Project Franken-Riviera -1964 Buick Riviera-

[CTX-SLPR]

Grinding 99% done on the top side. Found a small patch I needed to make and while I was tacking it in I ran out of shielding gas... Oh well, it's a small bit and I'll prep the toe board for primer tonight so I can have that spot fully complete this weekend.

The only debate I have is do I try and grind and maybe even weld on the bottom of the car on jack stands are drive it the 15mi to a friends house with a lift and do it there? Leaning towards doing it at home so its all done and I don't have to drive it without an interior or finished welds and seams.

[mopar57]

drive time is always a "win" but I buy your logic in finishing it at home.

[CTX-SLPR]

OK I'm definitely going wear gloves the next time I even think about touching seam sealer....

[Dan Barlow]

Yeah , I got that stuff on my hands after modifying the floor on my S10 . I cut the floor and welded in a domed panel where the trans tunnel , firewall and floor all meet together on the passenger side. Wished I had just used a big hand sledge .

[DanStokes]

I'm not a fan of working in gloves but there ARE times. This is one of those times!

Dan

[CTX-SLPR]

I'm not a fan of working in gloves but there ARE times. This is one of those times!

Dan

I'm with you there. I did wear them during application but I was putting in the screws in the floor knockout and realized I had it upside down and thought it had skinned over... WRONG!!!

[CTX-SLPR]

So been waiting on the local welding shop to get more shielding gas cylinders to exchange... So far they haven't while I'm actually in town to get a new cylinder. Drivers floor pan is pretty much unchanged and all I've really done is start to clean up stuff and pulled the rubbing exhaust out of the back of the car to plot how I'm going to redo it so it hangs freely and symmetrically. Feel like I'm going to have to buy new parts for that though. The existing stuff is pretty beat up and bent from bad mounting and several rough shipping trips.

[CTX-SLPR]

Closing in on 1yr...

It was alive, then died, and I just brought it back to life again today.
Obviously I finished welding in the floor pans to fix that issue and getting it all back together. Drivers seat is in and I ran the power supply wiring for the passengers but no seat yet. I drove it to our church's cruise-in and basically just left it sitting there since I had to help run the thing. Took it on a cruise or two but nagging issues with the power steering had me chasing what was going on. Well I don't know what was going on but there turned out to be a pin hole in the high pressure supply line so when I cranked the wheel hard and jammed the brakes on (it's a hydroboost) the line blew and sprayed the side of the engine down with power steering fluid.

Took me till November to get new lines (local shop made them) and then till early January to get them installed. Took me till this week to finally get the mounting bracket fabbed, painted, and installed. However I was so close I could taste it and I put the car back together today and rolled it out into the parking area while it smoked like crazy. I've always had some form of slow oil leak that meant after sitting it would collect on the cross over and burn off. This time however it was a real smoke show! Turns out the lower row of bolts in the aftermarket valve covers were 1/8in too long and bottoming out before applying any compression to the valve cover gaskets. Fixed that this evening and after the residual from this afternoon burned off no smoke.

God Willing, I'll drive it to work this week as I've fixed most of the worst issues with it. I think I'm going to have to replaced the 4L80E's internal harness as I keep getting fluid in the external connector and one of the internal sensors is no longer reporting (it was in the past). Also I think my ignition module is dying as I'm getting codes for weird power states and the tach isn't working despite double checking the wiring and getting a new one from Autometer. Oh... and I bandaided the exhaust so it's better looking and not hitting anything but I definitely need to buy a new muffler and pipes to rebuild it for good.

[DanStokes]

It's coming! Sweeping all the parts into one pile can take a while.

Dan

[moparjim71]

Looking forward to seeing this car back on the Power Tour! Some years we drive a nailhead too.

[CTX-SLPR]

Car made it to work and back just fine. Was cold and the defroster didn't really want to keep up. Bet the heater valve is shut which would make sense.

Anyway, need to replace the ICM as I'm still getting weird power error codes so going to replace the module and double check my wiring isn't nicked or something. Otherwise also will need to pull the down pipe so I can weld in a new WBO2 bung so I can run the narrowband into the computer and tune with the wideband. Slowly but surely getting it ready for driving it more.

[CTX-SLPR]

So I pulled the ignition harness out and was going through it checking the resistances to see if I had a bad splice or something and when I checked the ECM control line it didn't connect to it's matching harness pin in the plug to the main harness... Yeah, the ECM line and the Tach output line are both white and I got them backwards. So I've respliced those wires back to the proper configuration (couldn't get the pins out of the connector or I would have done that) and that should hopefully fix why my timing is locked and why I have no Tach signal!

In other news I took the chance of being in there to pull some of the kludge bracketry out and either clean it up with a file and paint it or make new ones. Also have harness split loom and more harness tape on the way to really clean up the engine bay. The down side is it might make me pull the drivers fender in pursuit of "While I'm At It".

[CTX-SLPR]

Tach Works!!!

Something else is Wrong!!

I started it up and it started idling at 2K and then came a massive cloud of fuel smelling exhaust. I could even see the flange between the turbo and the downpipe smoking so I think I'm burning fuel in the headers again. I'm wondering if I need to redo the whole CASE learn and reflash the computer to clear all of the trims to see if it clears up.

[CTX-SLPR]

Tach Works!!!

Something else is Wrong!!

I started it up and it started idling at 2K and then came a massive cloud of fuel smelling exhaust. I could even see the flange between the turbo and the downpipe smoking so I think I'm burning fuel in the headers again. I'm wondering if I need to redo the whole CASE learn and reflash the computer to clear all of the trims to see if it clears up.

Reflash and CASE learn didn't fix it. I did data log it and interestingly the manifold pressure was basically constant despite going into the throttle and definitely into boost. I think I have a stuck injector, a bad injector o-ring, or both. It's honestly tempting me to buy larger injectors to address both problems at once in a snowball sense but new o-rings are only $11.50 for a set of 8, 63lb Motrons are $230 used/ $350 new for a set of 6.

[CTX-SLPR]

Well its definitely something in the tune or one of the injectors is sticking as it's still pig rich but the idle has calmed down a lot so I think I did have an O-ring air leak. It was running not too bad before I fixed the ignition so not sure what's going on. I'll double check my fueling tables and see if there's an error there.

Helpfully there was so much fuel that it was spraying out the pin hole leaks and the down pipe gasket flange. Knew I needed to pull that off to add a WBO2 bung, now I know I need a new gasket and patch up the leaks. However I've been stockpiling 3in stainless mandrel bends so this might be the time I just need to build the new downpipe... Nah, I want to enjoy the car and I'll do the upgrade after I find all the other got'yas from driving it.