COAL: Hobby Car #4 — ’66 Buick Riviera Part Two — Clackety Clack, Don’t Talk Back!

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– Posted on June 12, 2024

I needed to find a good set of heads.

 

(Last week, in Part 1, the author told of his purchase of a ’66 Riviera and its clackety engine that would eventually need more work than expected. We tune in this week for Part 2)

I was prepared to get out the phone book and start calling around looking to source a set of heads. I’d seen a head-rebuilding outfit off the freeway in Oakland. But why not start locally?

I visited my local Pick and Pull wrecking yards to see if they had any nailhead-powered vehicles. It took only a few visits before I found a wrecked ’66 Riv. The left rear quarter panel was smashed in pretty good, which is actually a very good sign; it usually means the car was up and running until that fateful moment. I looked under the hood and the motor was almost complete. My initial plan was just to take the heads, but I got to thinking that maybe I should take the entire motor.

The car was straight except for the quarter panel, and I noticed the wheel wells had been painted white. It didn’t have any wheels on it, or lying close by on the ground. The car wasn’t in the greatest overall condition, but I thought that somebody had been fixing it up; until the accident. I’d bet that there had been a set of custom wheels on the car. I pulled a couple of spark plugs and they were clean with no signs of oil burning. Then I pulled a rocker cover and it was very clean inside! This was obviously a motor in good condition. I looked at the bottom of the engine by the oil pan, and found a rebuilder’s plate attached to the block. So this motor had been professionally rebuilt sometime in the past.

I rushed off to my folk’s house in Newark to borrow my dad’s truck.

I quickly returned to the yard and set to work unbolting the engine. Then I wheeled the motor to the front of the yard where they had a gate that allowed me to back my truck in for loading. I went inside to pay, then dropped the motor in the bed of my dad’s ’75 Chevy Stepside.

I would have to pull the existing motor out of my Riv, then swap this new one in. Swapping in a junkyard engine really put me in touch with the roots of hot rodding. Back then no one bought crate motors, they plucked them out of wrecks instead!

This was shortly after I bought the car, I still owned my ’90 Civic and ’71 Riviera. Judging by the stuff piled on top, it doesn’t look like it was being driven at the time.

 

I had quite a few bucks tied up in my rebuilt original engine, but I cleared out a spot in my garage to store it. After hooking everything up I apprehensively turned the key. The engine fired up and settled into a smooth quiet ideal with no hints of smoke from the exhaust. Finally I was back in business!

Photo taken several years after the swap was completed. Note the twin snorkel air cleaner that I made. And the cleanliness.

 

At this point, it was more important to be grateful than to add up how much money I’d already spent! The car was a bit rough looking, even though it was straight and complete. It had a complete set of Buick road wheels that were okay shape and I washed and polished up the paint and the chrome bits. The car had a set of glasspack duals and sounded great. Everything else, even the tires were in acceptable condition. So I started driving the car. It had the original Sonomatic AM/FM radio and I played my CD Walkman through an FM modulator. Surprisingly both front and rear speakers still worked and it sounded plenty good to me.

Besides maintenance, I had already given the carb a professional rebuild. I eventually replaced the heater core that had been bypassed, and now had heat on those cold mornings driving to the office.

The “Rat Rod” phenom was just getting started up and my car fit right in since it had plenty of patina. Though I will admit that it was kind of rough for a guy of my age.

I pulled the front springs and cut them down to give the car a California Rake. It was supposed to be a Custom, not a LowRider. I only had a couple of inches of clearance under the front cross member. It didn’t have too much trouble with scraping, as the rear still had working air shocks.

To complete the Custom look I had a set of radial whitewall tires “buffed out” into a set of two-inch whitewalls. I bought a set of spun aluminum Moon Disc wheel covers at a swap meet. These were normally secured by screwing them directly to the steel rims. That was a no-go. I bought a set of cheap plastic snap on wheel covers at Pep Boys and riveted the Moon Disc covers onto the hub caps. I now had to pull the wheel cover to check the air pressure, since the valve stems were now hidden, but I never lost a wheel cover in the years that I drove the car.

I was first in line for the ROA car show, Klamath Falls 2002.

 

I found a lot of good stuff at Pep Boys. A plastic trans tunnel caddy that held my CD player/modulator as well as having a twin cupholder. The seats had some cracked seams so I covered them up with a set of black, imitation wool fleece seat covers that I later dubbed “gorilla fur.”  My favorite accessory was a Grant GT Sport steering wheel. It added the perfect touch. It was a bit smaller and thicker than the stock wheel, and made handling the car very easy.

Gorilla fur was also used on the backseat. The seat bottom was swapped out for a white unit.

 

I drove the Riv down to Paso Robles for the show.

 

This was a real daily driver that I used every day. To work, for errands, to visit my folks in Newark, and later to visit my mom when she was in the hospital. She hated that ratty old Riv! I had total faith in that car, it looked rough, but I kept it in tip top mechanical shape. I took my son with me when I went to the West Coast Kustoms National show when it was still held in Paso Robles. I attended a Riviera Owners Association convention in Klamath Falls in 2002 with my family in tow. Boy, did it get hot in that car without working A/C!

I kind of shocked my fellow ROA members when I showed up in my beater.

This is a common problem. Many times the rust is hidden under a vinyl top. That’s the normal reaction.

 

Rusted metal is cut away and good metal is welded in.

 

What looks like rust is actually dirty tape adhesive residue. I left the stainless steel trim in place.

 

The top edge didn’t look as bad.

 

I never got the car painted. I never had the rust around the windshield and rear window channels fixed. That would have been an expensive repair. The glass would have to be pulled, the rusty metal cut out and new metal welded in. Many times, if you’re not going to fix the problem, it’s better to just stabilize the situation and leave things alone. The body panels were straight, but it would have been a good idea to strip the body to bare metal before a repaint. Again at a considerable expense. Instead, I just covered up the window trim with silver duct tape. It was a cheesy-looking bodge, but so what? It didn’t stop me from driving the car. Maybe I should have been a little embarrassed, but I wasn’t. Maybe all that Rockabilly music I started listening to filled me with a Rebel spirit!

Gas was quite expensive at the time; 3.00 a gallon for premium. Since the car only got around 10 mpg. it cost quite a bit to drive –I think that I was spending around ten dollars every couple of days. It might have been that, or that I was getting a bit tired of how rough the car was. I felt that I would never spend the money to actually get the car repaired.

My automotive interests were also being redirected. My son enjoyed our time with the Riv, but now he was approaching driving age. I thought that I should find a smaller more appropriate car. My son had been crazy about the early Datsun Z cars since he was a little kid. I decided that I would be the “Cool Dad” and buy a car that he would appreciate and enjoy.

I had passed up an early sale opportunity while attending a Friendship Day put on by the Mid Peninsula Antique Auto Club. A participant saw my Riv and asked me if I was interested in selling it, but I hadn’t decided on that yet. He was persistent, and started making an escalating series of offers. This reminded me of how I sold my ’64 Cadillac. He finally reached what I thought was a fair price and even offered to give my son and me a ride home after we sold the car to him. I didn’t suspect any nefarious intent in his offer, but I just wasn’t ready to sell… yet.

It would be another couple of years.

After evaluating all the needed restoration and all the projected costs, I balanced the cost /value equation. It needed a complete paint job, and the interior could use some work; gorilla fur can only take you so far! It was still in very good mechanical condition and I still really liked the car. However, I’d reached the end of the road with my Riviera, and I put it up for sale.

Here’s looking at you kid. We’ll always have Paso.

 

It took quite a while but I found a buyer that told me that he would, “blow the car apart” and have a complete repair and repaint of the body done. So the car was sold.

On an amusing side note, I encountered the buyer a couple of years later while I was at my long-term barber shop. He recognized me. I asked him if he had started on the rebuild of the Riviera. No he said, he had decided to pass it on.

As my interest had moved on to Datsun Z cars. I didn’t give it any more thought. It wasn’t until years later that it crossed my mind; until I bought my current Riviera.

As I was sweating away at a Pick and Pull yard during our recent 100 degree heat wave, I was thinking about my beautiful ’71 Riviera and my beloved ’66. Even as bad as the ’66 was, over time it could have been rebuilt as needed. I owned that car over 25 years ago. Taking a long view, considering my initial 2,500 dollar buy in cost, even with thousands of additional investments, I would have eventually ended up with a nice car. For much less than the 20+ thousands of dollars that a nice one would cost me now.

However, I didn’t think that I’d still be messing around with Rivieras in the future! The cost could have been spread out over a long period, doing one project at a time, while I could continue driving it. I could have been one of those old guys at shows that tell people that they’ve owned their cars for over thirty years!

But of course I didn’t do that.  But that’s okay, there were still lots of hobby cars available for me to buy!