Requ21
10-07-2015, 01:21 PM
Hey everyone! Just wanted to give a quick intro on my project and myself.
I'll start with myself, although I'm not all that interesting. I'm your typical full time work/full time college student. I work nights at a trucking company doing maintenance and repairs on heavy trucks, and I attend Missouri State University during the day, majoring in Physics, and minoring in applied mathematics.
Anyways, the new project (and the back story that makes it significant)
When I was young [12-13 years old] my grandpa on my moms side gave me a 1977 Buick Skylark with a 350 sbc in it. At the time we lived in a fairly bad part of Birmingham Alabama, and it was sort of a "mess with this instead of going out and committing crimes and getting shot" sort of thing... Obviously I never got to drive it, but I would take parts off, put them back on, listen to it idle... yada yada yada... I feel I should mention that I have been exposed to various areas of automotive maintenance, repair, and restoration ever since I developed the muscle control to hold a wrench.. Gasoline runs in the blood, on both sides of the family... During the time that I had this car, my mom and grandparents owned a shop, doing basic oil changes, brakes, custom exhaust, and the like... At 12 years old I would work there after school to save up money to buy things for my car, I did oil changes, and various little stuff... I'm not really sure about the legal aspects of it, but by the time I finally moved back to MO (where I grew up, and where my dad lives) I was 13, and could bend custom exhaust and weld it all up (under supervision obviously)... I basically said all this to say that I'm not "new" to the automotive scene...
Fast forward to today
My current (hopefully) project is a 1976 Buick Skylark that I'm in the process of trying to purchase from my dad... He bought it as a drag car.. It was a pretty solid low 9 second street legal car... However, he decided to remove the monster Buick 455 to install it in a 1995 Buick Roadmaster station wagon...
So what he is left with is a Buick skylark with no motor or transmission, and that is in the process of having the Ford 9 inch removed, and the wheels/tires...
Which doesn't sound like there is much of a car left, but alas, I am attempting to buy it, along with a few various parts from our own personal "salvage yard" (We basically just have various projects and different levels of completion, and we move parts from one to the next)
So, my purchase list will hopefully consist of the following.
1976 Buick Skylark (2 door)
10 bolt posi from a 97ish firebird (lt1 car, not sure of year)
I may also buy the front subframe from the firebird as well.
Then my other plans would be
355 small block build, fairly basic, old school (college budget)
I would love to do a 5 speed swap, but may end up going with an auto for now, either 700r4, or 2004r
I also need to figure out if the torque bar(?) that came off the 10 bolt in the firebird can be used with leaf springs, or if I need to swap it to coils
Also going to look into using the rack and pinion off the subframe...
Beyond that its going to be little bits of interior and body work to get it going.
I don't know as of now what will and will not end up happening, but I have a plan, and I'm going to continue working towards it.
I've always liked the pro touring segment, but I've never been able to actually build one, usually due to the fact that there has been 100% overlap between my project, and my daily driver... Which is less than ideal.
This car will never be a show winner, but I'm really hoping to get it put together to do autoX, and driving (safely, within the posted speed limit) on crooked back roads... Then using it as a platform to attempt to learn about aspects of building pro touring cars that thus far I have only read about.
It will be slow going, and I'll ask a lot of dumb questions along the way, but I will attempt to avoid becoming insufferable... I've never done much work on suspension on american cars... my only really good handling car I've owned was a 1992 Honda Prelude... that handled like a go kart from the factory, so improving on it was really just buying parts... which is not the case with an Xbody.
Anyways, if you're still with me, this is what it looks like as of now... so Just picture it with no wheels/tires, and without a rear end... and without a random gas tank on the roof.
http://i586.photobucket.com/albums/ss308/PreludeS/20151007_124442.jpg (http://s586.photobucket.com/user/PreludeS/media/20151007_124442.jpg.html)
Thanks for reading!
Requ21
I'll start with myself, although I'm not all that interesting. I'm your typical full time work/full time college student. I work nights at a trucking company doing maintenance and repairs on heavy trucks, and I attend Missouri State University during the day, majoring in Physics, and minoring in applied mathematics.
Anyways, the new project (and the back story that makes it significant)
When I was young [12-13 years old] my grandpa on my moms side gave me a 1977 Buick Skylark with a 350 sbc in it. At the time we lived in a fairly bad part of Birmingham Alabama, and it was sort of a "mess with this instead of going out and committing crimes and getting shot" sort of thing... Obviously I never got to drive it, but I would take parts off, put them back on, listen to it idle... yada yada yada... I feel I should mention that I have been exposed to various areas of automotive maintenance, repair, and restoration ever since I developed the muscle control to hold a wrench.. Gasoline runs in the blood, on both sides of the family... During the time that I had this car, my mom and grandparents owned a shop, doing basic oil changes, brakes, custom exhaust, and the like... At 12 years old I would work there after school to save up money to buy things for my car, I did oil changes, and various little stuff... I'm not really sure about the legal aspects of it, but by the time I finally moved back to MO (where I grew up, and where my dad lives) I was 13, and could bend custom exhaust and weld it all up (under supervision obviously)... I basically said all this to say that I'm not "new" to the automotive scene...
Fast forward to today
My current (hopefully) project is a 1976 Buick Skylark that I'm in the process of trying to purchase from my dad... He bought it as a drag car.. It was a pretty solid low 9 second street legal car... However, he decided to remove the monster Buick 455 to install it in a 1995 Buick Roadmaster station wagon...
So what he is left with is a Buick skylark with no motor or transmission, and that is in the process of having the Ford 9 inch removed, and the wheels/tires...
Which doesn't sound like there is much of a car left, but alas, I am attempting to buy it, along with a few various parts from our own personal "salvage yard" (We basically just have various projects and different levels of completion, and we move parts from one to the next)
So, my purchase list will hopefully consist of the following.
1976 Buick Skylark (2 door)
10 bolt posi from a 97ish firebird (lt1 car, not sure of year)
I may also buy the front subframe from the firebird as well.
Then my other plans would be
355 small block build, fairly basic, old school (college budget)
I would love to do a 5 speed swap, but may end up going with an auto for now, either 700r4, or 2004r
I also need to figure out if the torque bar(?) that came off the 10 bolt in the firebird can be used with leaf springs, or if I need to swap it to coils
Also going to look into using the rack and pinion off the subframe...
Beyond that its going to be little bits of interior and body work to get it going.
I don't know as of now what will and will not end up happening, but I have a plan, and I'm going to continue working towards it.
I've always liked the pro touring segment, but I've never been able to actually build one, usually due to the fact that there has been 100% overlap between my project, and my daily driver... Which is less than ideal.
This car will never be a show winner, but I'm really hoping to get it put together to do autoX, and driving (safely, within the posted speed limit) on crooked back roads... Then using it as a platform to attempt to learn about aspects of building pro touring cars that thus far I have only read about.
It will be slow going, and I'll ask a lot of dumb questions along the way, but I will attempt to avoid becoming insufferable... I've never done much work on suspension on american cars... my only really good handling car I've owned was a 1992 Honda Prelude... that handled like a go kart from the factory, so improving on it was really just buying parts... which is not the case with an Xbody.
Anyways, if you're still with me, this is what it looks like as of now... so Just picture it with no wheels/tires, and without a rear end... and without a random gas tank on the roof.
http://i586.photobucket.com/albums/ss308/PreludeS/20151007_124442.jpg (http://s586.photobucket.com/user/PreludeS/media/20151007_124442.jpg.html)
Thanks for reading!
Requ21