Hello everybody, I'm new here have lurked for awhile and this will be my first post. About a year ago I purchased a '63 LeSabre convertible and want to put a '63 Wildcat grille in my car. I was curious to know if anybody had done this before and if the Wildcat grill and headlight surrounds will work in the LeSabre or not? Any help or comments would be appreciated. Thanks
I would say go for it. Matt Menges and I had a conversation about the 64 grill exchange- 8 bolts and a couple wires and boom, LeWildcat front end. 65 cars are the same way. I got a really nice 65 Electra grill that will bolt right into the 65 Wildcat.
Thank you for the info guys, I'm going to a local yard this weekend to scope out a grille and headlight surrounds. Hopefully they are in decent shape yet and still there. I went and posted a intro thread also. Here is a picture of my LeSabre...
You're right about the headlights, I've never done a comparison like that before to notice the Wildcat ones are closer together. The swap can still be done, but maybe not as easily as I thought. I know there are LeSabres and Wildcats in the yard I'm going to so I can compare parts from one car to other while I'm there and figure out what parts I'll need.
The headlights are part of the grill assembly. Once the wires for lights are disconnected, the grill and lights come out as one heavy ass part. I was fooling around with 65 Electra grill and it bolted right into the Wildcat core support. Knowing a little about the way Buick would do most things, the bolt holes will be in the 63 core support for both grills.
I do think this will bolt right in, but I need all of the brackets, headlight buckets, etc. from the Wildcat. The brackets that mount to the core support that hold the headlights are different between the LeSabre and Wildcat, but look they bolt to the core support in the same locations. So I will be able to do the swap once I find all the correct Wildcat parts. I went to a local salvage and found the center section of the grill and the driver's side head light bucket, but the rest of the parts I needed had already been taken by someone else. I also took the hood latch as it looked like the release lever is at a different height between the two models. So I'm searching for the rest of the parts before I can actually do the swap, but it looks like it will bolt together once I have all the parts without having to modify anything.
I've finally sourced all the parts I needed to swap grills and will start working on it this weekend. I'll post some pictures when I'm done to let everybody know how it went.
Here is the finished product and it bolted right in. Thanks to everybody for the help on answering my question.
I new it would because I had mine all apart before painting and the grill is a whole unit. Looks great.