Da' further adventures of da' trusty billy-goat wagon!

[yachtsmanbill]

Hey Ed... FWIW, dump all the BS and put a Quadrajet like God and GM intended that car to have. My 72 455 sits for 6 months over the winter, I give it 4-5 full turns to prime all the systems, and a pump on the fast pedal to set the choke. Probably less than a turn and its running on fast idle. I do trip it off immediately after its winter nap and it will stall, but thats the only time. The 18 MPGs could be 35, but Ill gladly pay the difference. All the BS about hood clearance and digital tuning etc etc leaves me feeling cold.
  My other big issue is just like on my boat.  I repowered it in 1990 with a pair of 454 Mercruisers with the "Thunderbolt ignition". Imagine breaking a cap or rotor 200 miles from home? I swapped that over to a G.M. HEI and lived happily ever after...So yer out diving in Lake Elsinore and get out with the dreaded click click click... Uh-Oh...   Bill

[Super65lark]

Hey Edouard - whenever you get ready to pull that trailer - rv parks are booming. Check out the latest, ocean view at Avila Beach. My favorite beach in the area. Then, I can come visit!

[GS66]

I see you now have a hurricane named after you Edouard!

[elagache]

Dear Bill, Iain, Jim, and mid-60s Buick caregivers,

Hey Ed... FWIW, dump all the BS and put a Quadrajet like God and GM intended that car to have.
. . . . .

Yes, you are correct.  These engines were designed for the Quadrajet and performed perfectly well with a carburetor.  However, electronic fuel injection has advantages that you'll never appreciate until you can use a laptop and really fine tune all the parameters.  Biquette's FAST Sportsman also has the FAST ignition components so you can dial in the timing with software.  It is a lot easier to just listen to the engine and tweak it until it sounds the best.

A carburetor works fine, but cannot provide nearly as much precision in the fuel distribution.  This engine has been professionally tuned with the goal of "mellow."  As a result, this 445 cid big-block is noticeably quieter than a standard small block.  The car is much easier to control as well.  We don't have enough turning space in front of the garage and getting Biquette into her stall backward was nervous ordeal.  Now I have all the control I need to get her tucked tightly into her corner without damaging anything.

You could probably make a flat top air cleaner cover and use a, ahem, dodge, 2 inch tall filter.
. . . . .

Hey, how about the model of that Dodge air filter!

Whenever you get ready to pull that trailer - rv parks are booming. Check out the latest, ocean view at Avila Beach. My favorite beach in the area. Then, I can come visit!

Thanks for the tip!  Unfortunately I still have a few obstacles to resolve before I can pull that trailer!

I see you now have a hurricane named after you Edouard!

Well, it was only a tropical storm and it only lasted a day.  There is an interest story behind how hurricanes get named.  It is described here:

https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/aboutnames_history.shtml

Actually, this is the third time there has been a topical disturbance named Edouard that I'm aware of.  Since the names are reused every 7 years, there is a good chance my name will show up once a decade or so.  The first time this happened was particularly fortuitous for me.  In 1994, I was a lecturer at U.C. San Diego teaching (among others) a class on James Burke's Connections BBC series.   The first episode depicts a sort of doomsday scenario in which technology breaks down.  The Sunday after my students saw that episode, the Northridge earthquake struck!  With Burke's depiction of doomsday fresh in their minds my students were really shaken!  Later that year, there was a hurricane Edouard and it was a good sized storm.  For good measure, I put a picture of it on my office door.  Years later I ran into some of my students and that class still made quite an impression upon them!

Cheers, Edouard 

[elagache]

Dear mid-60s Buick caregivers who stroll down memory lane,

40 years ago today, we rented a large truck and moved all our large belongings from our first house of 12 years to this house.  The family has resided here ever since.  August 15th, 1980 left quite an impression upon all of us - never had the whole family ended up so exhausted after one day!

Before the big day, we were busy moving all the smaller items.  Of course a station wagon was ideal for this service so Biquette had a busy summer even if her engine wasn't working right after the first rebuild.  Here is a picture taken in mid-July of 1980 with Biquette on the driveway of our "new" house:



It was a busy summer after my first year of college, and to complicate matters, my Dad was frequently away on business trips.  This would figure into a particular heroic bit of moving that Biquette was inadvertently forced into.  My Dad had a particularly large and heavy desk.  Here is a picture of it:



This desk should have waited for the rental truck, but for some reason it was decided that it should be moved beforehand.  Dad was away on business, so it fell upon me and the rest of the family to move the desk.  As soon as I tried, I could see that there was no way to get the desk to fit inside Biquette - it was too big for a mid-sized wagon:



Still, there was a huge problem.  Biquette was the only car we had until 1978.  The desk had come to our old house, somehow Biquette must have carried it.  Finally, having found no other solution, I took a chance and lashed the desk to the tailgate.  It was plenty rough, but the desk arrived safely and Biquette had once more come through.

When Dad returned from his business trip we found out how the desk had arrived to our old house.  It turned out that a friend had helped us out with his pickup truck!  So as it turned out, Biquette hadn't brought the desk in the first place.  Nonetheless, she managed to move the desk to our new house!  That was just one of her duties that summer as a beast of burden.  She has continued to show how versatile station wagons can be and how rugged cars from the 1960s are.

It may seem like I am spoiling her a bit these days, but if so, it is in part out of some guilty feelings for what I put this car through!

Cheers, Edouard 

[option B9]

Hi Edouard great story with great photos, Specially your fathers desk ! I have the same exact desk here in my corner of the basement along with some of my Buick Literature . Your Fathers desk is a teacher's desk that could date from the early 1930s thru the 1940s and was probably made by the Indiana desk co. Mine has the date of 1936 stamped under the center drawer. My desk came from an old local high school that was being renovated back in the mid 1980s. Desks were lined up at the curb waiting to be thrown in to the waiting dumpster. So I stopped and loaded one into my truck. I went back to get another one the next day and they were all gone, but the dumpster was empty !  so I'm sure the people in my neighborhood took the others.. I restored my desk and I've been using it ever since then. 

                                    Tony

[elagache]

Dear Tony and mid-60s Buick caregivers who collect more than Buicks, . . . .

Hi Edouard great story with great photos, Specially your fathers desk ! I have the same exact desk here in my corner of the basement along with some of my Buick Literature .
. . . . .

Thanks for sharing! 

Your Fathers desk is a teacher's desk that could date from the early 1930s thru the 1940s and was probably made by the Indiana desk co.
. . . .

I wouldn't be at all surprised if the desk came all the way from Indiana.  I don't remember how my Dad picked it up, but at the time my parents were very savvy at the garage sale circuit.  We still have a good number of things bought over 50 years ago at garage sales.  My first taste of miniature trains were used Lionel sets purchased at garage sales.  Of course Biquette has to carry all these things home as well!

Cheers, Edouard 

[campfamily]

We also have one of those desks. I think my Dad picked it up at a yard sale about 30 years ago and refinished it, it is now in my Dad's old office at home (Dad passed a bit over 2 years ago). We were told it was an old military desk, and when you pull the center drawer out and look inside and underneath, it is signed by a bunch of the previous users. It's been a while since I've looked at it, so really don't know the dates on the signatures. Will have to pull the drawer out and look the next time I visit Mom.

Keith

[GS66]

Old pictures are the best! I may need to borrow the wagon to move a Packard piano.

[elagache]

Dear Keith, Jim, and mid-60s Buick owners who try to be practical,

We also have one of those desks.
. . . .

Well now!  These desks were a popular item that ended up all over the country!

Old pictures are the best!

I still have some old picture to go through.  Once the weather improved I was once more overwhelmed by the yard.  Alas, California is headed into the heat wave and wild fire season.  That may force me back into the house so I can continue the search.

I may need to borrow the wagon to move a Packard piano.

. . . . . Request denied!! . . . . . . .

10 years ago I finally replaced our lawn mower and it was the last thing I hauled with Biquette before getting her interior restored.  It is definitely time to have that lawn mower serviced and I'm definitely having a hard time convincing myself to carry that in Biquette no matter how carefully I clean and wrap it!

Cheers, Edouard 

[elagache]

Dear mid-60s Buick caregivers,

My trusty wagon is back at Orinda Classic Car Center to get a few issues checked.  The 1964 Buick Riviera is still there so I was able to capture this quick snapshot of a mid-60s Buick reunion:



Outside of Buick-specific car shows, it is getting rare for a mid-60s Buick to meet another Buick of the same vintage.

Enjoy!

Cheers, Edouard 

[elagache]

Dear mid-60s Buick caregivers who live in "unusual" times, . . . . .

After a far amount of haggling, Biquette got a replacement Powermaster alternator because the old one had a clear voltage regulation issue.  I decided to take a picture for documentation sake and noticed something of a surprise:



Particularly if you click on the picture to a get a larger view, you'll see all sort light grey specks.  They are especially clear on the glossy black of the radiator top plate.  All that stuff is ash from the California wild fires.  When I bought her home on Wednesday, I tried to remove as much ash as I could with garden blower - but obviously that didn't work very well!  I'll just have to wait for the air quality to get back to normal before giving the car a thorough cleaning!

Definitely "interesting" times we find ourselves in!

Cheers, Edouard 

[elagache]

Dear mid-60s Buick caregivers,

These days, businesses are under a lot of pressure to combat COVID-19.  Sometimes they overdo it.  That's what happened to my trusty wagon last week at Orinda Classic Car Center.  In their zeal to clean up the interior after test driving the car, they knocked off the "B" cover from the stereo:



I did find the cover, but it damaged beyond reuse.  So I had to repeat the procedure to make a new cover.  The overall scheme is described in this thread:

http://65gs.com/board/index.php/topic,3906.msg27658.html#msg27658

I sure am glad I contributed this thread - I had forgotten some of the key details!

I had some spare examples of the lettering printed on overhead transparency film.  So I cut myself a group of 3 and started by painting the background glossy white:



I created this setup so I could easily mail these covers to anybody who wanted them.  This group of 3 fits nicely in a #10 envelope.

Since there was some adhesion problems with the previous cover, I took the extra step of wet-sanding the white paint to make sure the surface was flat and uniform.

Phase 2 is painting the front of the buttons a clear gloss:



As noted in the thread, you need to cut out the buttons before this step.  If you apply the clear gloss first, there is some risk of the paint chipping off.

Finally, I could glue the missing "B".  As a further precaution, I bought myself a fresh bottle of CA glue.  These glues have a relatively short shelf life.



The last step is to blacken the edges with a permanent marker:



Voila!  That made my aftermarket stereo look a whole lot more like the original AM radio.

Of course this might seem like a lot of trouble, but modifying Biquette's sound system goes way back.  The first attempt goes back all the way to around 1977.  I was bold enough to solder a second set of leads to the original speaker - without removing the speaker mind you!  Thanks to this "mod," I could connect my mono cassette recorder to the speaker.   Why go to so much trouble?  Well, having just gotten my driver's license, it became my job to pick up my Dad each night from the train station.  Even then, the AM band had degenerated to news, talk, and sports radio.  Like any teen of the period, I was desperate for something else!

Things sure have changed from the days when these cars were built!

Cheers, Edouard 

[elagache]

Dear mid-60s Buick "longroof" fans,

It is a tradition at this house to wash and wax all the cars twice a year.  Alas, between COVID and other complications finding time for this task is becoming difficult.  I did manage to wash and wax the 2 "daily drivers."  They will have to cope with the rains (if this drought ever ends.)  Biquette isn't going to go out in the rain if I can avoid it, but at least I thought she deserved a wash and fresh application of tire dressing.  After spending most of the morning doing that, I got her out of the road to finish drying off.  While I was out, I stopped at the Moraga Barn and took 2 quick photos:



Here is the passenger side:



Since California has imposed further COVID restrictions, Biquette probably won't get much service this month.  At least when she does get out, she will look her best! 

Cheers, Edouard 

[SBRMD]

Edoardo, what size wheels and tires did you go with here?