Full Build: 1973 Buick Century Restomod

coming up on today's show meet muscle cars budget-friendly new project visit tommy's personal junkyard to pick out an engine then see how it breaks down plus rick shows you how easy it is to replace your own u-joints [Music] you may be wondering am i watching muscle car am i watching an old episode of kojak well believe it or not this is our newest project 1973 buick century if you're wondering why this thing deserves to be in the muscle car shop look at it this way it's v8 it's mid-size it's rear-wheel drive and it's got some cool lines to it this thing's got a lot of potential plus it was stupid cheap when it came time to choose our latest victim we listened to the viewers you guys told us you want to see a project that a working family can afford can be done in an average gearheads garage and isn't going to take a bunch of years to complete so we took those guidelines laid down a budget of 10 grand and went shopping for a car when we brought this fine piece of detroit steel back to the shop the haters came out of the woodwork but that's okay because we have a vision and it's going to live up to the name muscle car as project blue collar buick by 1973 car manufacturers were being choked to death by the epa and body lines were looking kind of bloated but there were still a few bright spots in gm's lineup this buick has crisp body lines and could be ordered with a factory big block it's not hard to look past that 70s funk to see that with the right paint scheme wheels stance and a few other appearance tweaks this could be a head-turning street bruiser but we're not going to stop there it's not really a muscle car if it doesn't have what matters under the hood we're going to swab out that small block chevrolet for a big block 455 buick all that additional power means we need to upgrade the brakes now you don't have to spend a bunch of money here just upgraded stock style of discs will give you plenty of stopping power throw in some additional low butt suspension tricks and this is going to be one bad buick the interior definitely needs some attention that bench seat has got to go so we'll swap it out for some buckets and console out of something to make it look a lot better the back seat just needs to be dyed or just recovered the door panels they're in pretty good shape just need a splash of color yeah before we tackle any of that we gotta go find a motor man you don't know where there's a lonely little 455 looking for at home do you not really probably about six of them let's hit the highway cool well rick this is my little stash which i call big body ridge this is a little stash huh yeah well it's big cars in a little stack i've got a couple of 455s i think i might have something that we can work with cool well you got anything that maybe not just low miles but something that just runs halfway decent we can freshen up yeah that's probably got something cool hey man what about this one owner cream puff well you know how it is um this one was drove back and forth to church i thought you could say it was driven in here no this one's actually a 350. not really a 455 like we were looking for plus i don't know nothing about this one all right keep looking yeah let's check out this old rivy rick doesn't run i don't know well we ain't going to be starting this one well we could i just have to find the carburetor well it's not necessarily a bad thing i mean if every car around here doesn't have a carburetor on it now you can still check them out so do a compression test on it if you can get the thing spinning over you can verify that it spins it's got compression throw a gauge on it you can even check oil pressure yeah good thing is it's complete it's got everything except for the carburetor so some of those brackets and stuff is pretty hard to find but you know we just did a special on the quadrijets now so the price is going up you got something maybe we can fire up and listen to yeah let's check this out the ruby out this one got a carb on it hey our luck is turning around does it run um i don't know do you have keys for it let's see no keys aren't in it all right let's check that oil out well it's good and black may be a candidate all right well let's all wire it then after the break find out if this old piece of iron has some life left in it [Music] we basically brought with us the same tools we took when we went to go look for a car body we also brought along a battery a jumper box just in case we killed the battery compression tester and a gas can there's a few easy things you can check to see if it's worth spending your time on to get it started like the oil if it's clean great if it's black that's okay you don't want anything that looks like chocolate milk because that could mean it's got a cracked head or a blown head gasket which is repairable but it's hard to repair a cracked block now another easy thing to check while you're under the hood is the coolant just make sure that it has some it doesn't look like mud and there's no oil in it now this looks pretty nice and clean and green so we're good to go another easy thing to do is to read the plugs this one looks like it was running a little bit rich but that's okay you don't want any heavy carbon buildup or a greasy film which can indicate a dead cylinder one more thing which is a little more labor intensive is a compression test if you were planning on buying this engine and dropping it right in this would be a must our plan is to rebuild it but you know hey it never hurts to have more information i'm using a remote starter switch from madco super easy to use just clip one end of your positive clip the other end onto the wire that's leading down to your starter solenoid you ready to hit this thing sure let's give it a shot ah nothing whoa dude we got sparks down here oh yep i don't know we got a problem with the starter i'll grab a jack all right let's just connect this well i think i found the problem solenoids well you could say scene is better today guess we'll find one on one of these other wrecks see what we can get we got the starter swapped out and went ahead and stuck a longer lead on here so i don't have to use the button see what we got you ready give it a shot at least let's turn it over now oh yeah not good not bad we got about 75 pounds so let's put some gas in it see if it's due to fire cool now while we're doing the compression test we disconnected the hot lead off the hei that way there was no way that this thing was going to fire up while we're spinning it over but now we want to try to start it so we built up a little lead just to jump it from the ignition over to the battery see if there's any life left in this thing we've already removed and plugged the factory fuel lines to keep it from pulling up any bad gas our way around that is to fill the carburetor bowl through this port which gives us about 30 seconds of run time go ahead man ignition's hot you ready oh yep that doesn't sound too bad i don't hear any rods trying to swap cylinders you're right and it's not really smoking that bad for it setting as long as it has yeah not bad at all i'd say we got a pretty good candidate here good deal you going to pull it no you're going to pull it we can get back to the shop a lot faster if we both work on it come on let's pull it we'll pull this off [Music] up next rick and tommy crack open the 455 to see what's lurking inside [Music] well they got the engine pulled back to the shop now it's time to tear this thing apart and see if we picked a good one if you got it out of a wrecking yard then they probably pulled it for you but if you get it from a private seller you can probably pull it yourself and save a few bucks as for price well i'm going to donate it to the project but normally these 455 buicks usually sell about 200 to 3 and a half for a good buildable core so we're going to figure in about 250 to our budget we got our engine up on a stand and now it's time to start knocking this dude apart if you plan on bringing it into a machine shop leave the long block together because most shots prefer to have the rotating assembly and the valve train together when you bring it in to save a few dimes our plan is to only fix what's wrong and add a few small minor upgrades so we're going to go ahead and tear this thing down completely [Music] if you're planning on reusing these parts then make sure to keep track of what bolts go where they are size specific and you don't want to get into a guessing game on reassembly after 30 plus years of heat cycles it's no surprise the water pump bolts don't want to come loose but that's why we have drilled the buicks are notorious for cracked exhaust manifolds and broken exhaust manifold studs so you can spend a little bit of time with the torch and save yourself a whole lot of time down the road the metal expands when it's heated so the trick here is to heat the metal around the threads so it expands away from the bolt nope just snapped off and sometimes even with a torch and everything they still break off that's where they make easy outside if you're reusing as many parts as we are then be sure to keep track all those small pieces and hardware and if you're worried at all about putting this mess back together then snap some pictures of it before you take it apart can save you a big headache down the road time to start cleaning this stuff up buying an engine like this there's no way to know its true history but there are a few clues to let you in on some of it if you know what to look for this intake's been sealed with red silicone we know this isn't factory so this intake's been off at some point in time the timing chain's got some slack in it so it's probably got a bunch of miles on it why does this matter well if this engine's been re-ringed a few times or got excessive miles you're going to be spending some money at the machine shop [Music] hey rick check this thing out man it's crazy clean wow yeah it is it's a good sign man maybe the bill at the machine shop will be a little less let's hope so [Music] our plan was to replace the push rods anyhow but you can see somebody was a little bit of a throttle junkie and been a few of them so these will have to be replaced organization is important when removing internal parts you do want to reuse every piece push rods lifters pistons caps and everything in between needs to be matched back to the cylinder they came from now you know we said an engine will give you clues as to how many miles are on it well one of those clues is the lifters now brand new lifters will actually have a dome surface on them and you can see that by putting the face of the lifter up against the side of another lifter and look for the light now the lifters out of our engine are either flat or just slightly concave as you can tell by putting them through the same test now generally speaking the more of a concave the lifters have the higher mileage the engine is hey greasy come check these bearings out man this thing looks like it was run out of oil we've got a trip to machine shop for sure yeah looks like a good luck ran out huh oh no sweat i'll give the machinist a call and give me a heads up coming up a quick and easy fixer-upper tip that could save you a tow truck bill [Music] hey guys welcome back you know buick engines aren't known for the horsepower as much as they're known for their stump pulling torque and one little often overlooked part that helps transfer all that power to the rear end is a u-joint now a lot of guys don't really understand them and they don't realize how easy they are to replace now whether you've got a 200 or 2000 horsepower vehicle all that power has to go through this if you got your drive shaft out anyway inspect it and if you have any doubts at all replace it even these heavy duty joints only run 20 bucks a pop and standard duty joints are even cheaper that's pretty good insurance against a tow bill later on build on a budget muscle car projects that save you time and money and this one's out of a big rig it's pretty much the same as from a car that's bigger and easier for you to see on camera the inside of each of the four caps is lined with needle bearings which allow the cap to rotate on the joint when the caps are placed on the yokes they allow the drive shaft to follow the movement of the suspension and still rotate without binding first things to go are the retainer clips new clips come with the u-joints so just pry these out however you can next you need to force the old bearing cups out of the drive shaft a piece a pipe or an old socket can support the shaft then just whack it with a hammer and drip until the cups can be removed after a quick cleanup remove the new bearing caps place the u-joint in its spot then slide on the bearings screw in the zerk fitting now if your u-joints don't look exactly like these then you probably have this style and these can be popped out with an old pair of pliers if you plan on not using your drive shaft for a while make sure to wrap the end up with some tape this will keep the caps in place and he'll protect those delicate little needle bearings now all it cost us was 40 bucks and a little bit of time to replace his u-joints add in the 250 that we spent on our core motor and the 1500 that we paid for the car and we've burned through 1790 out of our ten thousand dollar budget but we're not going to be spending any more money here today because we're out of time so until next time we're out of here today on muscle car we're flipping our lids project blue collar buick gets its top chopped and its channel hacked and a glimpse at a top secret project [Music] hey guys welcome to muscle car it's time to start ripping into project blue collar buick we're going to tackle the panel that needs the most work first the roof a previous owner probably had good intentions when they try to fix this massive rust hole in the roof but good intentions really don't cut it when it comes to restoring a car and neither did the fiberglass plastic filler and duct tape they used now we're not just going to skin this one for one thing nobody makes a roof skin for a 1973 buick and even if they did the rest on this goes way too deep so we're going to be replacing the entire roof we just need to expose the pillar so we're only pulling the trim we need to for now now this homemade tool here works pretty good it doesn't work that good when the molding is glued into place this is awesome judging by the three layers of different types of sealant i'd say this car has been messed with a few times before [Music] now this bench seat is definitely not going back in i hate bent seats they suck and they're ugly stupid bench seat and it's not going to go back in the car the windshield isn't cracked so we're hanging on to it for now if our budget allows we might replace it later the back glass is going in the keeper pile too our buick's all stripped out and ready to get decapitated but what are we going to replace that roof with well that brings us to today's special guest 1975 pontiac le mans it may not look pretty but it's got the same roof as our 73 buick and it's plenty solid enough it's something we can work with now a little research and a couple of phone calls and you should be able to track down a roof for just about any vehicle now the cheapest route is going to be a self-service wrecking yard so if you chop it off yourself the price goes down now if you want the yard to slice it off for you just be real clear where you need this thing cut we gave 150 bucks for the roof we borrowed the whole car to show you guys how it's done but the rest of it goes back to the parts guy we got it from now before we break out that saw we got to take some measurements because pretty soon here we're going to have two cars sitting around where the tops cut off and at that point it's pretty hard to reference how long these posts are supposed to be so step one is measure the height of the roof i've measured the damage on the buick to see how much roof we need i'll transfer those measurements to the lemons and add a little so we have some metal to work with [Music] [Music] after triple checking our measurements and marks it's time to break out the saws and have at it now try to keep your cuts at an angle that can be easily duplicated because you're gonna have to copy them on the other car [Applause] guess it's a drop top nice convertible we marked the buick earlier when we took the measurement so it's ready to have its top chop stick around when we come back we'll be flipping our lids after the break the buick comes back together or does it yeah it don't fit hey welcome back it's a little late to turn back now we got two cars with the tops cut off like i said earlier we trimmed our top a little long so it's going to be riding a little high but now it's just a matter of trimming this dude to fit and welding it on yeah it don't fit if you plan on keeping the dash and we do you better throw a welding blanket over it or a new dash might chew up a chunk of your budget now don't go crazy here just take a little bit at a time it's a whole lot easier to take it off than it is to put it back on you can see after i trim the front pillar a little bit we're still way out of alignment here you can tell by this this whole roof still needs to come forward that means we still got to cut some more out of the front there we go now that's getting better now you can see here where the lines are coming together pretty nice on this post here but on the back you can see where it's still stepped up quite a bit now that tells me the next step is going to be trimming this one off now i need a measurement of 26 inches here and we're already at 26. so i can't lose any more length out of this but as you can see it's still sitting a little bit high but what's holding this up is a little bit of metal along that edge well if i trim that off it's going to allow that to drop in let this whole top relax we'll be ready to weld it [Music] these are 26 inches right there perfect consider it trimmed and fit when welding on the top we're going to use a procedure called sleeving since we're using butt welds all the pillars need to be reinforced to make them as strong as they were from the factory so we're adding these small plates to all the weld joints the sleeves are going on the inside of the post they'll actually end up stronger than they were from the factory small squares of sheet metal will form the sleeves and some plug wells will hold them in place a punch will keep the drill from wandering and make sure the holes are right where you want them once the first sleeve is welded up a second one goes on for extra strength we're hoping by placing the rear sleeves in the roof section it should be easier to drop in but when you're designing on the fly you've got to expect some challenges front first front first this ain't gonna work no let's try just dropping it in the back first so if you drop it in the back let this slide in cut these off shorter i'll bet we can get this to pop over the top of it just make sure this will drop in we may have to bend this in a little bit and we can use a zip screw so when you pull it back out tight when you do that you're going to bend that post out no that's just a wrap around that's all it is it ain't plug weld through there your bull i'm just holding holding horns he's just holding the horns now let's just cut that off really short it's still not gonna work because it has to be dropped in pretty much from where we're at right now i think either we need to use this one and cut one of them off or cut one of them off and use it okay what we finally came up with for our issue with the front plates is actually pretty simple we trimmed off the excess made a relief cut and bent the tabs flush with the top of the post allowing the roof to fall into place then using some pry tools we bent the tabs back up so we can weld them in so now all we're ready to do is measure this guy out and then burn it in this is where all that careful measuring we did earlier pays off we're good we want a slight gap between the two panels here so the weld goes all the way through to the sleeves it doesn't get much stronger than that [Music] hot it's like me smoking once all six pillars are welded solid we'll grind them off and prep them for bodywork [Music] now i know replacing an entire roof can be pretty intimidating but hey that's why you learn on a 1500 car not a fifteen thousand dollar car with a low buck project like this you can afford to take a few chances the worst thing you end up doing is costing yourself a little extra time so don't be afraid to step out of your comfort zone and challenge yourself [Music] hey guys welcome back and we won the first battle but the war on rust is still raging and the next battlefield is this rear window channel now if you don't fix this correctly water is going to leak through there get in your trunk and cause more rust so don't be tempted take any shortcuts the first thing i need to do is get the rest of the window sealer out of the way a little trick is to heat up the end of a pry tool and melt it out all the clips need to go then i can attack it with a wire brush to get all the rust and junk out of the way so i can see how bad it really is [Music] if this was a small area i just free hand it but a patch this large calls for a template i'll make it a little larger than needed so i have some wiggle room later and once the template's cut out and transferred to a chunk of steel it's on to the band saw now this shape could easily be cut out with a pair of tin snips or an airsoft to make the second side of the channel i've taken a flat piece of steel formed it to the first piece now i'm taking it together now it's time to take out the garbage or chop it out in this case [Music] after a little trimming the patch falls right into place a few tacks and we can move on to the rest of the channel there's still one more little spot here that needs to be patched in but what i'm trying to show you is that you can do this repair using nothing more than a pair of tin snips and a basic welder i'm going to move on to the back here and show you another way to do a patch using a brake and a shear you could also use tin snips a hammer and a vise for this method but i'll tell you what shearing to break sure are nice i made this piece way longer than i need here but the rest of it will be used in other places [Music] now shrinker stretcher does exactly what the name implies it either stretches it or in this case shrinks it now this is going to help you get the radius that you need to match the original contour of this window channel whole lot easier to weld in that way i got a whole lot more holes to patch in this thing but for this week we're out of time so until next time we're out of here hey guys you know a lot of cool stuff happens around here when the cameras aren't rolling me and tommy we've been messing around with a project hidden out here in the warehouse for the last couple of days figured you might dig on scene what a couple of sick twisted gear heads do for fun all right got the show closed out man we got brakes yet yeah we got front brakes so that ought to stop us sometimes yeah front brakes is fine yeah i think this is going to be a pretty good investment of time for the you know head turner that we're making pretty good considering this is the car we use for parts yeah let's make this dude out of here and take it for a test ride sweet [Music] we like to call it project dead goat now she may be a little rough around the edges but at least she ain't pretty is it street legal hell no is it fun hell yeah [Applause] there's no way we can crush this thing it's way too much fun i hope that part's gotta let me donate him a hundred bucks for it we'll just have to see what we can do see guys just goes to show you you don't have to have deep pockets to have fun with cars all you need is a little imagination an old parts car that's it see ya'll today on muscle car it's time for some cutting and welding tommy gives the buick bumpers some nip tuck then rick gets a handle on things [Music] hey guys welcome to muscle car today we're back on blue collar buick well we're going to do some custom body mods that won't cost you much more than your time the buick is a low buck project so we've got to get creative when it comes to jazzing it up so it's time to break out the grinders and welders after picking up our 73 sentry from a salvage yard we replaced the roof and fixed some rust spots once the buick 455 came back from the machine shop i assembled it while rick put a shift kit in the turbo 350. with the drivetrain well on its way we can turn our attention to appearance part of the problem with mid 70s cars were changes brought on by new government safety regulations and big ugly bumpers are one example of this now prior to the urethane bumpers coming out in the late 70s these monstrosities were the norm and they're not cool at all but we're gonna fix that by shaving it narrowing it and tucking it tighter to the body for a cleaner more modern look but before we do anything we'll knock those rusty nuts loose and get the specimen up on the table [Music] now we figure tucking the bumper in a total of four inches is going to give us a look that we're after now four inches may seem like a lot until you start looking at how this bumper is actually mounted because we can achieve two inches right there just by drilling a hole in the bottom of that shock collapsing it back and re-welding it an additional two inches can easily be had right in here just by chopping out some of these guts taking this mounting plate re-welding it to the back hanging our bumper back on it no problem we're reusing bits and pieces of this assembly so i got to be careful taking it all apart when drilling through the shock wear eye protection because they are pressurized with really smelly gas this is going to get welded later so i'm going to clean it up now while it's still easy to get to with the pressure released out of the shocks the plasma makes short work of the brackets next comes the bumper side of the brackets by chopping the excess off of these we're moving that bumper back over an inch and a half in one swipe [Music] after cleaning the slag off both sides with the grinder i can line the brackets back up tack them in and then we'll set the bumper back in place to see how many problems we've created uh we got problems dude it's hitting on it yep it's hitting right here set it down for a second that's hitting these brackets right here dude i can't chop them off you want me to cut it no i'm gonna cut it i won't cut it i've been cutting everything else okay you could hey guys welcome back got all that metal chopped out of the way and the bumper should slide right on we'll give it a shot anyway [Music] cool looks good let's drop it check it out well it does look a whole lot better but dude these have got to go man that's an old lie and this rubber impact strip's got to go too yeah i know there's bolts behind there to hold this whole mess together but we can shave those that's not too big of a deal while we're at it we can shorten the side of the bumper up and move it in some that'll help a bunch that works for me let's snatch this dude off of here and chop it up good deal after pulling off the trim we realized these mounting bolts also hold the bumper to the inner structure no big deal i'll clean them and plug weld them back up so we don't lose any strength [Music] man we've been wanting to get rid of these bumperettes since the first time we saw this car and good riddance a few licks of the grinder and my welds are clean we're ready for more chopping if you plan on having your bumpers re-chrome take a piece of advice from our friends over at advanced plating don't grind down your own welds let them do it it'll save you some work and save you some money in the long run but for budget reasons we're going to paint ours so it's no big deal rick's got the bumper looking a whole lot better but by no means are we done we still got to trim three quarters of an inch off both ends to tighten up the gap that may not seem like a whole lot but it's the little details like that that add up to make a big attitude change i want to tuck in each and three quarters of an inch so i'm using you guessed it three quarter inch masking tape as a guide using a combination of different width tape you can easily measure out consistent sections of whatever it is you're hacking on i've swapped from the cutting disc to a flap wheel to bevel the edges for better weld penetration well that brought it in three quarters of an inch but we still want to clip its wings and also shorten up the side about four inches but that requires a little more cutting i'm reusing the back part of this piece but i'll get the excess first [Music] this is part of the piece i just cut off trim to fit i'm filling in the gap with some eighth inch plate i already shake next comes the big piece over four inches is coming out of here just like before i'm capping it with a piece i just cut off the end now that's a real change this is a big chunk of metal that i cut out of there but anything less just wouldn't have got the job done the front end is definitely looking a lot better but the car still got some areas that could use some improvement so while i finish up the front bumper rick's going to show you what we've got planned for the doors now when you look down the length of the car what do you see well i see some pretty stylish body lines and some pretty dated door handles now gm use the same ones through the 70s and most of the 80s so they're pretty much a dime a dozen a blue collar well this thing's got to stand out from a crowd so those have got to go now you'd think that we would just shave them off and be done with it but for you guys that have had shaved door handles before you already know what a pain they can be besides you're going to be in at a good 200 bucks or more for solenoids and the hardware to get them to work so we're just going to swap ours out for a little more aesthetically pleasing ones and thanks to a trip to a self-service wrecking yard these rent is less than 50 bucks the first step is to strip both sets of handles i didn't get keys with the new handles but on the bright side the lock cylinders are cheap and easy to replace [Music] now with that out of the way we can set the new piece in i cut that out so that these tabs here can drop into place because you have to be real careful where your edges are to make sure they're not going to interfere with anything on the back of the door namely your jam just pay attention to how this thing is clocked on the door make sure that it lines up nice with your body lines and also don't forget about any extra holes in there make sure you cut your panel out low enough to allow for that to get eliminated when i cut these out at the wrecking yard i made sure to give myself plenty of extra sheet metal it's always better to have too much than to come up short and have to scab something together using the new sheet metal as a template i can scribe out the section of the buick that needs to go i'm using a combination of tools to get this job done body saw grinder cutoff disc carbide bits whatever it takes just make sure to do plenty of test fit in as you go once you're happy with the fit strip the paint out of the way and weld it in well the handle's in and looking pretty cool but you still have to get the thing to work and that's where it's real important when you choose which handles you're going to install in your car make sure that the handle that you have see how this one here has a lever that pushes down and make sure that's compatible with your latch now these latches here have another lever which needs to go down to get the door open so it's going to be pretty simple to hook up i'm starting by putting the original rod into the new handle once it's set in place i'll mark the length that needs to be to engage the original latch the rod needs a stop to push on the lever and i've got a low-tech solution a washer welded in place should do the trick i'll trim it to my mark and cross my fingers the parts from two cars made over 25 years apart will actually work together all right see if it works i like butter now when the locks show up i can build a linkage and get those working too i know they look a little bit funky right now but that's only because they're white the game plan is to shoot them body color and make them blend right in by the time blue color is done you'll hardly even see [Music] hey guys welcome back now we got the front and sides looking pretty cool but the back end definitely still need some help and these tail lights i think are the ugliest i've ever seen so they gotta go we've given it a lot of thought and the design we came up with is gonna give it some style but it's gonna require removing some metal here and adding some there the first things to go the bumperettes yeah we really hate these things next to go this huge hump now humps can be good but this ain't one of them that hump was hiding a secret what the heck is all this stuff i don't know but it's gonna go in a round file with that out of the way i can see what metal needs to be trimmed to match the new profile we have planned for the bumper from the time we bought this car we knew that the rear bumper had some fitment issues now you can see why sucker's been rear rented at some point pretty good that's a lot of movement when that happened it bent the rear bumper out of shape now we don't have any fancy pants tools around here to get the sucker pushed back out so we're going to do it the same way you guys would do it at home take it off chop it apart and make it fit we got the bumper stripped down to just the chrome skin mark the center so now we're ready to cut this dude in half hey tommy got the brackets on let's see where we're at with this thing all right [Music] much better man i like this line right here here on that nice here on the corners it looks good too cool let's put a little piece in there tack it in place work on the other side we're welding some temporary brackets in to hold the left side still while we get the right side lined up it lined up pretty easy so it's time to tack it all together pull it off and fill it in cutting off that hump left a pretty mean hole that needs to be filled i formed some eighth inch plate to do the job [Music] while i was finishing the bumper tommy's been extending the trunk lid our plan is to give the taillights a whole new outline and these will give them a much sleeker look time for a test fit and a little preview of what the new back end is going to look like the changes we made today sure have improved the fit and finish and style of this old car not to mention it only cost us about 50 bucks for some door handles some welding wire and some cut off wheels now we do still need some lenses to fill in our newly restyled back end and i have a couple ideas on how to build them but for this week we're all out of time so until next time we're out of here [Music] hey welcome to muscle car red sled will be leaving and go to the upholstery shop soon so we've got to get it wired up and the glass installed i've already started laying out the harness but old rick just won't stay away from the buick i'd love to give you a hand of the wiring no i wouldn't besides we got a buick over here that needs some taillight lenses so i'm going to build these before i go give tommy a hand last time project blue color buick got its first body mods when we updated the door handles and chopped a ton of steel out of the front bumper next we started giving the back end its new profile now we were hoping to straighten out this bent rear panel and start building some taillight lenses but we got to looking at it it's bent a little worse than we thought add in the rust damage and it's just too far gone it's going to be faster and easier to just chop it off and build a new one besides we'll have some brand new sheet metal to play with [Music] step one is to find the edge of the sheet metal that needs to be replaced which means getting all those years of crud out of the way [Music] [Music] madco's spot weld cutter will take care of the pinch weld but a drill bit would work here too next i'm marking off a quarter inch inside the factory bend this will leave a lip to weld the new panel to the pen mark is just a back up in case the tape gets pulled off as i'm cutting [Music] after i get the straight cuts with a disc i'll hit the corners with the airsoft then finish it all off with the air chisel [Music] with the old panel out of the way i can smooth off the bumps with a flap wheel [Music] all right we got the old sheet metal chopped out of the way i got some new pieces here that i'm building they're pretty basic just a flat piece with a 90 degree break trying to keep this simple and this will give us a nice fresh sheet metal and then we can start finally building our tail lights these panels are pretty flat with the exception of the centerpiece which is why i had to make it in three sections [Music] the bend along the bottom edge was made with a break but the rest will have to be hand formed to prep the new metal for welding a hole punch is the quickest way to go don't have one no problem just break out the drill cleco fasteners will hold it in place while i tack it the old tail panel has one last purpose in life and that's to help me position the new i want the new openings to be slightly smaller than the originals so i'm shrinking the top and sides using three quarter inch tape as a guide i know an aerosol may be slow and noisy but it's the best way to get the precise cut that i need here [Music] i built these frames throughout a half inch square tubing it's going to serve three different purposes one it gives me a mounting surface for the new lenses two it's going to space that lens out so it doesn't look as sunk in as the original taillights did i hated that and three it's going to give me a way to hold my buckets in place i pre-built the outer frames but i saved the center one to show you guys how it was done it's very important to make sure the frame is square as you will check and recheck as you go or you may end up with a frame that won't fit your panel [Music] once it's all melted together time to drill some holes for the mounting studs drilling completely through the frame instead of just one side will help the studs mount straight and give a hole on the backside to plug weld into before the studs get welded in place use the frame and a center punch to mark where the mounting holes in the panel will need to go i made these studs by cutting the heads off some bolts we had laying around the shop make sure the studs are slightly recessed to give a pocket for the welds to fill [Music] i'll drill the holes in my pre-mark panel and see how it fits [Music] here we go i got my frames looking pretty nice now i know replacing that rear panel took us on a little bit of a detour but we're finally ready to put some lenses on the back into this thing hey tommy want to give me a hand uh acquiring some materials and i don't like the way that it sounds but i definitely could use a break from wiring up a red slit what exactly do you have in mind trust me coming up the guys put their sticky fingers to use for a good cause [Music] sometimes building on a budget that means you have to use all your available resources [Music] no this is an automotive lens prism but the price is right and it'll basically do the exact same thing diffuse the light cover it up with some colored plexiglass and you'll end up with a taillight lens in any shape you'd ever want the frames are a little smaller than the actual lenses are going to be i did this because it's a lot easier to get the final shape right with a piece of plastic than with a piece of metal [Music] [Music] with the overall size marked out it's time to start cutting the actual lens now this stuff breaks really easy so make sure to support the entire piece i'm describing not cutting all the way through so i don't have to worry about damaging the table [Music] beautiful [Music] a dye grinder will tweak it into final shape [Music] with the textured plastic trim to fit i came back and made duplicates out of flat plexiglas now this will be a lot easier to paint plus it's going to help protect the delicate prism plastic behind it now since this is going to be the top layer of our tail lights i'm going to use it to mask the parts off that i don't want to see namely the frames by painting a black edge all the way around [Music] using the trunk lid and frames as a guide i can lay out the shape [Music] and there you have the shape of the new red area in the lens the rest of it's going to be all black before i headed into the booth i masked off the area that'll be red leaving the rest exposed and ready for some black base coat after several coats and 20 minutes of drying time the tape comes off and i'm ready for the red i'm coating the entire lens black and all with red candy now true candy is invisible over black but if you're using over reduced opaque red to do this you're going to need to mask off the black first spray as many coats as you need to make them as dark as you want then follow up with three coats of clear [Music] once a last coat of clear setup i used some windshield urethane to glue the two halves of the lenses together then stick them onto the frames now these along with the modifications we did to the trunk lid and the bumper let's got this thing looking more like a custom and a lot less like kojak's old ride now the center panel is dark now but trust me i did not go through all that trouble just to leave it looking like that but tommy needs my hand on red slit so that'll have to wait for another day [Music] hey guys welcome to muscle car we got blue collar buick out of the booth with our first coat of primer laid down and now it's time to get it up on the rack do some suspension work yeah this thing's come a long way from that underpowered oversized land barge that we started with after we plucked our budget beauty from the salvage yard we replaced the roof found a buick 455 and rebuilt it with a few upgrades installed a shift kit into the turbo 350 updated the door handles put the bumpers on a diet and came up with some rad tail lights when we first picked up our buick it actually drove pretty good for a car its age but after inspecting the suspension yeah it definitely needs some bushings but while we got the thing apart we're going to replace all the suspension components and that's because we want a good solid foundation for future upgrades it's important to inspect your car suspension not just to figure out what parts you need but for safety if you've got a project that you're tinkering on during the weekends but driving it during the week you need to make sure it's safe until you can get around to rebuilding the front end you can check the ball sockets on your center link and your tie rod ends by gently rocking the steering wheel back and forth the tie rod looks like it's hanging in there but the pitman arm is definitely moving more than a center link so this socket is bad it might be alright for a little while but it could get real bad real quick so if your plan is not to replace it be sure to keep an eye on it if you raise the car up you can check the ball joints too just get a nice long pry bar stick it in between the frame and your spindle and check for any kind of movement ideally there shouldn't be any play in there at all if you just have a little bit of movement then that means that it needs to be replaced this is a perfect example but if you have a lot of movement then that could mean that it's going to blow apart and that's a bad thing another thing that needs to be checked is the idler arm it can have a little bit of play but that's a little excessive so it needs to be replaced and while you're inspecting your suspension don't forget to check out your a-arm bushings if they're cracked and coming apart especially something this bad be sure to replace them knocking the front end apart is pretty straightforward find a nut and remove it the steering linkage comes off all in one piece we'll explain why later hasn't been off in a while [Music] the down and dirty but safe way to get your springs off if you don't have a spring compressor is to break out the torch there's a lot of tension in these springs so the trick is to release that energy a little bit at a time once they're relaxed you can cut them out [Music] i've got the control arms all cleaned up and ready to swap out the bushings i'm going to be using a hydraulic press because i got so many of them and i don't want to be here all day now you could do this with a hammer but you can save yourself a lot of time and frustration by carrying them to your local alignment shop and having them do it a press is one of the simplest tools in the shop but also one of the most dangerous with 25 tons of pressure on tap if something goes wrong it will already be too late make sure you have the item properly situated on the base and everything is perfectly aligned if not you could have something ricocheting off your nugget before you even realize it with stubborn bushings be sure not to distort the a arm or getting the new ones in could be nearly impossible and could even affect your alignment when pressing the new bushing in be sure to reinstall the shaft in the right direction to be safe it's a good idea to label them before you pull them out since tommy's got the bushing swapped out in these upper arms i'm going to go ahead and take care of the upper ball joints while he does the lower a-arms they can tell by these rivets these are still the original ball joints no big deal that's what we have grinders for you can use a grinder but i'm using a flap wheel for this just be sure not to take any chunks out of the a-arm ball joints bolton that's how i knew the old ones were the originals well they go in a whole lot easier and they come out that's for sure well i'm going to go ahead and swap out the rest of these ball joints put some black paint on them and start putting the front end together on the buick but don't go anywhere because after the break we're going to be taking blue collar one step closer to the street coming up rick ties up some loose ends and tommy packs it in [Music] hey welcome back we've got the a-arms and the spindles reinstalled we've also upgraded to a set of detroit eaton lowering springs that are big block specific and at 160 bucks a set that's a money well spent because they're going to give our buick a whole new attitude well now we can go and start assembling our new tire rods i want the alignment to be as close as possible that way we can safely drive it down to the alignment shop when our build gets back on the road now if i was only replacing one end all you'd have to do is count the threads and screw the new one into match that'll get you close enough to drive it but since i'm replacing the entire thing i'll go ahead and measure the overall length this is why we dropped the entire steering linkage off in one piece now it's just a matter of assembling the new parts to match the old try to keep the adjustment sleeve centered between the two tie rod ends this will give the most room for adjustment at the alignment shop with the tie rods assembled they can be attached to the center link and don't forget the cotter pins duh last on is the idler arm i'll cinch it down pin it and it's ready to get tucked up under the buick's chin we're upgrading to ebc brake rotors up front they're slotted and drilled for better stopping power and they're economical to fit into our budget we're installing new bearings while we got everything apart but they've got to be packed you could use a bearing packer but i'm going to show you guys how to do it the old-fashioned way time to grease your palm with some bearing grease that is the process is really very simple just press the bearing cage into your palm until the grease squishes up through the top just make sure they're packed solid the larger bearing goes on the back side of the rotor followed by a new seal be careful not to deform it as you tap it in a quick wipe with some grease and we're on to the front pack some more grease inside the rotor before dropping in the outer bearing we replaced the brake lines too because it's pretty hard to tell if these things are bad just by looking at them and always replace them in pairs that way you don't end up with a weak link of your system one more upgrade that will improve the overall performance of the brake system are these ebc brake pads we're gonna get these installed and button up the rest of the front end don't y'all go anywhere we got a lot more muscle guard coming up today on muscle car we're spraying our way to budget beauty project blue collar is going to look good under the hood and sound sweet in the seat thanks to some low buck spray-ons and hear our 455 fire up for the first time [Music] hey guys welcome to muscle car now blue collar buick here has turned into one of the most popular builds we've ever done on the show and it doesn't even have an engine yet but today we're going to fix all that there's just one small problem there's a whole lot of ugly called an engine compartment that needs some serious attention but the rest of this old century has come a long way we dropped on a new lid rebuilt a buick 455 to give it some muscle and put a shift kit in the 350 turbo then we gave it some smooth new door handles lightened up the bumpers designed some one-off tail lights and freshened up the suspension and brakes you know there's few things as disappointing as popping the hood on a nice ride and finding a big old mess of wires shabby brackets and rust it's kind of like finally scoring a day with that hot chick and then finding out she's really a dude we're not going to let that happen with our buicks we're going to completely make over our engine compartment since this is a budget build we got to do all we can to get the most bang for our buck and this is one area where a little bit of cash can go a long ways first step is to get rid of all the useless junk starting with a small block chevrolet mount somebody worked awful hard to weld in these mounts using nothing more than a 12-volt battery and some wire hangers at least that's what it looks like but if that fresh 455 is gonna find its new home hey man they gotta go scrap metal out of the way the rest of the smaller parts can be pulled to make it easier to clean for prep and paint be careful removing this stuff parts you may think are easily replaced could be harder to find than you think [Music] hey rick you ready to get what the heck are you doing working out man getting ready for the next step of the build what what are you talking about this is going to be the most important tool of the day i call it my mini spray gun man i smell what you're stepping in and i know how you like to paint you need to get this car prepped out all right dupli-color makes a great aerosol degreaser just make sure that whatever you use it doesn't leave a residue or you could end up with peeling paint what do you say we pull those hinges off and go ahead a little easier and a drill alignment holes first though i ain't messing around with that 500 pound hood trying to get it lined back up for really stubborn grease carb cleaner and a rag worked great seam sealer fluid gets old brittle over time and now is a good time to scrape out the old and prep for some new so you know rick yeah there's not another person out there that i'd rather scrape seem silly with [Music] [Laughter] thanks man a red scotch brite will finish the prep and let the new paint bite in like a bulldog time for the new seam sealer a brush a glove and a little love will make it look better than factory and help seal out future rust and corrosion a finger dipped in lacquer thinner will smooth out the texture when you're painting stuff like engine compartments eventually you're going to run across something that's kind of weird shaped which means it's hard to mask off but you don't want to put paint on it but it's also a pain in the butt to remove well that's where tin foil comes in or aluminum foil just tear off a piece if i can get something pulling off here and wrap it around [Music] now for the fun part ho rick got his fingers warmed up earlier so it's time for some paint we went to the local parts store and put a big dent in the stock of rattle cans a duple color comes in dozens of varieties in just about any color you could ever want they also have specialty coatings for anything from undercoating to engine blocks now engine compartments don't really require anything special so i got some cool colors that i thought would look nice now most of the engine compartment is going to be a semi-gloss black for that oem look we'll use this gold here on the brake booster and maybe some of the brackets just to throw in a little bit of detail the textured metallic is for the evaporator housing and i like the color of this engine enamel for the master cylinder and steering box now everyone out there has probably used a rattle can at some time or another so you know the drill shake the can for a minute or two then commence to squirting we're doing two full wet coats waiting about 15 minutes for flash time in between the smaller pieces like the wiper motor and brake booster still work fine but to give them that like new appearance they need some color too they're both getting a light coat of edge primer first then a layer of the final colors will go on looks good now i just gotta hold it until it dries after standing around with these for like five minutes they're finally dry enough to go back on the buick well i got a couple more holes to fill here but don't go anywhere because coming up after the break tommy's going to step in here and show you how to bench bleed a master cylinder and later a spray-on sound deadener that's easy to apply and easy on the wallet [Music] hey guys welcome back we've got the master cylinder off so we're going to go ahead and replace it since it's only about 20 bucks but before i can install it i've got to bench bleed it because it's a whole lot easier to do it here than when it's on the car the idea of bleeding is to remove the air from the system plugging the outlets will block one pathway the air could get back in filling the reservoir then pressing the plunger will force the air back out of the cylinder and draw fresh brake fluid in this will take several cycles but once there's no more air bubbles coming up you're good to go master cylinders come in raw iron so to keep it looking good for more than 10 minutes it's getting the dupli-color treatment like our other part one important thing to remember brake fluid eats paint so be really careful when reinstalling the brake lines now the converter's got to go in before we can introduce the transmission to the engine for the first time now keep in mind here you got two sets of splines and as you put this on both sets have to be engaged so set it over the splines and put just a little bit of pressure on it as you rotate it and you'll feel it drop onto those splines there's one i may have already gotten the second one but if you don't get that engaged all the way then what happens you put the engine against the transmission and it pushes that converter back against your pump and it'll break your pump then what you've got is a broken transmission before you even fire up your engine one thing to check before mounting the transmission to the engine is the flywheel because if it's in the car it's one of those kind of repairs that the parts are way cheap but the labor will flat dab eat you alive what to look for are stress cracks around the mounting holes or chipped teeth you can see ours are missing quite a few so we're going to go ahead and replace it this adapter from transtat will allow the buick engine and the chevy transmission to bolt together with no problem this is an externally balanced flex plate so it has to be clocked correctly we paid attention when we took the old one off so we can match it up now like most critical drive train parts the flex plate needs to be torqued to spec last on is the adapter spacer hey tommy heard you've been looking for a not exactly but let's put this on [Music] our latest wrecking yard score is these factory big block motor mounts with these the 455 should bolt in just like it's been there its whole life okay bring it back come on we're in well it looks great but we want to hear this thing make some noise and that means all the accessories need to go back on now keep in mind all the hard parts are refurbished originals hey now you're topping that dude off like you think we're gonna fire it up we need to get a cooling system installed first though man i'm just putting it on there to see how it looks and it looks pretty awesome yeah it does i got some bad news for you though oh yeah radiator hoses ain't going to be here for a couple more hours but i got some good news for you the sound didn't stuff showed up what's that a muzzle for you yeah right man are you sure our budget's even got room for sound deadening oh yeah lizards can send us one of their spray-in kits and it's actually cheaper than some of that tin foil stick on stuff that's cool a layer of that stuff on the floorboard would definitely cut down on some road noise yeah i got the rust all treated and sealed up so we can get to spraying all right this stuff really is pretty easy to use start by stirring it up with the supplied mixing paddle it's water soluble so a bucket of water is all you need for cleanup pour it straight into the cup no reducers or hardeners needed that is some thick stuff lizard skin spray gun kit comes with a gun specifically designed for thicker materials you want a plan of attack here so you don't end up spraying yourself into a corner start at the furthest point and you won't end up with it all over your knees and hose [Music] you can put on a second coat just make sure the first layer dries completely and if you're wondering why i'm not wearing a mask hey this stuff is zero voc so no worries and that my friends is it [Music] hey welcome back those radiator hoses we were waiting on i've just about got them installed that means we're real close to firing up this 455. we just about got this dude buttoned up other than a few electrical connections and some fluids now we haven't bolted up the converter to the flex plate yet and that's because we don't have any coolant lines no coolant lines means no fluid and you don't want to fire this thing up burn up your transmission after that all we need is a little bit of fuel because right now there's no gas tank in this thing as you're adding the fluids dump them in one at a time and check for leaks before moving on it's a good idea to leave your battery cable loose for now in case you see smoke and have to pull it off in a big hurry with the temporary gas source hooked up to the pump we can prime the carb and hit the key before we fire this dude up you got a fire extinguisher dude the way you splash gas around yeah and it's a big block thirsty give it a shot ready yep looks like all our prep work paid off and it's running smooth enough that we can go straight to setting the timing and breaking in the cam we're looking for 12 degrees before top dead center a little twist of the distributor nails it i'll kill it [Music] well guys it's like we have a successful rebuild on our hands it runs good it looks good and it should make some pretty decent horsepower now we just have to get the carburetor dialed in straighten out some vacuum lines yeah but that's some stuff we got to do when y'all aren't around because we're all out of time so until next week y'all keep between the ditches you doing over there yet yeah i'm working on it good deal good deal today on muscle car tommy flexes his fab skills and rick gets artistic with his airbrush to create a one-off piece for the buick and clean your tank without breaking the bank [Music] hey guys welcome to muscle car now a lot of you buick fans out there have written in to let us know how much you dig on watching blue-collar buick here come together let me let you in on a little secret before we picked up our 73 century we thought about building a whole different kind of buick a numbers matching gs but considering how tight cash is these days we thought a low buck bill would be the way to go and a gs just doesn't really fall into that kind of category with a build budget of 10 grand the 1500 we paid for this guy was right on target we put a big chunk of cash into the buick 455 then gave the sentry some inexpensive upgrades and used old-fashioned ingenuity to come up with some money-saving ideas that'll set our buick apart from the crowd now even though our budget didn't allow for a true gs we can incorporate one of the features that they use a dual snorkel air cleaner yeah those things were cool they came on the late 60s and early 70s modeled gs's they even offered it in 73 although it wasn't fresh air they may be cool but man they are not cheap so what's our solution you got it we're going to build our own and it's even going to be functional no we're not going to be knocking a couple of holes in the hood but we are going to be getting rid of something on the nose of this car that i have hated from day one these fishbowl parking lights now to keep those snorkels breathing we're going to run ducks all the way up to the openings now true that means we're going to have to find a different place for the lights but no worries we'll show you plans for that another time we're going to use the stock air cleaner base and graft in the intake tubes from these two we picked up at the junkyard they were only about 10 bucks and they got the round ends we need to hook up to the air ducts first up is to separate all the good stuff from the junk the only part of the salvage yard air cleaners we're going to use is the snorkel so the rest is going into the recycle bin [Music] we won't be using the cold start actuator so they can go too [Music] i'm grinding the spot welds out from the inside so i can remove the extra metal being careful not to damage the part we need the snorkel on the stock air cleaner won't be used so i'll add it to the cast off pile [Music] since the new snorkels will be in different spots i'll be filling the hole the old one left behind i'll get it ground down flush so i can weld the patch in later with the base in place i can clock and mark the new parts making sure they're even and not causing any clearance problems before i attach the new inlets i'll get this old hole plugged up i'm using a hole saw to radius the ends of the new ports this will duplicate the look of the stock air cleaner the metal on these is pretty thin so it's a good idea to dial your welder back some keep from burning through hey man check out my air cleaner that's looking smooth yeah that's what i thought i'd dig it you got something figured out for our air inlet yeah i kind of use a marker light here as a guide i built a ring that'll set in there and from there i'm going to use a chunk of three-inch exhaust tubing cut it off kind of short and weld it onto there come off with a couple of tabs and that'll actually give us the same size to go right into it inlets on your new air cleaner sounds like you got that cast rope so i'm going to find me a cupcake since i pre-made my template i just need to transfer it to some 16 gauge steel and get it chopped out if you don't have a bandsaw don't sweat it grab an airsoft or tin snips for this with a piece this simple a little hand forman will get the job done now once i got it pretty close i'll throw a tack weld on it to keep its shape now here's where the three inch exhaust tubing comes in a few more tacks and some shaping and i can burn it all together my air intakes are just about done and they're looking pretty cool but i still have to get them mounted i snuck over to extreme swiped a couple of these little tabs i'm thinking they should be able to weld on there get this thing mounted we'll call it good those will work perfect i still need to connect my air inlets to the snorkels to do that i'll just use a basic piece of flexible hose now the air cleaner may be the last thing to go on the engine before you shut the hood but it's the first thing you see when you pop it open so i'm going to take this dude off clean it up give it my personal touch [Music] coming up find out how rick turns this air cleaner into one hot item that looks pretty doggone good right there [Music] hey guys now i know you might think that bodywork in an air cleaner is a little bit overkill but don't forget this step is 35 plus years old and it's been ground on welded up modified and i sure as heck i'm going to put all my nice paint work on right over the top of it so i'm going to treat these parts just like i would any other body panel and that means smoothing out all the imperfections with body filler sanding it down getting some primer on it giving it yet another sanding and then spraying on the base coat yeah this thing's looking pretty smooth here in just a solid colored gray and i wouldn't be embarrassed a bit to clear it and run it as is but we got other plans masking is a critical part of painting graphics the air cleaner will match the color skin we have planned for the car charcoal and orange two-tone with the silver and red accent stripe with the charcoal down as a base the red stripe goes on next so i'm masking off everything else i mixed up a dark red to complement the gray and orange and laid it down on the lid and base once it dries i'll cover the parts that'll stay red the rest of this area will remain exposed and be shot with the silver next i can remove the masking and cover up everything that won't be orange you got a little sneak peek of this orange on the engine and in keeping with our budget theme it's nothing fancy just a dmd 617 toner straight out of the can topping it off with a mixture of two pearls will give this budget color a high dollar look to save some time i printed my graphics onto some transfer paper instead of hand drying it next comes a time-consuming process of cutting it out unless you got a plotter man there's just no way around it now once it's all cut out carefully peel off the stencil then it's finally time to play with some paint the colors i'm using here are all custom mixes i've got several different variations of red orange and yellow with some white highlights thrown in since these are the only flames on the car i don't really want them to stand out too much so to make them a little more subtle i'm going to darken them up as i go with some candy with the majority of the design down i can peel off the mask then come back and freehand some highlights now a little bit of yellow candy tones down the white then i can unmask the whole thing and seal it all in with some clear all right time to see if all this hard work here is to pay it off and that looks pretty doggone good right there hard to believe we've only got like 60 bucks wrapped up in this whole setup that's what a budget build is all about using your skills not your wallet to build something that you can really be proud of the last piece of this puzzle is the ductwork i'm hooking them up using a pair of couplers from spectre i can't wait for someone to ask me to pop the hood on this thing hey welcome back to the shop you've seen us swap out stock gas tanks for new replacements or fancy fuel cells plenty of times but with project blue collar there's really no reason why we can't use the original one all we need to do is clean it up a bit with the right product and a little bit of time and effort you can restore your old gas tank and get decades more use out of it we ordered this kit online but your local parts store should be able to help you out too this kit includes two types of cleaners and a sealer all meant to work together for best results we drained and dry the tank before we started so the first thing to do is to remove the sanding unit i'm using a brass drift to prevent sparks i'm covering the hole up with duct tape to keep the chemical from sloshing out during the cleaning process prop the tank up and we're all ready to get to cleaning now for the chemicals make sure to wear protection because you don't want this stuff on your skin or in your eyes both of the first two chemicals are cleaners and the process for using them is about the same start by pouring the solution into the tank once it's in the tank tape up the filler neck to prevent sloshing shake the tank around enough that the insides are totally coated then let it sit for 20 minutes dumping it out can be a challenge there's a baffle in the filler neck so it's got to come out the sending unit hole get a helper and just shake until it's empty we've got the tank cleaned and flushed and we're ready to apply the sealer but we've got to get the tank dry first you could use compressed air but you're running a risk of burning up your compressor because you're going to use a whole lot of air we're going to use a heat gun now you don't have to have one of these you could use a hair dryer but it'll just take a little longer this does take a while so just keep checking and don't stop till it's bone dry now with the tank all dry we can move on to the last step sealer this stuff bonds to the inside of the tank forming a liner that stops rust and seals up any pinholes and seams pour the sealer in straight from the can then turn the tank to get an even layer on the inside let it set for a few minutes then dump out the excess [Music] the tank's all good to go on the inside but what about the outside we're not going to install it looking like this so for that brand new oem look we're using eastwood's tank tone [Music] our tank is completely dry but if your tank even has a little bit of gas in it don't use a steel brush it could cause a spark and we all know sparks and gas don't mix use a brass or non-metallic brush to be safe brake cleaner and a scotch brite will get the last of the grease off and a wipe down with acetone will ensure a well prepped surface i'm taping up the ground strap and the sending unit post for a professional look all that's left now is to work the spray can [Music] well that's one more piece of the buick that we were able to save it took some time and effort but now we've got a tank that will look and perform like new for half the cash once this thing dries i'm going to throw it up under the car but we're all out of time for this week so until next week y'all keep between the ditches today on muscle car blue collar buick turns outrageous orange pick up some insider tips on blocking and paint prep and learn how to lay out a unique two-tone [Music] hey guys welcome to muscle car now blue collar buick here is going to be going through a major transformation today and by the end of the show you might not even recognize it yeah you guessed it it's finally time to lay down some color it's amazing how a paint job can change the look of an entire car even with all the improvements we made the attitude adjustment isn't going to take true effect until we get a fresh coat of cool there wasn't much cool to speak of when it arrived in its coat of pea green but a big block 455 and new suspension has started to change all that some low buck touches like modern door handles custom tail lights engine compartment makeover and an awesome air cleaner notched up to cool but kept us on budget speaking of budget now is a good time to see how much of ours we've already chewed through now remember the original concept for this build was to do the whole thing for under 10 grand now you and i both know how quick that can go away so let's break it down see how much we've used and how many fun tickets we still have left okay we spent 1500 on the car 150 for the roof and a total of 24 18 for the engine rebuild trans adapter and shift kit at 14 36 for suspension and brakes cosmetic items like door handles tail lights air cleaner and spray paints came to 356 and miscellaneous parts were 265 that's a grand total of only 61.25 and leaves us with 38.75 for paint and body wheels and tires and interior so we're right on track a good way to keep costs down is to do as much of the work as possible yourself like blocking if you had to pay someone to do this it would cost you an arm and a leg but do it yourself all it costs you some sandpaper and some time blocking out a car is one of the most critical steps in a quality paint job concave surfaces like this can really mess with you so make sure that you use a block that matches the contour of your surface that you're sanding on otherwise you're just going to start sanding a bunch of lines into it also make sure when you're sanding don't sand straight up and down like this because you'll do the same thing just like it's starting to do there that quick you'll start cutting grooves into your surface you're a pain in the butt to sand back out move it across and keep your block at an angle give you a nice clean surface to paint on and as you're sanding like this don't forget you also need to cross your pattern that way you can blend it all together one last thing don't run over the top your body lines because by leaving that guide coat right along that edge it's going to tell you if your body lines are still straight save that for the very last thing while blocking it's almost guaranteed that you're going to run across some nicks or chips kind of like these now you could sand this thing out but you're running a risk of actually digging the panel out creating a dip or a wave which you'll see once you throw on a bunch of shiny me i usually choose to go ahead and fix it with a razor blade i like using a razor blade because it applies the perfect amount now once this dries it takes almost no effort to sand off the excess then you can move on which makes you a whole lot more efficient now here's a perfect example of why you use guide coat it shows you where all your low spots are apparently we have a little bit of an unwanted body line there the other thing is when you're sanding always bring it down to the body line especially in an area like this because we basically reshape the whole bottom lip of this trunk lid so that means we had to build a new body line so just keep blocking it but leave that edge and that will tell you when your body lines it straight when block sanding i like to do it in two steps first would be the coarse cut which is 80 to 120 and then follow that with a finer grit at 180 to 220. what this does is cuts down your sanding scratches to help prevent shrinkage what is shrinkage shrinkage is whenever your primer starts to dry out now if this starts to happen whenever you've got paint on it man it just looks horrible now i put some guide coat on it to help it show up better so spend some time and stand it finer trust me it's worth it it's just cheap insurance another really important aspect of blocking out a car is knowing when to stop and here's a perfect example of that we've got metal showing here filler guide coat and we still have a low spot running across our body line that indicates we may have gotten a little bit fast in finishing out our body work and getting ready for prime but at this point continuing blocking on this all it's going to do is make it worse and waste your time because you're going to have to go back over it so at this point stop finish the bodywork and get it ready for a re-prime another tip on sanding is use the longest block you can on the panel for a couple of reasons the longer the block the easier it is to sand that panel flat second that's more surface area allowing you to sand it faster we've still got a lot of sanding to do and got a hose on some final primer so y'all stick around after the break and we'll give you some tips on final sanding [Music] coming up rick reveals his secrets to laying out the perfect two-tone [Music] guys welcome back we got a final coat of primer on blue-collar buick here and got all the guide coat laid down i've heard a lot of guys ask well why can't you just use black spray paint as guide coat well there's a good reason for that true guide coat is actually a sprayable form of carbon where i spray paint what's going to jam up your paper is your sanding and cause you more problems now it's no denying that sending a car is hard work so you're probably going to end up breaking a sweat so you don't want to be dripping all your goo all over the car because this can cause contamination which leads to fish eyes and can be a bear in the booth when you try to fix it so just be cautious of this while you're standing in the car to keep all that from happening that's two basic techniques when you're blocking out a car there's either wet sanding or dry sanding there's advantages and disadvantages to both one of the big disadvantages of wet sanding is the fact that by the time you're done you are going to have a whole bunch of sludge you're going to have to go back and clean up but on the bright side kind of cleans the surface as you go you can squeegee it off and see where you're at now dry sanding i don't think it gives you quite a smooth of a surface but on the bright side it's a lot easier to simply go over it and blow it off and clean it back up but my preferred method obviously is wet sanding so i'm going to get this dude cleaned up we'll see you guys in the booth a clean surface is critical to a good paint job so after all that sanding we blew it out real well mask it off and then wiped it down with some paint prep now she's ready for some color now if you don't remember our plans for the paint scheme let me refresh your memory now we have made a few changes since this rendering was done namely we're going to add a silver stripe inside of this red that breaks the charcoal from the orange now when you're dealing with multiple colors like this you need to plan ahead so i'm going to be laying down the red first because that color is going to dictate where all the other colors end up even though the red stripes are only going to be an eighth of an inch wide i'm laying down a pretty wide stripe to give myself plenty of wiggle room when i lay out the design the quickest and most accurate way to lay out long stripes is to pull the longest lines that you can this helps keep your stripes from looking wavy [Music] this half inch tape is going down as a guide to keep the graphics straight and consistent once the upper red stripe is laid out the guide tape can go [Music] next i can lay down silver in the center of the stripe after about 20 minutes of flash time it's time to cover it all up to prevent the orange from bleeding into the graphic i'm covering the entire strike then coming back and trimming it to expose the outside edge of where the final colors will meet [Music] this in your face orange is far from custom it's just straight ppg dmd 617 toner but to make this basic toner look custom i'm topping it off with a mixture of orange and gold pearl i'm fogging in some candy tangerine on the rockers this will give a subtle fade to the lower half of the car and once it's dry i can mask off for the final color [Music] when you're doing any kind of two-tone it's really important to seal up all the gaps between panels where color is going to travel inside the car and come out where you really don't expect it [Music] the last color is a metallic charcoal called dark smoke poly also known as gm code number 14. it'll take three coats to cover and a dust coat to even out the metallic [Music] hey guys welcome back we're down to my favorite part of a paint job and that's where you get to unmask it see how it's going to look all right guys now normally the next thing that we show you here is the clear coat going on but i'm going to let you in on a little secret kind of a behind the scenes sort of a thing i know a lot of you guys think that we somehow work out of some swirling vortex at perfection here but it's just not true we get problems just like everybody else and i'm going to show you a little secret here before you put down the clear coat it's a good idea to go over the whole thing with some dx330 and look for spots just like this now these are actually marks that are left by the tape and the base coat now they look pretty bad without the clear coat on it but the 330 will show you that with the clear on it they'll turn invisible so it's nothing to worry about this right here though that's a whole other story because paint will bleed underneath your tape that's got to be fixed now for spots in the pinstripe like that red i usually use good old-fashioned striping brush but if you don't have one of these you can always go back re-mask it and spot it in with a gun but i've just found this is a whole lot faster and for me a lot easier as that dries it'll darken up and you won't even see it that's about all there is to it i'm gonna go around this car here clean up a few edges and then be ready to clear it i'm using ppg 2021 clear now we could have used cheaper materials but i've sprayed a lot of this 2021 and trust me it's worth the extra few dollars it has excellent uv protection and polishes out like glass [Music] and for all you haters out there that swore that the buick would never be cool check this out and all the materials for the paint around 1150 bucks tire rack hooked us up with a set of 20 inch wheels with tires for only 1 500. that may seem like a big chunk of our tiny budget but hey it's gonna make up a big chunk of the overall look and that leaves us over 1200 bucks to do the interior and still keep our budget under 10 grand i think we can still do it because i've got some money saving plans for the interior yeah i got some ideas too but that's gonna have to wait till next week because for this week we're out of time so until next time we're out of here today on muscle car don't trash that old dash learn to fix it without a lot of cash ugly interior we'll show you how to dye it repair it or fab it for a fresh new look ride along as project blue collar hits the town [Music] hey welcome to muscle car we're down to the final stages of the build of blue collar buick all we need is some glass interior and some sweet sounding exhaust we're going to knock all that out today so we can take our ugly duckling turned cool buick out on the streets see how many heads we can turn it's amazing how far the 73 century has come we revived an old buick 455 for the power plant and installed a shift kit in the 350 turbo our low bug body mods like modifying the bumpers updating the door handles and hand-fabbing the taillights gave it an all-new attitude topped off with a slick two-tone paint job and some 20-inch wheels and we've got one six street cruiser even after that we've got 1200 left of our 10 grand budget most of the cash will be spent on the interior we need to dye the seats and door panels throw in a headliner and carpet add in a floor shifter and console paint the steering column and put in a new steering wheel the dash needs a little extra work so i went ahead and removed it let me show you what i've got planned for that this thing obviously could use a coat of color but also i'm going to have to deal with this big crack which is a common problem no one re-pops these and a used one would probably have the same issues so i'm just going to do a little plastic repair and fix this one a big hump is formed where the sun has baked the plastic so i'll need to get it leveled off and i've never liked these perforated built-in speaker grills so since the crack runs right through it it's getting filled in i'll also be the edges of the crack to give the adhesive plenty of surface area to grip some masking tape will act as a form for the glue until it dries this is a two-part plastic repair adhesive and has to be mixed really well before it's applied make sure you mash it in all the holes and don't lay it on too thin or the repair won't last once it sets up a quick hit with a rotary grinder will prep it for the glaze coating [Music] this glaze is a flexible filler and won't crack like regular body filler wood but you do have to sand it just like any other filler and once it's smooth it's ready for sealer and paint well tommy's been working on the dash i got a wrecking yard bucket seat set in place and they fit pretty good they're out of a 1974 cut list and they're in pretty good shape so all we have to do clean them up and dye them hey man i gotta wait for that dash to dry so i'm gonna go ahead and take these off your hands if you don't mind would you find the rear seats and get them cleaned up for me sure i can do that thanks brother the best way to prep your seats is to take them all the way apart it's worth the effort because your dye job will look better and last longer then you can hit it with some dish soap one thing to watch for as you're cleaning and prepping your seats is to see if the water beads up if it does that's some form of oil wax or conditioner that must be removed for the dye to adhere properly and make sure to rinse them off with clean water once they're done [Music] rick got the back seat all cleaned up but there's one small little problem a couple of the seams are busted no big deal i'll just stitch them up and it'll be ready for a new coat of color i've got to get to the back side of the vinyl so i need to do a little disassembly with material this old you've got to be really careful not to cause more damage once the backing is opened up i can grab my poster needle and heavy duty thread and go to town let my grandmother be proud let's see what we got yeah that doesn't look bad at all especially for somebody that doesn't operate a sewing needle a whole lot this thing's ready for some color now [Music] i'm using a professional vinyl dye it's easy to apply and gives an original looking finish in fact most people won't be able to tell these parts didn't come this color while tommy gets another coat of color laid down on the seats i'm going to get the console and shifter installed they came out of the same vehicle as their front buckets did a 1974 cutlass now they're pretty similar vehicles so hopefully this stuff will go in without causing me too much hassle now first i'm going to see if i'm lucky enough to have pre-existing mounting points i must have been good somewhere because the holes are already factory stand all i have to do is cut a shifter hole and run in some self-tapping screws as markers now next i need to set the carpet in place to cut the access holes now i know the color looks a little reddish on camera but trust me it's black the studio lights are just playing some tricks with us here [Music] now i can take the marker screws back out mount the shifter and check the fit of the console and trim that went in easier than i thought i think i'll pull this thing back out sneak it into the pile of parts that tom's getting ready to die i bet he won't even notice coming up rick shows you how easy it is to keep the bugs out of your teeth [Music] hey welcome back i've got most of the interior parts painted including the dash pillar post and console i've decided to two-tone the door panels because they've got this factory trimmed out area the front ones are all done the rears mask up they're ready for the grate when you're dyeing an interior you can be as creative as you want i'm doing a two-tone instead of one solid color but if you feel like masking a lot you could take it even further with different color inserts stripes and accents [Music] sweet that looks pretty good now all we like is a couple pieces on the inside and we'll be ready to throw all these pieces in it there's not a whole lot in here i need to hit with the spray can the lower dash the steering column and a trim panel at the speaker deck rick's already got it all prepped out for me so all i gotta do is tape it up while the dash dries i can get the rear speaker panel covered a local upholstery shop sewed us some vinyl and upholstery board i cut it to fit and a can of glue is going to hold it all together a poster board is a thick cardboard it's textured on one side so you don't have to cover it but to get a cleaner look it can be wrapped like i'm doing here upholstery glue is really easy to use just spray it on both sides give it a few minutes to set and stick the pieces together make sure there's no wrinkles or bubbles before you let it dry when you're wrapping the edges make some relief cuts so it won't bunch up in the corners we could have bought some black vinyl but to make sure the color will match with the rest of the panels i'm just going to spray it with the same dye after some dry time we can install all the parts we've revived the controls gauges radio and vents are all original parts we just cleaned up and they don't look bad at all [Music] [Music] there was no help for the old steering wheel so we called up summit racing for one to match the new color scheme to complete the interior the original back seats can drop in and the recycled buckets can find their new home like most of the parts that we've put on today the glass is original to the car it's in pretty good shape so all we did is clean this stuff up and we'll go ahead and reinstall it our only real money that we had to spend was on some clips a little bit of urethane i cleaned the glass first with some heavy duty cleaner and four ought steel wool so now i can apply the urethane primer around the inside edge that stuff is actually doing two different things here it's going to help the urethane stick but beyond that covers up all the little bubbles along the edge and don't forget to apply some to the window channel too [Music] next come the clips there's a lot of different styles but they all basically installed the same way slide them over the tab and lock them into place this car originally used a butyl rope seal but urethane is a safer alternative a simple caulk gun and strong forearm are all that's needed cutting the tip in a v will give me a taller bead than a straight cut would the glass needs to drop in immediately before the urethane starts to skin over so don't wait around get it as close as you can before you drop it into place what i'm doing here is just kind of working some of this urethane back in i like to do it just because i hate it when you get this thing all done put together you wash the car for the first time and you see that little trickle of water going down the inside of your windshield this right here will help prevent that from happening in keeping with the no chrome look we blacked out all the trim [Music] there we go with all the trim installed there's just one thing left the exhaust because cherry bombs are budget friendly and they sound great so i'm going to go ahead and hang some pipe under the buick but stick around because later on in the show we're going to be taking blue collar out for a maiden voyage [Music] we started out with 10 grand burning a hole in our pocket and that bought us the 73 buick century plus a few upgrades between paint parts and power we slid in just under budget some cars are built to burn up the track or carve through the back roads but this one is more about going slow low and being seen we topped off the tank and pointed it towards the tallest buildings we could find it cruised the freeway like a champ but when we hit the streets of downtown it felt right at home with this 455 stoplight action would be no problem but that wouldn't give people time to stare laughs [Music] [Music] the clouds over the city are nice but now that the motor's broken in we're headed to our secret back road to make a few clouds of our own you know these old buicks ain't really known for the horsepower but they're known for their torque [Music] you know rick this thing definitely belongs on the road i know guys that spend a whole lot more to get a whole lot less that's for sure hey man after riding around all day i'm about ready to grab a bite maybe something cold to drink you cool with that no joke me too buddy hey for this week we're out of time so until next time we're out of here today on muscle car blue collar buick is back for some performance upgrades rick swaps out the turbo 350 for a 700r overdrive trans and tommy shows how to measure for custom push rods [Music] hey guys welcome to muscle car blue collar buick here has been a huge success and we've taken a big boring beast and turned it into a cool cruiser slash daily driver and we did it all for under 10 grand and most of you guys really seem to dig it but we also caught a lot of flack from some buick fans the buzz on v8buick.com says we're not doing justice to the 455 so we're going to take that as a challenge and turn our blue collar from a cruiser to a bruiser with a hotter cam better heads and intake bigger carburetor and headers we're expecting a 35 to 40 percent increase in horsepower but before we do anything we need to get a baseline so we're making the long trip down the hall to the horsepower shop and strapping blue collar down to the chassis dyno to see what we've got we know there's hidden power in tuning but since upgrades are on their way we're going to hold off until the new parts are installed under a 94 horsepower 271 foot-pounds of torque i think there's a room for some improvement though there's a lot of room well you can see the the curves the horsepower and torque curves we just never tuned it right built it bolted it on and ran it we haven't touched it now i'll be honest with you it hurts just a little bit tearing apart this engine that was running so well but a lot of these parts are going to be reused and in the end it'll definitely be worth the pain well looks like our buick is running pretty good nice and wide and clean but it's going to be even better i don't know why buick made that hole on top of that manifold to save weight that's the only thing i can guess unless it's in the manufacturing process of some sort of stamping it out because during the war they're trying to conserve steel i smell fertilizer i'd like to know why now we know that you really wouldn't use a cherry picker to pull an intake but we're trying to make a point here you got it yeah these suckers are heavy okay whose idea was it to use a tree breaker okay you got it yeah i got this okay okay come back careful come back careful you're looking at 80 pounds of cast iron here thanks buick that's good to say it all now when we originally built this engine we had a pretty strict budget in mind so we used a camshaft that would give us a few extra ponies but didn't require us to upgrade any of the valve train this new one from crane cams has more lift and duration so it's going to give us more power and torque as well as a broader power band plus the idle is going to be far from stock sure we could have gone with an even hotter cam but that requires bigger heads more compression a higher stall and shorter gears but all of these affect drivability and we want to keep blue collar street friendly after setting the number one cylinder to top dead center the old timing set and cover can go back on sometimes headers need to be set in place along with the engine since we didn't pull the engine we need to make sure they're going to fit once the heads are on step one is getting the stock manifolds out of the way oh yeah it does drop right in you put them in now though it's going to be harder to do the transmission yeah let's just leave them off and finish the top end yeah stick the heads on now these old buick heads well they're not just heavy these are the lowest compression least desirable heads that buick has ever built so swapping them out is a no brainer the edelbrock heads well they're half the weight plus they have bigger valves smaller combustion chambers and a better designed rocker arm assembly and that makes for a whole lot more power and better reliability we've already installed the gaskets that came in our edelbrock gasket set so the heads are ready to go on some loctite thread sealant will not only keep the bolts in place it'll lubricate the threads for more accurate torque reading after running them down with an impact we'll torque them to spec in three or four stages then drop the lifters in the stock push rods won't work with these heads edelbrock tells us the required length using these heads with an undeck block but if your block's been decked or your heads have been milled it's going to require measuring for some custom push rods push rods move the rocker back and forth over the valve tip if the push rod is too long it will push the roller off the outer edge too short and it will slip off the inside edge the idea is for the rocker to stay in the center 80 percent of the valve tip surface the most accurate way to gauge what length you need is with a push rod measuring tool there's a couple different types but the one that i like to use comes in a calibrated length and doesn't require any other tools make sure the lifter is at base or the lowest point drop the tool into the lifter making sure it's seated and place a rocker on the stud adjust the tool by twisting the two halves apart until the roller is at the correct point on the inner edge of the valve stem put on a rocker nut and tighten to zero lash then turn an additional three quarter turn for lifter preload turn the crank until the lifter is at its highest point and check for roller placement on the outer edge of the valve stem if it's not right repeat the process until the lowest and highest points are correct then simply remove the push rod and count how many turns you've made the preset length of this tool is 8.8 inches and each full turn adds 50 000 we twist it at 17 turns making our total length 9.650 this matches what edelbrock told us we should order for our unmodified block and heads we ordered a set from crane along with the cam and rockers so we can go ahead and install them the rockers go on just like we showed you earlier making sure each lifter is at base tightening the rocker nut to zero lash then going another three quarters turn edelbrock performer intakes boost torque and give quicker throttle response plus they're 50 pounds lighter than stock and with their gaskets no valley pan is required with aluminum parts it's important to use anti-seize on the bolts to prevent stripping and use the recommended torque sequence and edelbrock 800 cfn carb will run as smooth as factory and help boost horsepower there's nothing wrong with the stock water pump alternator pulleys and fan so all these parts are going back on as is while i finish all this stuff up rick's gonna get our ignition upgrades ready to install our 455 is building more power and turn into higher rpms and we want to make sure that the ignition is up to the task because if you're not getting the spark to the cylinders then all these upgrades aren't going to do you a bit of good now we already have an electronic ignition but we can improve on it with summit's hei upgrade kit it includes a hotter coil for a stronger spark and the cap itself is higher quality with a better casting and contacts for a longer life the module is more precise to handle those higher rpms and the kit comes with different weights and springs so you can adjust the timing curve and to make sure that that hotter spark gets to the plugs you need a better set of wires msd's universal 8.5 set well these will handle anything that we're going to throw at them be sure the motor is at top dead center and drop the distributor in with the rotor in the correct position with the motor buttoned up we can install our aluminum radiator from summit racing hey guys welcome back when we first put the drivetrain in this thing we kept the original turbo 350 just to keep costs down but i've got my doubts whether or not this 35 year old transmission here is going to hold up to all the extra power we're going to be getting out of this 455. so as long as we got to freshen something up we might as well upgrade the 700 r4 has a shorter first gear and an overdrive so that means you can run a shorter rear gear for those stop light battles but still have the high speed cruising capabilities of the overdrive a tci super street fighter transmission is one step away from a full on competition unit all the internals have been upgraded to handle up to 600 horse so that means we don't have to worry about twisting the guts out of that dude when you're upgrading your drivetrain make sure the converter is matched to your rear end gears and your engine specs are too low of a stall and your motor could die at idle too high of a stall and it'll rev right past its power band before your car even starts to move now if you're not sure which one to get call your supplier they'll hook you up at the right one all right guys i know we've gone over this before but it's important and it bears repeating when you put a converter on make sure that you get it lined up with both sets of splines and the two tabs on the front of your pump are lined up with the two slots in the converter if you don't get all of that lined up then when you cinch it up against your engine it'll put pressure on the front pump and crack it so it should drop in twice there's one and there's two once it's all the way in then you're good to go once the housing is bolted up connect the coolant lines and tv cable not to be confused with a kick down cable the tv cable controls the internal fluid pressure and must be adjusted correctly when you're switching from a turbo 350 to a 700 you're gonna run into a few snags but buddy that's just part of hot rodding one of the problems is that a 700 is a few inches longer than a 350. it's not that big of a deal this one in particular though the mount was a little bit lower than the factory 350. so what i'm doing is sliding the cross member back i'm going to extend the plate out forward to bolt it into this is a pretty basic piece but a template will still help with the design eighth inch plate is plenty strong enough for this task and can be easily cut with a band saw or a plasma cutter i'll tack it in place in the car then remove the whole crossmember to finish welding [Music] while rick's finishing his piece i'll shorten the exhaust to make room for the header [Music] line that up it should drop right in easy as pie now obviously we're gonna have to shorten up the drive shaft also but we'll do that when we do the rear end so for now it's on to the headers this engine's gonna be pumping out a lot more air than it did from the factory and those stock manifolds well they're just gonna choke it down a lot like breathing through a straw these hookers super comp long tube headers from summit racing they're gonna give us the airflow it needs they have thicker flanges for a better seal and heavier tubing gives longer life and controls heat well guys we took some big steps today in turning our big block buick into a real street pounder by upgrading the entire top end headers transmission and a whole lot more if you have any questions about anything we used today you can check it out at powerblocktv.com to handle all that extra power you could really use a beefed up rear axle and some better brakes and then we can throw it on the dyno and see how bad our buick can really be but we're all out of time for this week so until next week y'all keep between the ditches today on muscle car blue collar buick gets a rear end swap and disc brake conversion to go with its beefed up 455 check out the post upgrade dyno numbers and see how a hood tack is installed then tommy shows off the buick at the gs nationals [Music] hey welcome to muscle car we love a challenge around here and when you build guys out there threw down the gauntlet and suggested we was wasting this 455 with our original budget build well we decided to kick it up a notch last time we upgraded this dude to stage one performance with a more aggressive cam better heads intake and ignition a bigger carb long tube headers and a new training it's always nice to have some numbers to brag about so coming up later in the show we got a date with the dyno but first we got a few more upgrades to do we're expecting a whole lot more torque out of that motor so rear end upgrade well that's a given then we're going to be swapping out these rear drums for new discs now technically there's nothing wrong with this eight and a half but it's a one legger and that means all the power goes to one wheel while the other wheel just sits there looking dumb by adding a posi unit we're gonna send the same amount of power to each of the two wheels that'll make for better traction and better acceleration and while we're in there we're going to throw on a set of shorter gears because that'll help get the engine into its power band a lot quicker now here's something interesting about this rear end it doesn't have c-clips on the axles they are actually bolt-in not a lot of guys know about them but gm did make them bolt-in axles are better for performance applications if an axle breaks the wheel will stay attached to the car with c-clips the broken axle with the wheel and tire attached can exit the housing and turn your day at the drag strip into a real drag a pry bar stuck between the ring and pinion gears will jam them up so you can get the pinion nut loose the caps come off next they need to go back on the same side that came off of so make sure not to mix them up a little gentle persuasion and the stock open diff will pop right out knock the pinion in to get the yoke off and the rest of the assembly will slide out if you're looking at buying a used rear end out of a wrecking yard and maybe out of a swap meet you want to double check what gears are in that rear end before you lay down your cash it's pretty simple just pop the rear diff cover off and look for the number stamped in the ring gear look for the last sequence of numbers in here and then divide the second number into the first number in this case it'd be 15 into 41. so we know that this is a 273 gear set now the lower the number the taller the gear ratio and that can mean a lot slower acceleration now these gears combined with an overdrive transmission they'd be way too tall so we're going to swap out to a set of 373s now these will give us better acceleration but combined with the overdrive transmission we can still cruise down the freeway at a decent rpm but before we can put anything back in the housing i need to do some pre-assembly the press will get the new bearings installed on the pinion and locker but you can also carry them down to your local machine shop and they can take care of them in a jiffy pretty easy but the races are pressed in and require a little more convincing if your housing is out of the car the best way to install a new race is with a press but since ours is still bolted in the car a hammer and brass punch will do the job just be careful not to damage or distort the race in any way with the new bearing set and a seal in place the pinion crush leaf and yolk are up next up next blue collar's got a lot more go power now rick's gonna give it some woe power and later the event of the year for buick fans [Applause] [Music] hey guys welcome back when you're doing performance upgrades on a vehicle bolting on all those high performance go fast goodies is the fun part but don't forget stopping is pretty important too now drum brakes are prone to fading and overheating adding bigger wheels and tires and more speed the problem's just gonna get worse now disc brakes run cooler and they're a lot more efficient so they can handle the pressure bringing that nearly two ton beast to a halt now summit racing sent us this conversion kit for a gm10 bolt but they're available for just about anything drum brakes aren't horrible and they've safely stopped vehicles for over a century but the fact is disc brakes are simpler lighter and safer the only thing we're reusing here is the e-brake cable everything else is out of here the flex line and all the fittings came in summit's brake kit which means you don't have to shop around for odds and ends to finish your install [Music] that's about it now we don't have to worry about scrubbing off any excess speed now we just have to bleed these out install a shortened driveshaft then it's back to the dyno to see if this big block lives up to the name buick coming up hood tacks aren't just for pontiacs find out how easy it is to install one in your ride then blue collar takes a trip to buick heaven before we started our upgrades we made a baseline dyno run so we'd have some before numbers for comparison 194 horsepower 271 foot-pounds of torque from the minute we fired her up we could tell she had a deeper growl but we're after more than just sound the dyno numbers are going to tell us if we've reached our goal of a 40 percent horsepower increase [Music] picked up a few 290 torque picked up to 352. your peak's right at five grand and it starts to roll off that's a good gain that is almost 100 horsepower difference dude 50 gain that's fantastic that's not bad now that we got some respectable power under the hood it's gonna be kind of hard to keep my foot off the gas so to make sure i don't overdo it we're gonna add a hood tech all right now i know what you guys are thinking hood tacks are for pontiacs well it's true that they were more common on the gtos and the firebirds you could special order them on the buick gs's and they were basically the same thing just with the faces changed a little bit now this kind of creative part swapping was pretty common with gm back then and we're going to do the same thing now they do make buick hood tacks but the 5200 red line on this pontiac model well it's pretty much dead on to where we need it to be and we took a cue from gm and just modified the face to fit our project pretty cool huh all right dude these things weren't exactly available in 73 so we can put it wherever we want well i was looking over here at the underside of the hood right here it wouldn't interfere with all the bracing and all yeah i'm gonna drop the hood real quick give or take about there yeah don't look bad up here looks like it should work right that's perfect it's not your line of sight to see the road either good deal first i'll mark the bottom side to make sure we'll clear all the braces after drilling the pilot hole the hole saw comes out you can actually smell the fresh paint as it chews its way through poor rick had to leave the room while i did this but you gotta break some eggs to make an omelet and this one's looking pretty good a paper template will help mark where the mounting holes need to be drilled step drill bits are designed for drilling through sheet metal and ensure a perfectly round hole after smoothing off the rough edges i'll mask up the hole and shoot on some dupli-color etch primer and semi-gloss black one problem with the first hood attacks was moisture getting into the housing and fogging up the lens modern repops they're sealed up but if you're restoring an original you can use the same fix as the 69 up models did it's as easy as running a tube from the heater box to the housing and that's why i drilled that extra hole since ours is a modern version we don't need to do this but we wanted to show you guys just how easy it is after screwing in a hose barb the tag can be dropped into place rubber vacuum line works fine for the feed run it through any available hole in the firewall and pull the excess through to the inside drill a hole in the heater box being careful not to rupture the heater coil flaps or anything else important a 90 degree hose bar completes the defrost option on our attack all that's left now is the wiring it's just a few simple connections that run from the pigtail to the ground distributor and fuse block as usual painless wiring lives up to their name with the right connectors on hand extending the wiring really is painless hei distributors all have attacked terminal making this part of the install a breeze to make the light functional just tap into a switched hot on the fuse block with all the connections completed i can cinch it down and test it out [Music] [Music] dude that is cool now she's ready to roll i take it up for a quick road test man i was thinking more like a road trip you game i can't brother i have to go pick up her next project gonna have to go on without me well i try to keep it on two wheels most of the time we'll see you bye all right [Music] after the break take a trip to the ultimate buick event [Music] blue collar is running like a champ so i pointed her toward bowling green kentucky where the buick gs nationals are in full swing this is the place to go if you have a buick or if you just love looking at them man there's some nice looking buicks here there's guys and gals from all over the country here see how many people are here showing off their buick pride thank you sir appreciate you watching why did i choose buick happen to see a full set of tail lights go past the 1965 gs i said when i get out of the service i'm going to have a gs we all do our cars just to make them you know what we want a lot of fun buicks in every style color and era are on display here plus some unexpected surprises it's a turbocharged cadillac got the grand national uh motor in it and speaking of grand nationals these turbo v6 muscle cars that took the 80s by storm are here and forth i'm feeling like a kid in a candy shop with all these buick beauties on display but there's one that's caught my eye hmm this one seems kind of familiar oh blue color is definitely at home here it's a beautiful paint job that's a beautiful paint job oh it's a beauty boy that is just beautiful i like the wheels the wheels are sharp this crowd really seems to like what we've done to our 73 century but this event's about more than just looking good it's about going fast the drag strip is calling these guys name [Music] you're not going to see any mustangs or camaros on this track it's all buick power today [Applause] [Music] [Music] this is a perfect chance to put our new performance upgrades to the test let's see what this girl will do [Music] [Music] 13.8 not bad for a two-ton car with no hook oh blue collar has done everything we've asked her to do and more she may not be everybody's idea of a muscle car but we hope it's inspired you to think outside of the box and redefine what a muscle car can be i want to thank the gs club of america for putting on a great show i'm headed back to the track for one more run so until next week y'all keep it between the ditches you

Channel: POWERNATION 2

Views: 1,222,534

Keywords: powernation, powerblock, powernation tv, powerblock tv, how to, cars, trucks, do it yourself, full build, muscle car, 973 Buick Century Restomod, restomod, buick, buick century, car restoration

Id: 2zELd9qMbAo

Length: 145min 42sec (8742 seconds)

Published: Sat May 21 2022