My Caprice 9C1
My Caprice 9C1
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This is my 1989 9C1 Caprice. '9C1' is the option code for the "Police Package". The car started its life with the Missouri Highway Patrol and ended its service life with the Andover Police Department. I purchased the car in June 1996 from the city of Andover for the grand sum of $1000. The car was still painted in the department colors and even had all of the decals still on the car. The car had spent the previous several years as a K-9 unit for APD. So when I got the car it looked smelled and ran like crap! I went to work to rectify all of those problems. A good cleaning was the first obvious thing to do as well as taking off all of the stickers and emblems. It took me about two weeks of working everyday after work to get the stickers off. I peeled them off by hand, razor blade and with a chemical striper. I wish that I had known about a drill attachment that would take them off. It sure would have saved me some time!

The next job was a tune-up. I replaced the distributor cap, rotor, spark plugs, plug wires, air filter, fuel filter, changed the oil and transmission fluid and differential grease. You wouldn't believe how much better regular maintenance items will make a car run. This car would flat run after I was done with all of this stuff. Eventually I added new tires too. The next big project was a paint job. I took the car to several places to get an estimate. I was told by at least 3 different places that it would cost at least $1000. That was too much in my opinion. So I started trying to figure out how much it would cost me to do the job myself. I ended up selling an old pickup of mine and using the money gained from that to purchase the equipment I needed.

I purchased a 5hp-30gallon-air compressor from Sears. I also purchased a really good DA sander ($100) and a cheap paint gun ($50). I went to a local store and purchased the needed supplies. I took a week off from work once I had all the stuff set up. I learned several things while doing this job. The air compressor I bought is not big enough. It can barely keep up with the sander. It runs the whole time and once it's charged up it only holds enough to run the sander for about two minutes before the compressor kicks on. I also learned that sanding a car is a long tedious job. I started sanding on a Friday evening and did not finish until the next Friday. I did absolutely no bodywork on the car (fixing dents/rust etc.). This was just an exercise to see if I could do the painting. The painting was the easy work as it turned out. I did all the work in my one car garage. Ultimately the car turned out fairly well considering this was the first time that I had ever painted a car. I can now walk you around the car and point out problems in the paint and tell you exactly what I did wrong in each place. So in that way it was a good exercise.

 Here is what the car looked like when I got it:



This is what the car could have looked like while in service with the MSP:


Since painting the car I've also done the following:

Future Modifications (When money allows):


Check out the 1986 civilian Caprice I used to own, known as "Fernando"




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