1969 Cadillac Eldorado (26k miles) - The Standard of the World

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Hi , my name is Adam .

Welcome to my classic car channel .

Today we have luxury for 1969 .

In another video you saw the Mark three today .

It's a 69 Eldorado .

This was , this Eldorado was produced from 1967 through 1970 .

And it's the first front wheel drive .

El Dorado that came into production .

The term was used on some other Cadillacs , but this was the first time it really signified a personal luxury coupe that again was front wheel drive and shared that front wheel drive set up with the tornado .

The El Dorado was one of three vehicles that was part of a trilogy , I guess .

The tornado , the Riviera and this vehicle , the El Dorado , the tornado and the El Dorado were both front wheel drive .

The Riviera was rear wheel drive and they have a lot of differences between them .

In terms of the chassis , the Toro and the Aldo have a three quarter frame that stops right in front of the rear wheel and then they have a single leaf spring , rear suspension on either side .

The Riviera has a full X frame and has four coil springs supporting it .

So in spite of this being a really high end car for the time , to be honest , the ride is not great and by not great , I don't mean that it's stiff versus soft .

This is actually is a pretty firm riding car for the time .

I really mean that that leaf spring in the back , it creates this sensation of boos in the cabin as you go over bumps and it's kind of an unrefined ride particularly for what this car is .

We'll do a comparison test of this versus the 69 mark three at some point .

But I will say on this car , the ride leaves something to be desired and I owe a lot of that to that single leaf spring in the back .

So 69 was the third model year of the El Dorado .

67 was the first year and each year changes a little bit in 67 you can tell that one because it has the hideaway headlights and it doesn't have the turn signals in the fender .

Like this , the turn signals are integrated into the bumper .

There's also some other differences between badging .

There's not the side marker light that came later on the 67 and nor is there this reverse light that's integrated into the fuel door .

So each year you can tell because there's something a little bit different .

So as we progress from 67 to 68 the main difference that you'll notice on those is that the third signal moves from the bumper into the fender .

And the interior also changes in 68 to be , I would say more rich .

It's got more wood tone on the doors , has buttons on the seat cushions .

In 69 they dropped the hideaway headlights and went to this fixed headlight design and in addition to the fixed headlights , it also got this , that backup lamp that was integral to the fuel filler door , which I thought was kind of a neat touch that some of the Cadillacs today have like the X T five is the center backup lamp .

Then one big difference between the 69 70 that's visible is the tail lights on the 70 they're kind of capped off and they only have a really thin red area compared to the 69 and there are some power train differences year to year as well .

So 67 was the 429 cubic inch Cadillac V eight , same block as the , as the 390 Cadillac V eight that came before it in 1968 though they introduced the 472 cubic inch premium fuel motor , which is what this car has .

And that was the Eldorado standard engine in 1968 and 1969 .

Then in 70 the El Dorado got the 500 cubic inch V eight and the rest of the Cadillac lineup got the 472 really just as a carryover , but it differentiated the El Dorado from , from the other models in the line .

You got the 500 cubic inch motor in the El Dorado , you get the 472 in the regular Cadillacs .

And that persisted into the mid 70 until I believe 74 when all of the Cadillacs had a 500 cubic inch V eight as standard .

These are all premium fuel motors , high compression motors in this body .

So 1970 is the only year of the high compression 500 cubic inch engine before in 71 it goes to low compression and a bit less horsepower .

This 472 in this car is also a high compression engine very powerful .

I think the 500 cubic inch motor is rated at 400 gross horsepower and this was rated somewhere around 380 gross horsepower , which again is the horsepower rating , absent exhaust and accessories and the air cleaner .

When those are added , there's a net horsepower standard that all car companies went to in 1972 and is still used today .

So the power figures are a bit inflated , but nonetheless , this is a powerful car .

It's also a beautiful car .

This was during the height of GM styling and that trilogy , the El Dorado tornado in Riviera arguably best exemplifies General Motors at its finest from a styling standpoint this car actually would be even better without the vinyl roof .

But I procured it really because it has this unique color , which is ramp or green and it reads almost a gray right now and a cloudy .

But when it's sunny , it has this deep rich green gold metallic flake color and it comes alive .

It's amazing how this car almost looks like a dark graphite gray right now .

But again , in the sunlight , it looks really different .

It's just a gorgeous color on the car .

It's also a low mileage car .

It has , I think 26,000 miles on it , it was put away in storage in Kentucky and I bought it and basically resurrected it .

It had been stored since 1982 .

I believe I got the license plate in the back .

I hadn't been on the road and it required a little bit of work to get going , but , you know , not really that much .

All things considered the interior has changed pretty frequently in these cars too .

So the 67 interior and both the seat pattern and the IP is different from the 68 .

The 68 is different from the 69 .

This was the first year of this kind of safety safety padded instrument panel with the rim blow horn that you pinch the rim .

It also has the trumpet horn which is optional many times .

These wheels are all cracked up and in bad shape .

This one's perfect uh , really ?

Because it was a garage car for its whole life , relatively nice interior .

I don't know that I would call it overly opulent though .

It's , ah , it's nice but , you know , some of the things on it like this faux wood grain here on the door , it looks pretty convincing and good .

But you'd expect a little more in a car of this , uh , expense notice .

The El Dorado has a flat floor , there's no transmission tunnel because it's front wheel drive .

That was the unique selling feature of these .

This car is pretty loaded and I think it has almost every option .

It's probably missing a few , but it has the telescoping wheel .

So if you want to un telescope it , you move this to unlock and then you can move the wheel in and out .

Also has cruise control with this neat switch on the dash that you turn on before pushing the button at the end of the cruise stock .

It has automatic headlamp dimming .

So there's a photonic eye in the front that you can set .

Do you want it to kick on when it senses light , far away or near ?

It has Cadillacs Light Sentinel , which they later relabeled the twilight Sentinel and that just kicks your headlights on , automatically blower style rear to fogger , automatic climate control , which automatically selects the fan speed where the air comes out , which vents and the temperature , the outlet temperature AM F M radio with power antenna .

So if you want , let me close the door .

So the key doesn't buzz .

But if you want to put up the antenna , you just push this button and there it starts to go and you can push it down as well .

This car even has a Cadillac eight track tape player , which I am not about to try for fear of eating a tape and not working and uh , I have no idea how to even operate it .

So , but it has , it does have power windows , power door locks , power bench seat with the seat belts , the shoulder belts up on top and it does have a trunk release .

So let's push that and take a look in the trunk .

I always thought this wiper control detail here was really interesting on the door by the way and it has a trunk light which you can see when the trunk is open .

So this is quite a large trunk and here you go , this was the license plate on the car when I found it .

It had not been registered since 1979 .

Really , because the plate expired in 80 .

So it wasn't driven for a long time .

This car did come standard with dual stripe , white wall tires and a big trunk here .

I mean , really big trunk .

This does also have the automatic power pole down where you lower the trunk and you just soft , close it and it pulls the trunk lid down all the way here , you can see the underside of this fuel door with the reverse light that sits over top of the fuel fill in the middle .

We thought this was interesting , kind of like put this little shock absorber here to give some resistance as you close the trunk .

I don't know why it's actually quite a bit of resistance .

So watch this close here , I'm going to just soft , close it and you'll hear it , pull it down and click twice .

So there it goes , this car does have auto leveling rear suspension as well .

And while it's a relatively big car , there is not that much back seat room for those who are wondering how the back windows operate .

You can take a look .

Here they go all the way in on both sides so you can have that true hard top look if you want .

Let's take a look under the hood .

I always found it interesting that Cadillac rarely did the , what I'll call the Trapped hood design .

In other words , you've got a panel up front here and the hood has a cut line that comes down all the way on three sides .

They often almost always had this overlap hood that when you closed , it was kind of the front of the vehicle .

It's even true on that 94 S T S there .

So this is an unveiled engine bay for a car that was sitting for many years .

But nonetheless , a low mileage car when I got it .

So all the original spark plugs wires , as I mentioned has a quadrajet carburetor on it .

That's the auto leveling rear suspension , which I've actually unhooked right now , that vacuum hose connects to the hose on the air cleaner .

And I have a vacuum , a cover that goes over that I was just working on the carburetor , so I haven't put it back on yet , but I need to rebuild this pump .

The gasket around the front side has got a little bit of an air leak .

So I've just manually routed the airlines for the rear shocks to a valve that I can air them up on my own .

This is the heater valve for the auto climate control .

So depending upon how much heat you want , it actually restricts the coolant flow into the heater core with those two vacuum lines and then the top vacuum line shuts off the flow into the heater core .

If you have maximum air conditioning , commanded these cars .

If you're working on the carburetor , it's really tight to get in there .

You have to get a carburetor wrench if you want to get it off .

Otherwise it proves to be bit of a challenge because the air conditioning compressor interferes again .

This car is front wheel drive , so it's a Turbo Hydrotic 4 25 transmission .

So there it is back there .

The torque converter is behind the motor and then there's about an inch and a half thick chain that drives the transmission which is pointing toward the front of the car on the side here .

So this is where the transmission is .

It's hard for the camera to focus a little bit .

Let's see .

But that's the transmission and final drive and look at the axle shaft .

That's the half shaft down there .

I mean , that is a beefy half shaft .

So this set up was used in the tornados , the El Dorados and even the GMC motor homes of the seventies , those came with the Osmo wheel V eight and this Turbo hydrotic 425 transmission .

But this set up was so strong that it really went into those motor homes virtually unaltered and I have not had any issues with , I've owned quite a few cars with this transmission set up .

Never had an issue with it .

It seems very reliable .

There's actually a front differential that holds grease and then the half shafts on either side drive the drive wheels .

What's amazing is , I don't believe these are equal length half shafts , but the car doesn't have much torque steer .

So they must , I think they have counter weights on them to try to negate the torque steer because this motor has a lot of torque .

What's amazing is this , this car has less torque steer than that car , which if you step on it and you don't have your hand on the wheel , you're going in the ditch .

So part of the charm , I guess , of Cadillacs , we close the hood , you can see again , the hood comes all the way up to the front and wraps around .

For whatever reason Cadillac liked to do that for many , many years .

While the other GM divisions and Ford and Mercury often had that trapped hood design , which was harder to execute than this kind of a hood because here you don't have anything to mesh up with in front of the hood .

It's just er so this is an easier design to execute .

This car does have a three piece bumper in the front .

The 71 Eldorado that preceded it actually had a five piece front bumper .

So fair amount of complexity .

And I can't even imagine how they stamped this trunk with all the compound curves in it .

That must have been a high scrap rate piece or one that had a lot of variation in it .

I'll start it up and this motor is absolutely silent .

This has a two in one out exhaust and a cobweb , but just a gorgeous car from the peak days of style at General Motors .

The next generation El Dorado after this was a 71 to 78 it grew considerably larger .

It was based off of the full size platform for GM in 71 .

So it grew longer and wider .

It was actually on the widest body that GM had .

So this is the only one of the I'll say classic Eldorado's before the eighties hit , that was more of a mid size as opposed to a full size car .

The subsequent generation was originally going to be on a platform of similar size to this .

But given the volumes that this car was selling in , it just was not thought that it was going to be economical to get the economies of scale to have a dedicated platform .

And so the Riviera Tornado and the El Dorado all moved to the full size platform for GM in 71 .

As opposed to having their own hope you enjoyed this walk round of my 69 El Dorado .

Thank you for watching .