1971 Riv in Vermont

Welcome Peter... Beautiful Riviera with a great color!

 

Did you have the headlights on when you tried the the cornering lamps?

Very nice looking car and welcome to the Forum. Your car seems pretty well optioned. Another really rare option in 71 are rear shoulder belts so check for that one.

 

Peter, sent you a pm back about titles etc.. im still wet behind the ears about these cars.. got mine this past summer. Maybe we can be the vt buick club As far as i know there is none local to burlington or anything like that.

 

Welcome to the board!
Beautiful car :TU:

here is a pic of my 71.

 

OK... now that I've had some time to play with the car, here are some updates/yet more questions. I'm not a stranger to car forums and have tried searching on many of the questions below but the search terms are too generic and I get tons of posts but no answers. [I also use Google to search v8buick.com, the internal search engine is sloooow...]

Definitely a 2-note horn, and no rear shoulder belts.

Replacing the reverse light bulbs did not fix them. Curious here, but the spec info I've found online indicates it should be a type 89 or 1156 bulb with a single nubbin on the bottom and a single filament, but as found it had 1157s with two (sorry don't know the right term) nubbins/housing receptacles, so I assume 1157s worked at some point.

Cornering lights do not work with headlights on either but I think I can get away without them to pass inspection. Nice to have but if it's more than just changing the bulbs, low priority as I don't plan to drive it at night much. These appear to be single nubbin 1156s, guess that's my next purchase at the part store.

The cruise control engages (I can hear a slight thunk and the light comes on) but it doesn't maintain speed. I understand this is probably a vacuum leak in the system?

I think this is odd: The manual says to push the trip reset knob to reset the trip odometer, and to turn the speed alert knob to set the speed alarm. Well, my trip odometer button does nothing when I push it, but when I turn the speed alert button - it resets the trip odometer! Not all at once, it's like setting an old flappy faux-digital clock and you have to keep spinning it until all the digits are the same and continue until you get back to 000.0... How is the speed alert supposed to work? Is there a secondary indicator on the speedo? The manual says very little on it. I don't care if I never get the speed alert working so long as the trip odometer works and is somehow resettable!

Power lock function does not move passenger door lock. Passenger plunger works manually to lock/unlock the car, and both switches work the driver door, so I'm hoping it's just a loose/broken wire or a simple actuator swap. Are there any door panel removal instructions/considerations? Or it as simple as removing the screws [including the ones by the door handle] and prying it off?

My trunk light is just sitting on the trunk floor, connected to its wire. Where is it supposed to mount? Does it have a ground or is the mounting point the ground?

My front lap belts bind up but don't extend back out when pulled gently - they're not the kind that allow you to pull slowly but lock up when pulled quickly. [I.e. they pinch you after you put them on and can only let them back out be unlatching, fully retracting, and putting back on] Should mine have come with the "Friendlier" kind? At least they're the right color.

My HVAC fan works on low/med/hi but not on max. Not worried about it as I won't be driving when heat is needed, and rarely use AC in any of my modern cars.

All comments/advice/pointers are apprecated... THANKS, v8buick people.
-Peter