Project Wheels and Stance gets a motor and trans!

[JayR]

We're on it doing some late nights and we're right there but a couple vendors and a UPS driver flaked on us so we're scrambling and the last thing we need is a TAC Module for the DBW gas pedal, GM Part# 12578953

Let me know if anyone has it and can overnight it. Thanks!

I'll be running around today so call Melanie on the wheel line and let her know if anyone has it. 253 306 3215

[JayR]

So, we've been pounding away in the evenings and working the wheel business and doing designs by day without time to update so these are going to be a little out of sequence but highlight some of the different things that are going into this project.

Remember when I said the Keisler kit was COMPLETE? It even came with a brake and clutch pedal that just slid right into the original brake pedal location and even had rubber o.e. style pads which were way too mundane for the interior of this car so they were used for radiator cushions! win-win!



Keisler shifter ball that goes perfect with the Buick's white guts.



And the coolest thing is the balanced driveshaft custom made to my exact specs after installing the motor and trans and calling them with the measurements. Delivered to my door the same week!



Like I said about the o.e. looking rubber pedal covers, they were just too o.e. for a relatively stock interior in a car that probably belonged to a dentist or the like so I'm specifically trying to add some attitude to the abundant style and did so with a set of MODO Innovations pedal covers.



I gave Shannon the dimensions of the Corvette DBW pedal and he picked out a cover that was just right but the pedal has a cool curve to it and the cover is flat so I put it in the press with a round dye and it curled up just right.



Check it out with the killer pedal bracket Jared Hancock of J-Rod and Custom made for me which is now bolted to the firewall.



He also fabbed this slick little bracket for the giant-ass ECM



and the slick little gauge panel Justin at J-Rod and Custom made that I personalized with a grinder to help add some attitude.

[buickfunnycar.com]

Like the progress Jay...

[JayR]

I have clearly been lacking in my updates and must apologize but being well aware of the time crunch at hand, Chris and I buckled down and hammered out the punch list every night leading up to the Puyallup show which was the deadline all along. I hope it shows when I do post that I put a lot of thought and care into it and between the wheel business, design business, motor swap and family, I barely had time to sleep, much less take pics and post them with a clever explanation!

My daughter Carly didn't hesitate to pitch in and when she wasn't holding wrenches on one side of a bolt under the car and hamming it up for pics,



She was taking pics of me hard at work.

[JayR]

Check out the complete all-stainless Magnaflow system completely pre-bent for the car from collectors to tailpipes getting installed by our friend Mike Sader the day before the show. This guy is a street machine Obi-Wan to me and Chris and as young guys and was the only guy we knew who had built himself a car and a truck that were both on magazine
covers in the 80s and even when we were snot-nosed teenagers, he always made time to help us, give advice and suggestions and even took Chris to a street machine show in CA with the first car Chris built 20 years ago in Mike's still bitchin' slammed crew cab dually.

These are almost too pretty to put under the car and let them get all funked up but you don't have to worry about them rotting out like the old days.

[JayR]

It's hard to believe but Puyallup was just over two weeks ago and for the first week, I caught back up on work, sleep, and family with all intentions of posting up the rest of the story and the great news. Then my friend Craig Pike at www.MyRideIsMe.com heard about the car and asked if there was anything noteworthy about it that may be appropriate. Of course, I'm biased but I immediately told him I have a helluva story so he asked me to write it and I waited on him to publish it here http://www.myrideisme.com/Blog/one-g...e-to-puyallup/ along with lots of other cool pics and stories. Join up and check them all out. You can also read it right here.

Every car guy has a story about a late night thrash getting a car ready for a show whether it's debuting a million dollar piece of rolling art at the Detroit Autorama to contend for the Ridler, unveiling a car at SEMA or just getting your ride to this week's cruise night. This is our story and I think it's a good one.

Most car guys make like-minded friends and I'm proud to know car guys all over the world but a half dozen of my friends who live here in the Pacific Northwest are some of the best friends any guy could hope for and are collectively the only reason this car made it to our big, local Good Guys show last weekend.

On June 9th, I drove the Rushforth Wheels company car, our 64 Buick Skylark into Chris Holstrom Concepts which belongs to my long-time good friend, Chris Holstrom. This would be the last time the Buick ran with the 300" V8 it left Detroit with. The car only has 98,000 original miles and ran like a top but the little 2 barrel 300 and Powerglide weren't getting it done if you know what I mean so we commenced to swapping them for an LS2 and a Keisler 6 speed. The little Buick mill came out ninety minutes later and went to it's new home in a T-Bucket the next day thanks to Craigslist. All along, the plan was to finish the car in time for the Good Guys 23rd Annual Pacific Northwest Nationals in Puyallup, WA right down the hill from Chris' shop. We knew it would be kind of close but we were up to the task.



Things were going very smoothly and we were knocking out the punch list one item after another and the car was looking good and then the day before the show, while hooking up the last bit of the miles of wiring harness to the drive by wire Corvette gas pedal, I found that the connector from the ECM did not match the pedal. The computer was from a C5 Corvette and the pedal was from a C6! I thought for a second and called my friend John Annon who has owned Corvettes for the entire 20 years I've known him so I figured he might know someone with one at a local Corvette shop or extra parts or a wreck or some kind of Corvette source and told him what I was up against. What does this guy do? Climbs his 6'7" frame under the dash of his Lingenfelter Twin Turbo C5 and yanks his gas pedal out and runs it across town for me!

On the same day, one of the things on the punch list is an alignment because we swapped to L&H tall billet spindles, Hotchkis upper control arms to match the new spindles' geometry and Baer T4 calipers (as if we didn't have enough to do before the show) so I call Luke Mau from L&H Kustoms to get the alignment specs for his billet spindles that correct the factory geometry flaws and allow for increased camber gain without dangerous and annoying bumpsteer. Luke sees that it's Thursday and knows the show starts Friday and starts picking my brain to see what else is left to do and knows there's no way we're going to get it all done so he jumps in the car with a few extra parts, tools, an alignment kit and some shims and drives two and a half hours from Oregon to align it! Unbelievable.

We couldn't align it at Mike Sader's American Muffler shop at quitting time when it came off the lift from getting a complete Magnaflow system installed under it so he threw us the keys to his dually and we loaded it back in the trailer Chris dropped it off in and we hauled it over to Jared Hancock's shop; J-Rod and Custom where we rolled it out and Luke began double checking the suspension install Art Stohrmann and I performed (Mostly Art) while Jared's crew and I started to try to figure out why the car wouldn't stay running. It would fire for a few seconds and then die every time. Fuel pump? Check. Ignition? Check. MAF clean and hooked up? Check. O2 sensors threaded in and wires attached? Check. What the hell? One of Jared's main guys is Howard Wolf who works for a Ford dealership by day so he doesn't flinch at the snake pit of wires and tubes associated with a new efi computer controlled motor the way analog old-school car guys like me do and he carries a scan tool in his truck so he hooks that up to the data port and there's still no red flags so once Luke finishes up the alignment and the punch list he came up with all on his own, and we tried in vain to start it again and again, I said to hell with it and just pushed her out in the midnight darkness and set about to washing the car and have a zen moment alone with the car. When I finally left at 3AM, I just told Jared I'd be back for her on Monday and figure it out then. Defeated.




The next day, I accepted the fact that I'd be attending the car show on foot so I wouldn't grind my teeth all weekend and went to the show with as positive of an attitude as you can have on foot while suffering from malnutrition and sleep deprivation while retelling the same damn sad story all day when someone asks; "Hey Rushforth, where's your Buick?". Around 3:00 in the afternoon, I'm enjoying the show with my daughter, Carly eating ice cream and visiting with friends in the Summer sun on the opening day of the show when my phone rings. It's Jared exclaiming that he and his right hand man, Justin had loaded the car in his trailer and taken it to his computer tuner; Horsepower Ranch who plugged it into their laptop and found that an anti-theft code for the column lock had been left in the new aftermarket computer! The tuner eliminated the code so the computer stopped thinking we were stealing the car and it fired right up and idled away like it had wanted to do all along! Unbelievable. We had just about all but eliminated every variable and assumed it was something in the computer but I had personally given up the notion it would be resolved on Friday since we didn't have the ability to hook up a laptop and I was too exhausted to mess with it again so my friends did it! Unbelievable.

I drop my daughter off at home and Chris and I head over to Jared's to button up the last couple things like bolting the seat back down over the computer, bolt the newly acquired C5 pedal to the firewall and a few of those last minute things that come up on every project and take it for the maiden voyage which is completely surreal. The car sounds killer with the lumpy Comp Cam aggressively burbling through the MagnaFlow system as you hear the idle smoothing out while the computer and the motor figure each other out. On the drive, I lift off the throttle and hear the unmistakable sound of driveshaft smacking trans tunnel as the rearend tips upward and angles change ever so slightly. We pull back into Jared's and jack it up, slide under and see that the little balance weight attached to the driveline is in perfect alignment with the underfloor brace that runs through the tunnel so Chris takes a cut off wheel to it and removes every part of the brace that touches and Jared expertly welds it back in 3/8" further up into the tunnel without setting fire to the carpet all while laying on his back, effectively chopping and channelling the brace to gain the required clearance at Midnight. Unbelievable.



Chris and I drove the car home at 1AM and finally get some sound sleep. I get up the next morning with a whole new attitude and outlook on the weekend and drive straight to the fairgrounds without even dusting the car off. That can be done when I get parked at the show! Once there, I lovingly give it a quick clean up while friends and strangers and people who followed the build here all come up one after another to see how we did.

[JayR]

Coming off that emotional roller coaster, I wouldn't have cared if there were 100 cars and it rained all weekend but that was not the case. Like most Good Guys events around the Country, it was absolutely packed with great cars, over 2500 to be exact, lots of vendors and tons of spectators flooding the gates all weekend long with perfect 85 degree sun and 9:30 PM sunsets all three days. We get a bad rap here for our rain but the Summers are hard to beat! In addition to great cars and great weather, Art and Craig Morrison from Art Morrison Enterprises here in Tacoma, WA are responsible for the Builder's Choice Awards which are killer billet trophies given to only the 10 very best cars in the entire show and I'm proud to report, my good friend Brett Anderson, whose car I designed and put wheels on got one of the coveted awards despite the fact he built his car himself in his two car garage!

Here's a pic of the Buick profiling at the show along with a variety of the talent represented this year in Puyallup at the Good Guys 23rd Annual Pacific Northwest Nationals.




I was actually so numb and in complete disbelief the rest of the weekend, that I didn't even get any pics of the car there. My cousin took these and then my camera promptly took a crap the very next week and I haven't replaced it but my Birthday is next week, so you never know!

[srh3trinity]

Clean install. I love the Skylarks. They just ooze style.

[awr68]

Great car....and story! Car guys are the best!

[JayR]

I broke up the last 2 posts because I was just informed the limit per post is 10,000 characters long so if you read it all, I sincerely thank you and hope it was worth it.

To sum it all up as best as I can without another novella, I could not have even dreamed of this without the help of some great friends here in the PNW as well as around the Country throughout the industry. From the bottom of my heart, thank you all.

I hope it shows and is noted that not only am I in the industry, I put back into the industry and live this industry. I'm not making wheels and designs so I can hide out in my castle, I do it so I don't have to take time off a 9-5 job to go to shows, see my friends all over the Country and make new ones and play with cars. As most of you know, this car has already gotten lots of use doing road trips and autocrossing and that was with a 2 barrel 300 and a Powerglide so you better believe it's going to get even more action with the newfound hp, overdrive, efficient efi and all.

To sum up the last 2 weeks that I've been driving it, I know what all the LSX fuss is about and am so stoked to be part of it.

The car sounds incredible with the Magnaflow system and x-pipe. As many of you know, some LS motors with a stock cam and free flowing exhaust sound a little funny at idle due to the odd firing order but this Comp Cam sounds ROWDY and really wails when you get after it but without the deafening drone some mufflers make.

At the moment, I'm still running the stock rearend because I haven't bought a posi-unit yet so it isn't a rocket out of the hole but comes alive and pulls like crazy when you get rolling and the motor gets up on the pipe. With those gears, I haven't even hit 6th gear yet and have had it over 90 and 145 on the dyno (HAHA!)

I know this thread isn't exactly a how-to complete with every step and a parts list like Bart's amazing LS3 into his GTO but keep in mind that I drove it into Chris' shop on June 9th at 8PM and drove it the morning of July 24th and I was in Columbus for 5 days and Chris and I only worked on it in the evenings so if you're anywhere near here and can't do it yourself, you know where you need to take your project. Chris specifically wants to do LS swaps, disc brake upgrades, suspension installs along with similar small upgrades and hot rod upkeep and service with an occasional full build but the majority of work being small jobs that are only in the shop for a few weeks at the most for a large job like mine.

I'm going to use my wife's camera to take some more pics and continue updates, stories and driving impressions so stay tuned.

Thanks, Everyone