Project Franken Riviera -64 Riviera T-type-

[CTX-SLPR]

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.

[Ketzer]

I like the engine plan!

[fleetus macmullitz]

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.

[Musclerodz]

I'm digging the engine plan.

[Ummgawa]

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.

[CTX-SLPR]

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.

[gnx7]

This will be a blast. My first swap in 1997 was an '87 RX-7 with Buick GN engine/trans. 2670lbs with around 400hp was a good time.

[CTX-SLPR]

So what I'm up to now is working on replacing the rusty pieces of the floor and fitting those Acura CL seats into the car. The passengers side of the floor is going to be relatively easy comparatively since I have a whole piece of a parts car for that side. The drivers side is going to be far harder unless I can get another section from a parts car as its far more rusted out.

There is a relatively easy way to mount the seats in the car using reinforcing plates under the floor a little bent metal stand in the back but it puts the seat at full back and full down pretty much right at the close limit of comfort to the steering wheel and pedals as well as my head only a hands thickness from the headliner. Now I'm 6'2" and only 175lbs so I'm tall but thin so it might work but I'd rather have more flexibility in there. There's a hump in the floor, picture 1, (and the cross floor bracing underneath that I didn't get a picture of) that pushes that side of the seat up 1.25in off of the rest of the floor section. Additionally the seats use a 45º mounting tab, picture 2, that eats up more space. Those mounts are riveted onto the seat tracks so I've not come up with a good way to get them off as I can't even figure out how to get to the back sides of them without taking the whole slide mechanism apart which is more rivets. Not something I want to mess with.
There's nothing under that bump other than the floor bracing so I'm so now I'm debating how much hackery to otherwise good floor I want to undertake. Cutting the bump, or at least a section of it, out would let me drop the seat about an inch and scoot it back about the same. Just wondering how worth it would be...

Last picture is a set of 2002 Eldorado front seats I'm working to attach to stock frames and get in the back of the car because I've had them for something like 8yrs and have finally given up trying to bypass the memory module and the aftermarket seat cover supply has dried up so a DIY redye will wear less in the back seat.

[CTX-SLPR]

You know... just looking at the picture of the underside of the seats, I could remove that bolt and use it as the front mount after either cutting the front angle off or drilling out that rivet and removing the whole plate. Just means that I'd have to remove that bolt from under the car vs. from inside. Seems like a better idea than cutting the good section of the floor up.

[214Chevy]

Love the buckets in the rear.