Ah, only the hardcorest of hardcore purest would be put off by that, I think it looks fine. I did get scared for a minute when I read that line, thought you were gonna say you chucked a chebby engine in it!!!
That's a great looking Buick. I am currently looking at very similar wheels. Can you please tell me/us, what wheels and tires you have on there. Side note, I have a Buick 455, also hooked up to a 700r4 which is attached to a Ford 9" with 3.89 gear and 4 wheel disc. If your car was only 2009 Corvette Atomic Orange, we would be twins... Well except for all the polished trim, new chrome, awesome dash... yeah, yours is much nicer.
Steve, the wheels are Ridlers. The other wheel like this is the Boss 338. The Ridlers cost less. Mine are 18". Front are 8" wide and rears are 9.5". Rear tires are 295/45/18 fronts are 255/45/18. They are Nitto 555s. Thanks for the compliments. Hey post a pic of your car!
Very nice work. I like to see start to finish threads like this. Shawn's "Rusty Hulk" thread was like a weekly show and should win best drama in a mini series. like your thread, It was an amazing transformation. These also show the ups and downs of restoration. not to mention the fists full of cash that gets thrown at them. you guys are the inspiration for me to continue on. damn good looking car.
Thanks Joe. Shawn after looking at your build it makes mine look like minor surgery. Great looking Stage 2. The green is perfect. Here are some pics of my last build. I think I built the whole car (paint was done by someone else) in half the hours spent on doing a car needing restoration work.
At my age I'm more concerned with comfort. If I have a choice in which shoes to wear, I'll take comfort over style every time. My hope is to take this car on some long cruises. To visit my dad is a 10 hour drive, and that is still in Texas. A few creature comforts are a necessity to spend a lot of time behind the wheel. It also makes it more likely my wife will go along without complaining too much :-0. So A/C, nice seats, cup holders and a great stereo are all part the the plan. The 70 GS I am building came with a bench seat. It was pretty shot, and I dont think it was the correct seat for the car. Anyway, I wanted to go with buckets and a console. Ive always liked the look of the GS console, so I bought one from a board member here. As for the seats, I had seen a number of A-body builds over on Chevelles.com and Pro-Touring where some creative folks were putting 2004-5 GTO seats in their cars. They are electric, all leather, and really comfortable. They slide, tilt, have lumbar support etc. So I found a set for sale nearby from a wrecked 2005 GTO that had only 13,000 miles on it. I bought both front and back seats. I had already bought the Legendary rear seat covers, so I sold the rears from the GTO to someone here on this board. The seats, as is, are great for a vintage GTO, since GTO is embroidered on the seats. Not so cool for a GS. So I called PUI and talked them into selling me some of the "Woven Cane" vinyl fabric that they use for making reproduction GS seat covers. I took the seats and material to a talented custom interior designer named Larry Hankins of Highland Village Interiors near Dallas. I told him I wanted the new GTO seats made to look like they belong in the 1970 GS. We tossed around some ideas and we decided the seats looked to tall, with the headrests on them, for this vintage of car. He advised that most muscle car clients (and he has some clients in the NBA, Dallas Cowboys etc.) like the look where the seats come even with or just above the front doors. So we got rid of the headrests. Without them the seats are about as tall as the stock buckets with the headrests. One of the pics shows the seats in a GM A-body. They dominate the interior with the headrests on them. I'm happy the way they turned out. Later I will show them installed in the car when I get to that point. Here are picks of stock GTO seats, and how mine look now compared to the OEM GS style covers from the back seats.
Yeah DL, I've been thrashing on it since Jan trying to get as much done as I can before it gets too hot.....which is right about now. Any progress on yours?
Earlier in the thread I posted a pic of the passenger side front fender. It was rusted out in the usual spot, the lower back area. Here is a pick of the repair. The rusted area was cut off and replaced with a patch panel. You can see how rusted out the lower fender was. The part cut off is in the picture of the repaired fender.
Ben, They are relatively easy to install on an A-body. They are fairly tall from the floor brackets to the top of the seat cushion, so it is necessary to cut of some short downleg mounting points from the mounting rails. Otherwise your head will touch the roof. They have a lot of wiring and look complicated because of weight sensors, air bag system etc, BUT you need only attach two wires to get all the electric controls, a pos and a ground. Also, they are heavy. There was once a great pictorial on how to install them at 1BADGTO.COM, but the site is no longer up. A guy was putting them in a 1969 LeMans/GTO, which is very close the the 70-72 Buick A-bodies. I used this as a guide. If you decide to do it, let me know and I will show you what I did.
Is it possible to remove all the gadgetry? I just want the seats. They look nice and cushy with plenty of lumbar support. I have 4th gen F-body seats in my car now and they were a snap to install but I don't really care for the look. Thanks!
Attached is a pic of the steering wheel I found for it. Looks similar to the Sport wheels but a bit smaller diameter. Feels good combined with the close ratio PS unit I added.
Re: 1970 GS Restomod - Console update Another thing I wanted to add to the car is cup holders. Nice to have on long cruises, but more importantly my wife likes to have them. I bought a console last year from a board member. I had the base plastic door, button and hinge. It was missing the metal door cover, which costs $50-60 bucks. So after thinking about it, I bought some stainless marine type cup holders on Amazon. Then I used a hole saw to drill out the top of the plastic door. The issue with this is the metal hinge being in the way on the bottom of the door. I had to remove it and grind off some of it so that the cup holders could insert all the way down. After mocking it up I took it all to "Larry the interior guy" and he ended up massaging the plastic door so that the edges would fit while allowing some padding to be added to the lid for a better look. I like the way it turned out. I can always to back to a stock look by just replacing the door. I will update with pics when I get the carpet in and install the console. The hole in the shifter area of the console was made so that the MegaShifter cover will fit.
Looks great!! Only thing else I would do is have your guy cover the rest of the console base to match the lid.
DeanP that suggestion gives me another idea. I could have the rest of the console painted a shade of black that matches the cover. It would also match the rest of the interior better since none of it is gloss black.
Got the interior finished. Here are some pics of the 2005 GTO seats installed. I think they look like they came with the car. I also got the console with the cup holders installed. I had the console repainted in Landau black because the orginal gloss black plastic did not look right with the covering on the door. I also got new 3 point retractable seat belts installed in the front. On the console, the middle plastic strip that says "Buick" was too far gone to restore. It shined up well on the top, but lots of discoloration under the plastic. It was painted to match the rest of the console for now. I may have a custom piece made for it later. My interior/upholstery guy at Village Interiors also fixed all of the mistakes I made when installing the headliner myself. The front of the headliner looked perfect, but the rear around the back window was a bit wrinkly and saggy. He tightened up all of that and also made some new sail covers. I had recovered and installed the original cardboard panels, but they did not reach the rear window to tuck in. Larry made some new ones out of ABS plastic and covered them. Looks 100% better now.
