1967 Buick special wagon

I started working on making wedges for the bottoms of the doors.

Josh

 

I started mocking up the driver's side when my dad's friend walked into the shop and we were discussing the design. I told him it wouldn't work as a single piece, and mocked it up to show him. Turns out, I was wrong. It totally works as one piece. I'll just need to sweep the leading edges of the extensions back just a little. So, Version 2.0. They'll be one piece.

Josh

 

I bought a length of 16 gage sheet metal for the skirt filler panel

Josh

 

The passenger rear tire keeps rubbing on a bolt head under acceleration. It's barely touching the raised letters on the sidewall, like the dot numbers and things like that. Well I got curious enough to remove the bolt to see what it held on. Apparently there are vibration dampeners on either side of the rear suspension cradle. Well the bolt heads snapped off, so I just cut the dampeners off with a sawzall, and now they're plenty of clearance.

Josh

 

I removed the front bumper and air dam. I cut out the center panels and made new ones that have a smoother transition to the chevelle bumper I used. There's still a lot of finish work to be done, but I think it'll look a lot better this way

Josh

 

I separated the air dam and bumper. I painted the air dam white and cleaned the bumper with steel wool and some paint cleaner. I installed them on the wagon and took a few vantage point pictures to show the ground clearance and the general stance.

Josh

 

I'm putting the cargo windows back in, so I can road test longer distances. The driver's side fit snuggly in the pocket. I just held it in place with a few self tappers against the chrome trim. The trim has been bonded pretty securely to the glass.

Josh

 

I made a plywood panel to fit in the passenger cargo window pocket since it's a lot worse off and will need more repair work.

As I was putting the tail gate glass in, the bolts for the tracks broke off. So I drilled them out and installed riv-nuts.

Josh

 

First road trip successfully in the books. 750 miles round trip from Atlanta to Biloxi, ms and back. The only thing that broke was the left tail light fell off. Apparently the bolt holding it on vibrated loose and the light was dangling by the wiring. Since the bolt in question requires the tail gate to be opened and I wedged the back glass up and in place for the trip, I secured the light with some muffler strapping and some self tappers.

On the way down, I was running 83 mph, getting 18.5 mpg. On the way home, I set the cruise to 75 and got 20.6 mpg. Not too shabby, if i do say so myself

Josh

 

As much as I like the srx tail lights, they just seemed a little too bulky and stuck out passed the rear bumper. I finally found a cadillac ats in the junk yard, so I grabbed the tail lights, harnesses and cut out the quarters for the mount buckets. These lenses are cracked, but I'm going to buy the clear lens tail lights with the integrated amber turn signals, so these are just for mock up. But the ats lights do not have reverse lights, so I have to either find lights that fill in the gap between the bumper or get a 65 el camino bumper with reverse lights. I'm keeping my eyes peeled for some late model pick up fog lights that mount on a slight angle in the front bumper to use a reverse lights.

Josh

 

I messed with the ats tail lights for a few hours before calling it "good enough" I filled in where the srx tail lights left holes in the quarter panels. If you look closely, you can see the passenger side light is leaning inboard at the top just a bit, but that's a close as I could get it. I should get my clear lens lights this week with integrated amber turn signals, as well as the fog lights I bought to use as reverse lights.

Josh

 

I cut out the rest of the original buick rear floor board, welded in some 1"x1" angle iron to set the desired floor height, and sealed off both ends of the floor where the wiring goes. When I'm finished with the rest of the floor, I'll seal where the wiring comes through with expanding foam or something similar. I used a 1.5"x1.5" angle iron section for the back support for the floor panel will go. I'm thinking I'll make small block off panels for the ends by the tail lights and hopefully make the rest of the floor panel in one piece.

Josh

 

I finished the cargo area floor panels. I drilled holes every inch and epoxy painted the bottom sides, plug welded the holes. Smoothed out the welds and epoxy painted the tops. I still have to seal the seams, but it's pretty much done

Josh

 

I bought some clear lens tail lights, thinking they'll look a lot cooler with the gun metal gray I plan on painting the wagon. They were supposed to have amber leds in them for turn signals, as pictured in the ad, but they're standard tail lights with all red legs.

So, now I need to figure out turn signals, and I bought a pair of strip lights with clear lenses with amber led lights. There is a slight curve on the tail light where I want to mount them, so I clamped them to a section of b-pillar from a previous body swap and used my shop heater to coerce the light into shape without melting the plastic or burning up the wiring.

The red tail lights are just test dummy lights I'm using to figure out the quarter fender sheet metal and placement of the reverse lights, so imagine the clear lens turn signal strip mounted to the clear lens tail lights. It's not what I wanted initially, but I'm still figuring things out.

Josh

 

That's a lot of LEDs. Maybe too bright? Have to see it in person though.

 

Well, it's not a great start to the new year, but whatever. The clear tail lights have more leds on the running light circuit and they're drowning out the brake lights. Since the factory lights had cracked lenses, I started removing the lenses to check the wiring. The factory lights came apart pretty smoothly. The aftermarket lenses cracked in 3 or 4 placed, so those are trash now. But wait, it gets better! I had jumper leads on the terminal pins and the light rolled over and melted my leads!! So I walked away and got something to eat.

I noticed the running lights on the new light has twice as many leds as the stock housing, which explains everything. So I cut the lead wire for those and tried connecting them to the brake light side. But, apparently when I melted the leads, it shorted the circuit board for the lights, so nothing works now....... "happy" new year indeed

Josh

 

Sounds like my life - 2 steps forward and 1 step back! Happy New Year!

 

this ole wagon made it to Florida! it was great to see you my friend, "unbelievable" is all I can say.
Fernando

 

I finally finished the tail lights. You can see the difference between the oem lights with all the chrome trim and the blacked out aftermarket lights with the black trim

I used jb weld to attach the lenses, then silicone to seal the gaps and attach the turn signal/ reverse lights

And you can see how much tamer the running lights are and how bright the brake lights are in comparison

Josh