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,

[amcya]

First!
My brother is building a serious PT 64 Riv. It will be on Pro-Touring.com soon.

[nekkidhillbilly]

idk about jerking out the nailhead for a gn motor. i think a overdrive behind it would be better nailheads make gobs of power.

[WS6]

This sounds like a really cool build. Do get some pictures up when you can. Good luck!

[CTX-SLPR]

idk about jerking out the nailhead for a gn motor. i think a overdrive behind it would be better nailheads make gobs of power.

I didn't do anything that would prevent me from putting the original 425 back in the car. I still have the original motor and transmission if I wanted to do so. I also have nailhead plans on the shelf if I wanted to do so when I rebuilt it including a resonance wave tuned EFI tunnel ram that will fit under the stock hood. But to be honest, there are a few 91-96 B-bodies out there with 3.8L Turbo6 power and they do just fine on power to weight. With an extra 25cid, ported heads, and a turbo on the small side I have no worries about the power.

This sounds like a really cool build. Do get some pictures up when you can. Good luck!

Here's the best I can find on my harddrive, I know I have more recent ones somewhere.

[MrQuick]

man, did rivs ever come in any other color? interesting project. can't wait till you dig further into that suspension.

[jon72vega]

That is a beauty! I love the old Riv's!

[amcya]

My brothers rivy is white too!
He's going to buy a full frame from http://www.streetrodgarage.com/
You might be interested in his blog http://dukegumdoc.tumblr.com/
Looks like you started off with a really nice car.

[SRD art]

I like it! The T-V-6 is a great idea, nice to see something unique when you pop the hood. Can't wait to see that bad boy dropped with some nice rims! Keep the progress coming!!

[absintheisfun]

I always had a love for these boats! First time I've ever seen one with a Turbo6!

[Zanie]

I don't suppose you get much boost with the set-up shown above!
Cool build!

What's Riviera Tour? (on the back window)

[BulldawgMusclecars]

I love the car and the choice of engines! Have you thought about a TH2004R, though? The overdrive and lower first gear would be nice, along with dropping some weight.

[CTX-SLPR]

I don't suppose you get much boost with the set-up shown above!
Cool build!

What's Riviera Tour? (on the back window)

Hehe... nope but saves me from building another exhaust when I do add the turbo I have in a box.

That's Power Tour 2006 2007.

I love the car and the choice of engines! Have you thought about a TH2004R, though? The overdrive and lower first gear would be nice, along with dropping some weight.

I value durability over overall efficiency, doesn't hurt that a 4L80E stock will take what this engine will dish out most of the time. I have one sitting around, trying to decide if I want to try to seal the SP400 or go full into trying to get the 4L80E into the car this winter.

[CTX-SLPR]

The first bit of custom trickery involved in the engine, changing out the failure prone spur gear oil pump for the later 3800 Series II/III gerotor unit.

Ok, starting with the Timing Cover since it was the longest ago project. Sorry for the long thread and the out of focus pictures but this is archivial stuff and I don't want to take it apart again.

What I started out with was a pile of 3 Buick timing covers with the need to make 1 that would work on my motor in the frame and I wanted a gerotor pump over the stock wear prone spur gear unit. One stock V6 cover with a hole knocked in it, a stock L36 (FWD 3800 Series II), and a Stage II racing dry sump unit from a then local local guy who runs a 14-71 supercharged Stage II V6 in a rail. I don't have pictures of the original covers before the cuts but what I end up with was the bottom (oil pump) section of the L36 cover and the top half of the Stage II cover with around 1/4in overlap. The original plan was to weld them together so I made a jig out of 1/2in steel plate that I still have sitting around should I need it but since I had the overlap I decided to just fit the 2 together and use a combination of epoxy to build up low spots and grinding to make a joint that I could seal with aviation form a gasket.
Here's how it went together:

Lower section on the block

That fitting you see sticking out is the oil feed into the block since the oil passages don't line up because of the lower deck height on the FWD Series II block

Here you can see the backside of the L36 oil pump and the gerotor passages, note the notch on the right side

The side of the upper Stage II section notched to fit over the corresponding notch in the previous picture

Whole backside of the upper section, yes it's upside down

Right side overlap joint while the JB weld is curing

Left Side
I used the painters tape to keep it from sticking to the block or the other piece of the cover. The gap left after I peeled and sanded it off was for the aviation form a gasket to fill. You can see the gap across the middle caused by the different heights of the covers. Here's how I fixed that:

You can sorta see the spacer propped up between the sides of the timing cover, you can also barely see where I ground out the back of the timing cover to get the piece to sit flat. It's held in place by two 1/4-20 bolts and sealed against the cover with JB Weld.

Shows how tightly I got it in there, I did this all with a dremel and a high speed cutter


Here I've filled the oil passage that would take the oil back from the filter adapter to the block with epoxy. Its solid 1/4in thick and I sanded the flange flat with 400grit on glass using sharpie as a guide coat to find the low spots.
Unfortunately I don't have pictures of the intermediate steps of grinding that spacer bar to it fit the profile of the top of the lower section but lets just say I burned my dremel up (literally it caught fire) doing it.

[CTX-SLPR]

To drive the oil pump I took a stock L36 gear and had the timing gear section machined off so it would fit on top of an Edelbrock (Cloyes really) double roller chain after the Rollmaster billet unit hit the backing plate for the oil pump. Note how much I had to machine off.

Then I machined the back of the balancer down to make up for the difference and put the crank trigger ring in the right spot. I'm using a real Indy Lites balancer with an L36 timing ring bolted to the back


I've replaced the hex head bolt with stainless button heads, like the oil feed from the pickup gallery to the pump, the index from keyway to ring orientation is unchanged between the 1986 designed EFI system and the 96 OBDII system.

The finished product in a few different views and states of assembly:

Lower section in place with gasket. See the empty bolt hole near the top of the lower section, I've since drilled and tapped the block to add that fastener in.

Both with no pulley and crank position sensor in place

Side view with balancer in place

Fully assembled with oil feed adapters in place, semi-custom billet crank pulley (makes up for the change in balancer spacing due to the crank sensor). Sitting next to it is the tired 425 Nailhead that came out of the Riviera. No I am not going to sell it.

[CTX-SLPR]

The next gadget I made so I could pre-oil/prime the engine before firing it:

The Pre-Oiler:
Many of ya'll will recognize this from a CC article on how to prime a distributorless engine. Well while I still have the distributoresque cam sensor stub, it does not drive the oil pump anymore. So I built this using the cheapest SBC oilpump, pickup, and driveshaft from the parts store, a 2gal bucket, 5/8in heater hose, and a handful of -6 AN fittings. Basically the bucket holds the oil and the SBC pump hangs from the lid. I screwed a 1/4in NPT to -6 AN adapter into the outlet of the pump and cut the pickup in half and used heater hose to bridge the gap so it put the pickup screen in the bottom of the bucket.


Since I'm not that fancy I just drilled a hole for the return line and used 3/8in vinyl tube as a return line. In the pictures, it's blocked by the fender washer to keep crap out of the oil while it's sitting.



Hooked it up with a spare -6 line and drilled a hole threw a 1/2-20 bolt and welded a stub of 3/8in steel line on it as the drain hook up.

[CTX-SLPR]

I should really keep up with this. I've done a few things but travel and my two boys (2yrs and 6wks) keep me out of the garage for most of the time.

I've machined a replacement oil filter plate for the two previous leakers (the first one is visible in the above pic with the 45º AN-10 fitting sticking out of it) out of 0.5in aluminum plate. The problem with the first was while it sealed externally the pressure regulator piston wouldn't seat and this caused problems. The replacement made out of a machined down stocker with a lot of epoxy work, generated great oil pressure but leaked baddly around the AN fitting. The new one is a dead clone of the stocker on the backside but since it's a solid piece of plate vs. a hacked up casting it doesn't leak! Pictures once I get them off of the camera.

I also checked all the timing chain stuff since there is a clatter in the front end after startup and couldn't find anything so with no witness marks I've got nothing to go on.

Right now I'm chasing a grounding issue before I try to drive it again. The transmission I also through all the external seals at to try to stop it from leaking! It's got a seep to it still but nothing like it was. I can deal with a very slow leak vs. the gal overnight it was leaking before.

Plans for the future include a Craigslist score of OEM C6 13k mile take off front and rear rotors and pads for $40 and a completely redesigned front suspension using C5/6 uprights, custom control arms and Land Rover wheels. Just got to decide on trying to find a set of C5/6 caliper abutments to use a set of F-body calipers I've got sitting around or buy C6 calipers. Let the fun begin!!

[66larkgs]

sweet little build.. i am building my version of a T Type nailhead but got to love those buicks.