My 76/77 Buick regals going to the darkside!

Front tunnel half welded. Yes, my welds look crappy and yes, thats why my photos are so far away. I had to contort my old bones to weld everything. Everything is solid though.

 

At this point, I am so tired of welding that I will just have to stop right here. Fortunately, no more wind breeze from my spinning driveshaft. I should have epoxied the damn panels before I welded them up. Now, I will probably have to remove the tranny to paint them. Stoopid!

 

Im going to get a posi. That is for sure.


After driving this thing for a while, I am pondering what to do. The way it is now with 2.73 gears is okay but kind of too mellow. While it is cool to lug around at like 1400 rpm, it is not quite as exciting as I want. Now the issue is that if I decide to go boosted(yes, yes, yes), the 2.73 gears will definitely keep her drivable. With boost, this ratio will save a little rubber.


Now if I go 3.73 gears, it will be a beast with natural aspiration but as soon as I boost it, I will never be able to keep the tires from spinning. It would be quite fun though.


So do I keep the mellow 2.73 gears preserving the mpg's and top speed (which I dont care about really) in preparation for much more power


Or


Switch to 3.73 which will wake up the acceleration big time now and waste a little more gas but will devour the tires once boosted

 

Unfortunately the floor pans are too far gone. 30 seconds with a wire wheel revealed more holes. Looks like more sheetmetal work is coming.

 

Ah.... it is what it is.

I took that frustration and channeled it into fixing something else.
1. Got the rear view mirror re-mounted.
2. Modified the drive by wire van gas pedal to accept the factory buick pedal. Had to cut about an inch off of the factory pedal though since it hit the floor at the bottom. Now my pedals allow me to stretch my right leg out farther which helps my busted knee a little. The goofy brake pedal cover will be removed allowing for a near factory look.

 

Drivers side floor pan is made and ready to cut and weld in.

 

Thanks. These panels are actually quite easy though. It took about 30 min total. I will probably make a mirror of it for the other side if the paper template fits.

 

On second thought, the passenger floor pans are not bad so I think they will just get sanded and re-primed. No sense messing with good metal.

 

Making my digital dash with Realdash and an old tablet. I like this one.


Real dash is an awesome app and although it has a little tiny delay, it is more than sufficient for what I want to do with it. I was about to spend $600 on a powertune digital setup but had to really contemplate whether it is worth it for now. Until I need a 100% delay free setup, Real dash has damn near everything I need and can be customized very easily. I can also save the file to any cloud and share to any device that can run real dash. I have been using it on my phone and then shared it to my old tablet with dropbox.


I will probably have two tablets in the car,the dash and a console tablet. I am considering a surface tablet.


I guess this begins the electronics phase of my build. Sweet

 

My temporary gauge solution. It charges the tablet while plugged in and overall is workable until I build a permanent solution. It is held in place with a simple aluminum bracket I bent up from a scrap sign. It is held to the bracket with my favorite carpet tape. I have been using this stuff for years to secure stuff. Half of my stuff was held to my lockers while on my many deployments overseas with this stuff.

 

I would look for something fairly fast with the brightest OLED screen you can afford. Tucking it under the overhang might give it some sun shield as well...

 

This tablet while old is 100% useable in the sun. I actually bought it in the Kuwait city because I had broken my primary device to contact my family while deployed. I broke a few rules to get over to some massive mall in order to purchase anything that could be coupled with a sim card. I knew that I was on my way to an area where there was no chance that I would be able to grab anything and I could not let my family just go without any contact with me at all.

That said, I drove a few places today with it in place and it works perfectly. I particularly love the feature in the Realdash app that shuts the gauges down when power is removed. There is so much customization to the app too once you know how to use it. I will be fabricating a hood of sorts to make it look less grab and go to would be thieves. Until then, I will get a fancier towel to conceal the tablet.

For those that wonder why I screwed into the dash pad, it is in very bad shape and will need to be replaced so no issues with a few screw holes.

 

In one of the photos, you can see that I am going 75mph at 1777 rpm. In the other two you can see more of the real dash setup (with censored family photo of course).

 

Im looking for a ford 8.8 with a posi 3.73 gears. I think it would be the best compromise between 2.73's and 4.11's. At 2000rpm, 3.73's would be 62 mph vs 2.73 at 84.5mph. I would cruise at about 2400rpm doing 75mph with the 3.73's.

One thing is for sure, I 100% do not in any way regret doing the LS swap. I have driven the car more in 4 months than I did since I bought this regal. It fires up every time and has triple the power and like more than double the torque that it used to have. Once the cam is in, it should be 357% power increase and way more fuel efficient.
Literally every time I drive this thing, I get compliments and thumbs up. It is amazing!

 

Metal is cut out and fits with almost no help.

Ready to weld in.