So... my Father and I have a new project... should be a bit more fun than the Cav 1940 Buick Special, with a 1986 Z28 front suspension, 8.2" 10 bolt rear end, power disk brakes, a 350 swap, Summit 600cfm 4 barrel, street cam, Hedman hedders and a THM350 3 speed auto with a Lokar shifter... Runs and it's road legal. It needs some work, but most everything seems to be done the right way. It's set up to drag and my Dad is looking for a cruiser, but I think we can come to a good middle ground Excuse the mess, old steel gas cans suck for pouring...
Thanks We went down to Spring Carlisle last weekend, picked up a few cool parts for cheap $10 for a Buick air cleaner stud, it was the only one we saw there all day and the guy kind of flipped out on us when we asked to buy just it, since it was paired with a really small Buick air cleaner. Turns out we were like the 20th person to ask to just buy the stud, haha. We set it down and turned to walk out and we here from behind us... "FINE, $10! I'm sick of people asking about the damn thing!" We also picked up a chrome flywheel cover from the same guy, we were missing one and it was only $20. On to the progress... we picked up a Zirgo 3000 CFM electric fan to replace the engine fan, with a wiring harness and electric thermostat... Still waiting on the radiator re-core to come back so we can mount everything. The power steering pump lines we picked up turned out to have different threads than the gear box that was on it, so we ran down to the junkyard and picked up a different gear box. Brought it home to take it apart, and when we tapped the spindle to take the linkage off, the back of the housing just snapped off... Luckly! That cover just swapped from the old gear box. We also realized that the splines were different, so we had to tear the gear box apart and swap the valve. Very cool how these old power gear boxes work... All installed, just waiting for the radiator since the low pressure line runs out in front of the car as an oil cooler. We also finished up the accessory mounts, still room for an A/C compressor Interior isn't half bad for being 70 years old... Worlds biggest back seat... I wonder how many people got laid in the back of this thing... LMAO Lastly we pulled the valve covers to clean the chrome up and check the rockers out... turns out it has 194 cast iron heads, which aren't crazy for power but they are bullet proof, some porting will fix that though
If you already have a vendor for this - just toss the post. . At the winter car and services vendor show, locally, in February, there was a vendor named Hot Shots that does colored (3 choices) powder coating of exhaust manifolds and other parts, like front end pieces etc. . Really nice looking work - he had samples at the show. . Coatings come in standard Gray, Black, and a "Chrome" effect with high reflectivity, and the standard 1200 degree temp tolerance. . He estimated $140 :dollar: for my exhaust manifolds. A few days turn around. . A google search for hot shots powder coating finds all the info. RipRohring :Comp:
Cool i built one just like it back in 1989 it had a caprice front clip and rear diff, 350 TH 350 3.08 posi i rewired it with a complete harness from a 69 GS very cool car I almost miss mine Ill find some pics and post them here very nice job looks great:TU: Ken
Nice, that's pretty cheap. There is a local place that does ceramic coatings, we're going to get a quote from them first. Nice. My buddies 74 Nova and 74 Monte Carlo both have the same front suspension as the 86 Camaro front end we have, so it would appear they didn't change much, haha. Thanks man, I'd love to see those pics.
We picked up a couple small things from Summit, new valve cover T bolts, and plug wire separators. I have no idea what my Dad was thinking when he ran the wires though... I think they look stupid... lol. I'll fix them one of these days. We sand blasted and painted the battery box, and then moved it down into the wheel well. We can't put it in the trunk until the fuel cell is removed, since gas fumes + spark source = bad idea. It's out of the way and hidden now, it should look much better. The new recored radiator showed up Thursday, now with a built in transmission cooler. So I installed and wired the electric fan and radiator today, it came with a thermo switch that kicks it on automatically at 185F and turns it off at 165F. The wiring harness that came with the fan had an over ride wired in already, so I hid a switch under the dash for the occasional chance that we get stuck in traffic. I also took the chance to set up a nice switched power rail with a 30 amp relay. I had a ground block already, so we just machined a cover for it out of UHMW to keep it insulated Hopefully we can get the front end bolted on tomorrow and go for a cruise.
