FULL BUILD Buick Regal: Some Say Pro-Touring, We Say Pro-Luxury

today on detroit muscle the boys take a trip back to the 80s with not one but two new project cars there's lots to be done with renderings being made along with a custom chassis [Music] hey y'all welcome to detroit muscle now we've been making some pretty good progress on our 69 charger but we're just like everybody else out there we'll start a couple of projects before our old one is even halfway done now we're fixing to jump into an area that's not really known for the big power of muscle whenever it comes to the you know automotive side of things let's say it's more known for its big hair and a few bad decisions and you know how bad decisions go typically where there's one there's another one right behind it and that's the case for me and tommy here because we are gluttons for punishment we've decided to take on both of these 80s ladies at the same time first up is this super clean 1985 buick regal and this one is gonna be my ride up under here we've got 3.8 liters of tire shredding madness not really however this little v6 does get pretty good fuel mileage and is reliable but it doesn't make the power that we're looking for now you guys remember buick did make a v6 that made some really good power but it had a big turbo hanging on it we're not really gonna go that route but you guys are gonna have to stay tuned to see what we do [Music] next is this dirty girl right here an 81 cobra nice well you may think that buick is fancy but it's not a 1981 ford mustang cobra this thing's got something on that old buick oh two things actually two more cylinders this is a v8 but i don't really want to talk about the power output because let's just say it didn't come from the golden age of high performance mustangs we're having a little bit of a build off with these hair band honeys and the plan is to go a couple different ways with them [Music] with both of these projects we got a long way to go mr mark on yours what's your plans for that big mustang what do you think they are 347 bigs and littles on the wheels and tires big stupid tack on the dash maybe some black paint throwing your hair long in the back and pulling the sleeves out of your shirts mm-hmm you might have hit a couple of them but i'm not going to tell you which ones so what about the buick grandpa well you know we're going to have to get some of that grandma scent out of the inside so we're going to you know fix the interior up a bit and then we're going to have to address this painting candy paint no not candy paint we're going to have to also fix the wheels because these things being 26s no just bigger wheels not huge wheels and then we're going to put some power under the hood because this little motor ain't going to do it oh yeah single turbo yo grand national clone i got it oh no we may pull a few of those accessories off of a grand national if you will and put them on this because it's hard to beat a grand national but let's say let's go grab a cheeseburger and enjoy driving them for a bit before we tear them apart all right well my tires hold air you can ride with me if you want to if they have a flat you know at least you'll be comfortable in this one oh this is comfy oh this is nice pillow top seat well when it comes to 80s cars to me there's nothing better than a fox body mustang i mean i am kind of partial to fords i grew up in a ford family and my mom always drove a mustang sure but i just think that the fox body is the quintessential 80s car a few of you guys maybe wonder why would someone want to pick a grand mall car like this one well it's actually because these things are getting really popular and back in the 80s well the grand national which is the brother i guess you would say of this little regal well was the fastest production car of that era you can't find another car that has more aftermarket support than this maybe a jeep but certainly not in the muscle car market is there anything out there like the parts available for the fox body quite frankly i just want to be a little bit different that fox body mustang well it's going to be really hard to stand out if you're going to build one of those [Music] timings behind me i'll show them what's up oh yeah oh you feel that shift even the power shift is comfortable that shows what kind of power this thing makes right now we just reached 65 miles an hour and i shipped it in the drive yeah [Music] y'all see that also steered this car with my finger glad y'all made your way back now often times whenever you start a project and start telling your buddies about it well sometimes it can be a little difficult for them to understand the direction of your build one of the easiest ways to tell the story is to contact an artist and have them fix you up with a rendering this is the one that we had done for our buick i've been working with carter hickman at carter hickman designs and he came up with this gorgeous concept for our buick project he used a photorealistic approach and hit it with a great looking burgundy paint scheme along with some black accents top it all off with those modern wheels and that aggressive stance and you've got one mean regal welcome to grant alabama southeast of huntsville it sports a booming population of 907 people it was comfy this thing does ride nice why do you want to mess with it it's a perfect grandma car the way it is hey y'all welcome back now the first step to our buick build involved us taking a little road trip down here to this great town of grand alabama and we all know that tommy and this buick here can use all the help we can give them so we figured we'd give tommy a head start here at street rod garage so this thing can get an updated undercarriage here at sugar garage we specialize in building custom chassis for muscle cars street rods hot rods and just about anything else everything is done in-house we design them test do all the cad work engineering everything's done in-house now the first step is we got to get this car on the lift so that we can start developing that chassis that's good the reason we got to do this is because they haven't developed a chassis for a g-body yet so what you gonna do under here well now that we've got it on the lift we will we will go through the entire chassis front to back and we will map the entire chassis we'll go through start to finish we'll take our dimensions all the way through step by step uh once we get all that plugged into the computer then we will start working our transitions where it transitions in here where it transitions there if we're running a wider tire if we're going to do a modified rear a lot of times it depends on what the customer wants and what they want to do a lot of times in a real complicated independent or something like that you have to modify the car to make that happen if we have a customer like in this instance we don't want to cut this car up we're going to use something that we know will fit we're going to use a modified triangulated four link a parallel four-link maybe a torque arm set up or something like that that's going to fit under the original body without having to cut the floor from the car [Music] now comes the meticulous part chris has to measure a series of key points all along the underside of the car using a laser and a ruler and translate those measurements to a paper template [Music] alright the next step is we'll take all the notes that we've taken we'll go back to the computer and we start plugging all these numbers in and start actually drawing the perimeter frame once we get all that in we've got our frame perimeter design we're ready to start doing the transitions and all that and then we will carry that over onto this system where we're ready to cut parts we'll start cutting the parts and pieces to build a frame on the cnc plasma table uh all those parts will then go out be cleaned up ready to set the jig and then uh we try to get to the point where we've got a perimeter frame that we can test under the car and then that's the point we start doing suspension well i know it's going to take a few weeks for you guys to fab up a big killer chassis so i guess you'll be in touch right yeah we'll be in touch a few weeks cool well this is where i'm supposed to inject like an insult to this guy for driving a mustang but i just did you ready to go after you this way i'll let you you know be ahead of me for once hey folks thanks for joining us in case you haven't noticed i'm on a bit of a road trip we've got a few stops to make today because i'm on the hunt for some seed upgrades for my mid 80s buick regal project all three places we need to go are here in northern alabama so that's going to make it pretty easy the first stop we've got to make we found whenever we were coming back from the street rod garage guys and it's what's called the fiero factory now they had those little cars sitting around for days and i'm hoping they have just what we need [Music] you might be wondering why go to a fiero graveyard when you're building a buick well here's the short version i've been told that fiero seats will bolt right onto the tracks that go into one of those mid-80s buicks and these seats are much sportier than the factory ones we have well with that done we're pretty much ready to move on to our next stop and that's going to be street rod garage we're going to see what the status of the buick and how much progress they've made and while we're there we're going to go ahead and pull out the buick seats that way you know we can start making progress with the interior on it [Music] from here it's a pretty short hop down to grand alabama where our buick is [Music] [Music] we'll get to work getting these seats out and that includes the back ones as well now while i'm here i'm going to go ahead and grab the door panels in the rear panel because i want to upgrade it as well as the seats this wood grain is in really nice shape but it kind of has that old person feel to it we can do something there i'm sure [Music] man i appreciate you helping us get this stuff out we'll come back and see whatever chassis he's doing if you'll give us a call all right no problem all right bud see you [Music] [Music] well we're making some pretty good timing since we're in the area we're going to stop by and see some friends of mine wayne and pamela from m m interiors these guys do some spectacular work so let's just check them out and see what cool stuff they got going on [Music] hey y'all how you doing what are you doing way off down here well we slipped out for a little bit but i got some interior stuff that i'm needing i guess address and didn't know if you guys might could help me out with it we'll take a look at it and see what you got all right i'll bring it in then i don't put you out too much sounds like a plan well here's the door panels and i was hoping we could do something to kind of get rid of this mom all wood grain if you will oh yeah yeah that's not any problem to do away with that just got some nuts on the backside and kind of yeah modern it up a little bit yeah we're kind of going with like a pro touring kind of feel to it now it's not going to be like a machined out car kind of a street driven type deal but you know i want it to have that that vibe if you will yeah yeah that kind of more performance oriented vibe than than the grand mal wood grain absolutely not a problem can we get rid of this chia pet stuff down there oh yeah yeah the fake fur's got to go we can we can just pull that stuff right off and make some kind of cool insert to fit in there to tie everything together and man a little bit of work and make it make it look real good all right well let me grab the seats and we can talk about that all right sounds good eminem hot rod interiors is a great place to go if you're looking to get either an interior restoration done or to get one customized like we are now you can look at this little jewel here and you can tell that it's a product of the 80s with that big pillow top seat oh yeah and i'm not really a big fan of it so if we could get away from that it'd be a good thing yeah i think so you got to get away from grandma's seat for a pro touring car now this seat here come out of a fiero do you think it's something that we can work with yeah absolutely we've done these for years in street rods and muscle cars they they fit good they look good they have the look of a high-end aftermarket seat at a fraction of the cost now with the pro touring things oftentimes you see it's got a bunch of different colors and textures and materials is that something you can handle yeah i think so we can probably do some heavy contrast stitching on the sides and maybe some kind of cool cloth insert to give it that more modern muscle car look so yeah not a problem now on some of the research that i've seen that you can take the seat tracks off of this one and bolt to the bottom of that and it's practically a bolt-in swap do you mind if we try that yeah just throw it up here tommy we'll see if we can get those tracks off thinking it worked i believe it'll work well i'm actually surprised that this worked as easy as it did i am too usually it never does but this is going to be a lot better than working on grandma seats so can i come back and see you in a few weeks or so absolutely we'll take care of it all right then [Music] today on detroit muscle tommy and mark give us an update on the projects that we have in the shop plus we get to work getting project street regal onto its new chassis [Music] hey y'all welcome to detroit muscle i'm tommy boschers and i'm mark chris and in case this is your first time tuning in here's what we're all about we like anything that's cool or fast whether it be classic muscle or late model performance we do everything from salvation to restoration with one thing in mind making them look good and run like hell and we always find a way to weave in the one thing that's more important than all that having a real good time the three project cars that we're working on here in the shop are from the big three we've got a ford a gm and a mopar they're all at different stages of the build and with completely different attitudes the apple of our eye would have to be this 69 dodge charger you can't get much higher up in the food chain of the muscle car world than one of these now whenever we picked up project hard charger it was nowhere near this suite you could say it was in the knee of a little bit of tlc we're going with big power big brakes big wheels and big fun so in days to come keep watching and see project hard charger come to life but that's not the only project we have we've got a couple of 80s ladies we're going to tell you about so stick around don't go away we'll give you the inside scoop on what's in store for our 80s model projects that tommy and mark are building for their friendly head-to-head competition hey y'all welcome back the next subject for discussion is these two rides right here now i know they don't look like much but that one right there well we really haven't done nothing to it and that one over there it's kind of supposed to look that way and before we started on both of these 80s cars they were both pretty much stock and definitely slow when we first picked them up we decided it would be a cool idea to do a little build off a friendly competition if you will and even though they have similar styling they couldn't be much more different one's a ford one's a gm [Music] one is a unibody and one has a full frame one's pretty sporty tommy's behind me i'll show him what's up and the other one oh yeah ooh did you feel that shift even the power shift is comfortable that shows what kind of power this thing makes well it's kind of a luxury car my plans for this thing is to add some modern conveniences with some strong power let's say fuel injection automatic transmission big brakes some fancy wheels and some pretty paint kind of a pro touring theme with a luxury feel to it pro luxury if you know what i mean and quite the opposite is what i wanted for my baby this 81 mustang cobra raw power with a carb a five-speed manual gearbox and several touches that some might say are a little rough around the edges coming up we get to work turning grandma's grocery getter into a pro touring beast hey y'all glad you made your way back no mark's been talking quite a bit of smack about my old buick back here and that's all swell and good because you know he's putting a lot of work into that ride of hiss but you know what he's going to have when he's all said and done my old fox body mustang so let me give you the inside scoop on my plan i'm looking to build a refined street car with some grit it's going to have modern power billet wheels leather interior some serious suspension and sweet candy apple paint that make your teeth hurt to kick off our build i knew i needed a solid foundation to build off of so we took a trip to grand alabama to street ride garage guys have applications for chassis to fit just about everything and if they don't have one to fit your rod well they'll design one that was the case in our situation here at sugar garage we specialize in building custom chassis for muscle cars street rods hot rods and just about anything else so after a bit of sweet talking we left our regal with them to use for r d this is what they came up with it's their newest addition in their evolution series chassis a full custom frame that's boxed front to rear with inner and outer gussets for superior strength they also narrowed the rear rails a bit to help accommodate for wider rear tires for the front suspension it's a combination of c5 vet spindles with fabricated tubular upper and lower control arms and rack and pinion steering they also added a nice solid sway bar for good measure out back we're running a parallel four link with pen hard bar connected to a beefy mosher nine inch rear axle with a wave track limited slip differential to put the power to the ground for springs and shocks all four corners have adjustable qa1 coil overs that gives us the ability to dial in that ride whether we're cruising on the streets or making a hot lap at the track for a power plant i wanted something that was strong and reliable with fuel injection so i bet you can guess what i picked ls power this is a 525 horsepower ls3 from chevrolet performance it's part of their connect and cruise line and it does just that it comes with everything you need to do the install like harness pedal ecu transmission and so on what's really nice about this setup is it comes with all the pieces to the puzzle so it's a plug and play unit that's ready to go we're going to use these plywood wheels so that we can move our chassis around here in the shop we've got to fit it up under our buick and then we can measure for some custom wheels and i bet you oh mark's going to have something to say about them y'all just wait for it [Music] all right tommy i got this old chassis out of here for you hard parts done now after you're getting the old frame out from under there you can pretty much tell that this thing is nowhere near as strong it's got c channel here with that in this box got all those gussets man that piece is going to be nice up under here yeah plus this old thing's gotta go anyway might as well just roll the whole thing out [Music] stay with us we circle the wagons on our new chassis [Music] hey guys welcome back to the shop well it's finally time for us to marry the motor and transmission together and hopefully we can slide that thing onto the chassis and get all of that up under our buick come on down we need to get the engine spreader bar attached using a few bolts [Music] then we can pick it up off the pallet with our forklift so we can get it into place to mate it to our transmission [Music] since we're just mocking it up for now we're not going to install the torque converter all right there let's try that we'll just secure it with a couple of bolts [Music] all you go [Music] and maneuver it over so that we can install it onto our new chassis [Music] so excited oh let me get this trans mount on all right come on down fast preferably not and help you steady just keep an eye on that see where those mounts fall up front as i'm moving this back and when the big moment comes how's that motor oil pan's not going to clear oh oil pan's not going to clear so where we're at right now we need another oil pan to clear our cross member which isn't no big deal at all so we're gonna have to order us one of them but what we can do is still put this thing up under the car just see where it's at because it's about that much too high and i'm sure all this is still gonna have plenty of clearance so let's just see where it's at i want to see it in that today [Music] [Music] we can detach our spreader bar and roll the chassis under the body i like your wheel choice tommy are these board cottingtons no no we'll use a plumb bob to make sure our body mounts are in line with the holes on our new chassis that's pretty close [Music] then we can lower the body onto it we down now yep it's down well i have to admit tommy great engine choice it looks good in there yeah we still got quite a bit of work to do we're going to be enlarging the wheel tubs plus you never know we may accidentally bolt in one of them fancy power adders yeah you're going to need it but all that's gonna have to wait until next time so until then go to powernationtv.com hey guys welcome back we've got our buick on the lift and we're ready to get busy on it now the task at hand for today is gonna be making some room for some big old rear wheels now these tires right here pretty good size and all but i'm wanting to run even wider than this and it's not exactly just gonna fit up under there let me show you what i mean to make the room that we're going to be needing what we're going to do is take this wheel tub here and move it inward here on the body now sometimes whenever you're doing this type of modification you'll run into the frame rail but luckily for us our chassis guy accommodated us if you look here in this hole we've got a couple of inches of room to play with so what we're going to do is cut this out move it in just a bit and do some trimming and then weld in a new one now to do all that yeah it's going to take some fab work but it'll be worth it in the end so let's go ahead and get that one out of the way i'm going to start off by making a mark where i need to cut we're not trying to save this whole thing so we'll cut it into a few pieces after that i'll drill some holes so that we can get the cut [Music] the body saw has to be one of my favorite tools yeah it's a bit noisy but it makes easy work when removing panels like this up here on the front i drilled several holes and now it's just a matter of connecting the dock bam it's that easy now we need to make a few marks so that we can cut our floor what i'm going to do is move it all the way in so that it's basically parallel or flush with the side of the frame rail now here on the rear of the frame you've probably noticed that it's kind of got a 90 degree bend in it the reason they did that is because there's a body bushing under here and they're trying to attach to it now what we're going to do on the front side of that is we want it to be flush with the side of the rail so we'll mark it just like we did up there i'm going to just eyeball this line using the frame as a guide and then i'll get to spend a little more quality time with that body saw [Applause] [Music] to fill up that big old hole that we just cut in our buick what we're going to be using is a set of these factory style replacement wheel tubs that we got from summit racing now i could have made something out of flat metal did a whole bunch of hammering and shaping but for the style build that we're doing it's just really not worth it but what we are going to do is take this wheel tub cut this lip off and then we'll follow that up with a band to connect this inner to the factory outer i'll make a mark all the way around the new wheel tub and use the line as a guide when cutting an odd shape panel like this thing making a smooth straight cut can be kind of difficult but with that as a reference it's much easier [Music] looks like that's going to work just fine now i still got to do some grinding so that we can weld this thing up so i'll go ahead and do that y'all don't run off we'll see you here shortly stay with us as tommy tightens up our tubs hey guys glad you made your way back while you were gone i went ahead and ground and wire brushed all in here making preparations for some welding i also added this little tab through here and right down here on the floor that way to make it a whole lot easier to attach that new piece and what i used was just a simple piece of sheet metal that i put in the brake and made a 90 degree bend now what we need to do is take that wheel tub fit it in there and see if we need to tweak it any before we weld it into place with our wheel tub all clamped in place the next thing we need to do is fill this void here in between the two and to do that we're going to use a couple of strips of metal it's pretty simple what we're going to do is take this slide it under our factory lip and on top of this new wheel tub we'll slide it around till we get the fit exactly where we want it attach it with some panel clamps and then burn it into place know this piece looks too big right now but we'll trim it down later [Music] we'll start by installing several of these panel clamps they will hold everything together and allow us to shape our filler panel as we go [Music] i like to tap the panel slightly because the vibration helps to tighten up the clamp we'll put a few more fasteners here on the underside of the fender well because the trunk hinge brace is in the way to do it from the top [Music] we can mark our seams remove the panel clamps and slide out our filler piece using a pair of tin snips i will trim off the excess of our filler panel cutting it about a half inch from our orange guideline now all that's left to do is grind off the black coating on our new wheel tub that ought to do it with our panel back in and all trimmed up now it's time to throw some sparks [Music] i'm not welding the seams completely from top to bottom i'm going to weld it in half inch increments trying to keep each weld about an inch apart now where this panel is located you really don't have to worry about giving it too much heat and warping it just make sure it's burned in nice and soft [Music] that turned out pretty good and we've got some big gains for a little bit of work now i didn't get to address this corner because i'm gonna have to come back and fill in where the spare tire used to go if you have any questions about what you've seen on today's show go to powernationtv.com but we're all out of time for now so until next time y'all keep it between the ditches today on detroit muscle tommy and mark fabricate a new bumper for our 85 buick project street regal giving it a more aggressive appearance to go with the theme of our car [Music] hey folks welcome to detroit muscle now we've got the ball rolling again on our buick regal project here and with a full custom chassis underneath with modern suspension mini tubs and ls powertrain this thing is going to be a handler problem is still looks like your grandma's buick so we need to make it look the part as well now we're going to have to address the appearance on this thing like getting rid of some of the bright work that's on it we're toying with the idea of losing the vinyl top and you know this color we're definitely going to do something in that department but today our main course is gonna be kind of tidying up a trademark of the 1980s and that is big chrome bumpers now way back in 1985 somebody's grandmama drove this car home from the dealership and she was real happy with all that chrome not to mention these bumperettes here impact strips which are showing their age now which all of that stuff kind of screams luxury and we're going more for performance look and we've got it just mocked up for now because we want to make some changes we want to get rid of all this rubber and black plastic and the bumperettes but instead of just grinding and welding on this chrome bumper we've got a better solution that would be this piece right here that we got from classic industries it's a reproduction bumper for a grand national because if you remember they came with painted bumpers now we don't have to send it out and have the chrome stripped off of it now what we're planning to do is fill in this little recess here that's for the license plate and over here on our turn signal holes we're also wanting to add some dimples to give it more of a fabricated look but the first thing that we need to do is kind of figure out how we're going to cut this thing up we're just eyeballing this because it just has to be larger than the pocket of the turn signal on the bottom here we want to line it up with the body line [Music] we use our trusty big old cut off wheel for the long cuts [Music] and switch to the smaller one for the finer cut [Music] [Applause] now we need to make us a template using our old piece and some cardboard [Music] this is kind of like back when i was in kindergarten enjoying myself and no i wasn't one of the kids that eat paste or maybe a little bit oh yeah that's gonna work you tired of throwing sparks on that mustang hey man heavier cars bring more for scrap you know that would look better if that was made out of metal let me give me that i'll take it from here well i've got this piece of eighth inch cold rolled steel that i'm going to use to make this patch panel the problem is i'm going to have to make a bend in it now it's going to be difficult for us to do because we don't have a tool here in this shop that'll bend something that thick so we're going to have to improvise and make something ourself so the difficult part about this is that i have to duplicate this radius here and what i found is this piece of tubing here is actually a slightly tighter radius which will be ideal to bend our metal around so what i'm going to do is i'm going to make a break out of the table and use this piece of tubing attached to the edge of it to be the lower jaw of the break and then what i'm going to do for the upper jaw is use this piece of tubing here sandwich the metal in between clamp it in place make our bend i want to make sure this is flush with the top of the table so i'm going to use these magnets then i can burn it in with the lincoln electric power mig [Music] well my tool is ready but before i make the bin there's one more thing i want to do i want to make a cut here next to where my template is because i don't want to bend any more metal than i have to but instead of just ripping this thing all the way down which would sacrifice this piece i'm going to notch it out down here besides i need as much weight and leverage down there as possible [Music] the band saw is ideal for this because it makes nice clean cuts [Music] then we'll sandwich the metal in our improvised break make sure it's square with the edge of the table clamp it down tight and make that bend [Music] all right i might do it [Music] well that tool worked out just fine and it made it a lot easier now our bin's done that's the hardest part just need to get it cut out now weld it in place we can move on to the other side coming up tommy puts the finishing touches on our custom buick bumper making it fit the theme of our build hey folks welcome back while you were gone i got that piece cut out welded in got all those welds ground down nice and smooth did the same on the other side and while i was at it filled all these holes that were here for that impact strip to mount to i'm gonna hand it off to tommy here and i'm gonna go get some fresh air what we're gonna do now is remove this little recess here in the middle of the bumper it isn't gonna be all that complicated we're gonna use the steps that mark showed you earlier first thing we need to do is make some marks and throw some sparks we're going to use the same method that we used earlier following the body lines on the bumper now we're ready to start working on our insert panel now to do this we're not going to be making a cardboard template what we are going to do is take our piece start trimming it down using some measurements but the first thing we need to do is mark center this is important because there's a peak here in the center and we want to keep that straight we'll transfer that center mark to our filler piece mark where the other cuts need to be made and head to the band saw a quick test fit we can tack it in with the rest of the filler pieces made we'll check their fitment packs those in and then weld it up solid on these welds we're going to use a blending disc to mow them down polish it out we got our bumper all welded up and ground down and it turned out pretty slick now the next thing we're going to do is add us some dimpled holes or lightning holes as some people call them the first step to that process is laying out your pattern we're going to use this masking tape as our canvas the next thing we're going to do is draw us a line right through here to help lay out our holes for our dimples and to do that i'm going to use the upper side of the bumper as a guide [Music] [Applause] our dimple dies work great as a template to mark where we want our most inner hole and outer hole then we can use the straight edge to mark the tops of the holes now we need to draw some circles and to do that we're going to use one of these pattern makers our hole is going to be an inch and 7 16 so now all we have to do is line this up with the marks that we made draw on our circle [Music] now we're wanting to space our holes an inch and an eighth apart so i'm going to use the inch and an eighth hole make a mark and move on we'll center punch where we need to drill make our pilot holes [Music] then we can use the step bit to finish them off [Music] this process is relatively simple what we're going to be using is a set of dies to make our dimple holes and depending on how you stack them onto your panel is going to determine whether you flare them up or flare them down we want ours to recess in we'll just put that piece on the top line this one up on the bottom and then put it under here and smash them together [Music] you want to apply just enough pressure to completely compress the dies together not so much that you distort or mar the [Music] bumper that guarded chrome bumper is what we started with this is what we've got now those few hours we spent gave this buick an attitude adjustment that it desperately needed today on detroit muscle mark dives into project sidewinder installing the cooling and fuel systems getting one step closer to hitting the road plus tommy adds some custom fabrication pieces to the interior of project street regal [Music] hey folks welcome to detroit muscle we're busy working on our 85 buick and 81 mustang cobra project sidewinder now tommy's out picking up some parts for the buick so i'm going to get started on the mustang right off the bat there's a couple of systems that i want to get wrapped up on this thing today the fuel being one of them and the cooling now i do need to get the car up in the air to get up underneath get that fuel tank swapped out but i've got a bunch more stuff under the hood so i'm going to start there first oh mark's making some pretty good progress on his mustang and it's time for me to make some here on this buick and the subject matter that we're going to be covering all happens here on the inside what we're wanting to do is jazz it up a bit on the inside of here now you know a lot of times those sporty and high performance cars have a full console and a power shifter then our old car being far more on the comfortable side well let's guide it up here on the column so we're going to go a different route if you were wanting to go down the path of kind of a restored car there are options for a reproduction like this we got from classic industries but we're wanting to step it up even further than that and that's where this thing comes in it's a very aggressive looking horseshoe shifter with some simulated brass knuckles it's quite a trick piece whenever you're mounting something like this there's a few things that you want to keep in mind one of those is the sweep of the shifter you don't want to be jamming your knuckles into the dash and you don't want it crammed up into the seat another thing is it's got to have a solid foundation if you're going to be mounting it through the floor with some bolts or something take a look at the bottom side there could be some inner structure and scooting it up or back can save you a whole lot of work now what we're planning to do on this thing is lift it up here in the front just to give it that cooler effect we'll have to build a bracket but we can handle that we taped up the side of our shifter because we don't want to damage it while we're making our bracket here and to make that bracket we're going to be using some eighth inch material and i know that may sound a little bit heavy but we want it plenty strong enough to support this thing now here on the base of it we're gonna have to make a few measurements and then we'll transfer that here to the plate and then we can cut everything out [Music] what we're looking for here is a piece that's nine inches long and four inches wide i'll use a square to keep everything straight this next piece is going to be the mount that we're going to use to attach to the floor i'm going to mark off an inch on each side so that we can bend the tabs down and grind those to shape to the floor our next pieces will be the mid plate and a couple of wedges [Music] now quick trip to the bandsaw so i can whittle all these out we got all of our pieces cut out and i went ahead and bent the tabs here on our base mount what we're going to do is lay this up here take a marker lay it on top of the transmission tunnel kind of drag it across that'll give us a perfect mark to know exactly how much we need to grind down [Music] once we're done with the bell sander it's time for assembly i'll clamp our mid plate to the floor mount make a few marks and drill four holes we'll install these threaded inserts to make installation easier then burn all of our pieces together and it's back to the car [Music] when mounting this thing in place we want to make sure it's level then with our adjustments made we can fuse the two together [Music] that turned out all right keep it dialed in tommy tackles our trunk situation on project street regal hey guys glad you made your way back we made some pretty good progress up front and now it's time for us to make some back here what we're going to be doing is filling in this big old hole this is where as a factory car would have a spare tire hump we don't need that and our chassis kind of got in the way what we need to do is a little bit of measuring and then we can get to cutting up some metal [Music] with this piece i want to make it plenty big enough and then come back and trim it down later what we're looking for is an eight by eight panel with a two inch flap i'm going to use some electric shears to cut it out our break is pretty straightforward we're looking for a 90 degree bend [Music] matching the contour of our wheel tub can be somewhat difficult but using some cardboard and a little bit of time makes it much easier now we'll just transfer this pattern that we just made to our piece of metal and then cut off the corner [Music] now to cut this contour you could use a cut off wheel but i prefer the body saw [Music] to hold this thing in place i'll make a few welds then we can move on to that big piece with that tacked into place now we can make a filler panel for this big hole [Music] so roughly we need to cut us a piece at 29 by 17 inches with another template we can transfer our pattern to our sheet metal and trim off the excess at the band saw we got our piece all cut out and the next thing we're planning to do is run this thing through the bead roller that way i can give it some extra added structure now to do that i need to draw on my pattern and then we can get started nice thing about doing it this way it gives you the ability to see your design and give you a map at the bead roller we're using a half inch die on the inside and a simple step die around the outside [Applause] [Music] oh yeah that's gonna work to lock this thing into place i'll use a few plug welds and then she'll be good to go well that ought to do it it turned out pretty nice i still have to do the other side but it won't be nearly as complicated as this side with that big old two foot hole if you have any questions about what you've seen on today's show go to powernationtv.com hey folks welcome back a little bit earlier we got the nose all dialed in on our mustang and it gave it quite a bit of an attitude adjustment it can see better with all that new lighting and look better with that arrow won't be long this thing's going to be on the road now the task at hand for us today is going to be removing this vinyl top off of our buick we're going to get rid of some of the trim as well and when we're all said and done it's gonna make this thing look a whole lot cleaner you know what if it was me i'd be leaving this vinyl top on and leaving it cream trust me man it's gonna look great all right i'll trust you the first thing we need to do is get this big old trim piece off that goes across here now it's tempting to just grab a hammer and a chisel and just start banging away at it but we don't want to do that for a couple of reasons one you could damage the car itself and we're going to paint this roof later on so we want to avoid that the other reason is because once you start changing the way this thing is shaped it might be even harder to get off you could kink it or even make it clamp down on the clips even tighter so we want to make sure we do it the right way removing these trim pieces isn't very complicated and using these plastic pry bars makes it even easier plus they're a lot more forgiving than using metal tools now here on the skinny trim it's basically the same procedure that we did to remove this big wide stuff but if you were trying to save this it's a good idea to use a pry tool that's got a wider foot that way you'll run less chance of bending it up but all we're trying to do is get this stuff off of here [Music] well the next thing to take into consideration is going to be the quarter glass depending on the design of the car and the design of the vinyl top the top could have been installed after the glass or before which is the case with ours that means that vinyl sandwiched in between the glass and the body glass has to get out of the way now good thing is we're going to have to use 10 millimeter socket to get those nuts out window will just pop right out tommy we catch this glass for me sure [Music] all yours we're finally to the point that we get to pull this ugly vinyl off of the roof and i have a small concern that it may be rather difficult this top being in such nice shape it's probably really glued on and you know as much as i hate to see this top go and you know i do think this is going to be my favorite part oh yeah it's really stuck we're just gonna start at the bottom edges near the corners and work our way up and in because this glue is hard as a rock yeah [Music] it's harder than it looks with your legs they said i'm not enjoying this as much as i thought i would i like to see grunt looks like i need to use a different knife you need to borrow my knife if i'll slow down and it means he'll do a majority of the work i hear you but with a little teamwork we get the majority off in no time all that's left to get the rest of the vinyl off is this trim panel which is riveted on my ass done time for coffee and they glued the kicker and it just snaps whale breaks right off [Music] don't go anywhere as we make the fur fly off our 85 buick project hey folks welcome back well just before the break we got the vinyl top off of our buick but we're not finished because we've got all this glue left on here and that's going to be the most tedious part yeah this job isn't any fun by any means and i have to say whenever i do something like this about a quarter of the way through it i start thinking there's got to be a faster way and usually there's not about the best way that i've found is to use a big sander and just stay after it and luckily for me right now is we got two of these big things and you're ambidextrous well you know you're right but i know you're just begging to work on this car look at that i promise you he's more excited than that all right a couple of safety items before we get started number one would have to be your eyes make sure you wear safety glasses be a lot of stuff flying around here the other thing is going to be your lungs you want to protect them because we don't know what's in this glue and it's going to be flying all around all that dust you don't want to breathe it in now tommy's got 36 grit on his i've got 80 grit on mine and we're really not sure which one's going to work best on this glue so we're going to try them both go from there both of these are getting the job done but it sure looks like tommy's is doing it a lot faster look i'm gonna go get some 36. think so might bring me up another piece got it we'll just sand away at it one section at a time until all the glue is gone all right well we're almost done except we've got these holes back here and the studs here we need to fill the holes get rid of the studs and these studs are welded to the roof so all i need to do is just sand them down we're just using a 36 grit pad on an air grinder to knock them down we're gonna have to body work this roof later anyway so they don't have to be [Music] perfect done making noise over there huh anyhow now we're gonna have to fill in these holes on the back side of the roof and to do that well we need to protect this piece of glass i've got some deflection paper here that i need to install and it is kind of pricey but i tell you you say one piece of glass it's well worth this paper this stuff is nice because you just stick it right to the glass and you trim it to fit [Music] then we'll prep our holes by grinding away the remaining paint or glue well i got the roof all cleaned up and while i was doing that grinding i noticed that a couple of these holes still have a part of the rivet in it and you got to get that out because it doesn't really work to fuse aluminum to steel it's no big deal with a punch and a hammer you can knock it right out we're gonna use our lincoln electric power mig 210 mp to get the job done and then grind the welds flat well we took care of a big chore on our buick today we got the top off the holes ground down and welded up now we'll have to do some body work but that'll be a little later down the road if you have any questions about what you've seen on today's show go to powernationtv.com [Music] today on detroit muscle we work on the rear of our 85 buick project street regal adding a custom fabricated spoiler [Music] hey y'all welcome to detroit muscle today we've got some fab work planned jazzing up the side of this old buick cause it's a bit bland you could almost call it vanilla so now it's time to add some flavor and if the word hemi pegs your meter you're going to want to stick around because later on we're heading over to arrington performance to see some friends of ours they've got a bunch of hemis there but they've got one mopar in particular that we've got special interest in you'll see what i'm talking about the way we're planning to spice things up is by making us a rear spoiler now there's not a whole lot of options out there if you're wanting to buy something there are a couple of companies that make a reproduction spoiler that would come on a grand national but we're looking for more we want aggressive and tasteful but not gaudy first thing we need to do is make that base plate we'll start out by measuring our trunk lid we don't want the base plate to go from edge to edge so we'll put our plate at 58 inches you guys have seen us use this thing before bam we have our first plate [Music] now we can set our panel back on the trunk and a quick measure to center it up we want to make sure it isn't sitting sideways we'll trace the bottom of the base plate following the curvature of the trunk lid [Music] then it's over to the old bandsaw to cut it out [Music] this whole thing fits pretty nice here on the curve of the trunk and i'm wanting to match that same curve here on the leading edge but that's just preference you could leave this thing with that straight line now to do that i'm going to make a couple of marks across here at two inches and then pull me a line all the way across it [Music] now to draw this curved line i'm going to use this back edge as my guide and you want to make sure that there's no sharp spot on it because it can cut your hand and then you want to use your hand as kind of a jig to hold the marker just lay the marker right on top of your indicated spot get your fingers comfortable and then just pull in one fluid motion from one end to the other [Music] we've got our base plate all made and the next thing that we need to do is actually attach it to our trunk lid and the reason i want to do that is i don't have to worry about it wiggling around whenever we're going to add that next piece now with that you could use some text screws and kind of just zip it to the trunk lid but we want it to look a lot better than that so we've got a different plan what we're wanting to use is some of these blinded rivet nuts it's a glorified pop rivet with threads on the inside and i've got a couple of reasons why if you wanted to use a nut and bolt trying to get your hand inside of here to put the nut on it well it can be rather difficult and the next reason is since this thing's got the inner structure you'd have to hack it up to make an access hole to put the nut on it we don't want to fool with all that i'll tape the plate down in place and measure for my six holes [Music] then we can center punch our crosshairs drill our pilot holes with an eighth inch bit and then drill our lid to 2564 to install one of these inserts it takes a pretty hefty gun all you do is thread it onto it squish the handle and it will compress it give you a piece like this the little rib spots bite into the surface or the hole that you just put it in and it's very important that the diameter of the hole you just drill matches the diameter of this insert we use these all the time and they're silly easy to install not to mention they give you a much more professional look [Music] last thing on this top plate we need to enlarge our holes for a quarter inch fastener and we can bolt it down one piece down one piece to go stay tuned tommy adds the finishing touches to our rear spoiler hey guys welcome back next thing we're going to be doing is taking this flat piece of aluminum and building our wing out of it that's going to be a little bit more complicated than this piece and this is why the deck lid has got a curve to it the back of the deck lid is curved as well and we want this thing leaning back we'll keep everything simple first thing we need to do is mark center on both now we just need to line up these two center marks and kind of kick it back to the angle we're looking for now we need to take a couple of measurements here one on each side to make sure that this thing is parallel with the deck lid because you don't want it higher on one side and lower on the other all right that's 3 8. that's dang close uh just i mean a 16th of an inch up on this side stop all right that looks good well now we need to make a mark all the way across but we're not going to be able to do that right with the sharpie up against that base because there's a big gap here it'll only mark there in the middle so we need to get up off of there we're going to do that with this piece of wood right here and we'll just use that and that'll keep it steady all the way across we just there you go [Music] there you go with our line drawn we can trim this part down all right let's see how well this thing fits line it up here in the center move it around oh yeah that's not too bad looks like mark's fancy pencil work paid off let's tape this thing into place and then we can add some style we're using just standard old masking tape be sure to press it down firmly to help it stick better [Music] to jazz this up i'm going to map out a little recess when building something like this you can get as creative as you want to [Music] that work [Music] not really a fan of this square corner so what i want to do is kind of roll it off a bit now earlier we trimmed off this bottom piece and i'm going to use that to give me that nice line so what i'm going to do is measure down about a half of an inch line this up to the corner we marked on there to this mark here on the edge then i can use this to transfer it on that side so everything matches [Music] nice thing about laying it out this way if you don't like it you can simply wipe it off and try something different while i'm here i don't like this either so it's gotta go when fabian park you get to know your band saw real well now we can smooth out the edges on our trusty belt sander [Music] we got our rear wing all shaped up and it's starting to turn out pretty cool the next thing we're going to do is tack weld our two pieces together and then i'll take this off take it over to the table and finish welding it up we don't want this to move around when we take it off so we're going to space out our attacks about eight inches or so apart since mark wasn't busy i got him to help with the fit while we tack it up a couple more attacks and we can move to the table to weld this we're using our precision tick from lincoln electric a tip for you when welding long parts like this spoiler pay attention to how much heat you put in it because you don't want it to twist or warp on you check this out when we got started the back side of this buick had a generic appearance so we had to do something with a little bit of fab and some time we now have that aggressive look that we was going for hey y'all glad you made your way back we're steadily trying to remove the maw maul effect off of our beer cure and we're making some pretty decent progress we got the vinyl top off of it a custom rear spoiler and some fancy bumpers for each end now this car had a couple of performance brothers from back in the day the buick grand national and the gnx and i'm a big fan of both of those cars so i want to take some of the body options that they had and add them onto our car now one of those modifications is relatively simple the other one is going to require some cutting so what we're going to do is install these pieces that we got from original parts group we've got a full set of fender flares and some side scoops now to install these it's pretty straightforward they have a bolt-on design so let's go ahead and get these on and out of the way we'll start out by removing the chrome trim pieces around the wheel openings and bottom of the quarter then we can put our flare into place and clamp it down these things just screw right to the inner fender well lip and just like that they're installed we've got our flares on now it's time for us to install our louvers now to do this it's not really all that complicated but it does require us to cut a big old hole here in the side of this fender now with the kit it comes with an instruction sheet that gives you a template of what you're going to have to trim out so let's go ahead and cut this out of here and we can start for placement on our template it's supposed to be three quarters of an inch down from this body line and this corner here supposed to be two inches from this edge we need to make some measurements and then we can tape it into place luckily for us the lower pin stripe is dead on three quarter so we just need to mark the back now we can place our template on the fender and trace around it [Music] to cut out my hole what i'm going to do is i'm going to use a drill make me a couple of holes here and all the corners and then follow that up with my body saw cut out that piece now whenever you're going to cut something like this out you need to keep in mind your tooth count on your blade you want to choose the correct blade for the material that you're working on now we're cutting steel and both of these are for cutting metal but the one here is 32 tooth count per inch this one is a 14. this is really nice for cutting sheet metal because the teeth are so much closer together with this one here that's far more coarse if you were to try to use it you could actually damage the panel after punching our holes it's time to let some metal chips fly [Music] oh and like your kindergarten teacher told you stay inside the line if you're installing these onto a painted car you want to come back and touch up this raw edge because you want to prevent it from rusting now with our car we still got to do all the paint work and all that stuff so we're just going to stick this thing in there to see what it looks like [Music] oh yeah it looks pretty cool now i just need to do the other side [Music] coming up we show you the cure for peekaboo rust hey y'all thanks for hanging with us we've got our louvers and flares on and this buick's looking pretty killer a while back we removed our vinyl top and sanded off all that goo and up under that top is the seam where the quarter panel and the roof join and they fill it in with some plastic or even lead depending on the age of your car and whenever we took all that off i found a pretty common problem that would be rust up under the filler what happens is moisture gets under there it starts to corrode and pushes the filler off so all this has to come off to see how bad everything is we got to get this shiny stuff out of the way we don't want to mess it up because we'll be using it later down the road this is what i was talking about you can see the evidence of some rust all the way back here but from the visual that we've seen before we started grinding it was just right in this area this is exactly why you got to pull this stuff out to see what's under there our 36 grit disc chews right through this old plastic [Music] don't get crazy here with your air tool and keep the rpms down we're just trying to get the filler off not grind holes in the roof a wire brush does a good job as well really well in those nooks and crannies [Music] now with everything all cleaned up the next step we're going to do is fully weld both of these joints keep in mind that you're welding near a big flat panel the roof so spacing out your welds and letting it cool a bit is a good idea and if you have to do it a couple of times it's no big deal now a quick massage with a grinder we're ready to move on with everything welded and prepped it's time to spread on some filler smooth it out on a joint like this i prefer to use the stronger aluminum reinforced filler [Music] once it's all mixed up it can be applied directly to our metal surface when using filler make sure to squish it into the seam to minimize the chance of an air pocket [Music] [Applause] after it hardens sand with some 36 on a hand block we'll wipe it a second time to get our desired shape and switch to some 80 grit for a smoother finish [Music] well that didn't take much effort at all and it put us one step closer to getting some shiny paint put on street regal if you guys have any questions about what you've seen on today's show go to powernation powernationtv.com [Music] well we've done a clean sweep on all of our projects here and we've got a lot of empty space we rearranged the furniture a little bit and not only that got it cleaned up real nice now with all this empty floor space there's only one thing you can do with a shop like this and that's fill it up with some new project cars here's what i'm thinking two-door sports car sitting right over here maybe lipstick red something we can take to the track or a 70s trans am themed car over there then again we had a lot of fun with that cts v a while back maybe we bring in another four-door just got so many ideas i don't know where to start shoot man you must have forgot about my baby girl had it sitting up here on the shelf now it's time for us to knock the dust off up and get back on it now you would make quite the entrance like this wouldn't you well it ain't me that made the interest it's the car i thought we put this thing out to pasture just on the back shelf letting it ripen with like fine wine you know what i'm saying when i saw tommy come in the door with the forklift and that buick sitting on the forks i couldn't believe it i mean that thing had been gone for so long sat on the back burner i figured it was sold actually i figured tommy probably traded it he does a bunch of wheeling and dealing seen him with a new goat figure that's probably what he traded it for now i know this old buick isn't necessarily mark's favorite ride but we've got to finish this thing man you wouldn't believe it but i like this car and now that i see it here in the shop we've actually got quite a bit of work done already yeah we've got the bumpers doctored on front and rear are fabbed up a rear spoiler plus it's sitting on that trick chassis and the motor and tranny's in it so where do we go from here what's next i want to do a bit of plumbing and go ahead and conquer the exhaust what do you think let's do it [Music] on our buick i'm wanting the performance benefits of a set of headers i've ordered a couple sets of hooker blackhearts that are for an ls swap but where everything gets all complicated is with our chassis the engine's been moved further back and down for better handling and i sure hope one of these two help us out here you go see if this fits oh long tubes yes sir we're gonna put these on if they will fit in the hole look at that custom chassis you know you don't really have to know i don't know if the chassis is gonna be the problem i'm hitting the bell housing right here already oh yeah well before i go any further is it really hitting pretty yeah yeah i know it's hitting got something else we can try yeah i got some mid links let's try that and if we have to make these fit we'll make them fit he's probably going to fit in like butter let's see oh look at that i'm flat up against the head it fits nice too yep you can go anywhere with that thing yeah we'll be able to tuck that pipe a lot closer to the full board i like that well i guess that made the decision for us there you go you gonna polish these sir heck no i ain't polishing them mar's going to polish them i'm not doing it [Music] well we got the header cinched down and now it's time to do some plumbing mark's going to run the pipes from the collector all the way to the back end of the car and me i've got a little trick up my sleeve let's start with this x that we got from magnaflow this is a really good place to start because you figure out where it's going to fall then you can plumb from the headers to the inlet and then from the outlet to the back of the car there's one more thing we have to take into consideration with this build we've got this custom chassis here it's got the provisions already here for the exhaust pipes to go through it's great because we can slam this car really low tuck the exhaust in nice and tight drawback is we got to hit that bull's eye just perfectly i've been tinkering with fabbing up a fancy exhaust tip that's going to complement the tail end of our buick and this is what i've got so far what we still need to do is build the inside of the tip and make it so that we can connect it to the tailpipe what we need to do now is cut off this inside of the bumper [Music] i'm gonna cut this piece out so that i can make room for that inner tip [Music] now i gotta grind all this paint off so i can weld on my piece [Music] with this piece tacked into place now we're gonna start putting together the inside of it and i'm making it out of two different pieces more or less an upper and lower once i get it wiggled around into the sweet spot i'll go ahead and tack it into place i'm making this stuff out of 18 gauge mild steel because it's heavy enough and yet light enough to work with next thing we need to do is determine where we want our tube to come in at on our tip now i want it to be far enough back that it gives the tip a lot of depth but at the same time not so far back that it interferes with my fuel tank i need to make me a mark and then i get this bumper off finish up the project [Music] [Music] all right well i've got those first pieces of tubing tacked into place on each side and they're really imperative because you need to make sure that it's level and also pointed straight toward the rear of the car but not only that they need to be the same height got that accomplished now i can move on to the mid-pipe but i've got this piece right here that i found out in the warehouse this is actually an x-pipe out of a magnaflow direct fit kit that we had laying around somebody already stole some pieces out of the kit so i took this this is going to be ideal because the spacing on the pipes here gonna go right through those holes in our frame so i'm gonna get this mocked up connect the dots [Music] we decided to use these v-band clamps from magnaflow because they're nice and high end and you can remove them and reinstall them as many times as you'd like all right just gonna check make sure this is level with the ground looks good [Music] glove [Music] that [Music] now with everything mocked up all the way to the x i can take it all back apart now start doing some welding mark's been making some pretty good progress plumbing the pipes up under our buick and me well i've been whittling on some steel and we're ready to weld on the top [Music] plate got all the welding done on the back side that i could so i flipped this thing over we're gonna grind off this excess and then finish welding up everything on the front [Music] well i'm at the point now where i need to start building the tubes that go up over the axle but before i do that i want to get the mufflers in place make sure i end up in the right spot and another thing too tommy i need your input i want to make sure this muffler position is going to jive with your tip yeah it should be just fine we'll have to put a 90 on it to connect it but nothing nothing too serious cool well i can start working my way this way will you grab me a pole jack please see i need 2 [Music] let's 45s how this thing looks on here it's gonna look amazing that's fancy i'll tell you that and it's heavy now with the bumper mounted and adjusted i can start making my connection between the muffler and the tip [Music] we're using one of magnaflow's universal kits what's nice about these is they have all the bins necessary to fabricate this entire exhaust system front to back well now the muffler's tacked into place i know it's not going anywhere and move on and get these tubes built over the axle [Music] manual plumbing work under here looks pretty nice i appreciate it is it up to your standards you don't need to be talking about my standards buddy i tell you what the tip looks nice so i like what you did with that well thanks man i know each time we're getting a little closer to hearing this thing roar and i can't wait well i have to say that was a big win with the charger now that that thing's all finished up and gone we can move on to some other projects like our buick regal here that thing's been on the back burner for a while but we got the exhaust all plumbed up recently it's time to move on to the plumbing under the hood now we got several systems that we're going to terminate today like the induction and the cooling and when we get both of these done it's going to get us a huge step closer to having this thing on the road we just got to get a few bolts out of the way here so we get this intake manifold out what we're going to be swapping to is this modular mid-rise intake from holley it utilizes a dual quad dual plane base plate and then with a couple of adapters well it converts it over to an ef5 setup first thing we need to do is install our o-rings on the base [Music] there you go boss oh man look at that let me get some hardware okay you know it's not too late to go with a couple of 750 double pumpers on there no sound burgers got a torch speck yes sir [Music] first step is 50. the next one's 106. all right thanks [Music] once that's done we can set our wrench to 106. [Music] with our base plate torqued down i need to put in our gaskets and then i can put in our mid plate i'm gonna have to line everything up it's not very complicated i say this thing's starting to look pretty cool [Music] now we need to torque it [Music] left two that's it all right now we just need to get this o-ring here in the groove and what's nice about this is it just sits down in the groove and when we put the hat on or the lid to this intake the clamping force of those bolts holding that thing on will keep this thing sealed after i get the gasket in place now i can drop on the lid i'll be using a little lube on the bolts and install them by hand before i torque them down for the first time well i just finished the first sequence of 75 inch pounds and i'm gonna go to 130. it's really important to follow the manufacturer's specs on something like this not just the torque spec but the torque sequence as well another thing you'll notice is they've got the bolts coming in from the bottom you may wonder why and that's because holly is very specific about how they want their product to look and that's just one small thing they do make it look nice the next thing we're going to install is our belt drive system that we got from summit racing made by billet specialties now from where you're sitting you may be thinking that this is a bit intimidating because there's so many pieces to the puzzle but in all reality if you follow the instructions it's really not all that hard it comes with a 140 amp polished aluminum alternator and a nice and shiny ac compressor the first step to getting all this installed is putting on your harmonic balancer you making any progress guys yes sir i got that factory water pump and this balancer out of the way just for you well i appreciate that now whenever you're doing something like we are here swapping out our balancer one thing you want to keep in mind is you can't reuse your factory bolt and we're swapping ours out with one from arp we've got our belt drive all installed and now it's time to move on to getting our cooling system mocked up and figuring out what we're going to do for our air intake tube for our induction system we went to summit racing and got a universal kit that has several different bins filter and some brackets in it so i'm gonna grab a couple parts here and we can get started there's a couple things you want to keep in mind whenever you're plumbing your filter and that is your filter location you don't want it so close to the headers or the radiator to pick up excessive heat and the other one is moisture now what i'm thinking i'm going to do is place this thing about right here that's a good central location and then run the tube over to our throttle body i am going to cut out this lower part of our inner fender so that it can give it a little bit more fresh air but i'm not going to drop the filter so low in there that it can pick up wheel slosh so first thing i think i'm going to do is cut this piece of pipe off about right there so i can slip my filter on now what we're fabbing is kind of a universal setup but it's technically a cold air kit and what that refers to is it's pulling a cooler denser charge from outside the engine bay into the engine with all that done the next thing we need to do is locate where we're going to install the boss for our mass air flow sensor now there's a few things in our application that we have to keep in mind one of them is it needs to be 10 inches from the throttle body as far as the orientation in the tube it needs to be from horizontal up to vertical as long as the connector is in that position you're fine and also it needs to be in a six inch straight piece so about right here should do the trick [Music] tubular man you're an idiot brother what are you doing working on taking this thing off so that i can weld it together make it one piece probably gonna need that welder later all right i'm gonna leave it on i'm gonna work on radiator hoses sure now with what he's working on let me paint a little picture for you stroll into a parts store and you tell them what you got 85 buick regal then gonna ask you what size engine you got you say 525 horse ls3 they look around at the keyboard look back at you like you're dumb uh we don't have any upper radiator hoses for that thing guess what you got to do make your own and that's where these right here come in [Music] all this stuff we're using is an-20 that we got from earl's and these fittings screw right into the bungs on that aluminum radiator we got from frostbite another reason we're using these is because these are really nice and high-end and it's going to match the theme of our build now just need to get these ends here and figure out where they need to go well this all looks like it's going to work out really well just need to loop that lower hose down we'll get to that later this upper hose here is headed in the right direction toward the water pump but the problem is we've got this end right here that's an an-20 and the pump itself has a slip-on bung for a regular radiator hose so what we're going to do is we're going to use this little fitting right here and it needs a weld on here and that's going to solve our problem but got to get that water pump off in order to get this welded on so this entire belt drive system has to get removed [Music] we're going to use our lincoln electric precision tig it's great for welding aluminum like our intake tube now i need to cut a hole in this tube before i weld the bung on so that the mass airflow can slide into it well well weld oh good thank you sir hey while you're all dressed up fancy do you mind welding this on here for me yeah i guess if you put that on sure don't touch it that's hot thanks [Music] well we got that bung welded on and i went ahead and reassembled the belt drive and tommy made us a radiator hold down bracket right there so now all that's left to do is make some hoses [Music] we're using earl's ultra pro hosing fittings they're light and designed to withstand harsh environments vibrations and high flow requirements plus they're quick and easy to assemble these things will keep our ls3 cool and happy man oh man aren't you fancy oh thank you that looks pretty good too well we got to have some filtration you know what i mean yep and i'll tell you it sure is nice finally making some progress on this old girl i know we're getting close we do a fuel system and some ignition and fire this thing up i think you're putting a cart before the horse on that one but yeah we ain't even broke the horse yet i know hey y'all today on detroit muscle we're working on our buick regal now this is a pretty trick car it's got an aftermarket suspension up under it ls power several body mods and so on and so forth now to make a car operate correctly there's several systems that have to work together and today we're going to work on the last few yep one of those the main one is going to be this fuel system now we've actually created some obstacles for ourselves with some of those things that tommy mentioned before but that's okay i'm gonna figure out a way to make it work you like him will nope [Music] well at a quick glance you can see what i'm talking about when it comes to hurdles nothing under here is original including that fuel tank that's conspicuously missing it's because it's not going to fit we've got a custom chassis narrowed frame rails so we can get some big wide wheels and tires here got an anti-roll bar and not to mention the exhaust system these mufflers are in pretty far and tommy made those fancy tips and that's going to leave us a little bit of room we need to do some custom fabrication i think we can make it work what do you think absolutely [Music] so our solution is all these pieces we got a fuel tank and of several other parts for the filler neck from summit racing we just need to get some dimensions cut us a giant hole and we can get started basically what i'm doing is making a few marks where we're going to cut the trunk floor so that i can recess the gas tank down in there here's tommy [Music] got it let's save it just in case i was off a little bit the reason i built this little framework is to give the floor a little bit more structure and that big gnarly hole looks really raw this way it gives it a bit of a trimmed out look to weld all this up i'm using our lincoln electric 225 precision tig now you don't have to use a tig welder if you wanted to use a mig that'd be just fine [Music] now i'll drop the frame into place secure it with some clamps tack it in now we need to do some fab work here on our tank now with it it's 10 inches tall and i don't want whenever we mount it up you'll be able to see the thing hanging out from under the car so i'm going to take these angle iron brackets and mount them about three inches from the top that's our sweet spot [Music] [Applause] [Music] here you go boss i'm gonna let you put it in man you did all the hard work and you're gonna let me do this i won't admire my work from afar it looks nice [Music] yeah look at that i mean it's racy looking but you gotta pop the trunk every time you go to fill it that's not very classy trust me brother i got a plan for that as well okay you know mark's right having to pop the trunk to fill up the gas tank is a pain even with these cars from the factory having a flip down the license plate well that's a pain in the tail as well so what i'm going to do is take this gas filler neck that we got from summit racing and drill a hole in the quarter panel mount this up and then build us some tube to fill up the gas tank it's not all that hard but we do have to cut a hole in the quarter with placement of this cap there's a few things that you want to keep in mind and one of them is the appearance you want to make sure that the cap looks like it belongs on the side of the car and the other one well it's that old plumbing rule of thumb all that stinky stuff rolls downhill if you mount this cap too low well you're going to run into problems with it fill in the tank what i'm thinking is this thing needs to be about right there that should do it since the cap i'm installing has a flat surface and the quarter panel is curved i've got to build me a little cup if you will so that i can mount it i'm going to use some 20 gauge steel cut me out a disc and then wrap some steel around it now to weld these two pieces together i'm going to use my table here some washers and a bolt and build myself a jig and then tack weld this strip and pull it tight all the way around this one's generic looking cookie cutter let's see if it fits a little more oh yeah that's nice burn that dude in [Music] now from the factory our old car had the gas filler that was behind the license plate and that was kind of a pain [Music] the way we're doing this now gives us a much more modern feel and it looks pretty snazzy too [Music] now it's time to work with the tubing [Music] this next process isn't very complicated at all we just got to get from this point to this point what i'm going to be using is some two inch stainless steel tubing that i got from summit but what i did run into is this neck here is two and a half so i went to an exhaust shop got a little reduction piece that solved that problem now it's time to figure out what bend i need cut some stuff up looking in here what i need to do is come out with a 90 pretty tight and drop down this way because what i'd run into is when the trunk closes this hinge is going to come down so i can't really come straight out don't be alarmed about running a filler neck like this heck them old mopars came from the factory this way [Music] wow you got that done pretty quick yeah it doesn't take long with you out of the way that looks nice what are you going to do to it you're going to finish it out i don't know if i'm going to paint it and polish it up or heck i may even wrap it with some exhaust tube and give it a kind of a custom touch that would look cool well i guess i can work on figuring out what we need to do for a pump well that's good i hope you like now that you don't have to pop the trunk to put fuel in it yeah good solution i should have thought of that tank's installed now to get that fuel to our 500 plus horsepower plant we're working on figuring out the fuel system on our buick and because we've got that fuel cell the best thing we figured we needed an intake pump so we decided to go with this holley sniper universal pump what's cool about this it's got a 340 liter per hour pump 600 horse that'll support way more than we need but the other thing is this is a returnless style system so this is built for that we just need to figure out where it needs to go cut the hole bolt it in well we've got our filler here in the center and it goes up that way so we want to stay away from the center and this corner and our cinder's here and the float is over in this area and there's a baffle that goes here and here so we can't go here or here because there's really not enough room that port there so we kind of need to be in this area here and we really don't want it to one side because if you do take a right turn it'll starve the pump if it's on this side so we want to put it in the middle here in front of the filler and this is a 20 inch tank so i want to make sure that we mark it right there at 10 to start and then we want to center it up front to back here as well that way it fits and it's about five and a half so we go see that's where we'll drill our hole we're gonna cut this hole to three and a quarter inches the reason we drilled that three and a quarter inches is because that's the diameter of the bottom of this hat here that slides right down into the tank and the top of the tank seals by this piece of foam here it's this thick because you can use this pump on a corrugated tank like a factory style one another thing is once we tighten these bolts up top here it's going to flip these tabs out and that's what grips it all together and seals it tightly [Music] well we've got our pump installed and tight and i went ahead and installed the two fittings that come off of the pump one is going to be the feed and the other one's going to be the vent there is no return this is a return-less style so we figured out where we want to make those go right through here under the car then we'll route them once we get under there but instead of drilling three-quarter inch hole and just running our hoses through there with a grommet we want to make it a little cleaner and safer we're going to do that with this dash 6 bulkhead fitting just need to figure out where we need to drill our holes drill a couple 9 16 holes [Music] with our bulkheads tight we can run the hose from the pump to those bulkheads i went ahead and made the first one i'm going to copy it then we'll go get them on the car well we talked about that vent hose and rather than just plumbing it to the outside in case it does get fuel out of there instead of it contaminating the environment it's going to go into this catch can right here that we got from finch performance it's made of billet aluminum just mounts to the floor here you need to drill a few holes and bolt it in place this thing comes with this plate which is a template here so you can mark where all your holes need to be drilled and get them right the first time i'll do it and with the car in the air we can finish up our plumbing [Music] well we've got our feed line attached to the bulkhead and that needs to go up to the fuel rail but there's one thing that needs to go in between and that's going to be this post filter right here pre-filter's built into the pump got to find a safe place to mount this where any suspension components are going to interfere with it and we don't want it too close to the exhaust either i've actually got a good spot i want to mount it on the inside of this frame rail right here but in order to get my tools in there to get it mounted i need to get this muffler and tube out of the way so i'm going to do that next [Music] so well man what kind of progress you've been making well i got the hard part done i just kind of route this hose to the front yeah i just want to get your input on how you wanted to route it going on top of the frame side whatever is easiest and looks you know professional at the same time okay so simple and clean got it what are you working on i got to go grab some of the electronics so that you know we can start doing all that business and i'm not looking forward to that we're gonna fire it up today hope we don't catch it on fire today take that as a no we start wiring up the connecting crews and install that skinny pedal well we terminated the plumbing for our fuel system here at the rails and that's all done we just need to wire up that pump in fact we need to wire up pretty much everything on this car because we haven't touched it at all have we tommy no we haven't whenever you're doing an ls swap like we're doing with the buick this part right here is the most intimidating you've got all these little connections and sometimes you don't know which ones go where yeah i mean it looks like a bunch of spaghetti i can understand why people find that intimidating yeah for sure man but what's nice about the setup we went with is they've simplified it a whole lot this is a full standalone harness from chevrolet performance it's got a fuse box your ecu your electronic throttle pedal and all the connections you're going to need to make that engine run all you got to do is terminate a few of these loose ends and the rest of it's plug and blade this is simple i mean they make this thing to just go in anything right absolutely you could even put it in a ford to make it worth something i hear you so where are we starting i guess we probably need to start putting all this in see why it looks intimidating don't you yeah well i guess the first thing we need to do is kind of plug in a few of these things and see where we can put that main fuse box and such i see some injectors here i wonder if that's for this side let's see if we can find the engine coolant temp sensor because i know that's over here all right well this is for the throttle body so it looks like we need to flip it this is there's your mass airflow or nothing oh yeah just takes a minute getting somewhere oh got one plugged in one down 3700 to go b 46 bingo there's your math hey hey you don't be talking about my mouth if you pick a fight [Music] an oxygen sensor this whole harness right here needs to go through the firewall because we need to figure out where and how well i talked about this harness that needs to run into the car and rather than just drilling a big hole here i want to utilize an existing one i found the perfect spot here this is the speedo cable we're not going to be using that anyway so i'm going to go ahead and take it out i think that hole will work so many things in the way why did i choose that hole oh yeah let's try the big one first it's going to be this obd2 port oh yeah all right let's get the next one that's gonna be the pedal barely but it goes well on this harness that i pulled through we've got the data link connector for the obd2 port one wire that goes the ignition switch and one for your check engine light and this one that goes to the pedal which is basically just a sensor but we got to get it mounted to the firewall in a good safe place we get full wide open throttle let's take a look stud there right there space that off though yeah that'll do it measured from the spacers ball marks up under the dash mounting that gas pedal i'm gonna work on mounting up the ecu and our fuse block now with this type of setup man sometimes it's really difficult to make this stuff look like it belongs and that's the challenge that we're gonna have so it looks like i'm gonna have to fab up some brackets [Music] i'll cut up some three-quarter inch thin wall tubing and a couple of pieces of 18 gauge mild steel fab this thing up it's that simple a couple of basic brackets and that stuff looks like it belongs in there i got this pedal assembly all figured out had to make some little pedestals here there's not a flat spot on this firewall but got it all figured out now just need to get it bolted in i'll be done [Music] oh yeah all right it's good to go [Music] tommy fabricates a custom steering shaft now i would imagine from your point of view you were thinking we were making some really good progress on the buick and i've just backed up about 10 steps taking that front cap off well the reason i did is because spending a few minutes removing that sure does make my tummy a whole lot happier working on this steering and not having to bend over that fender now we've got a destination that we're going to hit today but we've got a few hurdles but that's just a stone for a stepper so what we've got to do is connect this point here the shaft coming out of our steering column to this little shaft down here coming out of the rack and the obstacles we have to avoid is the motor mount and all these header tubes and after studying it just for a bit notice if i was to shorten this shaft up and move it back that'd give me some room around the setter that's what we're gonna do now where i just lobbed off the end of that shaft is a little bit crooked how i'm going to true it up it's going to be pretty primitive but it's going to be effective i'm going to spin the steering wheel causing that shaft to rotate take my grinder touch the end of it it's going to true it up [Music] with all our pieces cleaned up we're ready to weld them back together now to help assist this i'm using an old drop a piece of three quarter double d i'm going to slide this old piece onto there and then slide all this into the steering column it'll help keep everything nice and straight and give us a backing for our weld with that piece tacked on now it's time for us to make all these parts work together what i like to do is have several different u-joints and a few different lengths of the shafts and then start installing them the car itself will tell you what will work and what won't you may have to start over and regroup a couple of times but you got to stay true to it and eventually you'll figure it out [Music] now this old car has been sitting around for a while and finally getting back on it was putting a smile on my face yeah a few of these things are quite difficult but actually i enjoy them the most because it allows me to be creative and show my craft and when you're all said and done being able to put your stamp on saying yeah i created that and being proud well that's a compliment all in its own well we've got our shafts and the joints all figured out and the next thing we're gonna have to install is some shaft supports because otherwise these are going to flex around and it's not going to work properly it's not that big a deal but it's time to do some more fab work [Music] after bolting my bracket on here i'm gonna twist that shaft around and put it at the sweet spot and we'll probably have to trim it off and we weld that dude into place well you got that steering done because you make it sound like that's the only thing i worked on today no we got a lot done that wiring harness which wasn't too bad actually entire fuel system's wrapped up and i got the pedal installed which reminds me i need to go the chiropractor that was a rough one for me too yeah no but i mean in all reality if we put in another serious day maybe a day and a half or so we may be riding in this thing i think we could do it i'm ready man it's been a while and i want to hear that exhaust anyway i tell you though i got a little flat i'm going to have to fix i can put a plug in it or something i hope we don't have to roll on those dude pretty awesome call these one-offs because one fell off [Music] this week on detroit muscle we jumped back on our buick buttoning up our power steering components and we had a high performance brake kit [Music] well we're finally making some serious progress on our buick regal project this thing's been around for a while it went away and came back a few times but it's back to stay until it's completely done now you'll notice right off the bat it's gray it's not beige anymore that's because we've done majority of the bodywork and got it in primer as a matter of fact we've got some other panels over in the prep booth tommy's working on but that's for later today we got some systems that need to get buttoned up on this car before we do paint it and send the chassis off to be primed while we're still in the mock-up stages here we've got to address the brake system we haven't touched that yet we've got to install a transmission cooler got a couple of other little things including the power steering system which i need to mount this remote reservoir get the hoses made i'm going to do that now first thing i need to do though is get these fittings into the steering rack their adapters to a in then i can make the hoses well the next thing i'm going to do is mount this power steering reservoir but i went ahead and put the air intake in place so i knew where it was and i didn't want to interfere with it when i mounted this and i have to mount this tube higher than the return on the pump itself so the best place i can find is going to be right here inside this inner fender [Music] i have to grind down this little lip to make it smooth so the reservoir will mount flat against the inner fender then we can mark where we want the bracket to be [Music] all right those are exactly three inches apart and the one is half inch from the edge using our measurements we can mark our holes [Music] make sure it's level and start drilling them out [Music] done with this then we can bolt it up and start making our hoses sir when making hoses you want to make sure you use the high pressure hose we cut the ends flush that way the fittings are nice and tight these hoses are under a lot of pressure so you don't want them leaking or [Music] rupturing [Music] [Music] yep well i finished up the hoses got those installed for the power steering system so that's all done i'm going to move on to the brake system let's start with what's on the car we've got a brake pedal assembly we're going to retain that we're also going to retain this factory brake booster the diaphragm is good so we're just going to build out from there and we're going to do that with all the stuff that we've got here on the table that we got from wilwood we're going to start in the front here we've got this big brake kit for c5 and c6 corvettes this is a direct bolt-on it's perfect for us because our chassis came with c5 c6 spindles so it's going to be a nice and easy install it's for the rear this is kind of a universal kit for four to nine inch equipped cars so it's very popular for street rods and muscle cars it's got big rotors and calipers just like the front but the difference is this has got a parking brake assembly so that's super nice and easy to install as for the master we spec this one out to go directly into our factory brake booster so it's going to be just perfect we do need to plumb it up a little bit with this proportioning valve let me get that assembled here get this thing bench bled we'll get this thing on the car after getting our master cylinder bled and assembled we'll mount it to our brake booster [Music] all right with that installed now we can move on and install the rest of our brake system we'll show you what to check for when adding a custom brake kit plus we install our transmission cooler well i finished up in the prep booth and i got mark out of the way so i went ahead and assembled our rotors i got them torqued to spec and set with some thread locker now we just need to go ahead and finish putting all this good stuff on before you start slapping on all these cool parts you want to make sure to do some inspecting first and all of them have something to do with making sure this rotor fits on the hub correctly now if you were using some used parts here oftentimes there's rust and corrosion here on the surface you want to clean that off to make sure that that rotor is nice and true on there another one is this knurl on the stud sometimes whenever it pushes through it's a little bit too fat and it runs into the back side of the hole another thing is the radius of the stub sticking through make sure that that doesn't have any interference with this spot here let's see where we're at get it lined up well we're good to go so now we can put the caliper on i'm going to slide on a couple of washers and screw on some of these lug nuts that helps to prevent me from dropping this rotor i hate to bounce it off the floor plus it also help with setup it keeps that rotor nice and tight against the hub so it's nice and i'm true twist this thing around and give me a little more room now if we were assembling this for the last time we put thread locker on these bolts since we're still in the mock-up stage and we still gotta paint everything we're just gonna put it together i'm going to use this top bolt to keep that thing from falling in the floor slide this other bolt in slide my shim up from the bottom get that one started putting that bolt in from the top keeps you from having to use three arms i'm gonna take this one back out put that shim in from the top now there's no real big need to really crank down on this stuff just get it good and snug because we're still in setup this caliper has a few adjustments that you have to do properly if you want your brakes to work correctly you can see that this caliper is too far this way by the gap being wider on this side versus that one so we need to take a few of them shims out move everything back that way the next thing you need to do is make sure that the placement of the pad on the rotor surface is correct what you want is with that caliper pushed all the way down that the top of the pad and the top of the rotor are flush we're good in that department so all we got to do is take out a couple of shims and we'll be good to go and yeah that did the trick now we're almost off the subject of brakes but we got a little bit more plumbing to do well one of the things we talked about doing today is going to be the transmission cooler and that's what we got right here from b m we also got a bunch of fittings and hose from earl's including these special fittings right here that adapt to the transmission to an-6 first things first i'm gonna get this transmission cooler mounted we'll go from there let's see where this is gonna go i like that you reuse that hole and that one i'm going to drill one right here [Music] we need to mount this thing in front of where the condenser is going to go so it can go right in front of the radiator support right here looks like we can just use some existing holes bolt it right to the radiator support [Music] because of the way this radiator support is stamped we need to use some spacers to make this cooler stand off a little bit so we can mount it flat all right now we just need to connect the lines all right that's it for that now we can move on to something else we're pretty much ready to go ahead and install our starter on our buick here to finish mocking up the wiring if you've got a starter that's giving you a fit maybe you need to check out duralast gold starters each one is engineered to deliver a torque output that meets or exceeds oem specs not to mention they're all built using new components that are triple tested to ensure quality and performance to meet the highest standards so if you're in need of a starter and want to ensure the maximum life and performance you may want to check out duralast gold at autozone well we've gotten quite a bit accomplished today but there's one more task i want to do before we blow this thing apart and send the chassis off to be powder coated and get the body painted and that's going to be measure for our drive shaft so a few things you want to make sure you take care of before you get this measurement one is going to be your driveline angle will be the tilt of the engine and transmission but then also get the rear end where it needs to be as far as pinion angle goes and then at ride height but since we don't have our wheels and tires yet we can't get this thing on the four posts second best thing which is going to be to put a couple of pole jacks under here get it up at ride height and get your measurement there that's what we're going to do [Music] the starting point for our measurement is going to be the end of the tail shaft housing here but that's where that seal rides that machine surface there is where we need to measure from and there's not enough area because that seal covers it so we need to figure out the thickness of that metal seal first that way we can add that to our measurement [Music] looks like about 45 thousands well with that done now that makes it a lot easier because i can put my measuring tape right on the face of that seal and i get my measurement the length put that right on the face back here to the center of the bore of the cap for the u-joint looks like 51 and 15 16. all right now we just need to add those numbers all right 15 16 is 9375 so we've got 51 9375 that's our measurement plus our 0.045 the thickness of our seal and that's our length 519825 all right with that done we only need a few more pieces of information to get our driveshaft ordered one is going to be the spline count on our output shaft ours is 27. another one is going to be which u-joint we need for the rear this is a 1350 style if you don't know what yours is you can take a couple of measurements and that's going to be the overall diameter of the u-joint and then the diameter of the cap and that'll tell you which u-joint you have the only other thing and this is kind of important is going to be your power output level because you want to make sure you have a drive shaft that's strong enough you think they need that drive shaft length down to the ten thousandths ah you got to get pretty close we got a lot accomplished didn't we absolutely but are you talking about today no i mean since the beginning this old buick has come a long way since we started to say that this thing looked like he could be your grandmother's ride wasn't too far of a stretch at first glance the meemaw colored paint might turn you off but we knew this ride had potential first thing to do was go on a bit of a road trip to street rod garage to get fitted for a new frame they worked their magic and built one trick piece our frame now is a full custom setup with adjustable coil over suspension all the way around some big old fancy sway bars on the front and back and a rack and pinion steering setup these are just a few of the upgrades that our chassis has to take our buick to the next level we picked the 525 horsepower chevrolet performance connecting crews after getting it dropped on the chassis it was time to marry the body to the frame with so much performance on the bottom side of our buick we had to make a few adjustments to the appearance to bring it up to speed i've always been a big fan of the grand nationals so with a little bit of slicing and dyson we now have side scoops that the buicks are known for then we had to address those big old bulky bumpers so some fab work was in order to doll them up the tail end was begging for some attention as well so with a couple of pieces of aluminum and a welder you could say we adjusted our backside appeal heck we didn't even talk about the mechanical stuff yeah let's not get into all that but i can say the next time y'all see this it'll be time for color change change back to base probably you know i like that color it looks pretty good today on detroit muscle we take grandma's old beige buick and give it a splash of color plus we get our chassis back from the powder coaters and start assembling the suspension to get it rolling [Music] you know i have to say i do love this color you picked out that battleship gray really pops you know for you to be such a small man you sure can cast some pretty big stones there bob you know yeah i would clear it if i was you no sir i've got a fancy color picked and this thing is gonna look killer i believe that you know it's taken quite a bit of work to get here but i'm i'm sure am excited to see this thing finished up oh yeah i mean it really has you know i mean mini tubs full chassis ls connecting crews 525 horse i mean this car is complete transformation from where we started yeah but that's not the work i'm talking about i'm talking about all the sand and blocking doe work all that luckily for me i found a friend of mine you know that doesn't mind wiping the sweat off as brown gets a little dirty puts in some effort i hear you everybody wants to be the trigger man when it comes to painting but you can't spray a car straight it comes from hours and hours of sanding and you don't want to just invite anybody to come over and help you you're not trying to remove a refrigerator and all you need is a strong back and weak mind this type of situation you need some skilled hands now michael back there he's a really good friend of mine i've known him for quite a while about 20 years or so and there's a few things that i know on him and there's a few things he knows on me but we don't ever tell nobody unless it's us when we're drinking and you know it's kind of bragging right yeah i know some dirt on him he knows something on me we better some stuff together i guess that happens when you know somebody for that long once the buick was whipped into shape it was time for a coat of primer and street regal was ready for some color you know i admire all that body work but you have to admit you're not the only one that's put a bunch of time on this thing what have you done well i got the chassis all torn down and taken off to the shop to get blasted and powder coated i got you and judging by the colors you picked it's kind of hard for me to tell what color you're gonna paint the body so what is it man i've got a red from summit racing that's gonna knock your socks off summit racing paint like we used on uh sidewinder yeah it's basically the same material but the techniques on the application slightly different no rollers and brushes no it's far more traditional if you will you could say we took an out of the box approach with our fox bodies paint job we called in our old friend ted swann with summit racing to help with the distressed look we were going for he gave us some tips and hints on how to pull off a cool yet weathered patina paint job on sidewinder i know that just a bit unorthodox but it turned out when we were all said and done and your ears have probably been burning they have been lately uh a lot of people have actually asked how we ever got together and uh it's a rather remarkable thing that we've done multiple projects over the past couple of years so uh i guess it's time to paint your buick project now oh absolutely man we're ready to no no no no no don't get excited we're not doing the paint brushes again i really needed that i'm just kidding i'm just kidding yeah now this one is going to be far more traditional we're going to paint this in all shiny and that on fire red from summit you know what that's a really nice color i mean it's got that deep lustrous almost burgundy slightly candy apple look to it and we're going full shine this time correct yep several coats of clear i want this thing to look deep oh this is going to look real deep we're going to put some overall use clear on this thing so that uh you know we don't run out of recoil time and we can wait a little bit longer between coats now i know summit's got several other colors you have any hand in picking those things out believe it or not no uh that was one of them things that they picked on our own with some of the colorists actually what they thought was going to be popular and timeless and some of the colors are actually updates on some of the very popular older colors i mean you know colors like the solid color boss blue or the go bananas are like brightened up and slightly toned down of classics that like our parents or grandparents might have had the bahama blue metallic real nice classic color but it's going to fit appropriately on anything from a harley-davidson custom bike to uh somebody's resto mod 63 corvette i know some people may accidentally look at those colors and say yeah they look good but maybe a bit concerned because they're so economically based but that's really not nothing to be worried about is it no it's nothing to be worried about one of the most expensive things that any car paint manufacturer does is constantly chase the factory to factory variations that occur with the same color code i mean oftentimes if you read an engineering magazine you'll see the term backed its best available current technology when they build a brand new factory they may have some brand new more transfer efficiency in other words more that comes out of the machine actually stays on the car so it's better for the environment but they do have variation from factory to factory i mean you can see this if you've ever gone through a modern salvage yard after you broke a gas cap off your car you find one wow it's the same color and you bowled it on and you realize how different it is you know it could have been as simple as a factory in georgia versus a factory in detroit or maybe even another country because cars are made all over the world today so you don't have to worry about matching colors when you've got something like this palette you pick the color that you like and that helps save a lot of money then is that what you're saying it saves a lot of money because you make it one time it's consistent from candy cane and more importantly it's going to give you that consistency to the customer they buy some more later and they're going to have a very accurate rendition regardless of what the ear was that they bought to paint it now i know with summit it's pretty much the go-to whenever you're going to be looking for go fast parts but even with the paint side of thing that isn't just one thing they cover they carry everything else that you need to paint this car as well don't they yeah you better believe it i mean summit racing has a complete selection of products going from the preparation of the surfaces to body filler to sandpaper uh degreasers all the way up through and including clear coats and polishes like on this buick a lot of people sometimes think wow why doesn't my car look like that like a rolls-royce say and they don't realize the amount of finishing time that goes into a car like that where it's color sanded compounded and then polished you know to get that almost texture-free look to it with zero particles in there i mean that's a lot of detail work and hand work once the job is done and it obviously gives you a spray job that's sometimes smoother and cleaner than maybe a regular production automobile would have we're pretty much all cleaned up and ready to start mixing and spraying you gonna be around so you can touch in with us i am i want to see that thing when you get done the base coat all right we'll haul her back at you thanks give me a go coming up grandma's blah beige is gone street regal's in the booth and it's time for some color well our buick's ready for its transformation and i'm so excited we've been working on this old buick for quite a while and one thing i'm glad to see going away is this marmal colored paint job yeah i'll be spraying on a coat of sealer before we add on our color and this process will help the paint adhere to the surface and gives us a uniform canvas for us to work with [Music] [Music] not everybody enjoys painting but this is a point whenever you're building a ride that your vehicle makes the biggest transformation they usually go from ugly and primered up to shiny and full of color now i really enjoy spraying red colored paint and it's not because red is my most favorite color it's actually because that was the first color i got to spray i was about six or seven years old and my old man was painting one of his trucks and he was painting it victory gm red and after seeing him paint his truck well i wanted to paint my toy truck so i asked him can i use that paint gun and he said gotta tape the windows up first he handed me a roll of masking tape so i scurried around there trying to get the windows mask up and after that he gave me the paint gun and i went to spray it you could say i painted everything in a three foot radius from that toy truck grass rocks probably even a bug or two but when i was done man i was smiling so you could say that was a moment in time that ignited the fire for me building cool cars and i've come a long way this thing looks a whole lot better than my first one hey ted just wanted to give you an update i don't know if you can see what's going on back here i'll flip you around so you can see it okay got some color on it tommy's spraying away what do you think i think it looks awesome i mean the color looks great and uh you know painted fully disassembled it's gonna make for a beautiful job when it's done yeah absolutely yeah tommy tommy's been hard at it i think i'm gonna go break away here and go get him a snack and uh give him a break for a little bit we'll get back to you after a while okay see you in a bit take care all right thanks ted you bet if you're digging the way that old buick's turning out well you're probably gonna like this next step we've got all the color on and now it's time to spray on some shiny for clear we're using summit racing's high solids urethane clear we're looking to apply three coats under our buick now some people say it's a little bit tricky to spray on clear coat but really the trick behind it is to see where you're spraying it so sometimes you have to maneuver yourself around to catch the light just right to see where it's going other than that just keep moving keep spraying with our buick we're painting it with summit's base coat clear coat system the base coat has to be top coated because otherwise it doesn't have any kind of uv protection and the paint itself or the color will just weather itself away so the clear coat itself doesn't only make it shiny it protects the color one common problem that happens whenever you're doing some painting is getting trash onto the surface one tip for you is try not to be all flailing around with your arms causing this big commotion just smooth and steady movements hey big man i had to give you a call back to show off my handiwork i got the clear on and it turned out pretty nice check that out it sure did i'm looking at the reflections the lights i mean the logo the air control unit it looks perfectly wet right now it looks great yeah we're going to do a little buffing a little later on so i might give you a ring if you if you'll answer of course i'll answer that looks fantastic though that's going to make it even nicer well thanks man well i'm going to go ahead and get off here i need to get the gun and all cleaned up so we'll be hollering at you here shortly take care of you guys blasted and powder coated our chassis is back and we start installing our suspension getting street riggle one step closer to rolling well as we mentioned earlier tommy's been getting the outside of the buick looking all nice and i've been working underneath with the chassis and as you can see here we've got this nice shiny gold finish and i think it turned out amazing but believe me when i tell you it didn't look this nice not that long ago we sure like looking at that fancy fab work that street rock garage did on our custom chassis but it's time to coat it in some shiny so we brought it to blast from the past in lebanon tennessee we've used them before on several projects and they do an amazing job whether it's sandblasting or powder coating now our brand new chassis collected some rust over the time while we were building the car so it needed to be blasted just like anything else would once it was down to bare metal it goes in the booth the guys have to make sure that all the media is removed before the powder coating process starts so they blow it off with some compressed air [Music] the next step is to apply the powder for our buicks chassis we chose this gold color we think it'll really accent that red nicely [Music] after the powder is applied it goes into the oven where it bakes at over 400 degrees for up to 30 minutes well while that frame was in the oven baking they took some of our other suspension components to get them coated like our control arms and spindles on our suspension components we decided to go with a couple of different accent colors we picked the traditional black for some components and others we decided to go with this gunmetal gray and those suspension parts turned out really nice and i like the way they work with that gold frame speaking of the frame it was time for it to come out of the oven but we weren't really satisfied with that semi-gloss finish so it needed to go back in the booth now this next part is a little unconventional normally powder coating gets one coat and then baked and it's done but we're doing something special on our frame i know this powder looks white but it's actually a clear coat once it gets baked in the oven it's going to come out shiny gold as powder coating becomes more and more popular some of the coatings get more involved like adding a clear coat what's nice about this is it gives you a finish like a base coat clear coat paint wood with the additional benefit of being more durable i'm really glad we decided to go with that gloss clear because it made that gold pop especially when the light hits it we even had them do the control arms while they were at it now i just need to get the rest of this thing assembled hopefully by the end of the day today this thing's going to be on the ground now when you're working on assembling something that's been powder coated you want to make sure you take your time because you don't want to chip the coating it's really hard to touch that stuff up we're using arp stainless steel bolts on this project where we can gotta make sure you put some anti-seize on there keep them from going now one thing i like to do when i have something that's freshly powder coated like this is to get all the powder coating off of the holes where the bolt needs to go through is i use this little abrasive here on a drill that way i don't take too much material off it's pretty handy [Music] another thing i'm doing here is i'm reassembling everything in the exact opposite order of which i disassembled it i even took some photos before i took it all apart so i knew how it looked when it was all together [Music] this stuff only goes on one way it's nice and easy just need to get the bolts installed get them cinched down we'll be ready to get this thing on the ground [Music] it's amazing how much nicer these components look once they're all powder coated and put back together it's really cool the way the colors play off of each other [Music] well i'm gonna go grab some wheels and tires and this thing is gonna be a roller finally don't go away we take our new paint to the next level well we got our buick all sprayed and it turned out really nice and you know we can't just leave things alone so we're going to do a step now that can be a little bit labor-intensive but when we're all said and done it's going to take that paint job to a whole nother level what i've done is still a little bit of sanding here on the fender for this demonstration as usual we got a few pieces of trash in the paint so we wanted to sand those slick as well as the rest of the panel we're using some 1000 grit and some water and that did the trick now a few of you probably are a little bit concerned about that dull finish but don't worry about it we're going to make it a whole lot better the first thing we're going to do is use some ultimate cut from sonax with their hybrid wool pad here and don't you worry about it there weren't any psychedelic sheep harmed in the manufacturing of this what's nice about both of these products is they're designed to save you effort and time all we need here is a few drops to get us started we're ready to go to work now we're only buffing a portion of our fender to get started ultimate cut is a fast cutting compound that quickly removes 1000 grit or finer sanding marks from the paint and has an odorless water-based formula that keeps the dust to a minimum and uses no silicone heck yeah that was nice cutting and buffing is a pretty serious process but if your ride's reflection is just faded or weather beaten it will help bring back its original shine man that looks nice and that's just the first step now for a few of you out there you're probably thinking it's pretty much done we should stop right there well we're only halfway through the process and i'm sure you've seen a few other people that have stopped midway through because you've been at the stop light or at the car wash or something and the car drives binder looks like swirls all down the side of the car let me show you what i'm talking about kind of looks like a hologram effect and that's where they didn't carry the paint to its full potential and this next step will take care of all that just a little bit of this stuff and it'll make you some happy paint now for our last step we're using sonax perfect finish with their green polishing pad perfect finish was developed to repair paint defects like trash and paint runs after sanding it starts off with an initial deep cut and then diminishes to produce a high gloss finish taking care of all the holograms left behind by our first step let's see how good this looks man yeah won't nobody be making fun of your ride if anything it'll be a bit envious of it oh yeah now with the paint that we started with looks pretty nice but after a little bit of rubbing and some sonax polish it took this paint job to a whole other league well today has been a pretty big day we got all the color sprayed on the buick the chassis is fully assembled and in color and this thing is looking pretty sweet uh yeah i'm really excited about it and i got to tell you as far as the color choices go the frame and the body great job appreciate it man i tell you i can't hardly wait to be behind the wheel of this thing stretching it out on the open road it'll be a sweet day it won't be long yeah and uh the real question is though who's gonna buy the root beers heck i'll buy the first round second if we're celebrating i may be even going as far as four rounds wow i got coupons today on detroit muscle we get street riggle in the shop for a final push before sending it to the upholstery shop we'll give you some tips on painting different types of metal and the right way to install door glass and trim [Music] hey everybody welcome to detroit muscle we're back on our 80s buick regal project and i'm excited about that because this thing is getting really close to being finished you know the popularity of the mid-80s gms the g-bodies is pretty much through the roof and i'm okay with that because they've got a sweet spot in my heart yeah and i know you paint me as a ford guy but i love especially the buick version of the g bodies there's just something about them and it may just be our generation so we wanted to take this car and set the bar with it and i think we did that full chassis ls3 connecting crews big brakes big wheels the list goes on and on but my favorite part of this build would have to be that shiny red paint that tommy sprayed on now we did have to massage the body just a bit to get the reflection that we've got and you know we've come a long ways with our solid foundation set it was finally time for us to start assembling all of our shiny pieces now usually this is the most fun part of the stage of building a car because the car is starting to take shape but one thing is for sure you have to be careful you don't want to damage all your hard work well the next big thing on this car is going to be obviously the interior but before we can drop this thing at the interior shop and get that done we got to put all the glass in it especially this door glass here because you got to have that on before you can put the door panels on you know plus we're also knocking down all that bright work the shiny chrome so i've got a few pieces i need to paint i guess i need to go get in the booth all right well i'm gonna go dig out that door glass and the other stuff if you didn't break it well i can't promise nothing well i got my first round of parts here in the booth they're all prepped out and we're pretty much ready to start spring now i've got three different situations set up in here and you may run into these if you're planning to do some painting yourself first let's talk about this hood the primer that is on here is the edp coating it's electronically deposited primer now they put this stuff on here to cut down on corrosion and to prep it out well pretty much all you have to do is clean it first scuff it and then re-clean it and you're ready to start spraying now back here on the spoiler it's a little bit different the primer that's on our spoiler is something we sprayed on here at the shop and i've got two different types the first round was a polyester that's this orange or pumpkin colored stuff that you can see coming through and after i sanded that real well i came back and sprayed some urethane on it to smooth out my scratches now when i started sanding on it i got a little bit thin with that urethane so to paint this piece i'm going to have to seal it to go on to the paint process last but not least are these two pieces of trim that we've got hung up now you've probably heard war stories of people trying to paint chrome and not having much success and more likely what they did was just take paint spray the chrome and it didn't stick so what really needs to happen is you need to spray on a tie coat like this epoxy primer that i've already applied and the reason for that is because the adhesion properties of the primer is much more significant than of paint now i need to mix up some sealer for my spoiler back there and then we can spray on that black foreign now we've all heard of metallic colors settling in the can well really and truthfully flat and semi-gloss colors do the same thing so it's crucial that the color is mixed thoroughly so putting it on a paint shaker is the optimal way to mix this stuff up now you can do it with a stick but it just takes longer to do and if you wind up not mixing it enough well what you'll run into is whenever you apply the color there will be shiny and dull spots and a real inconsistent reflection so make sure you mix it correctly with our paint off the shaker it's time to get to spraying what we're using is summit racing single stage hot rod satin black now with spraying this stuff i'm going to put on about two coats all of them is going to have about a 50 overlap and make sure that you select the right reducer for whatever temperature you're spraying sometimes with these trim pieces it can be a little tricky to make sure you get all the nooks and crannies pay attention but you don't want to come out of here and have missed the spot now for this spoiler it turned out pretty slick considering all this was flat metal just a while back well that laid out pretty nice we just need to let it dry and cure out so that we can handle it and then we can put it on the car coming up we dive into installing glass and window trim the right way well while tommy's been working on getting those pieces painted i've been busy getting this side assembled with some of the stuff we painted earlier and i have to say choosing to paint that trim black was the wise choice i really love the way it makes the red pop but when you're doing stuff like this getting the doors assembled and the glass in it it can be quite tedious and there's actually a certain process you have to do to get it all assembled properly and i'll show you how to do that on the other side well i mentioned there's a process and there's a reason you have to do things in a certain order especially when we're talking about assembling doors that's because if you put one thing on before it's supposed to you won't be able to get to the part before it to install it for instance if you get the glass in you won't be able to get to the hardware to install the exterior door handle or the lock cylinder or the mirror so i went ahead and got those installed now the next thing would be normally to install this outer felt or do wipe some people call it but on this particular car there's actually a trim piece that goes on with that so if you just put the felt on without the trim you'll have to go back and grab the trim and put it on with it and let's just say learned my lesson on the other side on that one well now this door is ready for some glass when we took the car apart we saved our original door glass and we've decided to reuse it because it's in good shape and factory glass is a better quality than an aftermarket piece would be and not to mention has all the hardware already attached to it so that saves time the only thing really wrong with this is it's dirty and it had some tint on it and when i peeled it off it left all the adhesive behind so we need to get that off get it cleaned up and then we can get this glass in the door [Music] i'm going to use the glass cleaner as a lubricant to help my blade slide across the glass without scratching it another reason is because the glass cleaner kind of liquefies the glue turns it into like a gel so it's easier to remove want to get this while it's still wet otherwise that glue will read here if you try to scrape it dry the glue just tends to smear and doesn't come up as easily [Applause] well that's pretty much all there is to getting that glue off of there but for the other side well we're going to need a different tool for that on the outside here if you look at the part of the glass that was never exposed to the outside elements it was just kind of hidden in the door over the years it collected all this dirt and grime that washed down off of the windows as for the part that was exposed well it picks up all kinds of contaminants and it feels really rough and regular paper towel and glass cleaner won't get that off i'm going to be using glass cleaner and double out steel wool instead of the blade i know that seems crazy like you're going to scratch the glass with this but actually you're not going to just like when you clean chrome with steel wool it's going to clean the glass the same way here i'll show you i'm saving this bottom part the really grimy part for the end because i don't want to drag all of that up on the glass that's going to be [Music] exposed that's better than new this thing's ready to go in the car start up front here [Music] one nice thing about these guides is that when tommy disassembled the car he marked where they were originally and that way when we're putting it back together we can start there even if we have to just get a good starting point all right let's check this yeah that looks good i'm gonna go get that quarter glass well now it's time to move on to our quarter glass and as you can see from the exterior here it's in really good shape as far as the interior goes i went ahead and cleaned the tint and the glue off but if you look at the butyl here it's kind of beat up we could probably salvage that and form new peaks and it would reseal just fine but it's probably a good idea to go ahead and replace that we've already got the glass out the car is real nice and this stuff's not really that expensive anyway you can get it at your local parts store this is 5 16 thick and then we've got 3 8 as well and it looks like this was probably 5 16 from the factory so really all we need to do is just get this cleaned up and off of there get the new stuff on get it installed now it looks like it'd be hard to remove but it's actually pretty easy just got to work it a little bit at a time that's a good time to clean any of this up off the edge here wow well i'm cutting off a couple of little pieces here that i'm actually going to put around those studs so water doesn't get in through the stud holes into the car all right now we get this thing in the car well that's all there is to that now we do have a few more things we need to do and we've got our glass guy coming to put a new windshield and back glass in it here shortly but after that we can ship it off to the upholstery shop now this goes to show you if you take your time do things in the right order you'll end up with a nice product i'm happy with how this one turned out today on detroit muscle we have some tips and tricks for wiring up your project and we'll show you an easy way to reduce heat and noise in your car [Music] hey everybody welcome to detroit muscle when you're getting to the end of a project it can be very exciting but it can also be somewhat intimidating and time-consuming because you get to the point where you're starting to do all those tedious processes like recently we got our doors assembled we put the glass and the hardware in and even though it's not very exciting per se it is very important when you're building your car to do each thing in the right order and to do it properly and take your time so the next thing we need to do on this is going to be the wiring and instead of just digging in and showing you how to terminate the specific ends on this car i'm actually going to broaden it a little bit take a step back and talk about wiring in general because it's something we don't normally dig into here now there's a lot of tools to the trade and some tools are better than others and then there's a lot of different components that you can pick for a certain process then you have to actually make the termination so we're going to go through all of those today i sure hope you got that wiring done because i don't want to do it yeah i don't blame you yeah no i just got a couple of loose ends and this thing will be all done loose ends you've been fighting loose ends for a while aren't you you're talking about the car or the wiring uh over to the interior on a different note well we're getting dangerously close to having our buick all finished up and the next big step is going to be shipping it out to the upholstery shop now with this thing from the beginning i wanted it to perform well look good and be comfortable so this next thing that we're going to be doing is essential in that comfort department we all know with older cars and hot rods they're plagued with a common problem of being hot noisy and rattling on the inside now way to reduce those unwanted factors is by applying some additional thermal and sound control material we use this stuff on several of our projects and it's pretty simple to install all you have to do is pull off the backing smash it onto the panel and you're good to go now this stuff drastically reduces road noise and if you've got a stereo system and you like to listen to it cranked up to 11 well that's going to cut down on those vibrations then there are products that have to be applied using a spray gun now with the application of these it's a little bit more involved because you got to have a few more tools like a compressor and so on now with this particular product you just need to make sure that it's mixed thoroughly before you go to spraying and the service that you're applying it on is nice and clean [Music] before i go to spraying i like to mask off the stud or the hole where my seat's going to mount and also where the seat belt mounts now spending a little bit of time here well save you a bit more time on the back side if you do happen to get a little bit spray crazy and get out on let's say the rocker or something you can clean that up with just warm water and a rag we got everything cleaned up i'm gonna mask off that shifter grab my air hose and we can get the spray [Music] you should do it we're going to be applying two different materials the first one is for sound control you just want to lay it out nice and even and then let it flash the second one is a thermal coating now it's time to spray on our ceramic insulation the application is basically the same [Music] now i like using this type of stuff here on the inside of the door panels for a couple of reasons one of them well since it has a big void here on opening this type of stuff you can put it over top of it and it works really nice and i've got a demonstration for you that's what it sounds like now see it's that easy and check this out this old door sounds a whole lot more solid now we picked up both of these products at summit racing just in case they tickled your fancy and you'd like them for your ride we still got to let our floor coating dry which is no big deal and then our big bad buick will be off to the upholstery shop today is the day street regal is finally complete we head to eminem hot rod interiors as they put the final touches on our one-of-a-kind interior then we put all our hard work to the test on the track and the streets making sure our buick checks off all the right boxes [Music] hey y'all welcome to detroit muscle today is gonna be one great day we're headed down to eminem hot rod interiors to pick up our buick we dropped it off a while back and i got a phone call just recently saying that this thing was pretty much ready for us to come check it out and drag it back home now they have done some work for us in the past and what they did well they knocked it out of the park so with that said i can't wait to check our buick out [Music] hey wild man you left the door unlocked so i made my way in here yeah i know sometimes we mess up and do that is this this our stuff yep this is it you got anything completed yet yeah absolutely we got one seat finished once it can i take a look at it sure where's it at sitting on the table man this is one trick piece bud well thank you tommy glad you like it man how much time you got in on this thing oh probably a day day and a half now to build this does it take a whole lot of different material to do it well we start out with clear plastic to get the patterns and and you really need to do that on one of these it's got all the multiple pieces and so that way you get everything fitting right and it sews up good and so that and some foam and different textures of leather now with the foam did you have to re-foam this entire seat the inserts are all new the sides we just steam the old foam and it kind of plumps it back up and then we glue a quarter inch scrim over it with the scrim side out to make the cover slide on easier okay because these are kind of tough to get the covers on now notice with the leather there's a couple different ones here yeah we used a smooth dark brown and just for contrast because i don't know these cars need a little contrast and then we used a perforated insert which is a lot like the light model cars the perforated leather will breathe and you don't sweat as much i got you is it a little more stretchy too it's a little more stretchy because of all the little needle holes and it it is a little more pliable than say this leather okay now i see the rivets here and this is kind of a trendy thing is that very complicated to do nah not hard at all you want me to show you absolutely let's do it now with part of this laid out here it doesn't look all that complicated but that seat well that's a little different story yeah it looks a little different when you just get the insert ready but we got this one stitched up and it's ready to put the grommets in do we have to cut the hole first yep got a punch hole now where you're spacing is there anything particular like a rule of thumb or anything just depends on the seat and the width of the insert the way the inserts laid out these ended up being three and a half inches and so then i center the grommet three and a half inches in between there all right but you could do it if it's a four inch or even a two inch what we need to do get started then we need to punch some holes and to make those nice uniform holes he's using a specialized hole punch after a few taps of the hammer you got perfection that's all there is to it [Music] there we go [Music] now what's this big hunk of metal you got just a special grommet setting tool and they make different sizes for different size grommets so i've got several and then you do it bottom side up can you damage the material putting this on there nah not really not as you long as you don't miss [Music] how do you know whenever it's compressed all the way just a couple of licks with a hammer that's all you got that looks nice silly question do you have any idea where them things came from the grommets yeah like where they originated what was the purpose for them just a breathing hole that's all it is they used to put them on the bottom of boat seat cushions and furniture cushions to let air escape now people are using for stylistic purposes yeah just the coolness factor and there we go you make it look too easy ah nothing to it coming up we button up street regal's luxurious interior our interior's turning out killer and just like those fancy seats our door panels are fancy as well now jeremy told me that fabbing up this stuff isn't as complicated as it looks he's working on that driver's side let's check him out so wild man what do you got going on here well we've got your driver's door panel here and we're about ready to laminate the second panel on to the first one how did you get to this point well we drew out the design we cut our panels apart and then we went ahead and glued this panel on just because that's easier foamed it and then we've got the leather covered on it already all righty so what's your next step next step is we're going to bond this one to this one we're going to put the pins in these holes and go straight down with it and we'll press it down really well just to make sure that the panels stick together good now we're gonna press our edges down so that when we glue our other panel on it's nice and flat with the leather smoothed out now on the panel what we're going to do is we're going to glue the top panel on and we need to go ahead and spray the glue on both sides how much glue are you putting on just at the end layer you just want a good even coat not too thick or not too wet so that it takes forever to dry now when we spray the glue on this panel i'm going to try not to get any on the foam because we don't want the foam to stick before it needs to now we're going to come back and brush glue along all the edges that's basically because it's more controlled yes you've got a lot more control over over it with a brush figure while you would be brushing you'd at least have your pinkies out you know that would make me look more fancy pin stripers do it [Music] now if you got that a little excessive and it run off to the edge can you get that off you can you can use 3m cleaner to clean the glue off when you spread that on there how long do you have to wait it'll be about 10 to 15 minutes just enough time for it to tack up so you can stick them together or now that we've let the glue set up on the panels we're going to stick the two panels together now with the top panel glued on we're going to fold leather and the foam back and spray glue on the back side of the foam and on the top cap now we just need to give that a few minutes to dry and then we'll stick it together with our glue dry now we'll just smooth out our foam now we just need to take a razor blade and trim away all the excess now with our foam glued and trimmed you can kind of see the unevenness on the panel what we're going to do now is take our sanding block our sandpaper and just sand that down and try to do away with this dip all right tommy with our foam sanded all we got to do spray glue on the foam and the leather and then fold the leather over and finish the panel once that dries we'll finish the panel all right now we're ready to apply our leather on the outside looking in it looks like for a creative person this would be an amazing job oh yeah you pretty much got freedom on all your designs and everything you know sometimes we work with renderings but a lot of time it's just whatever we come up with with that smoothed down all that's left to do is turn it over and finish it on the back side all right that's it all that's left is to put it on the car man can't wait to see it [Music] all right and that's ready to go eminem took our buick to the next level she now has a full custom upholstery with high-end douglas leather they showed off their skills by using multiple textures rivets and pleats to give us an aggressive interior while yet keeping it refined to complement our buick by selecting the perfect color combinations accompanied with pure craftsman style stitching the only thing we have to do now is go enjoy our creation out on the pavement the journey has been long but worth it we'll take street regal to the track and lay down some rubber well we are here at ncm motorsports park because this is where this car was built to perform right tommy not exactly we've built this car over the course of many moons and i tell you having it out of here on a day like today is going to be a great day well we built sidewinder to battle this thing and unfortunately that car is long gone now and i had a nice trip out to tulsa with that car had a lot of fun and even though this car is really kind of focused more for the street thus the name street regal i think even you will be surprised at what this thing can do out here man absolutely this car's got the right combo under big brakes nice suspension plenty of power up under the hood and i tell you mark keys are in it i'm gonna let you do the honors all right that's what i wanted to hear don't break her try not to you can abuse her but don't break her [Music] now a few of you guys are probably curious why i gave the keys away to mark so easily well mark's a friend of mine and he's pulled a lot of hours putting that car together right there beside me and you know out here on the track i know that's really where he shines so heck sometimes you just gotta give good things away wow this thing is super flat [Music] wow this thing actually likes it out here well the first thing i noticed lots of power and lots of grip too a lot of lateral grip big meets in the back plenty of grip in the front plenty of braking lots of braking you know being that this thing is a buick regal a grandma's car essentially you know it's a little odd especially with this steering wheel and being an automatic it's slightly awkward it's just not your normal track car and i know this isn't a track car and tommy will argue that's not what it was built for but this thing's plenty capable you know it's like kind of got an identity crisis to me because you know it's a street car but it's it's capable of doing anything you ask of it out here [Music] its limits are well kind of what i can do i can't really up shift and downshift very easily because it's an automatic so limited there much lateral grip as it has i'm finding myself holding myself in the car in the seat with the steering wheel with my grip on the steering wheel so i'm by myself putting less input in or taking the turns a little more slowly because i just i can't stay in the seat and it's actually kind of fun it's awesome coming down the straight now easily surpassing 100 the gauges are happy i'm happy i'm not sure but this old buick man converted it what do you think no i think we converted it no that's that's a given from where i was at up there man this thing looked great the the the complaint i have i mean it needs harnesses you know if i had a stick but i understand that's not what that's what it was built for right right right but if i had to blame it to blame something on it it'd be that but you know that's our fault yeah we didn't do it for that uh the only other thing is it almost like has an identity crisis so it's like acceleration plenty of acceleration hard acceleration all the power you want but then again when you're not under hard acceleration it's like it's comfortable and it's quiet and it's like it's like it's trying to be two different things at the same time and it's not doing either one of those really poorly so it's a cruiser and it's a potential racer if it had those few components but again it's not what it was built to do right right this car here for me per se i just wanted it to perform really well but i didn't want to sacrifice any comforts or even the appeal of it by going fast you know mission accomplished man the suspension the brakes i mean the handling and the acceleration i mean everything under the car is like all there good deal oh that sounds like we did all right then sounds like we did all right good job hand it to you i have to say man up in that crow's nest seeing this thing rip around it was quite the sight this thing looks darn good rip it you do it see what i'm talking about i bet you run up all the fuel in this thing see what it ah what is the gasket i think it's got an eighth tank you ran it out of gas oh it don't have an eighth of a tank it has that's why you wanted me to drive it you want me to fill it back up make sure you put a premium in it as its name implies we take our buick to the street to see how regal it really is now getting out here on these back roads and stretching this thing out is definitely putting a smile on my face we've been working on this car for a long time we went through the suspension we've done paint and body work on it had the interior redone basically this car has been touched from the front bumper to the back and you know that itself is quite the undertaking a key component of building a car that performs well going stopping turning and on is having a solid foundation so whenever we went with the street rod garage chassis but we knew we had knocked it out of the park now whenever you're putting together a ride one thing that i can't stress enough is picking the right color because this is what everyone sees and you see if you don't pick the right color every time you see the car well can leave you a little bit disheartened where this color that we picked is deep cherry red very tasteful it's almost making my mouth water already now omar was pretty complimentary of the buick when he was out there beating on the thing at the track saying that it performed really nice now for me a track car is okay but the sweet spot is having a ride that you can take to the track and stretch out here on the highway [Music] now with that connecting cruise that we put up under the hood of this thing the power level on it is 525 horse and that's almost like the perfect number it's got plenty of pep it's got a lot of manners to it and if you want to get a little rowdy well that's as easy as smashing on the gas pedal some people call it spirited driving i just kind of call it goofing off there ain't no line this old girl a rock and roll put a car together like this it's pretty easy to have a good time sometimes i question myself did i pick like the right occupation and i have to say yes because sometimes it just seems like your project will consume you because you're putting all your spare time spare money into it and sometimes it seems like you're not really getting that far but finally you get over that threshold and you complete it this car here yeah i'm pretty proud of it [Music] nice thing about being out here in the sticks it's plenty of places to do a big promo [Music] burnout that wasn't too bad wasn't even trying hard [Music] whew all that smoke blowing around that's a sign that this thing's plenty peppy guess you can say this buick's got all the goods looks performance ride comfort home run i sure am glad you didn't crash my baby out there on the racetrack well i appreciate that but where i was there weren't any traffic laws to break yeah i could probably say i stretched them out a little bit but you know it was fun but you know now it's time to wrap this thing up right so we've got to wrap up the project but as you can also see we've wrapped the car with this car cover that we got from covercraft this is their most luxurious indoor car cover called the form fit it's made with polyester and spandex on the outside and 100 cotton sheared to a fleece finish on the inside it's breathable washable protects against minor garage dings and even comes with a four year warranty you can even add yourself a bit of a custom touch like we did with a logo and my favorite part about it is all these covers are made right here in the usa and this thing's been a lot of fun i know man i can't believe it's finally done

Channel: POWERNATION

Views: 3,037,438

Keywords: Car, PowerNation, howto, how-to, diy, automotive, cars, trucks, automobile, do it yourself, automobiles, auto, powerblock, buick regal, regal, street regal, full build, car restoration, car rebuild, buick grand national, buick gnx, pro touring, car, buick

Id: eYg6DaHAu1M

Length: 185min 58sec (11158 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 30 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/Sean_Ornery]

I nsaw this when it aired. Turned out way better than I thought it would. Like the color a lot and the build quality looks good. Think the holes in the bumpers, however, are rinkydink.