The Story So Far I've owned this 1962 Special since 2009 when I picked it up in a small town in Pennsylvania for $1,000. Between then and now, it's spent time in South Carolina, Connecticut, Washington state, and of course come back home with me to Missouri. It's never been a show car and never will be, but seeing as I have a "if it ain't broke, fix it 'til it is" attitude, that doesn't stop me from throwing an inordinate amount of work and neat parts at it. The first real change I made was swapping in a junkyard 700R4, which has since been replaced with a built 4l60E. The extra 2 speeds (it started off with the Dual-Path 2 spd trans) made it the best bang for the buck change I have ever done to it, and made driving it in modern traffic rather pleasant (this was my only vehicle from 2009-2016). But that itch to keep tinkering never went away, and eventually I purchased a second vehicle (a 1980 Chevy LUV, $900) to support more intensive vehicle hackery. It currently has a 10 bolt swapped in back with the obligatory Cadillac discs, a Fat Man Fabrications front end with 12" Wilwoods, QA1 single adjustable coilovers front and rear, a dual reservoir master-cylinder, 7" dual-diaphragm booster (finishing off the swap from 4 wheel manual drums), a mild cam, Edelbrock intake, Holley 2300 Sniper 2bbl to replace the stock 2bbl carb, and most recently a Vintage Air unit (A/C not yet hooked up, but that heat is incredible...). The new shoes are 17"x7" American Mag wheels and 225/50ZR17 BF Goodrich G-Force Super Sports (all-seasons, nothing sticky). A New Chapter Begins... At some point in South Carolina (I think 2015) I picked up a 1970 455 and TH400 combo for $400, sold the trans, and more or less got a decent big block for $200 (fun fact, a disassembled Buick 455 fits in the trunk of a Nissan rental car ). In keeping with my obsessive "if it ain't broke, fix it 'til it is" way of life, I'm now going to try to shove that 455 (now a rebuilt 462) into my increasingly messed-with Buick Special. The engine has been bored 0.030" and fitted with hyper pistons, decked 0.010" (I forget, may have been 0.020"), 10-10 crank grinding, it has the TA Performance Stage 1 Street Eliminator heads, 212 cam, front cover, and water pump (with a beautiful closed impeller design), along with an Edelbrock Performer intake. Still waiting on some engine stuff, so while I wait on that I'm going to swap my leaky gas tank for a bigger one. The Current Self-Imposed Hurdle (Of Many) I love little in life more than a good roadtrip (one of my longer ones was 3,650 miles total, and I've done at least 6 totaling over 2800), and average about 225 miles per 3/4 of a tank with the 215 v8. I didn't want to sacrifice too much range seeing as I was more than doubling displacement, so for the swap I mandated a 20 gallon minimum tank capacity. I planned on fabricating my own for awhile, and admittedly chickened out after I saw what appeared to be a more elegant/shiny solution. Turns out a 1968-72 El Camino gas tank is very similar to the stock tank (same basic shape and dimensions, same side filler neck), but is 2" deeper all around for a total capacity of 20 gallons. As such, I ordered one from Holley with provisions for an EFI setup (the big block is getting a Holley Terminator setup with Trans Control). To make room, I'm planning on sacrificing 2" of trunk depth. Essentially I'll be cutting the floor of the trunk and raising it, as well as cutting and remaking the area where the filler neck will be. Now, I'm purely a hobbyist and no professional, but what I lack in smarts, speed, ability, good looks, social grace, and overall adequacy as a human being, I make up for with an out and out stubbornness that lets me keep banging away until I find a solution to a problem. And without any further monologue outta me ('cause holy cow, this is a long post), lets all get ready to laugh as I fumble-buck my way around shoving 462 ci where 215 was already kinda cozy. Lemme know if you have any questions, I'll see if I can answer them!
Cool A (Ear) post. Love it. The 455 and trans weighs more than the car!! Awesome post. What issues did you run into fitting all that in there? Huge props for you using a 62!!
Thanks, I appreciate the kind words! The 455 is gonna take some work to make fit, but at least here's how I got everything else to fit in there with the stock 215: The 4l60e needed a new tunnel, as it was much bigger than the Dual-Path (dunno if you've ever seen one, they're tiny!). Actually, it's the 2nd tunnel I've made for the car, as the first was for the 2.8l v6 bellhousing 700r4 I ran for 6 years. Another fun fact (or maybe it's just a regular fact), the low stall converters that come in the v8 style 700r4's won't fit the narrow bellhousing of the ones for the 2.8l v6. The adapter for it came from D&D Fabrications, and I believe it also needed clearancing on the part if the firewall; I forget, it's been awhile since that area has been stock. The heater box was going to be a big issue with the 455, that's why I went with the Vintage Air unit. With the bigger tunnel, it's TIGHT, but I got it under the dash after massaging the cowl a touch (didn't want to go with a smaller unit, so I made room for it ). Even without AC hooked up (this engine swap has been planned for years), the setup is great. The heat and defrost is incredible compared to the stock setup! Danged if I can remember what I was making clearance for at the time, but years ago I cut the spot welds holding the stock blower motor to the metal bit that funneled air into it from the cowl, shifted it, re-welded it, and re-sealed the duct that went to the heater core. This moved it an inch or so. Also, as it turns out, the Fat Man front end wasn't setup for a stock engine (the 215), so the oil filter and stock oil pan didn't fit. So, I got an interesting oil pump setup from TA Performance and ran an oil filter relocation kit (cheesy junk, forget from who but the casting was rough and the threaded nipple for the filter had to be messed with to keep from spinning off). At first I spent a long time hunting down a rear sump oil pan from a Land Rover 'cause I thought that would fit, and while it fit the engine, it did not fit the front end. So, I cut off the rail from a spare stock pan and made a new oil pan that fit, which was pretty fun. To work with the special oil pump setup, the pickup exits the side of the pan, is plumbed to the pump, then to the block via a drilled hole in the timing cover. It sounds weird, but it supposedly bypasses a LOT of oil passage restrictions from the pickup and through the timing cover to the block, yielding higher oil pressure while lowering the load on the cam drive gear. And to its credit, the oil pressure reading has doubled with the stock sized pump gears, and the oil pump drive gear still hasn't eaten itself. The massive 225 series tires (I know, right?) rubbed the inside of the rear wheel well slightly on hard turns, so I cut and widened the rear wheel wells, which required me to cut and remake the trunk braces that went to them, and slightly bend the seat frame to clear the widened wells. The S10 10 bolt with Cadillac disk brake conversion ALSO had fitment issues; the emergency brake lever would hit the hat channel just over it when going over bumps, so I welded reinforcement in the area on top in the trunk and notched it for clearance. The wiper motor is gonna go at some point when I figure out how to get it under the dash too (it's getting really crowded in there...). The 7" dual diaphragm booster has maybe 1/8" of clearance, but I wanna go bigger, so that's the impetus for that upcoming nightmare. As it stands right now, to get the dual diaphragm booster in, I had to cut out the stock firewall-to-inner-fenderwell brace and make a bolt in one. To make room for the big block, I'm gonna basically cut off everything forward of the firewall and make a new frame stub to bolt the Fat Man setup to, and also make some new inner fenderwells. As a bonus, this is a good excuse to stiffen the overall chassis with some tube. The radiator (original, boiled out years back) will not be trusted to keep up with all the new cubes (even with the teeny cam), so to get as big a radiator in as possible I'll be making a new core support. Unfortunately, the details will have to be worked out in the months to come as I'm kinda playing this by ear, but I'll come up with something; I'm too stubborn to call it quits, certainly at this point, lol
I had one of these about 12 years ago. They are really cool cars! Here is a Picture below. I sold it on eBay and it went all the way to Dubai.
Ok, in hindsight, these pics are kinda awful, but it was getting dark and I was pooped. While the undercar shot looks like the trunk has gone up something ridiculous, it's only raised a little less than 3 inches. I'm a little sad to lose some of that glorious trunk space, but it's all for the greater good (if I say it enough, I'll believe it...). Right now I've only started to weld the panel back in at the front and rear, after which I'll make some side pieces to step back down on the sides. It'll look odd, but if I radius the side pieces it shouldn't look too janky. It will be odd to carpet over, but I'll burn that bridge when I get to it. Once again, bad pics, but It seems I didn't do to bad a job of getting the front and back of the trunk section I cut out to meet; after some proper blending and painting, it might not look too bad. In one pic you can see where I widened the wheelwell, and subsequently neglected to paint the interior portion (the exterior portion is properly primered, painted, and further coated). Blech. The outside pic shows some of the rust that's finally going to be addressed in the near future. There's a lot of stuff I haven't made time to fix, and I'm hoping to really force myself to remedy these things in the near future. Part of the reason I started this thread was to shame myself into righting these "I'll get around to it" issues, and despite the somewhat toasty weather, it's working thus far.
No further progress (rain, various frustrations, and other excuses, etc), but I came up with just the thing to make me feel better. I took the 455 out of its plastic wrap and various coverings and temporarily put some of the fun bits on it to finally see what it would look like. As you can see from the masking tape on all of the sealing surfaces, it's still waiting on a few things to actually go together (one being the ARP bolt kit from TA Performance...). You can also probably see why I'm working on the Special outside in the driveway; many much junk, and other great stuff in the garage. I like the look of the black, cast aluminum, and silvery blue (seen too much pug-fugly Chebby orange sbc's to go Buick red :/), what do you guys think?
Thanks! This is my first ground-up engine rebuild for myself, so I'm trying to make it count. On the note of engine stuff, I called TA Performance yesterday, and while they haven't received shipments of black oxide fasteners from ARP yet, they got a shipment of stainless from them. The timing cover, water pump, and fuel pump bolts from the assortment kit I purchased from them have been on backorder, but they let me upgrade my backordered stuff for stainless, so I should be able to get it all buttoned up in a few days! As for the trunk work, the rain lately has been holding me up, but I got a little done today. Hopefully tomorrow will be dry and productive. I somehow keep forgetting that I've been meaning to make adjustable rear suspension links, so that's one more thing to add to the pile of stuff to do. Oughta be fun though.
I stuffed a 430 with 400turbo in a 62 2dr hard top back in 1971 using stock headers and a 57 olds rear end. B4B intake,Sig Erson cam and Holley carb. Being young and dumb I solid mounted the engine to the frame. Couldn’t run it without shaking rust and bolts out the bottom. Hard runs on the street pretty well trashed the unibody. Had to take the engine out and put it in a CJ5. I’m glad to see someone doing the job right and a very good job at that it’s a fantastic combination. Roger On The Eighth Day God Created Buick
@papa roger, that must have been a heck of a sleeper! It's a shame the car shook itself apart, but it's cool the engine found another home. That Jeep must've been pretty fun, CJ5's are some of the cooler looking Jeeps out there. More engine stuff! Got the timing cover, intake and water pump bolts, so now those items are actually mounted and sealed. I'm gonna be sad if I have to break open any of those joints as I spent a hot minute making sure they were prepped to never leak. All sealing surfaces were cleaned with acetone, which took a hot minute as there was adhesive residue on some from a protective layer of tape. I'm excited for the engine stuff as I've got room to work on that in the garage before I start trying to cram it in the Special. The next step (after I finally order the AC compressor and power steering pump) is to make brackets for a serpentine conversion. I realize this has been done a lot as I've spent quite a bit of time on these forums looking up what's been on here, but I have decided to just go from scratch as my application is a bit specific, and I think the result will be a little more compact than reworking existing pieces. Part one of the puzzle was a crank pulley plucked from an early 90's (?) Chevy P/U while I was out treasure hunting at one of my preferred junkyards. The center hole will have to be opened up and the 6 mounting holes drilled, but the depth looks great for a compact setup, and the pre-existing holes won't interfere with the 6 I need to drill. I'll have to nab a water pump pulley too, hopefully I can find one with a similar depth to my existing V-belt style. If so, it shouldn't take too much shimming to get them to line up. BTW, the water pump pulley is just sitting on the water pump crooked, it's got a little-bitty of clearance when fastened. Also scored from my treasure hunt was a Hydroboost style brake booster from a decently low mileage Yukon. I've decided to go Hydro as even the mini booster I have is taking up too much space, and I'm upgrading to power steering anyway, so might as well plumb 2 things instead of one and solve another problem. And at only $22 (obviously not including the required plumbing and step-down valve for my steering rack, which I also still need to order...), it was hard for me to argue.
62 was a super sleeper for sure just wish I had put it together better. CJ was just as good with 4 wheel drive 9” ford rear end lakewood traction bars and 4.30 gears it literally jumped across intersections. Wife thought it was too dangerous to drive after I retired so I put the engine in a 1985 Regal and upgraded it to a TP 470.....still dangerous lol
So there's been a lot of distractions lately including some home improvement projects (none of them for my place...), but things have happened. I opened up the center hole on the Chebby crank pulley I found and drilled the 6 mounting holes. I also found a water pump pulley that works for the setup I'm going for, thanks to information I found from black70buick that clued me into looking at Fords. I have the accessories I plan on running, and after bolting and shimming the water pump pulley just a teensy bit to get it to line up, started coming up with a plan on how to get the belt routed. Here's the 2.3l Ranger I found it in, a comparison with my stock pulley, and the crank and water pump pulley mounted on the 462. I found that printing a pic of the engine and arranging paper circles to approximate the accessories and idler pulleys was a quick and easy way to try a number of configurations. I had already figured out where the accessories would and would not fit, so it was more or less a matter of placing the tensioner and idler pulleys. It would have been much easier/nicer/better(?) with a water pump meant to rotate in reverse, but mine's a fancy closed impeller beauty from TA that I already installed, so I'm working with that. The upper left big circle is my Sanden SD7 compressor, and the little circle on the left is a tensioner. The tan and white thingy on the very upper right is a CS144 alternator (I may change out to a more modern unit eventually, but once again, I have it) and the big white circle on the right is the power steering pump. The 2 little white circles on the right side are idlers, as may be expected. This seems to get me the most pulley wrap for the least amount of extra idlers, so I suppose it's time to start making brackets. Obviously things will be moved slightly as necessary, but the pic conveys the idea.
Here it is! Just gotta cut down the uprights to fit under the hood and it'll be good to go... Ok, I couldn't resist a quick mockup, and I imagine it'll make things a lot easier to plan in steel. When 1st starting to prepare for this, I planned on making individual steel brackets for each accessory and pulley, and making large brackets to join them all to the engine. I then realized this was inefficient and wasteful as it would rely on a lot of trial and error. This is a lot quicker in terms of finding the final way everything will actually fit together, and then I can plan everything together and hopefully make it out of less pieces. The belt came off an 06 Ford F150 (4.2l), the idlers came off an 01 Grand Prix (3.1l) and 03 Lumina (3.1l), and the tensioner came off a 96 Buick Roadmaster (5.7l). The tensioner made me a little sad, as the Roadmaster it came off of was in beautiful mechanical shape. This is why I can never own a flatbed, I'll wind up with 3 more projects everytime I hit up a 'yard... I was very surprised when everything went up in what seems to be a decent way, though some things are gonna be moved around just a bit to optimize the packaging, like moving the power steering pump in a bit, and the alternator in and up. I'm feeling optimistic... Also, I can't really recommend it as it's dangerous as a scorned mother in law, but dang this blade setup on my angle grinder really moves some wood!
Holy frikkin' cow, the last few months have been wild and exhausting. Very little has gotten accomplished since I last posted, but figured I put up some stuff anyhow. Bear in mind that I'm working outside on this sucker, so the weather of the Midwest has been sticking it to me when I do get the chance to mess with the ol' Special. It never ceases to amaze me the amount of water that collects in/on my beard and mustache area from breathing in near freezing weather, but enough whining from me; updates! Thought I had some pics of the patch panels to cover the holes in the trunk from where I raised the trunk floor for the new tank, but just realized apparently not. Lame excuse, I know, but I live in a different area from where my Special is stored and worked on, so eh. I've started to look into cramming in the engine, and what that entails. As one would expect from stuffing 462cid into a place designed for 215cid, it's tight. Not as bad as I thought, but what I was planning appears to be workable. By some miracle, it appears the stock pan will fit! I was kind of looking forward to making another oil pan again 'cause I never even considered a stocker would fit, but this saves me some time. Where the front subframe makes a V for the front mount, that will be going away to make room for the oil filter, crank pulley and power-steering pump. The subframe will have 2 front mounting points (1 on each side) that will attach to the tube frame bits to come in the future. Basically, the stock unibody frame rails and all attached to them forward of the subframe rear mounting points will be removed. In its place will go tube frame and a custom core support. Removing the rails makes space for the exhaust, and cutting out the front structure will also let me fit the size radiator I'm looking for, as well as an A/C condenser. Here's just a shot of a practice bend I used to get the measurements for planning the bends. I'm excited to see the ridiculous amount of room for the front tires. I know they're not big (225/50r17's I think), but it's nice to know I can make the inner fender wells nice and tight to get a lot of space in the engine bay. I removed the coilovers and checked full lock-to-lock clearance with the wheel at full stuff, and even with the suspension at points beyond the compression limit of the coilovers it looks promising. The tubes (2"x0.120") will tie into the floor, going all the way back to the trunk area and rear coilover mounts (the front and rear tubes will be separate pieces, sleeved and joined in the middle). It was kind of nice bending tube again, haven't done it since I learned how years ago, made a cage for a 36 Chevy. It's enough work keep you warm when it's in the 30's (don't let the sunny pics fool you), satisfying in a way. The bender I'm using is a Pro-Tools 105HD, and thus far it's great. The pics make it look like the tube is all marked up, but it's just sharpie marks and grease from the follower. The pic in the car is just to get a visual on what it'll look like, it'll be sunk into the sheetmetal when it's time to actually install it. Got one side fully bent and ready for trimming before putting in. When doing the other, I got distracted and overbent the last F'ing bend; I was so pissed I just called it a day. Still haven't decided whether to cut, sleeve and weld the tube to spec or redo it and just keep the other bend as scrap. Kinda leaning toward fixing, seeing as this is just a cruiser, no racecar. Never actually overshot a bend before, now I'm kinda paranoid to restart that side from scratch. Btw, the crusty pickup is a 1980 Chevrolet LUV, my current daily driver and next project once the Special is back on the road. As much as I love it, I'll never understand how it gets more positive attention when I'm out and about than the Special. It'll receive the 215 that came out of the Buick after a mild performance rebuild along with front and rear axles, transmission, and a transfer case snagged out of various years of Jeep Cherokee. And no, I'm not responsible for the sweet paintjob; it was included no extra charge with the $900 price tag
