64 Riviera T-type

[CTX-SLPR]

Howdy,

I'm new to the board but I've been working on some piece of this car or another for 7yrs now. I've got a small amount of time here and there right now with fixing my daily drivers and taking care of a sick wife but here's the basics and I'll try to get some of the bigger fab projects caught up progressively over the next bit.

It's a 1964 Buick Riviera that I bought back in 2005, the car is white on white and is pretty fully loaded, short of the Dual Quad, pop up arm rest, cruise, auto dimming headlights, and the wooden steering wheel, it's pretty much got the rest of the options list. Power was originally a 465 Wildcat, which for those who don't speak 60's Buick, is a 425 single AFB making 340hp and 465lb-ft. This was funneled through a ST400, basically a TH400 with a valve body that only has detents for high and low so you have to play the AOD like trick of upshifting to Hi to get 2nd then pulling it back down too Low to get it to stay here. 3.23:1 Posi out back to cap the drivetrain off. I took it on 3/4 of 2006 Powertour and all of 2007. However over the course of 2007's trip I fragged (literally had the impeller disk explode) a water pump in Peoria, seized a CV joint in the driveshaft the next day in Evansville, IN, and had to run the heater and stick to 60mph to keep it from overheating after the radiator partially clogged with the aluminum and iron dust from the waterpump. Since I had been building the Turbo6 for it for 3yrs by this point I decided no money spent on the nailhead and just get to swapping the 4.1L Turbo6 in.

The motor is a 8484 casting production 4.1L block out of an 84 Electra that's been worked over a bit in the oiling department but more on that later. Crank is an Eagle forging at the stock 3.400in stroke (only new forged crank available at the time) fitted with stock length 5.965in K1 forged rods (again only new forged rods available at the time) and custom Diamond pistons for the 4.1's larger 3.995in bore (stock 3.965in). All of the machine work was done by the legendary "Ohio" George Montgomery since I was stationed at Wright-Patterson AFB at the time. There was a slight mix up and my pistons are too deep in the block and my compression is only around 8.0 but it's too expensive to get another custom set made and the block deck is thin enough already. I'm going to try some thinner Commetics in the future depending on funds and if I pop the Fel-Pros in there. Heads are Champion CNC ported irons nominally off of an '86 Grand National fitted out with some 1.65:1 T&D shaft mounted roller rockers. Cam is a 212/212 Comp hydraulic roller pushing TA custom length pushrods. I had to customize the oil system to fit the rear steer X-frame of the Riviera by cutting down a 300 V8 pan and I machined a Series II 3800 gerotor oil pump timing cover down to serve as the lower section and oil pump then a Stage II dry sump upper section to mount the water pump and cam sensor. I'm still running a stock LC2 intake and a customized set of Poston headers.

Right now there is no turbo because I need to get the hang of sorting out my OBDII EFI system that uses the ECM and harness off of a 2000 Grand Prix GTP. It runs and I've driven it around but the SP400 that I swapped in leaks very badly and my epoxied up oil filter adapter has a slow oil seep to it as well. Hopefully this winter I can pull the timing cover off to fix the oil pump stuff and a seeping bolt and potentially swap in the 4L80E I have sitting around. I plan on more OBDII trickery to get the outputs of the L67 ECM for a 4T65E to run a 4L80E by inverting the solenoid B output, switching the pwm of the lockup back to binary, and repining the trans connectors slightly.

Next update will probably be the fun I had making that gerotor timing cover.

Feel free to ask questions,