Project Franken Riviera -64 Riviera T-type-
 

Hello Lateral-G,

Since I'm over here watching some other Riviera builds I should probably bring mine over as well. It's off the beaten path and I've been doing it for awhile so bear with me as I catch y'all up.

I'll start with the basic premise. I'm a Riviera guy after getting a '70 in college that I made a ton of rookie hot rodder mistakes on, spent too much money on the wrong things, but over all just loved the car. Owning a second generation got me exposed to the first generation so while I did own a '65 Grand Sport briefly it was beyond my ability to restore so I sold it and waited for a nice 64 or 65 to become available. I finally got my '64 in late 2006 and promptly did enough work to take it on two Hot Rod Power Tours, the last of which the water pump exploded (literally I had to pull pieces of the impeller disc out of the timing cover water passages with pliers) and that was really the functional end of the nailhead since I wasn't going to pay to rebuild it when I'd been slowly building a quasi-custom Buick Turbo6 in the garage to swap in eventually.

The car is a fairly high option '64 Riviera, it doesn't have the rear arm rest, 4 note horn, cruise, or auratronic eye headlight dimmer but it has power vent windows, the deluxe level interior, and a rear defroster which is kinda rare. It also came factory with a 3.23 posi which is nice. The engine is an '84 4.1L V6 block (3.965in vs. 3.800in bore on the 3.8L's) with a forged 3.4in crank, forged stock length rods, and custom Diamond forged pistons. Up top is a set of ported Champion CNC ported iron heads, T&D roller rockers, Comp 212/212 roller cam, and I ran out of money before I could afford a matching CNC intake so that's just a slightly customized stocker off of an '86 T-type. I'll go over what I did custom on the engine to both make it fit and to eliminate some weak spots in the classic Buick V6 design. Behind it I have a 4L80E and it's all controlled by a modified L67 (that's a Series II Supercharged 3800 Buick V6) EFI system where I hacked the transmission control like is common on the 4L60E to 4L80E control scheme by inverting the B solenoid output with a 5 pin relay.

I've got plans to update the car inside and out but life (most of that time I was active duty Air Force and I have a wife and two kids) and budget has made it a slow process. The goal is a car that doesn't keep someone from putting it back to stock if I need to sell it but still makes a strong attempt at driving like a much newer car. Particually taking advantage of 50+ years of suspension and tire improvements as well as various comfort features like heated seats, auto climate control, and the like.

Here's some pictures from when I bought it. I'm having some hard drive trouble currently so I can't get to most of my build pictures so I'll catch up over the next few days.

I like the engine plan!

Starting with the amazing East Bay Muscle Cars brown Riv build a few years back, plus now Charlie, yours and a few others on here, it certainly creates a Riv curiosity in a sea of Camaros...not a bad thing. :)

I'm digging the engine plan.

Very nice starter Riviera for your project. I fear my Dads Riviera will be just this side of a chicken coup as far as the trunk and floorboards go. Keep us updated! Dig the engine combo.

My floor boards and the trunk pan aren't super either. Side effect of the way Buick did the under floor bracing that just collects dirt which promotes rust. The trunk is just a bit weak by the rear body mounts, the floor boards are another story. The outboard seat mounts, which are on top of the stamped channel cross braces are rusted out on both sides of the car. The drivers side rear mount is rusted along the seams to the inner seat mount. I have a passengers side floor pan to splice in but the drivers side I've got to either fab from scratch or buy another chunk. As much as some people on the ROA board haven't treated members of this board very well. There are a lot over there who would be willing to help get a Riv back on the road. I know a guy here in the Livermore area that has something like 27 63-65 Rivieras of various states of repair. I'm going to ask him for a floor pan section for mine.

Really bad new, I've lost my hard drive with all of my pictures so I'll have to recover them from photobucket and other places so it'll be a bit longer before I can put more pictures up from the history.

Here's a recent picture of it's maiden voyage to a cruise in I put on at my church this last 4th of July. You can barely see the turbo behind the polished Al up pipe in there and I'll eventually get the front bumper back on.

Here's some pictures of what the worst of the floor looks like. Since that's the last thing I talked about for the car. It's gotten slightly worse as those pictures are from around 2009 and it's been in the garage virtually all of the time till this last 8 months. That's next months project because I need to mount my new seats, 97-99 Acura CL Premium seats since they have a power "walk through" where you flip the seat forward and it automatically moves to the full front travel then goes back when you flip it back all without involving a BCM.
http://images.gtcarlot.com/pictures/51938666.jpg
Not Premiums since it has a manual recline but elsewise the same.

Nice body and good choice on the seats.

Cool project, thanks for sharing. :)

Not ignoring y'all, just been out of town and I don't travel with my pictures so I'll catch back up sometime after I get enough sleep...

Teaser: