincing me to post pictures and sharing my little build. I've had a blast posting/writing this, I even learnt how to link pictures on a forum, and if I was able to entertain, motivate or even help a single person, then it's definitely worth it.   

Also to Brian from Chicagobluesmobile.com - I sent you a message on your webpage, but in case you didn't receive it, THANK YOU for your blog. You've uploaded so much information that helped me like a guide at times - and that's exactly what's extremely hard to find online when it comes to C-bodies. Your page - even if I didn't have to fiberglass my fenders - saved me from many missteps and wrong approaches, and..., oh well, I just wanted to say a big THANK YOU. 

[cynot]

Awesome story! Its time to enjoy the car after all of your hard work. Hit me up when you come to Chicago...it would be great to meet you both.

[77granfury]

Cynot, that's awesome. We'll definitely keep you updated, would be great to see you, but first we'll have to iron-out a few bugs to get the elderly lady (not my wife...the car!) ready for the roughly 1800km road-trip. Thank you for the great feedback!

[Steam McQueen]

Mar 19, 2022 23:02:22 GMT -5 77granfury said:

I'd like to thank especially markinblues and steam,

You're welcome and thanks for the shout-out !

Glad you got the pics figured out, I need to manage the attachments once in awhile which I'm doing now.

Great thread. I remember some guy saying once you can't make a Monaco out of a Fury. And we've got about 3 examples here now proving me ... I mean that guy, wrong.

[77granfury]

Mar 21, 2022 15:10:10 GMT -5 Steam McQueen said:

I remember some guy saying once you can't make a Monaco out of a Fury. And we've got about 3 examples here now proving me ... 

I remember that! This line was always in my head: "You can't make a Monaco out of a Fury, but you can make a Bluesmobile out of a Fury or a Monaco"...

Honestly, it never felt 100% right about it, but there was no way I could have found a better car, it happened to be a Fury. Sometimes I felt I'm doing the Plymouth wrong - as if it's the lesser car, sometimes I felt that I'm putting a cheap and obviously fake copy together. Like you're that kid in grade 3 with the fake Adidas shoes that say "Adeedas" and have 4 stripes, and everybody knows it and laughs their a** off... 

The difference is only on the exterior, it's the front, the rear and the bodylines. If somebody does the front and the rear, I doubt that many besides the forum members would be able to point out that it's a Fury. Hell, we have a totally different car (79/80ish St.Regis?) cruise through Universal acting like it's the real deal. 

....but it's in my head....and one day...I'll sell the Gran Fury Bluesmobile and buy myself a Monaco in inferior shape, just because it's a Monaco. That's how my brain works. And if I have a 360 or a 400 that has 1000hp in it, I'll pull it, just to replace it with an RV 440 with 180 horses - just because the Bluesmobile had a 440...

[77granfury]

PART 11: DASH TRASH and other DECORATIONS -will be updated in the next weeks

The 2022 season has in-officially started. We're allowed to cross the border to the United States now - and avoid ridiculous customs fees by picking up all kinds of parcels from our US-address-mailbox. Canadians know...this allows us not only to save on shipping and customs, it also gives us the chance to buy items off ebay that buyers don't want to ship outside of the US, i.e. fully automatic guns, drugs, easy women etc.... (just kidding).
As usual, my wife has been kept successfully in the dark - with the exception of a proposal for a nice Easter trip to take her a few days away from routine, a weekend just for her of course, to pamper her (and whatever else we were lying through our teeth about) - while little junior and me spent time ordering all kinds of goodies:

-4 Budweiser beer cans from the 70s, empty, for $10. That's the first time in my life I PAID money for empty beer cans. Usually I pay for full cans or get paid a refund for empties. I'm not proud.
-An 8-track player. It's a Craig S605. The trained eye will immediately notice a difference, I believe the red LEDs are square instead of round, and it's missing the channel select buttons, but once the 8-track is inserted, it shouldn't be too visible.
-Several stickers and shirts from Teepublic - they have a lot of great graphics on shirts, stickers and more. Stickers were $2 each (rather small) and shirts under $14 - it was a sale event. Let's see how bad the quality is... 
-The "Plymouth Hotel" keychain. Finally a worthy key chain for the Bluesmobile.
-A Rad and other engine-related goodies from summit, we have to get her as reliable as possible, so I figured spending some money on parts is never a bad idea.

The lord works in mysterious ways, and suddenly you find a colour printer and laminating machine that you weren't aware of - right at work. In that case you might as well use that equipment to make props. I'm not fully sure how illegal the stuff below is, but I started downloading and searching motives off the web, printed them, laminated them and made some props for the dash board. This worked pretty well, and maybe I got carried away a little bit, making different coloured AUCTION signs etc, but OBVIOUSLY I only did this during my designated work breaks and not during working hours... The quality is horrible, they have a nice and solid "grainy blur" to all of them and you'll be able to read about 30% of the letters, but hey, you're going to see this through a windshield which is probably dirtier than a.... (my son entered the room and is reading this...will edit later lol)
On a side-note - none of the pictures are mine, they're either from google searches, or this forum, and I'd like to thank every source. Of course they're not for sale or any sort of personal gain other than pure happiness, but if anyone would like me to remove the pictures off the web, please let me know - and I apologize in advance. On the other hand, if I can give back to this forum in any way, please let me know.

BELOW: The Saint Helen of the Blessed Shroud shirt/sticker/etc. graphic available on Teepublic. They also have "Soul Food Cafe", "Bob's Country Bunker", "Ray's Music Exchange", and MANY more Blues Brothers related things.



BELOW: Tonight Only flyers, Police Car Auction flyers, Blues License for Jake and Elwood, Elwood's license, Murph's business cards, John Belushi's visitor's pass for Joliet Prison, Jake's prison pass for Joliet,...



That's a pile of stuff. Maybe we'll make a little display on the rear deck, with toy Bluesmobile, Auction flyers and more, but first we got to work on the dashboard.

-2 Budweiser beer cans, crushed. Apparently they're collector's items and called "tear-drop cans" because of the shape of the opening. eBay was our friend.
-2 soft-drink lids. You know, the thin "almost see through" type, used at McDonalds and more. Comes as "free prop" with the purchase of a fountain pop at your local fast food restaurant.
-A couple packs of Chesterfield cigarettes - and a few butts on the dashboard as well. I found a great write-up here on this forum - THANK YOU. Printed it out - fit perfect! Could be a "free prop" if you smoke....might cost a non-smoker up to $20.
-Peanuts. I think there's a lot of peanut shells etc on the dashboard as well. We went to town. 
-Sunglasses. I think. Cheap Ray Ban copies to smolder on the dashboard.
-"Murph and the Magic Tones" business card and some concert flyers make sense,
-"AUCTION" flyers, while I made them up on Word and added different Police Car pictures after seeing a rainbow-coloured version online, I don't think it's movie accurate other than Elwood mentioning the Bluesmobile was bought at an auction.
-We have a glow-in-the-dark "Santa Maria de Guadelupe" to put somewhere, not because we think we drive a '64 Impala lowrider, but we found her in an antique market and she fit's the religious motive quite well. Plus, she's supposed to bring us luck. She was neither in the movie, nor does she have anything closely to do with it.
-I think at this point we just decided to do what we liked, I love great ideas, and I see our cars as homages to one of the greatest movies of all time. Will I place a spare cigarette lighter, a harmonica and the "Plymouth Hotel" keychain with junkyard Chrysler keys on the dash? Yup.

We noticed on our first test drive that our Bluesmobile has the rare option code "C86: Automatic Dash Cleanup" when the front windows are open. At every turn all our collected garbage slid out the window, especially the heavier items. Perfect :\ We were more interested in a long-term commitment to our dash trash. Gluing it to our mint dashpad wasn't an option, I feel we shouldn't ruin it. Yet.
I was thinking of ordering a dash mat (one of those dash carpets that come in 399 different colours, 17 of which would have matched different pieces of our STOCK gold interior) and stitching/gluing the props to it, but when the mailman dropped off some promotional fridge magnets from real estate brokers of the neighborhood, we cut them up and glued them on the back of our props. The dash carrier is made of metal, the light items like laminated documents etc. aren't sliding anywhere anymore. The dollar store had some heavy duty magnets, 3 for a buck, meant to hang keys to the wall. Mint. They went on the crushed cans - almost overkill.

BELOW: This is how we want our dash to look. Movie accurate.



BELOW: This is how our dash looks now. More like a yardsale, but hey... maybe we won't notice it while driving...

 

BELOW: Nope. We will notice it while driving. Our dash trash seems to project itself onto the windshield. We have "Heads-up dash trash".



On a positive side-note though, we came up with a half-solution for the 8-track player. EITHER we'll find a dash pad in poor shape that's worthy of cutting into next weekend at the junkyard, or, we cut our 8-track player apart. It sounds like a horrible idea and a major butcher-job, but given that ours is a Craig S605 and therefore NOT the movie correct version, and is NOT working, and will never be fixed to be used to play music, I *could* disassemble it, take the front off and mount it on a "sawzall-ed in half" old cassette stereo I found in the basement...that happens to fit right into the vent slot.

   

ABOVE and BELOW: Our known-not-working Craig S605 8-track player, now WITH $2 Chet Atkins 8-track from the fleamarket...AND Sam and Dave label glued onto it.  



BELOW: to compare. This is what it looked like in 1980 to be fast and legendary. We're not too far off.

   

Updates will follow when we figured out where to mount the 8-track without destroying the dash-pad... it hurts!

[77granfury]

PART 12: GENERAL MAINTENANCE. Updates will follow in the next weeks

I mentioned it before, we live about 800kms (which translates to roughly 8 hours without breaks) North East of Chicago, and that's where we want to go. I was lucky to get to work from home during the last 2 years. That gave me all the time in the world to spend on the whole Bluesmobile idea of my son - and my own dream that I had since I first watched the Blues Brothers movie. I was probably 14 and an exchange student in France at the time, it was in French, I understood only a fraction of it, but I knew right away this would become my favourite movie.
For me this movie turned to be, let's say, the "guy's" TITANIC. Let me explain. I'm in my early 40s, and most of my age have a wife that watched De Caprio's Titanic when it came out around 412 times in the movie theatre. Probably sneaking out the window at the age of 12, "bEcAuSe LeOnArDo iS sO hOt..." I know that because I have a little sister, she was one of them. And a wife. Her, too.
Blues Brothers is the "guy" movie that you can watch more than anything else. I've never gotten bored of the Blues Brothers, although I watched it more often than any other movie, so has my son at age 7, and that only within the last year. Every time I see it I find new things to be excited about, especially now - since we bought our Bluesmobile. You pay more attention to the actual movie car. The door panels. The mirror....Aaaaaand....back to topic: This year, planned in June, we'll make our "men's (father/son) trip" down to Chicago. We'll take as many pictures as we can, but my little man is my boss, and he decided our first night will be in Joliet. We'll spend all weekend driving around Chicago and we might meet up with some of the nice guys we got to know because of this forum.

We only have 51000 miles on the car, but many things get a little brittle over the years, 45 to be exact. Our job in the next weeks is to get the car in the best-possible shape to avoid breaking down. After all, this is supposed to become a lasting memory for both of us, and not a nightmare.
We'll focus on everything from re-packing bearings to changing fluids, making the cooling system work reliably and changing wear and tear parts along the way.  

THIS is where we started, to get our starvation/fuel issue under control:

New fuel pump. Painted and installed. New Accel coil - shiny chrome. After an hour or so plus paint-drying time, we went for a test drive. All great when  cold. The fuel issue is still there as soon as it warms up. Standing at traffic lights with one foot on the break and the other foot on the gas to keep the RMPs up so it doesn't stall. Next: we'll replace all fuel hoses, check if there's one in the back by the tank, and before we're starting to mess with the real issue, the carburetor, we chose to do some "bling" in the engine compartment instead. Fancy wires, new cap and rotor, new plugs, fluid changes and more.
Then we have to spend some time with our cooling system. I'd love to go electric fans, however, we have other battles to fight first. We have a slow leaking rad and several heater hoses that look suspicious for future leaks to say the least.

Updates follow!

[77granfury]

Little Elwood's first coincidental car show!

It's the beginning of the season. What are the first things you'll have to do to your car - of course after re-positioning the dash-trash and sitting on the driver's seat asking daddy to take pictures "for kid's messenger"...?
I walked little Elwood along while we got the Bluesmobile ready, just because the weather was too nice to do serious work off the "honey-do-list" from the wife, and tried to be serious for once about it. Until I noticed that watching daddy wrench is boring and we have to get him to physically do some real work. Off to the car wash we went.

BELOW: He insisted it was the second time he washed a car in his life all by himself. It was true. The first time was less than a year ago, the day before we started sanding the "golden fawn"...


BELOW: We're clearly working with the foam brush past the timer. Which is fine, because the car is over a minute too long for the pre-set $3/3 minutes time limit. 


BELOW: We PURPOSELY didn't paint the door frames and trunk lid from the inside - to make the matching coloured interior appear bigger and roomier. Nope, that's a lie. We just didn't get to it yet.


BELOW: One exhausted but happy kid. I like the shirt the Easter bunny brought him - along with a few slices of toast...


BELOW: Then a friend came over with his Trans Am to ask if we wanted to ride along to a car-show. We weren't planning for that, but little Elwood wanted to go, so I thought....the car is clean, we might as well...
It was late, many cars had left at that point. There were around 10 GM F-bodies, a couple Challengers and what you see on the picture below, but...my proud helper was super excited and ready to showing the car to everybody.
On a serious side note - While we always turn a lot of heads, get "thumbs up" and "rock on" impressions and lots of smiles on the street, but I was shocked how many people had no idea what "a Bluesmobile" is. I was asked several times about
"the old Police car", "the OPP cruiser" (Ontario Provincial Police - they're black and white, too), and similar. Here we are, all concerned that people will notice our square instead of round lights on the 8-track recorder, the wrong seat material,
or the rearview mirror, that is incorrectly mounted to the windshield instead of movie-correct to the roof.
Guys, we do this for ourselves and our kids. Maybe even our wives. Others won't appreciate the attention to detail if they can't even point out that this is THE BLUESMOBILE! 
.

BELOW: We had a great day. So did our Bluesmobile. I still love the look of our amber lights. Check out little Elwood on the front porch. It's dark. He's still wearing sunglasses...

[cynot]

Another great story of a great adventure...thats what its all about