Our August feature car belongs to Mike and Deb Reimer. Mike bought this 65 Beaumont and enjoyed driving the car for a while until he decided to do a little body work on it. Well you know what happened next!

Mike has the details:

When I was around 16 or 17 I had a 65 Beaumont. Being a kid I bought a car that looked good but needed too much work for me to afford so I ended up selling it.  Twenty-five years later and now married I decided it was time to look for another one (I think my wife was tired of me talking about it).  I looked on Kijiji for about a year until I came across this one.  I was working in northern Manitoba and flew home for the day to look at and purchase the car.

  I drove the car for a year as it was and over Christmas holidays in 2013 I decided to fix the bubbling in the rear quarters. From there it was in the garage for the better part of two years. I worked on it during the eight days a month that I was home.

  The bubbling turned into both full rear quarters having to be replaced as well as the inner tubs.

  The front of the hood was all rust holes and needed metal bent for it. 

  The firewall was cleaned up once the motor came out as well.

  Once the body was taken apart we decided to build a 396 that I had bought a few years earlier.

The motor was dropped off at Millar motors and they went to work. The block was bored .100 over and then stroked 4.25 to leave me with a 496. Next we sent the motor to SanDale for break-in and a run on the dyno. We ended up with 598.5HP and 670lb ft of torque. 

We left the 350 transmission in it for a year before it gave out. We built another 350 transmission for the car that lasted another summer and have since replaced it with a 700R4. This made the car much easier to drive and has lasted for the last three years.

  With the motor done we looked at the wiring in the car. It was in rough shape so it was all replaced with and EZ wire kit.

  While putting the car back together we changed the factory 10 bolt rear end with a 12 bolt posi as well as new trailing arms thanks to a wonderful Canadian Poncho member. We did a disc brake conversion and installed QA1 rear shocks.

  So far the carpet has been replace as have the door panels. The seats still have to be redone or replacede at some point.

  My goal was not to build a show car because I would be too scared to drive it. It's also not a race car but car just to have fun with.   

  I would like to run it down a track this year just to see what it will do, then it will go up for sale and we will start over again!

  From southern Manitoba Mike and Deb……MAD65