new member, old build... 84 t-type resto

[turbosix]

hey guys, i found this forum from a link off a local site that referenced the whole pro touring style of old school muscle. i've always loved these cars and figured i would say hello.

i dont have anything recent (or a domestic g-machine for that matter..), but i figure i would share my project my grandfather and i worked on for my first car. some of the pictures are poor quality due to being scans of polaroids, but they do the job.

my uncle owns a lot of land out in terrell, tx and flips cars for a living. sometimes cars sit and sit while he waits on a title and are forgotten. he was willing to give me whatever car i could find out there for free, and we'd all work on it to fix it up in time for me getting my license.

now i had always wanted a turbo buick due to one of my best childhood friends' father having an 85 t-type. i knew there was an 84 gn somewhere on his land and when i found it i was disappointed to see the massive amount of rust it had developed over the years due to leaking t-tops.

i kept looking around for a better candidate, he said he thought he had another t-type somewhere in the back so i kept looking.


so here it is.

this car was a theft recovery and ended up on his land sometime around 1990. i could only guess the date because the tags on the car had expired around then.

the thieves had stolen the car somewhere in san antonio and stripped its rare lear siegler leather seating and some other turbo car related interior pieces.





they also had seemed to hit a curb with the passenger front wheel, it was missing and the tie rod looked like a pretzel



there was also (to my surprise) an ant mound growing up into the trunk. you cant see it but i got about 30 ant bites for this picture, so you're gonna check it out


once we got the hood open i found some more goodies


all stock, except if you look closely you can see the familiar K&N warning sticker on the airbox. there were remnants of nests in here, lots of droppings and chewed wires, about 8 years of decaying vegetation as well.

at this point we put a wheel on it and pulled it out of its grave over to a nice shaded spot under a large tree and i got to work on it every weekend i'd ride out there with pa and do as much cleanup as i could.

i have to shout out to the guys over at gnttype.org and turbobuick.com at this point. there are a few really good guys i have now known for about ten years that would answer all of the questions my 15 year old brain could throw at them.

eventually i got it cleaned up and did the basic maintenance, flushed the fluids and what not... got as many wiring issues as i could find fixed up and it was d-day. after about 10 minutes of trying we got the thing to fire... of course it wouldnt idle for crap due to a bad MAF, but it ran! oil pressure was good, coolant temps were spot on... it was a relief to know the thieves had not blown the car up.

so we took her home! i cant get to the pics yet (at work...) but i'll add them later. when we got her home i stripped the interior completely. i sanded all of the rust that i could find off the floorpan to see what we were working with.

the car had a huge dent in the drivers side up near the tranny tunnel, it looked like it had been hit with a fork lift while being moved in a yard (further damage would be found on the trans casing, im pretty sure this is what happened.) while using a sledge to slowly shape the caved in portion, it was evident the floorpanels were a little rickety. so we fiberglassed them and applied POR-15 throughout the interior. as i'm sure you guys know.. that stuff does not come off skin very easily. lesson learned i guess.

at this point we took it back to terrell to my uncle's bodyshop and i got to work sanding the car down to bare metal so we could start fresh. i was doing this in the winter in an unheated shop and quickly learned that DA sanders and fingers dont get a long too well.

it took awhile but eventually i had the car pretty adequately stripped, some in progress shots.




it looks so sad, haha.. thanks to gnttype and turbobuick, i had gotten the car running pretty well at this point, it was able to annihilate those old tires on the rear without issue.

the only thing out of my reach at this time (and still today) is body work. my uncle had one of his paint guys do all the prep and shoot the car.

pt 2 coming... hit image limit in this post

[turbosix]

in the booth..

now seeing some of you guys' projects here it is FAR from perfect but for $600 including materials, what are you gonna do? the car was shot with a metallic black found on 1998 honda accords and looks GREAT in sun; the metallic flake is a very fine mixture of red and blue. none of the pics do the actual color justice but hey, this is all about a nice photo laden documentation of progress, right?


its all one color, finally!

so at this point there is something that needs to be done about the interior. a good friend had some black carpet from ACC that he was ditching in favor of another color, so he gave it to me. free = good

after that i made some calls and found someone that used to work at an upholstery shop that was wanting to do some stuff on the side.....


and $350 later we have it. i reversed the color scheme on the seats to match the later cars but kept the lear siegler seats i purchased from a good friend in alabama instead of using the seats out of the newer cars. i used some VHT interior dye to color the top of the console black as the original "bone" shade had discolored and faded.

now yes, i know the interior plastics and the seats dont match 100%, but its as good as i could do at the time and no one but myself and a few really picky people have ever said anything about it.

and here we have basically the finished product




before anyone says anything, yes i have one black wheel on the car. i wasnt sure if i liked the gunmetal i finished the wheels in, so i did one gloss black just to experiment.

i'm tired of typing for now so i'll leave you guys with a halfway finished shot of the engine bay

[cencal69]

Looks great. Be very proud of the job you did. I had a 1979 Buick Regal 3.8 litre turbo (sport coupe) and I miss that car very much. Que sad country song.

[ProTouring442]

Nice loookin' GN!! You've done on hell of a job turning a junk yard special into a car to be proud of!

Where are you located?

Shiny Side Up!
Bill

[XcYZ]

Wow, great work.

[esm]

Looks Great -- I Have A 85gn With 87 Drivetrain

[turbosix]

thanks for all the kind words everyone. to say i'm impressed with all the project cars ive seen on here is an understatement. you guys do some pretty flawless work.

Originally Posted by ProTouring442

Nice loookin' GN!! You've done on hell of a job turning a junk yard special into a car to be proud of!

Where are you located?

Shiny Side Up!
Bill

i'm in the garland, tx area. after having multiple issues with people not beign able to build a trans to last behind the car and finally getting a bullet proof product (~$6k later..), the oem oil drain tube on the turbo came loose on the car while i was driving and some bearing damage resulted. i was fed up with the car at this point and its sitting in my garage until i can work up the desire to pull the motor and freshen it up.

when its done, its going to be done right and i just dont have the time / cash for that at this time so it can wait. the torqueless wonder will do for now.

[tones2SS]

WOW!!
Great job on the rebuild. Looks great.

[89 RS]

Great looking GN! That's something to be proud of, looks really good.