Archive for the ‘Riviera’ Category

But wait, there’s more…

Posted: November 20, 2018 in Buick, Riviera
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I was having trouble with the idea of hiding the beautiful headlight nacelle’s behind the (admittedly graceful) front bumper.  I toyed with the idea of cutting the bumper ends off and grafting them to the center, so it “floated” between the fender tips, but that seemed like it’d still hide the lines Bill Mitchell laid out for the car 55 years ago.  What to do?  A little masking paper gave me an idea…

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Why do I even need the bumper?  It’s strictly an ornament, in fact it bolts to not only frame, but the sheet metal fenders, AND, the fragile die cast bottoms of the headlight tower grills. Even a tiny bump would take out the whole front end.  Not only that, the soft curve of the thin bumper clashes with, and mostly hides, the crisp, sharp lines every where else on the front end.  Why not just eliminate it, and let the design of the that front end stand on it’s own?

So, a couple of hours later, the paper pattern turned into:

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The bottom valance panel, the part of the bumper that bolts to the fenders and headlamp tower grills, remains as a “rolled pan”.  I made a simple filler panel, from the valance panel under the grill, that’ll bolt (it’s clamped on for now with Vice-Grips) to that.  It was a very easy panel to make, all straight bends (which I did over the edge of the bench with a couple sticks of 1/4″ 2×2 angle, some Vice-Grips and a rubber mallet as a brake).  That chrome piece will get painted body color, which will let me fix the little dent where one of the original bumper guards got tweaked.  I have some extra door stainless trim pieces that’ll make a nice trim over the little “flat” I added to the valance panel extension were it meets the Riviera’s original part.

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I’m pretty proud (obviously) of my design, which focuses the eye to the headlamp nacelle’s and the wide ’65 grill.  The bright Halogen headlamps will be fine behind the grills and plastic lenses, as the grills are so close the bulbs.  Shining on the shop wall, they look like they’ll be more than adequate for actual night-time driving.

The only drawback to this modification is that now I don’t think the original pale blue color, which I’d decided I’d use, won’t look right with this new, rather sinister look.  Which means, I guess, that the door jambs and cowl will now have to painted some other, suitably menacing, color.  Maybe gunmetal grey, satin?

I can’t believe I just said that, but it would look great with the black leather interior I have for the car…

Thanksgiving, a Rivieras progress.

Posted: November 18, 2018 in Riviera, transportation
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I’m approaching my 64th birthday in a couple of weeks, Thanksgiving is coming right up, and I’m pretty thankful for my wonderful family,  beautiful grandson, great home with a (semi) warm shop, a collection of some pretty neat cars, a couple of fun projects, time to devote to them, and a wife who supports this obsession of mine.

The Riviera is coming along pretty well, the brake conversion is done.  I got the correct pins, and the spindles and brakes are on the car for good.  Lines are next, and the new master cylinder needs to go in.  I pulled the original gas tank, and have the poly ’93 Cadillac tank that was under our old ’48 Pontiac convertible to replace the original.  A new sending unit and Walbro fuel pump compatible with the pressure requirements of the LS is an easy swap, then lines for that, and the car will be, hopefully, a runner.  It turns over with the key, all the systems are “hot”, so I think I’m getting close.

I’m very happy with the headlight installation behind the parking lamp towers in the fenders, it’s a HUGE improvement of the clunky, last minute botch the factory did with them in the grill.  The ’65 finally got the clamshell lights, and the clean grill (I used a ’65 grill), but this will be a good, low dollar substitute for that one year only, complicated and hard to find conversion.

I used the headlight buckets that came out of the ’59 Thunderbird (which were replaced by ’63 Cadillac units), the were on the shelf, complete with the Halogen bulbs.  I’d originally thought of new projector style bulbs, but they ‘re expensive, they’d be hard to adapt and make the adjusters for, and might look odd behind the lenses.  This seems to be a more sensible approach to what’s going to be a period style car.

Happy Holidays everyone, get out in the shop and make something!

 

Name that part…

Posted: November 3, 2018 in Riviera, Uncategorized
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More specifically, name what vehicle it came from, so as to be able to obtain the missing caliper pin, and maybe a set of shoes in the future.

I’d had these on the shelf, saved for who knows how long, from what I remembered as being an ’83 Chevy conversion van that I’d bought for it’s 350 engine.  It turned out I didn’t use that part of it, but I did use a bunch of other stuff from it for the Diamond T, the front suspension, the gas tank, the master cylinder and power booster, steering box and and so on.  I remembered saving the front spindles and brakes, having swapped the 5 bolt, 1/2 ton parts for heavier, 8 lug 3/4 ton pickup items when I put the suspension in the Diamond T.

They’d  been sandblasted, the spindles primed with epoxy, I kept them thinking I’d use them someday, on something.

Evidently my memory is unreliable, as when I went to O’Reilly’s to get a replacement caliper pin (one had gone AWOL in the shop during the 10 years or so I’d been shuffling them around), and we couldn’t match it with what I thought they were.  A set of oversized GM pins were ordered as they were the correct length overall, but when they came they didn’t work due to difference in the head and length of the threaded shank.

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A trip back to the store today and a VERY patient counter-man revealed they are really mid 70’s full size Cadillac parts.  The pins are available, the calipers themselves are not, at least from O’Reilley’s,  For the life of me I don’t know where I got these, what I intended them for nor why I saved them.  I do remember, vaguely, deciding the set of van spindles and brakes weren’t worth saving, and taking them on a scrap run, thinking these were the same parts.

They aren’t.

They DO fit the Buick ball joints, and I CAN get the missing pins I need, they have a brand new set of shoes and the pistons are free and don’t leak, so I’m  using them.  I’ve got the spindles mounted and the right side all assembled, the left I’m now waiting for the pins.

The moral here is twofold: 1.  Don’t use what you have on hand just because you may have it on hand, and, 2.  If you save something, label it to identify what it is and put it away carefully so as to not lose difficult to find bits.

Of course, I won’t heed my own advice, and I still don’t remember how I got those…

 

I love my garage…

Posted: October 31, 2016 in Hot Rod, Real Hot Rods, Riviera, Thunderbird, Uncategorized
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I think I’ll get a chair so I can set out here and soak it all in.  But, where would I put it?

Bagging the Riv.

Posted: April 17, 2015 in Classic Cars, HAMB, Riviera, Tin Can Tourists, Traditional Custom Cars, transportation, travel
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With help from my friend Jake who made spring spacers for another ‘ 63 Riviera he was bagging, I got started on the air suspension for Kim ‘a Riviera today.

Front is together, I hope to get the rear done tomorrow and get lines run . The goal is infinitely adjustable suspension for ride height, static display and trailer towing duty.

Two-fer!

Posted: March 24, 2015 in Buick, HAMB, Riviera, Squarebird, Thunderbird, Traditional Custom Cars
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Progress on two fronts today! Finished up the floor repair in the Riviera, got that all primed, And, got the Lincoln door buttons in the ’59 T ‘bird too! I’m super stoked about both projects, the ‘bird looks great with the smooth, handle-less Lincoln door buttons and it’s nice to not see the shop floor through the Rvi ‘s floor pans.

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Friends don’t let friends drive stockers.

Posted: March 19, 2015 in HAMB, Riviera, Traditional Custom Cars
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I was at ALRO Steel yesterday, picking out some steel to make the air bag cups for the Riviera, when my phone rang.  It was my pal Jake Moomey, calling to tell me that he wasn’t going to come out and drop off the plates he makes for the cups, as he had to stay home for his kids to get off the school bus.  He followed that up by saying since he is currently putting an identical Air-Lift system in our friend Destin’s ’63 Riviera, he might as well make a second set of cups and spacers for mine.  Not only that, but he said he’d take photos of the job as he does it, to help me out.

I have my friend Johns bead roller in my shop right now, to make the floor pan patch panels for the car, and the block-off panels for the firewall where the original heater is.  John has lent me this handy tool before, along with his shrinker/stretcher, and Panel-Bond gun, even when it’s inconvenienced him.  He has an 8 foot sheet metal brake, which he lets me use when I need to do something that simply bending sheet metal over the edge of the bench won’t do.

My friend Kirk went to the guy I traded some parts to for a console for the Riviera, and my pal Jay brought it over from  Detroit to our place last weekend when he and his wife came to Kalamazoo for the weekend, saving me a day long road trip.  My buddy Crafty B did some welding on the aluminum oil pan for the engine, as I’m not able to do that at home.

The only reason I have the car is that my friend John sold me the car, and a second, slightly rougher one, for scrap metal prices, and then lent me his trailer to haul them home (which I unknowingly damaged slightly unloading the cars).  He was happy for me when I sold the rough one for more than I paid for the pair, which I had told him I wanted to do when I bought them.  He could have sold them himself, but he knew I liked them and wanted to build one.

We don’t do things in a vacuum.  Help, support and inspiration (and, sometimes tools)  come from our friends and family when we need them, get stuck, or run out of steam.  I hope I’m as generous and supportive to my friends, because I certainly wouldn’t be able to this stuff, or be where I am, without them.

Thanks guys, call me if you need me!

Inspiration in Detroit.

Posted: March 10, 2015 in car shows suck, Chevrolet Impala, Detroit Autorama, HAMB, Ridler Award, Riviera, Thunderbird, transportation
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Chip Foose is my hero.

Chip Foose is my hero.

I’ll say it right now, Chip Foose is a hero of mine.  I’ve heard, and read on-line lately, lots of disparaging remarks about his latest creation, the above Impala which took the Ridler award at AutoRama, but I’m not one of those distractors.  This car is a masterpiece, and was in my head all day yesterday while I was in the shop working on my own two customs, Kim’s ’63 Riviera and my long-term ’59 T’bird project.

I don’t have the talent, vision, or admittedly the budget for a car like this, but I take inspiration for my own cars from Chip’s work, and this one spoke to me at a very visceral level.  It’s absolutely stunning.  The proportions are perfect, the car is radically modified but still looks like a Chevy Impala.  Integrated, unified, classic yet modern/  Everything flows, beautifully detailed to a level that boggles my mind.  It’s everything that I like about custom cars, and everything I’d like to be able to do.

I overheard some comments while looking at the car, and read afterwards, comments along the line of “The Ridler is bought, not earned”, “All Foose’s cars look the same.”, “F-ugly.”, and so on.  My thoughts on looking at this (and LOTS of other cars at the show) were more along the “I could do that.”

In that light, while the images of the car are still fresh in my head, I’m going to get out to the shop and try to get the bodywork on my T’bird, and get busy with the Air-Ride system under the Riviera.  Maybe someday a crowd of guys will stand around my car and mutter “It’s all about money”, “He just wrote the checks”, “I hate painted bumpers”, and occasionally, “I could do that.”

Let’s get busy.

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“Why?”

Posted: March 7, 2015 in Classic Cars, Riviera, Traditional Custom Cars, transportation
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When the big boxes of goodies from Air-Ride came, and I had to explain how much these parts cost to my wife, she asked, ” Why do we need that?”
Here’s why, Kim:

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Just fix it.

Posted: March 1, 2015 in Gilmore Car Museum, HAMB, Riviera, Traditional Custom Cars, transportation, vintage car
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The restoration (or “fixing up”) of an old car is a matter of repairing and refurbishing all of the worn out and/or broken parts, making them work like they should, and then, depending on your own taste, making them look like new, or as close to new as makes you happy, again.  It’s one step at a time.  Today I made several big steps forward.

The Riviera I’m building for my wife had an issue with the passenger door glass, it flopped inwards when the door closed, didn’t fit right, and the power window motor was shot.  Happily, I have an extra pair of doors, and robbed the spare door of the parts I needed.  The window motor works fine, but sadly, the die-cast arm on the window regulator that was the cause of this floppy-ness was also broken on the donor door.  Since I had an entire extra regulator, I cut one of the steel arms off it that happen to be exactly the same length as the broken die cast one, managed to save the shouldered rivet that makes the hinge pin that it pivots as the window goes up and down, and put it all back together.  It works fine, and cost ZERO dollars.

I got the new “Southern-Air” A/C-heat unit mounted on the inside of the firewall too, and adapted the shiny new dash vents to the Riviera’s original housings, on each side of the dash, and the long narrow  original one in the center of the console.  The defroster tubes are also mounted temporarily, so I’ve go all done that I can do until I get the new console (sourced from the guy who bought the parts Riviera I sold) and start permanently putting the car together.

Next up, put some butyl duct-insulation (same stuff as “Dyna-Mat” but about a quarter of the price), on the floor and insulation on top of that.  A buddy uses shiny mylar bubble wrap insulation in all his builds, so I’m going to use the same thing, with maybe a second layer of butyl duct insulation on top of that.  I want the car quiet and cool.

After that, I spent some time sorting out the wiring harness, as I need to sort out the switched and constant hot feeds to wire the new ECM for the LS engine, and I got all the windows to go up and down.  The drivers power seat needs some work to free up the mechanism, but the motor runs, so it should be repairable.  The headlight, tail-light and wiper circuits all work, so I won’t have too much wiring to do, as the original wiring is in good shape.

I’m very happy with this afternoons work, I got a lot done, and made progress on several aspects of the build.  As soon as I get my re-shaped oil pan and the air suspension stuff, the car can start going back together and get ready for paint!

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The defroster plenum will get the tubes sealed in with my second favorite thing, duct tape.

The defroster plenum will get the tubes sealed in with my second favorite thing, duct tape.

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from the firewall

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