Oops...we're at it again.

We came very close to selling Betty. I put her on ebay, got some lookers and then after the auction ended under reserve, I decided to throw a cover over her, let some time go by, and decide whether I wanted to tackle this project after all.

My main dilemma was still the old, outdated drivetrain and suspension. My dream scenario would be to have a Nailhead / manual combo, but I knew that having this anyways was going to involve first, finding one, and second, some major fabrication on the existing frame....and even then, I'm still stuck with updating the suspension and brakes, all of which were seriously tired. I was going over and over these things again and realizing how much work I was getting into. On top of all this, the straight 8 engine was cool, but took a lot, and I mean a lot, to get a decent amount of power....coupled with the fact that the dynaflow trans is about the most pathetic example of an automatic transmission out there.

I had steadily been returning to Dan Speakin's cardomain page (see HERE) where Dan took a mid-70's Cadillac Deville chassis, cut the body off, leaving the floors and firewall, shortened the frame 6 inches to match wheelbase, and welded the Buick body on the Caddy floors and chassis. This way, you get the updated suspension and in this case, huge ass 472 engine, and everything is done for you. Dan also channeled the body a bit to drop the body down more on the frame, eliminating any need to lower the suspension.

Many on the Buick boards had talked about using a 71-73 Riviera. The wheelbase is exactly the same (well, off by 1/2 inch) as the Special, at 121.5". Come to find out, the 74 and 75 Rivi's also use the same wheelbase. This way, you get the 455 engine, 400 tranny, and 12 bolt rear end to boot. Power brakes, front disc, power steering, and even A/C make a whole lot of options I couldn't dream about doing on Betty. Only trouble would be finding a good 71-75 Riviera that's not too far away, and actually has good floors in it to swap over. Well, I let a 73 get through my hands for 400.00, but it was in New Jersey, and it was trashed, rotted floors, and a possum living under the hood. Probably better that I let that one go.

So I waited and waited, kinda giving up on the idea. I'd see the occasional one pass, but 71-73's are usually always going for between 3-5K, even in bad shape. 74's and 75's are so rare, that you never see them. Then, 2 days ago, I found one for 1,600.00 on ebay.

It was a 1975, 60K original miles and nearly everything original on the car. I almost hated to hack the thing up it seemed to be in such good shape - but then again, I don't see a long line of people waiting for one. What's better, is that they lived just a few hours away on the other side of Michigan. I managed to get ahold of the people and snagged the car for 1,500.00.

Once we got on the road, all the fun began....


The 2 feet of snow we had got in the last 2 weeks suddenly melted the day we left, when temperatures shot up to 55 degrees in about 12 hours, coupled with rain. The result was a super thick fog that literally made for less than 40 yards visibility all the way there. Fun.


Here she is in all her glory. Notice the thick Steven King horror story fog in the background. The car was really in miraculous shape. Outside of one busted front turn signal lens and a plastic piece on the corner of the trunk, the car didn't look too bad. No rust anywhere, solid floors, motor sounded pretty fair...just sounded old - even with 60K miles! Even if I ended up giving up on the Betty project, this car could fetch some money if re-worked correctly. Then I got the bad news - apparently the tranny started slipping on the way to the meeting point. According to the sellers, the car had never done this before, and they had just had the transmission serviced a few weeks prior. I opted to take the car anyways, as the sellers reassured me that if anything went wrong on the way home, they would take care of it. Unfortunately, things went way, way wrong.

The car took about 5 miles to get up to 55MPH. 1st and 2nd gear slipped so bad I'm surprised they even moved the car. The transmission chattered and banged like hell until it finally dropped into 3rd gear. I managed to get it up to 60MPH for a brief 50 miles until the oil pressure light came on and the car started making some funny noises under my feet. Rather than risk anything, I made a bee-line for the nearest exit. The car died at the stop sign at the end of the ramp. I got out to find antifreeze pouring out from underhood. She had overheated badly and I didn't even know! Nice to know the idiots at GM decided a coolant temp gauge wasn't important in those days.


Luckily, I had left a towstrap in the Ridgeline and we used it to tow the Rivi-beast into the gas station nearby. The Ridgeline happens to be the best damn truck in the world and should you come across one, you should buy it. (Shameless Honda Ridgeline plug). Upon inspection, the car did have a new radiator and water pump, as the sellers indicated. I noticed, though, that the fan clutch was just free-spinning, and that was bad news. My guess is that the high revs of the tranny slipping, coupled with the fan clutch, over-heated the motor. Here I am calling the sellers. I hate to be a pain in the ass buyer, but unfortunately, this one was a deal breaker. The over-heating part didn't bother me that much - that's easy to fix, not to mention, the motor was going to be ripped apart anyways...but I didn't expect to do a tranny rebuild. The sellers were pretty rattled by the fact the car did this. We agreed to two choices. One, I could buy the car for $1,000.00 and figure out how the hell to get it across the state and home, with them washing their hands clean of it...or two, they come get the car, rebuild the tranny with documentation proving so, and deliver it to me. I really thought they'd opt for #1, but apparently this guys' mechanic rebuilds transmissions and does a lot of them, and offered to do it for them for a cheap price. I left the car and got a call later that night that they had picked it up, and were going to deliver it to me in a few days. Score! Now I get a rebuilt tranny out of the deal.

Now my plans are to pull the 455, drop in some higher compression pistons (try to get it up from the enemic 8.2:1 the smog motors became) and get it up to 9.5 to 10:1, a new cam, manifold, and some headers. That should be all I need to move Betty with some conviction.

But for now, I wait for the car, and it's back to body work on Betty. I need to get the body work done first, then we'll work on removing both bodies and doing the swap. The Riviera will stay parked until I get the body done, and should something happen, I can always sell the car off. I just couldn't pass up a deal like this. Stay tuned, the fire is alive again! -TH

The latest, not the greatest.

Wow. Its been a while. A long while. Unfortunately, life got in the way of reBuilding Betty. Planning and paying for an upcoming summer wedding, plus a honeymoon in Italy and buying a house all seem to have taken center stage over the car. So she sat for some time in Jim's barn, keeping him company and taking up space. We decided Jim had enough time with Betty to himself, so once we got all moved in the new house, we brought Betty home with us.

I know we said we'd keep her. And we want to... we would both love to see this project to the end, and to be able to hot rod around town in a car we both helped reBuild. When I look back I see how very far we have come... and when I look forward I see how very far we have yet to go. Maybe if we had more room, or more time, or more money, or less to do.. we wouldn't feel so hopeless. But for now, she's on the auction block. Sad as it may be. Maybe there is someone out there looking for a project 1950 Buick Eight. Maybe she'll sell. Maybe she won't. Maybe we'll sit on her for another year, and then take up the challenge again. Who know what the future holds. -SB

I'm still sanding, yeah, yeah, yeah...

Almost half way through August already! We've sorta been "slackers" lately, or at least it seems that way. With the car housed in Jim's garage, its been a little more difficult to get in a good days work when all we seem to be doing is sanding a bit, slathering on a bit more body filler (oh, who's kidding.. bondo..) and leaving so it can dry. We tried not to get too ahead of ourselves and instead focus on just one area at a time (i.e. the rear end) but this makes for very slow progress. So, instead of hogging Jim's garage any longer we've decided to bring Betty home for a while so we can maybe get this sanding business over with a bit faster. Honestly, we went back and forth whether to keep Betty or sell her, and it was decided after much, much deliberation to keep her. So in between house hunting, wedding planning, and work we will (once again) borrow Jim's dads car hauler, and haul Betty over here to our tiny garage. At least if she sits here for a week without being touched we won't feel guilty about it. Maybe a little, but not much. -SB

How much I hate sanding.

See this image below? This is going to be me for the next 10 years. I hate sanding body filler. Hate it. Loathe it. Despise it. I have no patience for it. But... I try. Here I am trying to smooth out the massive discrepancies in the channel between the rear fender and body. Keep in mind, this area has been welded, ground down, filled with aluminum epoxy filler, then coated in body filler. It's a long process. It's tough to get anything in this area to sand the transition from the high fender, sloping down into the body. A short block with 36 grit is about the best you can do for now. Later, I'll smooth it out with the DA as good as I can, but currently, the last skim coat has been put on - I'll shoot it with a guide coat and see how we come out. -TH



The back in this pic has been skim coated for the last time. I'll long block this out and we should be ready for some finer grit on the DA...then on to primer. This was a long, long process getting the rear looking good. -TH





I'm sure I'll be sanding this thing for an eternity. I hoped to have primer on the whole car by August. Yeah right. Until next time...I'll be sanding, sanding, sanding, sanding...oh, and sanding. -TH

Some of the last welds....for now...

So with the last day of my vacation, I spent the mid-morning finishing up the back end, and grinding everything down. I needed to do alot of hammering and shaping with a dolly to bring the right curvature and such in with these back pieces. They were tough. I got them good enough though that a good skin-coat of filler should smooth everything out. Should. I'm not a good body person. I have no patience. Let's hope. -TH



This little corner was rotted, so I chopped it out and fabbed in a quick piece. This'll be the last piece I weld until I do the rear floorboards later on. -TH



Here's the back with the first coat of filler on it. I've grated it down a bit, and will finish with the air file and add another coat. -TH

Gettin' out junk in tha trunk.

So this was the final welding frontier. The trunk. Or...what's left of it. When we finally pulled the dozens of old car parts out of the trunk, this is what was left - a nasty, rotted out trunk, with a big piece of flatstock sheet metal over the gaping hole. Luckily, the cross braces that go underneith the trunk were still in tact, so at the sandblaster, we simply blasted around the area that was going to be cut out. I chopped out the nasty cancer, and proceded to weld in the pickup truck bed replacement panels I picked up. The nasty, nasty spot was the back edge of the trunk. This spot was rotted all the way through to the back metal near the bumper. The whole thing needed to be cut out, and re-done. Luckily, I was on vacation this week, so this post covers two days of hacking, welding, measuring, cutting, and re-welding. My back still hurts from bending over into the trunk. -TH



Ahhh. Much better. Looks like a new trunk! I used a large piece of cardboard as a template to cut the metal to a perfect size to fit around the edge I cut out. Worked perfectly. Once the whole thing is done, I'll cover the weld in seam-sealer, and use pickup truck bedliner on the whole thing. Now...for the back ugly stuff... -TH



Here, you're looking at the back latching mechanism for the trunk, and the metal area around it. The metal has already been cut out from the rear of the car, and the piece that overlapped the rusty metal you see here, and went into the trunk. There's actually 3 pieces of metal that come together right at the rear of the car, and are spot-welded at the factory. The rusty piece you see here, the back of the car, which makes a 90 degree bend under the car, and the trunk floor, which sits on top. I cut away the cancer, and then split the spot welds with an air chisel. (Thank you air chisel, you always make life so much easier). -TH



Here's the back half of the car, you can see the rear cut away. Thin panels will need to be stiched in here, and have a 90 degree bend on them at the bottom, where they can be tacked to the underside. -TH



In the back, I had to remove the 60 year old rubber bushings that insulated the trunk floor to the rear of the frame. I'm not sure what I'll replace these with, but I'm sure I can fab something up easily from new parts. These had to be removed to put the new metal in. They, of course, had to be cut off. I didn't even attempt to turn them with a wrench. -TH



The rear and rear edges is where things had to get creative. The sloping side of the trunk here was all rotted out, as was the rear section where the corrugated new metal ends. The whole thing needed to be fabbed up, and stiched together. -TH

Here's the rear of the car, in progress. This is a tough piece as the back of the car has a slight roundness to it. This so far has been alot of tacking, hammering into shape, and tacking again. Suprisingly, it's coming together good. The back seams that run vertically from the trunk down on both sides will be welded shut and smoothed down (the one on the left is already welded). -TH

Here is the underside of the rear pieces. You can see the 90 degree bend, and stiched to the underside. Luckily, we sandblasted alot of the scale off this area, otherwise it wouldn't have welded at all. -TH

Rockin it....part II

Well, before I started on the rocker panel on this side, I needed to tackle that filler-infested rear part of the rear fender. Here, the patch panel is stiched in. I had to set the welder really really really cool because there was spots all over in the left side that just burned right through, even with just a quick 2-3 second spot-weld. This panel was really pretty easy to fabricate, it's just a square piece of metal that's rounded down. -TH



Here's the finished product, after the welds are ground down. Hard to believe its the same panel. There's still a small piece at the end of the fender lip (at the bottom) that still needs to be cut back. -TH


Yeah...so here's the rocker from the passenger side. Not as bad as the drivers, but nasty enough to house an ancient civilization of mice at one time. Yum. There was actually bare, clean metal on the inside of this rocker that didn't have a speck of rust on it. Crazy. -TH



I figured I'd just cut to the chase on this one...you've seen the other side. Here this rocker is, done. Notice, once again, all the holes down the door to pull out the metal at one time. -TH