Will It RUN AND DRIVE 600 Miles Home?1968 Buick LeSabre 400 FORGOTTEN For 26 YEARS!

well the guy's in a field of cars in western south dakota i just bought that 1968 buick lesabre 400. she's a hard top four-door flavor it hasn't run or been on the road since about 1994 26 years i'm going to try to get it running and drive it from its grave and not only that but i'm going to try to drive it all the way home the good news is we got keys well we think the not so good news home is 600 miles away great welcome to vice grip garage [Applause] [Music] this old girl here is technically a third gen lasabre they ran from 65 to 70. and personally after the third gen i'm not much of a fan of them to be honest before 1959 they were referred to as a buick special which is actually my favorite buick model and that ran from 36 to 58 but let's take a walk around this thing see what we got going on i'd like to start in the trunk if we can get into it because it just tells you a story about everything else going on we'll get the power barn open and the inside seems to have floor mats or carpeting in there so i'm sure that's to smell just delightful one of the things that a guy was attracted to on this car is she's the 400 model the base cars had a 9.1 compression 350 in them which put out about oh 230 horsepower this would have the 10.25 to 1 compression 350 so she's barking out about 280 horsepower and it should have the super turbine 400 auto magical transmission in it as well so she's pretty hopped up actually especially for being a 68 that was kind of getting close to the emissions era there pretty solid car actually i have walked around it already i didn't see anything that you know really brought a guy down to his knees a little bit of rust starting down here but very manageable of course i can't see much because she's down in the weeds kind of the same a little bit of rust down here but the wheel openings are nice and solid which is always nice so the 68 had a redesigned grill on her and the headlights changed this had that center bar coming across it i believe the 67s and the 69s kind of had multiple horizontal slats in it and it should also have a different speedometer in it kind of square looking oh we got vintage window open i don't know if that's good or bad that's cracked pop's obviously seen better days i think he started peeling it off here at one point would look better all one color honestly it's actually good that it either came off on its own or she's been peeling off because otherwise they get so rusty down there especially down in here and who and here but top looks really really good actually i'm thankful this car sat in eastern south dakota until maybe a decade ago and then it was moved to this site still hadn't run or drove or anything they just towed it but it missed a huge hail storm which did this to almost all of the vehicles out here so thankfully this one didn't take on all that damage but let's get the trunk open and see what that's going to tell a guy are you seeing this ford focus back here goodness guy miles will confirm on the plate while i'm back here got a 93 tag and a november of 94. so 26 years is correct gas caps on it that's good not used to having keys it's kind of nice actually like i say i like to start in the trunk because guy finds an old water pump or something you can start putting the story together what happened with the car in the past oh that opens nice okay yep well i've got uh i've got a lot of carpet basically and there's some carpet over here i got carpet down there there's some carpet and it's a lot of carpet i'm not even sure what i'm supposed to do with this maybe i'll put it in this pickup got some really nice pine trees on the seat yep well guy can never have too many remnants okay i guess i'm i'm starting to not understand what's going on here of course it has to be the biggest trunk in america we're gonna take an inventory of the body carrier here but first i wanted to show you around this boot lid it's in really good shape normally these old buicks they just start rotting right around the lip here this one's just starting the surface rust but dang she's in pretty good shape fellers i ain't kidding ain't rusted there that seam looks good weather stripping looks pretty good all the way around trunk floor so far knock on balsa looks pretty solid it's got the original trunk mat in it we've got four those yeah those are the original poverty caps we've got half a hammer of course ruler 10 40 and a shoe horn looks like the factory jack and they even laid some cardboard down in there we got a radio knob and some wire we could probably use a little on down the road so the great news is there's no engine parts just kind of sprinkled in here so we're off to a great start even though i'm really fond of buicks a guy has to go on ahead and admit the one downside is getting parts sometimes is just it's a touch tricky probably like 13.4 percent more than your generic chevy or ford and it's always a gamble opening these cars up wow what is going on all be dipped this looks at first glance to be absolutely complete i just can't believe it here's what we got looks to be 100 percent complete which is just really surprising that no one's come up here and snapped a couple parts off of her all the wiring's intact belts got a little bit of mouse damage over here but i mean down in here looks fine usually they get into the sparklato wires but those seem to be not so bad really old filter on it don't know what brand it is battery tray is rotted a little bit even got the ac pump on it that'd be the old frigidaire so yeah this is the high compression 350 have a 400 behind it well i guess we do have a belt off here looks like it was eaten eating off something kind of funky going on with the brakemaster but you don't always need those gap was replaced at some time oh here we go see the rtv so she's had a water pump at one time in its life still running points but yeah i mean this is this is great news well one last thing before we start to digging in on her let's jump into the cabin here and see what we got at first glance it looks like a lot of the same as the trunk my youngest human i'm responsible for came with today so he's going to start pulling out all the grass and weeds and stuff out of here start cleaning that up yeah we'll jump in the interior here so clearly we've got just a lot more carpet oh that smell just hits you right now it's like chicken noodle soup and gym locker i mean it's right there i think it has to do with that wet padding laying on the ground so again this is a hard top so you don't have the post here if it has the posts they call them posts and they call them hard tops because they looked like a convertible but she had the hard top try to get some of this stuff out of here real quick oh she's just locked in there seats look pretty decent except over there on the driver's side got some print in here let me get this carpet out click and then we'll take a closer look she's got the crank later windows on her going down pretty easy oh yeah we're just gonna pretend that they do come back up but they don't all right here bud he drags that around back kind of a nice beige tight berber i don't know that's not berber what else we got this is berber how did it unroll oh i see had her up in the back window you got to protect on that deck the dust is just violent and the smell is getting much much worse that's fine the amount of carpet fiber going into my lungs right now is actually pretty alarming oh yep but the seat should be absolutely perfect under all this you'd think well how can it be so heavy help me understand what is going on oh yeah who doesn't want a little bit of pink and yellow and purple on their carpet i just is this ever gonna end i think i think we got to the bottom nope great we got her all cleaned out and i got the doors just shooting open trying to get some of the smell and heat out of there i'll start in the back seat and it looks like that carpet completely saved the back seat she's a little crunchy but i think we can bring that back around no big tears or nothing pretty fancy pattern in the seats carpet looks i mean it's fine oh hey that's the i bet you that is the dome lens cover it is and it's not even broken so we'll put that back up i noticed this right away they were smart enough to tuck some plastic underneath the sill plates and it saves on the carpet when you're scuffing your feet in and out rear deck lid is she shot but we got some six by nines warren g would be plenty proud headliner looks absolutely perfect i don't think there's a single hole or tear in it the mice are different out here it's way better than a minnesota i mean this thing would just be completely eaten front seats looking pretty good other than the usual driver's seat area same plastic laid that down guy's thinking we might be able to save this carpet just scrub bonner you know and i'll get my rust checker in here and see what that feels like yeah i think it's pretty good oh my goodness i can't believe it we've got an actual eight track stereo astro sonics i really really hope this works has it got a digital readout on it even i think it does well that made the entire purchase worth it see what we got here oh what is this fabulous 40s gotta have that ray price uh-oh we'll bring her around i think you could fix them and we got papers expiration date 1987 1993 and 1994. so 94 so that again confirms the date 94 is when she was parked up gotta hang on to these i'll put them up on this dash which by the way this dash looks absolutely perfect as well sonomatic look how they put buick on the buttons i'm telling you buicks were just really classy cars they're kind of like the poor man's cadillac except i might argue just as equal i'll go around the other side and take a look at the edges door panels look good got a little bit of mold down there but that's okay i'm used to that seat looks fine over here back of the seat is perfect got some wear on this maybe or is that a oh yeah a little bit of a tear these are always nice me climb in this thing she's a glow to the ground says it's got 20 260 and judging by the pedals it's got to be 120 i'm thinking but nothing's broken everything's here speed alert all these wheels ouch ouch just got stung on the arm over here so i guess i will have to address that ac and then the key is way down here so we're off to a good start i mean it's a really solid base a guy needs to see if this engine's locked up or not but i'm going to do the right thing and just procrastinate a little bit bentley's going to take the air cleaner off i want to see what the carburetor looks like see if that's locked up if i got to order a carb kit i want to do that now because they'll most likely not have it and then i'll get a wrench down there on the cranks now and see if she spins over that's not so bad well yeah it is no big nests or anything like that you can see a little bit started to get carried in by rodents but nothing major wow what what have we got how come this just i need you ah no nothing ever just works for a guy always got to be a fight how about now how about now what do you say now well we do have some ice age it's a pretty small mouse house so this is probably single wide trailer level when you get into the apartment complexes that's when it gets worrisome but still not getting any of the wires which is great because i just i don't like playing with the digital stuff looks like they got into the hood insulation a little bit and did their thing anyway i'm going to throw a wrench on down here cut my arm on this fan blade about seven times and see if this engine actually rotates well i did try to get my sasquatch arms down in there but it just that's not working since there's still belts on it there's tension on the water pump pulley which holds the fan on so i'm just going to back those nuts off remove the fan then i could just dive all the way in there get out of there now that that's snipped out of here guy's got more room to get his arm down there and crank on that so you fillers can keep your eye on the ice cube maker and the charging wheeler belts here if you see them spinning you know i got her broke loose it's basically laying on the ground down here so she's a ways down there we go oh no it's not moving there it went a little oh there it moved about an eighth inch there it went she broke free oh guy was getting just a little bit nervous there she's spinning so what i'm gonna do is just keep rotating it over for a couple minutes i'm so glad this came free i've dealt with two stuck engines recently and it's just it is not fun whoa what is going on you know guys been doing this for 15 20 years you'd think i'd have kind of a plan by now but i don't what i'm going to do though is probably start with the fuel make it happener see if that's locked up move on to some vacuum lines and just make sure that it's 37 good i'd kind of like to make sure it just fires and then if it does we know it's worth the time effort and money to throw a tune up on her change the oil and eventually work our way back to the transmission and lastly maybe not even brakes well we've got original edge looks like a rochester quadrajet these are actually really good carburetors but they're also commonly misunderstood so a lot of folks shy away from them [Music] not locked up in any way accelerator pump i'm sure is probably gone in it got a couple vacuum lines split back here some wires eaten but i'm not going to worry about those just yet i'm not even sure what that one does it's not red or yellow so probably not important so i'll plug that up i'll find a battery for and see if this thing spins over no idea where i got this battery from but she's got the goal handle on it so i approve it's definitely too small but it does say automotive battery on it so maybe that'll cancel each other out probably not anyway it's what i got well i guess it's gotta go in this way then well guys been danking around bentley went ahead and cleaned this up for me looks brand new nope marginally better but that is an improvement do you know where the nuts went for this oh look at that uno two c and four before we really start cranking on her guy's gonna go ahead and disconnect the fuel pump from the tank i don't know if there's anything in it and if there is i don't want to suck all that juice and junk up into the fuel pump diaphragm and then fill the carburetor that's probably already dirtier than a crime scene and then we'll check the oil and finally give her a twist and see what happens so down here is the fuel make it happener pump later and we've got line in from the tank and then we've got the return i don't care much about the return line but oh this is crispy i'm going to take this off right there if i can it's got one of those compression bands that well i'm going to cut my hand 74 times in this region getting that off this rig's so low to the ground i can't get a good stance on her yet might just have to do one of them planks or something here we go yeah that's severely uncomfortable perfect oh it actually came off not so bad now if i can actually pull the fuel line back well i'm just consuming large amounts of dirt today it's starting to get a little concerning yeah okay there we go that was easy check on oil here significantly over full no gas in it no water in it but got plenty of viscosity at least to fire up for a couple minutes and then we'll change on it it's at least two three quarts over perfect always need a little extra these really ought to be replaced but i'm gonna wait until i light on fire all right bring the thunder try it again bring the thunder again how about now how about now perfect dead battery run the battery tester across here made in china so you know it's good well are these batteries dead now too i just got nothing nice well i'll just take my manual battery tester 300 across it this never lets me down no sparks no juice gotta find another batteries well we found this guy appears to be out of a boat but what i like about it is it has a thousand cranking amps that ought to put this starter in the tokyo drift mode what was left of the battery tray is now laying on the ground basically that's fine well we've been on fire watch we got the fire test running right now it doesn't look too exciting but basically when i hook up live batteries to old cars because of mice and whatnot sometimes you get shorts and it gets exciting there could be fire and flames and smoke so we kind of just stand around and you know bring it in all i'm getting right now is dead grass and oh man i think that's me actually well i think we're ready to give her another go you want to crank on it a little bit [Music] hey works well i think we're going to give her another go again i'm going to watch just for anything that might look worser than it is better now okay go ahead [Applause] hey that sounds pretty good actually i didn't hear any weird valve train bending or it's obviously spinning over really clean we could be in pretty good shape here none of the pulleys were locked up uh let's do it one more time go ahead all right that's great news a guy was gonna try to let these little fellas be alone but we're cranking on it they're getting a little agitated and i don't want the little dude to get stung so i'm gonna try to flush them out of here if i can they're mad yep oh the good news is we're cleaning up this door frame might be fine did drop them right out of the air with just some basic brakes cleaner a guy went to look for an oil pressure gauge plopped down in the seat and the dangle door buzzer just started working i just can't believe it well i guess i got to i'm listening to it anyway this only has an oil light so i'm not quite sure if it's building pressure just yet but we're going to be able to tell relatively quickly i get asked a lot how come i don't change on the oil first before i fire them up and kind of here's my take on that if the oil isn't obviously bad like full of water or gasoline and you can feel it she's got some viscosity left on her it ain't going to hurt to run it for a minute two minutes plus i want to get it a little bit warm so i can get all the sludge and impurities down into the bottom of the pan because you got to remember the lifters are full of this stuff all the galleys and everything else i want to get as much out of it as i can plus if it ain't going to fire i just don't want to waste the money since we're going to be firing on her from here on out i think i'm going to try to get my i'm a lone wolf 6000 trigger hooked up and all this is is a switch that connects the ignition post on the starter and a 12 volt source but lets the guy just lay out underneath the hood and and hopefully in order to get that baby on i got to get my belly underneath this bentley's grabbing the air tank we're going to try to get this tire aired up which is pretty doubtful i'm gonna say very also these lug nuts are well they're basically not on at all and that way maybe i can just sneak a roux a jack under here so i can at least get one side up if we have enough air i suppose we can try to bring this side up too but i would say this side's even more better we got belts showing it is a white ball though completely different rim that one's got two lug nuts that's good should we take it over to the other side see i'm teaching you right you got to use all your back well it's worth the shot anyway here we go we've got zero beadage dang it well i wonder if i could sneak the jack under the front just enough if i get this tire dangling we got a better chance of me pulling that tire out against the wheel and it might seal up that bead and catch a little bit of air where's my jack now see if i can sneak it under the frame here just a little bit right there maybe wow there we go wow it was just laying flat on the ground oh this tire doesn't stand a chance so that's what i'm fighting back there that beads and over close i am going to kick and pull it back and forth a few times just for giggles see what happens but i'm probably gonna have to go find another tire and wheel do you spin oh yeah well that's good news hey i might be able to push that let's see no she's down got some weird-looking spiders out here do they bite i guess we'll find out it's another weird alien looking spider [Music] before a guy starts wandering around looking for tires mazel try this one too boy it's in really bad shape [Music] but it's uh inflating somehow this is it must have a tube in it or something [Music] it's holding air this is crazy this thing's gonna explode i don't hear anything leaking it says it's a tubeless radio that's pretty crazy actually i would have bet monty the other one would have held there over this one cords were coming out of it it actually pulled grass into the tire when it aired up there and over here but i don't hear anything leaking yet so i guess we just need one to get to work on this front end i think well i got her on a jack that's about to tip over and this jack stand that's slowly sinking into the earth i'm gonna get my head in here because i got a pretty good shot of getting these wires right there hooked onto that starter and that'll be that trigger up here make life a little bit easier as we go forward and then i also think i did may have found a different flat tire that might go right on here and maybe that'll hold there probably not can't really see nothing i'm thinking thinking like it maybe i don't think that's gonna though can i get in this way i just up maybe up like this come on get in there can i get it on there too right there there we go i guess we could have measured this before we spent a half an hour rolling it up the hill but it looks like a buick oh yeah look at that it's a tiger paw asc sounds like a performance tire it even has rf for right front on it what are the chances not very good meanwhile this one's already lost air so we've only got about 20 30 minutes and that one goes down haven't even looked at the rears i don't think what's this one gonna say that one might have no it's got to be flat belts aren't showing anyway what about this one that one's really shot well we'll have to just walk around and find some more there's got to be more out here well we went tire shopping we're going to borrow two until i can come up with a set look at this one up here this is really cool this is an old phillips 66 tire and it's still somehow holding air that's really cool and this is a pontiac but that'll fit just fine buick ozobill pontiac cadillac should slide on this so while we got the ejaculator up here we'll take off this tire too and probably put this one that has air up front here so we can get this front end just out of the dirt this is actually a chevy truck rally i guess i forgot to mention these would fit on here too they're a five lugger only two lug nuts on this side that seems fine wow new dent thanks bud she wasn't making good contact so i had the belly crawl under the front end here hook her up again i did somehow find a piece of carpet to lay on though so that was nice but should be able to crank her now yeah okay fire maker this gas primer 6000 is a pretty handy tool guy's going to try to get some down the old vent tube here about like that way too much down there 26 years this car hasn't ran will it fire why don't you stand back buddy just in case these belts go flying fired immediately more gas wow one more time i'm going to switch over to the other side bottle feed it see if we can get it to run for 30 seconds 42 i don't know maybe a minute that'll be long enough and then we can continue let's drop the oil we could put some sparklators in it some lightning hoses start cleaning some of this stuff up yes she's a runner well i don't want to tear up the starter it's not going to want to sit here and run for us i think we do got some ignition stuff going on after all we were going to replace on that stuff anyway so let's just get after it great we'll take the lightning rod off in a second but i'm sure she's pretty dirty then also rodents can get in here and take some of this jacketing off and then that core is exposed and that lightning can just jump out and arc against the valve cover or block or anywhere on the engine and give you a mess or a rough idle or sometimes a no start like this and these are really old sipcon by motorcraft it's time to come out anyway and i'm seeing some rodent bites down there and stuff before we get in here and pull all these out i'm going to take some brake rejuvenation spray slash wasp killer 200 also known as hand soap and get in here and clean out around these sparklators so when we pull them out all that dirt dust stuff doesn't fall into the cylinder there bentley's changing on sparklators there we're going to throw in some acdelco r45ts see what that heat range does we just don't know yet of course we'll read on the old ones when they come out we're also going to try to get the entire ignition system down at once so i'm going to pull the old lightning hose off match it up with the new one of the same length throw it on buttoned her down to the new lightning weather instead of the old one and when we're done going around the engine we just throw that on with the new rotor and points and we got it well unless the coil is bad because i didn't bring one how you coming bud good [Music] [Music] the porcelain lightning staffs are in making some pretty good progress about to pop the cap off there these ones don't look too bad i mean they're fouled uh running rich but no physical damage no heavy soot anything like that this is probably the worst one of them all and it's really not that bad so pretty good indicator she's a healthy engine i'm gonna get this popped off see what i got below there i've got a fairly decent dish not so big but slightly medium hunch 30 points is our whole issue here although this lightning cap definitely has been changed on so and that looks pretty decent not too bad button looks fine can't see the points until i get the button off here then i'll i'll hook your peepers down in here so just be patient here for a second would you got the old points or contacts out and if you look closely in there i don't know if you guys could see it but they're clearly burned probably could maybe file these for a little bit longer but we'll just throw this new one in here and be done with it i'm just going to slide a business card in there wrench her down and call it good well we got her all put back together got the points adjustablated battery cables on thanks bud ignition sticks on so we'll dump some more gasoline in here and see if we can keep it running this time there she goes can you go see if there's exhaust coming out the back no noise all right well bentley was behind the car we're not getting quite the exhaust that we want so we might have a plugged up exhaust system sometimes rodents get in there and just pack them in valve train was clattering a little bit that's all the longer i'm gonna run it though on this old oil we'll put fresh oil in then we can kind of bring the rpm up see if we could build some oil pressure but i should crawl under here and take a look at the exhaust i don't even know what we got for a system to be honest and also we got to check the old transmission blood stick over here don't want to run it much longer if it's dry burn the pump out oh she's got a lot smells like burnt hair that's fine we'll put that back well she's a runner bud what'd you think sounds good sounds good yeah yeah yeah yeah yep it's hotter than larry bird's three-point average and i ain't kidding you i didn't see anything obvious underneath on the exhaust i think we got to get the rpms up before we can kind of confirm anything and sometimes you could just blow it out if you just feed her the onions give her the old italian tune-up i think i'm going to drop the oil get that changed and then i want to get a boat tank hooked up on this and see if we could just get the thing idling and running let all the gaskets cook in again and then we can top off the radiator see if it stays nice and cool so far we're having a lot of good luck where do i i always just it's over here for the most part buick engineered these to be really easy to work on for the consumer filters right up here and then drain plugs right on the bottom right there should be pretty easy of course this will be slightly warm now but that's what we want some chunks coming out see all that sludge she's just gonna stay in the pan unless you get her a little bit warm then it'll work its way out there's a shot of the exhaust she's a two into one systematical she just kind of goes back there into the other grass that's hanging and then it bends and then there's grass and then it just kind of keeps going this is an atlas oil filter i don't think i've seen atlas before tighten one turn after gasket contact well kind of concerning this wasn't barely full at all so it still hadn't built oil pressure and that time we run it but in a way that's kind of good news because then we stand a really good chance of that valve train noise going away because again it hasn't built any pressure yet so fingers crossed it builds it faster and more gooder we're going to throw on a wix oil filter and then we're going to put in some 1540 heavy duty diesel it's got a piston with some fire and stuff on the front but quite honestly this is really good for flat tappet cams she's got a lot of vitamins and dinosaurs and zinc and all that stuff in it you want to put the filter on flip it over see how it pours better yeah good job kiddo well we got the old boat tank down here for you guys have been watching the channel a while it'd be interesting to know you should comment down there how many different vehicles you've seen me run off that thing she's been pretty faithful i'm just gonna unhook it right there at that filter and plug the filter into the line right here before the pump that way we can run it off this fresh gas and then whatever fuel the fuel make it happener doesn't use that'll get sent right back to the tank and that's just fine because what i'll end up doing is just flushing fuel through that tank and the lines because eventually we're gonna need to run on that tank we stand any shot at running 600 miles we're going to need that fuel capacity so guile roll around on his belly and get that plugged in think i could reach it from there probably not well it's worth a try i can't i could say i tried hey little guy roll under here and hand me that fuel line up through the bottom don't go too far under the car though please there you go oh get out of there thanks gonna need a clamp later on that i think i used all of them these clamp laters with the plastic which way on them they're kind of handy they're spendy but boy do they save time well we'll go on ahead and fire her up again i think if i can nurse on her for about a minute then she'll suck a light from the tank down here i just want to get it idling here so we can let it sit and run and pump a couple gallons through this thing rang the thunder valtroy noise went away i don't know how much fuel to give her yeah i don't think we need that right now so many buttons and levers [Music] i don't know then laughs [Music] uh oh she's still ain't running off the pump sounding a lot better though but my eyes are just on fire i can't see nothing and i'm also swallowing anyway it seems to be running better slightly smoky there at the end is what i was trying to say i wonder if i need to prime this somehow i do have this pump on here we'll just fire up that pump and force it in need to run that digital pump and i don't know these gauge wires should work so i got that running down here and i'll hook this up and prime it a little bit oh we sprung a leak shut her down so she's just spraying fuel out right there so i got to shorten this up oh you can see where the old clamp later was i'll bring her down a little bit and redo it well we got that fixed and i went on ahead and cracked her up here and she's shooting fuel so it's gonna start filling the carb bowl now i might have to just tickle on it then needles and float bowls get sticky in there but we're getting really close i think to get this thing idling okay i got my big carburetor adjuster go ahead ease some fuel in here bring it in pretty sure this accelerator pump's just gone okay go ahead stop see if we can fire up now still only running off the bottle i'm going to fill the cardboard one more time get some juice in there fact i might try to throw some barium and b12 down in there that'll clean on it but we might be taking this carburetor off and rebuilding on her because she's just not making fuel happen all of the smoke rolling out is just some old oil on the manifolds that'll burn off and next year so water pump sounds a little squeaky but maybe once the thermostat opens that'll quiet down a little bit i don't know we'll just wait this thing is idling amazing for 26 years sitting getting smoke back there finally i've been running in two three minute cycles here and that coyote stuck in a beaver trap sound as the water pump she comes and goes and i'd say about 60 of them it gets hot i'm not sure if it's a sticky thermostat yet or that water pump is just done done you can see it's spilling out again but it runs pretty good it's coming around not too bad at all here it's angry at me it's feeling cool back up son all right she's hot hot here comes the geyser well i think it could be a little hot let's take a break i guess you want to go play hide and seek in the cars sure okay got some hide and seek done i lost of course because i'm a sasquatch i'd like to just let these ease down by themselves i don't want to throw water on them i'm thinking i might have some air trapped in the system i got in a hurry and i didn't run the heater core i need to do that and i pulled the temp sensor out and we're gonna fill it up this time with water because it's cheaper plus that coolant sure gets slimy and we'll keep filling it until it fills out of here we might get some bubbles and that air will leave the system we could drop this back down again we know the thermostat's opening water pump bearing surely is making some noise so i'm hoping it's not but it's probably a bad water pump not usually the impellers go out in those but if the bearing shot it ain't going to make it 600 miles anyway but i want to see if we can at least get the heat down just a little bit more because then we can start testing other things like the transmission and stuff so we'll dump some water in here see if we can bleed it fire it up again heat's on high got most air out of it that i could we'll fire it up see what happens sure starts nice it's pretty well right now so this time i'm gonna wait when the thermostat just opens and it looks like she's going to overflow i'm going to throw the cap on let her eat a few minutes like that it's cold water it might temporarily make that thermostat want to close down for a second sure wish this had a heat gauge on it of course i got some aftermarket gauge i could throw on her but well i think it's going a little better and it's blowing heat on and off that heater core it's kind of just warmish now that heater core could be pretty gunked up and the radiator i'm sure we can back flush here still the nasty stuff in that thing too we get it down by the shop hopefully we can run a hose and all this stuff here too sometimes that'll start a fire on a guy but that blue smoke's starting to clear up i think she's uh getting the rings back into her so that's good might be coming around also that water pump bearing kind of goes away the more throttle you give her show you what i mean well she's iffy hot well at least take a wheelie nothing we've been out in the sun all day and we're just we're starting to get goofy so we're gonna go liquefy we also got a storm coming in and we're going to help move some cars and get them under the lean to over here because it might hail great and we got stuff just spread out everywhere so we'll hit it again tomorrow and hopefully we can move on to the transmission and breaks and drive this thing tomorrow that would be that would be nice well good morning it's uh 73 11 million early o'clock i don't know i don't have a time keep on didn't sleep much that's okay i was thinking about this beautiful ride back here and i think i actually planned something not really basically today i just want it to move on its own power guy needs a transmission but we got to start with the fuel tank situation because we went through five and a half six gallons of fuel yesterday just idling her and that's because 84.73 of the fuel is just getting sent right back to the tank so we're going to try to flush on that hopefully the fuel line doesn't have any holes in it and the tank isn't completely rusted out we need that capacity now we got to dig up some jugs and figure out a way to flush it did it before on a camaro i think we should be able to get it figured out then we can run it long enough test the transmission see if we resolve the heating issue go from there oh yeah we still need tires don't we we found a couple yesterday but they're flat but less flat than these flat ones perfect subscribers sent me this here clicky clack pump she's got clamp laters on it and the plan if then i had one is i got about three quarters of a liter of fuel left dump that in the tank hook this up here and just sucker through try to find a filter i think i got one on that line whatever goes in the tank we just throw in the back and i think if we do that for about three hours we should get most of the junk out of the tank into that filter and then we just plug her in and let her eat of course we'll put a filter on it in front of the pump down here too but that's all i got see if it works that is a squishy hose so here's our operation bad gas jug pump it later wire it in tube comes down here and it's plugged in right there and we ran it for a split second and already that's uh what's in it it's almost purplish brown not gonna smell it just yeah i'll smell it in a little bit but the idea is we're gonna pump out everything that's in there and then i emptied the boat tank into a gas jug we'll put that in the car and then we'll just keep pulling it through not worried about the quality of gas i just want to make sure we get the chunks and stuff out like that and i'm gonna watch it if it gets bad we'll put a filter in here go ahead turn it on there was a chunk right there and this must be the fresh fuel that we were pumping back but i don't see a lot of rust at all really fast halfway already here's what's coming out it's not horrible move your foot back a little bit bud so you don't get it on your shoe there you go but uh long as it doesn't have a ton of sediment or rust in it which it doesn't then i'm fine with that we're gonna pull a couple more and then when this is full we'll go back and throw it in the tank and i found this filter here i like running these clear jobbers because you can see what's going on this is actually a small engine one you just cut the smaller nipple off the end here plop that into place and then you keep an eye on her if you got a bad tank or you're getting some sediment you can run two and when the first one plugs just pull it out and run your second one saves you a little time fire it up [Applause] really wish this guy would make these shirts in gray black is so hot all right battery on i wonder if the accelerator pump works i thought it might be working yesterday yep i can hear it all right let's see if it fires up she is stone cold oh go jiggle wiggle the red cable would you push down on it nope twist it bend it do this on it give it a no jiggle wiggle maybe yell at it a little [Music] almost see we got smoke well we need a half inch these wrenches are hot and i ain't kidding you feel this wow well i told you they were hot guys got to tease a guy no way well we're trying to get this thing running 26 years it hasn't been on the road is it going to be your car no well what are we doing this for then this car yeah it's a 68 it's parked in 94. so it didn't even wasn't even on the road for what is that 30 years i can't do math very good so anyway there's fuel pulling into the fuel filter now prime it a couple times wow chokes working there we go that's stone cold start right there it's pulling from the tank fuel pump's working fine hey the water pump stopped making noise that was squealing like crazy yesterday i'll have to tug on that pulley and see how much movement we got not smoking today well yet anyway great running engine well the pontiac 5x5 won't fit the 74 foot rear drum so we're back to using this pretty sketchy chevy rally so we'll put some air back in this and throw that one on well before we get in and try to move her i'm gonna check this brake master see if she's got anything in it and it's got 74 million pounds of lithium grease smeared around it i don't know why i've never seen this before it's just really inconvenient basically oh the gasket is just completely shot just torn into pieces but she's got brake fluid what is this stuff dump some fresh juice in if you don't care about getting brake fluid everywhere just keep dumping it in and the old stuff will rise to the surface and overflow and you kind of flush on her that way something like that should start a good fire i'm gonna have to try to find one of these gaskets which i won't there's just so much stuff everywhere i feel like it's in my teeth well just as important maybe even more important than does the engine run is does the transmission work for some reason doing a tran swap in the middle of the field doesn't sound very fun i think it's critical i tighten this visor down first though there we go i'm going to start with reverse gear most gm's if you got reverse on her then she'll bring it around in any gear fires right up this has got tilt wheel on it i can't believe it brake pedal is kind of firm that's a first all right reverse immediately neutral drive wow yes reverse drive gen light's coming on i think i'm just gonna keep going 26 years pulled itself out of its own grave here's where she sat i don't see the fuel tank leaking or anything like that and even where the transmission was it's not too bad this is awesome i can't believe it drove out that effortlessly so what i think i'm gonna do is drive it around up by the shop whoa we've got brakes big time that's never happened oh yeah i forgot the power steering belt's off we can grab one of them though these brakes there's like nothing and then they like extremely grab yeah there's something wrong there actually that tire is really got her tucked in over here now this will be a little bit better the hard pack gravel working on this and that grass went ahead and threw the power steering pump on unfortunately on these buicks if you lose the ps pump later you got to pull off all the other belts to get to that back one so now i'll get the water pump pulley on and get the rest of these belts on and i am going to throw a new ac on because i like to have fun and just see if these old systems work if they're intact in cars that i pick up this one is doubtful very but i'll still throw the belt on her just gonna let it run for a couple minutes look for any leaks but so far everything's fine and then i'm gonna pull it around front of the garage get out of the sun it is just getting hot today take a look at the front brakes and bearings up here i did find a master cylinder gasket pop that on there the brakes work but it's nothing nothing nothing everything and usually that means there's a bunch of gunk in the fluid or the rubber lines up front either collapsing or obstructed so we'll pop the front tires off here see what we got going on and try to get some fresh fluid in here as well nothing leaking back here yet but this line is completely shot one of two things are going to happen it's either going to collapse or it's just going to shoot off and both of them aren't really that good we'll see what the other side looks like here really weather checked better than the other side but still not good the problem with these and i've explained this before is getting this fitting off right here is almost impossible and what ends up happening is the line gets broken so when you're putting on new fittings that won't reach the bracket so then you're kind of cobbling something together so it's dicey taking these off because it usually results in a bunch of extra work well a guy thought i laid it on it a little bit and i went about this one differently i put a vice grip around the top pulled it through this clip and then i took a 5 8 and i was able to spin the bottom instead of the top and it broke free and you can see how collapsed that line is so this is definitely a big part of the issue the reason i cut it is getting this off is the next nightmare because you can't get a wrench on there but now i can fit a deep well 5 8 over it and hopefully crack that loose so long as the other side goes this good this might not be so bad then we'll move on to the whirly gangs down here use the same old gas sucker and if you flip it over this way it becomes a brake fluid 9000. got this stuff sucked out of there we'll drop some fresh stuff in maybe clean that no probably not and start bleeding the brakes got both lines in went pretty smooth hour later a guy has just got a mess bailey and i have been just we can't get the stop laters to bleed out we cleaned out the bleeder screws we cleaned out the wheel cylinders we back flush the lines we uh bench bled the master cylinder but i bench beat them in the car it's the same thing we're getting pressure down at the distribution block but it's weak so i'm thinking the brake master has a faulty seal and she's pulling air back with it it's not built good enough pressure and there might be a little bit of gunk in that block but if this doesn't build enough pressure she's not gonna punch her through found one way in town so i guess that's the next step is i'm gonna jump on a bike here rip into town grab another master cylinder and see if i can get these things bled we haven't even looked at the bearings yet and the sun's going down great next day now however many days of the days were in it called 178 parts stores yesterday looking for a break master found one 45 minutes from here the guy said yep i got one so i drove there and nope he don't got one completely wrong not even close disc drum set up this is a drum drum so of course i didn't sleep at all last night but a guy really started thinking on her and i might be able to hit a bird with two stones here the original problem was there was no brakes till about 50 percent and she just grabbed and i got to thinking on it the rod length could be different and the stroke of that rod could be different because they have a shallow and a deep master cylinder i picked up two today just so i could show you what i'm talking about and also so i have a pretty good chance of getting this right i'll show you what i mean so with your master cylinder off you can see that rod right there and it's important to note the rod depth when it's sitting with the pedal up and also how far that depresses which is the stroke when the pedal's up you got to make sure that it's sitting against the piston and not pushing the piston down or you're going to have brake issues it's going to bleed off this is a shallow you can see that that rod would engage right away and here's a deep one that goes way back in there well the master cylinder i took off was like this unit right here but what was happening is when 50 of that rod was coming out or 50 of the pedal was going in it wasn't even engaging yet so you pretty much had to put the pedal to the floor to actually engage this piston and at that time the vacuum booster well she's boosting so you just get all the breaks so this is actually the correct unit here and you can measure that based off the face or the flange here the depth of that rod and make a comparison here and if you need to you can adjust it back on the pedal a little bit but long story short this is the guy that we get it's going to fix our bleeding issue and it's also going to fix our pedal issue so i'm going to pop this on really quick i'm not going to bench bleed it because i could do the same exact thing by just bolting it on there and bleeding it right there go ahead up down up down up down up down up down and she's blood now i'll cap this off move that one so these bearings look pretty good full of grease if i grab a hold of this there's no movement in here i am going to wipe some of this old grease off and uh pack the cap up with some high temp and just bang her in and that'll force some new grease in there and the extra stuff will just squirt out the side and wipe it off this side however i do have some movement so i think i am going to pull this one out i grab this i don't know if you're seeing that this nut is pretty loose but i'm gonna pull it out anyway and just take a look at it see if the race is shot or if it just needs repacked bearing looked okayish i did repack it throw it back in i'm gonna do a couple small things try to fix the air cleaner the snouts busted off of it throw an air filter in it clean up a couple things and i think that's pretty much it i'm gonna roll her around back here i gotta try to find a set of tires and wheels throw them on and then it's 600 miles home well let's hope [Music] when we got here both these tires they were down you know what do i got that's fine the other side was up yet over here and i did crawl inside and cranked on it for maybe 30 seconds pumped it probably 10 times she barked right to life ready to go and that's after sitting through several snow storms in a few months so i think we got a pretty solid rig here for sure and cranes with me we just got done driving the s10 600 miles in north dakota and then he brought me down here 350 miles and now i'm going to try to get this 600 miles back home so i put some mileages on last week but that's all right the best way to do it in these old rigs so we're going to drive it up front now and get some new wheels on this thing and take it for its first spin in 26 years i think it is i remember right yeah [Music] what a loyal old car this is going to be missing or is this the awesome this exhaust it's cold too yeah just gotta warm up got her backed in jacked up tools ready and i'm gonna honestly try to hang on to this one for a couple weeks maybe longer no but honestly i'm gonna try to hang on to this one for quite a while so i did want to pick out a nice set of tires and wheels that are gonna look great and last a long time so what i did was i got a hold of coker tire and if you've never been on this website you've really got to check it out these guys have period correct tires and wheels bias pies and radios all of the oddball sizes they've got military they've got motorcycle drag racing wheels i mean you name it they've got it and this is what i came up with is these beautiful firestone these are g7015 so this would have been very period correct and then we've got the buick rally and then i'm going to get some center caps from coker as well and they even have the right lug nuts and everything and this came just like this wrapped banded shipped right to my door mounted air in it and everything so you literally just unpackage them bolt them right up so big thank you to coker these are absolutely gorgeous and i think they're going to look really awesome on this car they'll give it a little more muscle car look but again it's going to be period correct [Applause] those wheels are for the smaller gm cars so i think i figured out what happened here and it's completely my fault because i'm the one that ordered that and when you google the bolt pattern on these cars almost all the sites come up with four and three-quarter you know the forums and stuff like that and i thought i remember seeing a chevy rally on it so i said yeah this is four and three-quarter and that's what i ordered was four and three-quarter but that's a truck rally so it's five on five so this is not even gonna bolt up so now we're gonna scramble and see if we can find a tire store open on sunday and just get some cheap tires on these wheels for now just wanted to show you this would have been kind of the original wheel see how it's a one piece right here and then that's going to be the five on five this is a 57 roadmaster here uh buick obviously but that's kind of the look i was going after but this would be actually i think that's the actual wheel off the car originally but i'm gonna he wants to keep those which i understand these are hard to come by so we're gonna leave that on that and just try to uh put some rubber on the ones that i got so we went for a walk you know there's there's stuff and roger's letting us borrow these are real deal pro wheel rally style these are the one piece five on five that we need and we've been scratching on them with some steel wool like this just quad zero and some spray away bringing them back around you know these look brand new you know and he's got some 2 15 70 15 tires up there in the barn that'll get me home and then after i get my wheels entire situation figured out i'll just bring them back and then he's got a set mounted up but this is going to save a trip into town and yada yada and yada and today's sunday and people don't like to mount tires that you find in grass fields trees anymore uh liability or something so this will work out pretty good we're just gonna keep scratching for a while and they'll come around sean's here now too got back from wally where old they mounted them up and balanced them and whatnot trying to fit these on i'm helping what i'm doing yeah that helps a lot keep going but this is what uh they're looking like pretty snazzy there we go this is what i'm looking for that looks really good these cleaned up pretty nice there's a little bit of rust in them but kind of matches the rest of the car i think that's going to work just fine we got uh 215 70 15 goodyear adventurous tsl9 or 5x's something like that they're kind of just a general terrain thing only got three lugs up here going to take a look back here put it up here take one from back here move her back there then i think i got four on all the wheels which is good enough you don't need five that's a suggestion and then i think we're ready to maybe take it for a test grip maybe it's getting a little dark but we'll see putting the shine juice on the 56 i don't know that i want to do that what a difference all right first stop is i'm going to stop at o'reilly's is right down the road like two miles and i'm going to grab like a five gallon gas jug fill that up and throw in the trunk that ought to help just in case this fuel gauge is just maxed out it's not even f it's like an f plus which is normally not that bad but in this case not gonna help me first impression it's a buick i mean she just floats like you wouldn't believe here's what a guy's carrying back here jack jack stand impact and drill and there's a light in there i think got a spare roger let me take that along she's got a lot of tread enough to get to the next town i got two harbor freight tool chests down there gas jug and then i picked up a bunch of berryman as well and i'm just gonna dump probably two cans in the first two tanks and that'll help clean that needle and seat with all the junk it's pulling plus it'll help clean up the intake valves if there's any gum around them rings that'll clean on that and whatnot and then they might as well just call these a body or funnels or big buick funnels license plate you got to have these with the lip it's hard to pour stuff in there top the cooling off i did try to run the heater and it sucked it down a little bit so i wanted to top that off but i think that's about it we're going to hit the gas station fill her up fill the jug and sink it on the highway man this thing it's actually really quiet 50 55 60. this floats i got blakeridge i think so it's blanket green well we're on the highway we're doing the thing 600 miles and here we go [Music] [Applause] let's see if i could find my digital thermometer thing and start shooting around hot lights off again it's coming on and off i don't smell i don't know i don't smell anything i'm gonna keep it running though just in case yeah she maybe is just getting a little hot valve cover is leaking pretty good and i may take the ac belt off here if that gets any worse that's really starting to squeal on me but it's nice to know that hot light actually works i didn't think that would work at all steel filter is already getting really brown i'll have to keep an eye on that it's definitely pulling some sediment from the tank back here it's not smoking see how that temp light it's off now so i guess i just got to slow her down a little bit i was running about 65. we'll finger down to 60 and just keep on easing about uh i don't know miles in 50 42 i don't know we just i just started i got a long way to go is that a fire fire airplane gonna keep this heater cranked take her nice and easy well a guy only made it three or four exits down and she's coming out now so that's not good and remember i already put a new water pump on it and i only did about 55 that time so not good i got the heat running in here full blast might have to consider taking the ac condenser off or something to get more air through here i'm gonna go back to some basics here looking at the timing mark on the balancer and the tab here and it hadn't been cleaned up so i don't think i moved this at all when i put that water pump in so i got that loosened up so now the lightning roller got a little play i'm going to throw the digital where you at timing meter on it and just get back to basic timing make sure that's okay uh two advanced or two timing could cause heating to lean and then i might have an exhaust restriction as well that could also cause some overheating so i'm gonna just start here and work my way through the list i know you guys probably can't see the light but it's at seven degrees here so we're gonna make an adjustment on timing and see if that helps and i've also noticed it's starting to run a little bit rougher as well [Music] i found a manual online said 10 degrees initial got her back to that did smooth out a little bit i'm going to double check for any vacuum leaks that's pretty boring i won't take you guys along for that i did let it idle for a couple minutes the hot light already came off i'm gonna try to go another exit or two see if she stays down and next step i think we might start looking at airflow situation i could probably take this condenser out fairly easy nope that's a headache well i made it to kadoka from wall very slow ride but it's not overheating so i think the timing really did us justice there i'm gonna check the oil and then this is probably cool enough actually i could pop the cap off and juicer up again fill it up with fuel and check what kind of mpgs are snagging out of her and then we'll kind of know for the next tank did dump a little bit more berryman in with this fill the engine's running good transmission's running good and boy does this thing just kind of float down the highway i ain't kidding i'm already you know guys got to stick the peepers out the window stay awake we're going to get in really late it's already 4 30 and i literally i have over 500 miles left still i believe i haven't quite been looking at the map mainly because you just go eastbound down and just stay in it but if this heating issue stays under control we just might have a chance here i'm gonna sneak in here get something to eat and get back on the highway just grab supper that'll work figured guy muzzle pull the headlights out we're gonna need them soon got one you know 89 that's down to 22 percent those are fairly equal although that one is 24.63 so i think if we combine these three it should equal one other one and that should maybe be good enough to not get me pulled over surprisingly the tails work just fine i don't know if i have brake lights but you don't need them down the highway so i think we're in decent shape to run through the night which is great that's when i get most of my traveling done guy can sneak around and try to stay away from those nice fellas over there look at these statues though what do we got [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] i think this fuel filter might be getting plugged down i'm getting the old let's go don't let's go nope let's go let's go don't go saying you know the old bog later and i did bring i think i've got two or three of them i just use the cheap little inline ones the clear ones so i might have to pull off and replace that but i'm going to try to get a little bit further for oh no i guess we're doing it now that's fine we made it another six miles so everything is going relatively good you're not getting very far but that's okay because look at that sunset and the dome line works so everything's good down here this filter is pretty well just she's plugged up look at all that that's why i like to run these guys before your fuel pump otherwise all that gets jammed into your diaphragm so i'm gonna swap this out quick and then i'll get my carburetor adjuster tool vice grip just tickle the old q-jet around so if there's any sediment that needs to get knocked loose in there to get chewed up on i'll do that and then i forgot to top this off when i stopped so i think we're gonna go ahead and risk it now injury injury yeah that's too hot still so we're gonna wait oh can't forget turn the lights off i'm also gonna get my thermostat housing adjuster out which is a channel lock bang on that housing case that thermostat is getting sticky for some reason yeah i don't know if we continue with this miles per filter i ain't gonna make it with what i got but this is terrible and unfortunately i think a lot of this is probably getting into the fuel make it happener so we're looking at imminent rebuild side of the road probably great she's definitely circulating so the thermostat's fine water pumps being a water pump that situation is what it is new fuel filters in that looks 102 better slam the hood keep going [Music] [Music] [Music] made her to mitchell south dakota now look at this they got ethanol free 91. i'll be dipped definitely gonna use that and we got cadillac so far it's not getting hot again and running a little bit faster and i found out the old cigarette lighter works so i'm going to run in here and see if i can find one of them plug-in heaters i ain't got no heatage and keep on cooking i think they should this uh travel this is like a big travel thing so hopefully they got one of them plugging jalopies there's a valve that sits back on this heater hose here runs on vacuum the dash all runs in vacuum that's all these back here are and i wasn't getting any circulation out of her so i actually pulled that out and just jammed this in i just pulled off on an exit thinking i can get circulation that's not doing it either so there's something else going on and i just don't want to mess with it so that's why i'm just going to try to get a plug in one for now and upgrade to my bigger jacket and just grit the old teeth so i've done the mpgs on her a couple times now uh i was getting 14 2 14 4. she was heating up i was going slow but i just got 14 1 with the pedal down quite a bit that is awfully awfully impressive for a 350 in a big old buick boat like this cannot complain one bit [Music] another plug filter just gonna quick pop another one in [Music] [Music] [Music] hate it 3 30 in the morning not a soul in sight i am frozen solid it's actually pretty painful to be honest that cigarette heater i picked up at the gas station blew a fuse immediately and about 20 more miles i want to be able to see out the window fog's moving in and the temperatures drop quite a bit but that's okay it's all worth it got myself a beautiful 1968 buick lesaver 400 sat off the road for three decades waiting for somebody to save it so i stepped up to the plate and did it 600 miles home and another successful revival thanks guys for watching if you're not subscribed please do that hit the notification bell so you don't miss anything and until next time keep your greasy side down is chilly you

Channel: Vice Grip Garage

Views: 3,914,659

Rating: 4.9091811 out of 5

Keywords: motortrend, roadkill, vice grip garage, vise grip garage, vgg, field, barn, garage, find, revival, rescue, old, vintage, classic, muscle, car, cars, buick, lesabre, 400, chevy, chevrolet, special, century, drive, home, will it, cold start, old start

Id: fhpA1uT8W28

Length: 100min 1sec (6001 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 22 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/OgieOgletorp]

Would you hook your peepers on that one?

[u/GenericModerator2020]

Long AF!