Slow, Low, And Being Seen In a Cool Low Buck Buick Restmod

Today on muscle car, don't trash that old dash. Learn to fix it without a lot of cash ugly interior will show you how to dye it, repair it or fab it for a fresh new look right along as project. Blue collar hits the town and meet the buick that sparked a big debate.

Hey, welcome to muscle car.

We're down to the final stages of the build of blue collar buick. All we need is some glass interior and some sweet sounding exhaust and we're gonna knock all that out today so we can take our ugly duckling turned cool buick out on the streets. See how many heads we can turn.

It's amazing how far the 73 century has come. We revived an old Buick 455 for the power plant and installed a shift kit in the 350 turbo. Our

low bug body mods like modifying the bumpers, updating the door handles and hand

fing. The tail lights gave it an all new attitude,

topped off with a slick two tone paint job and some 20 inch wheels. And we've got one

six street cruiser. Even after that, we've got 1200 left of our 10 grand budget. Most of the cash will be spent on the interior. We need to die.

The seats and door panels, throw in a headliner and carpet add in a floor shifter and console paint, the steering column and put in a new steering wheel. The dash needs a little extra work. So I went ahead and removed it. Let me show you what I've got planned for that.

This thing obviously could use a coat of color. But also I'm gonna have to deal with this big crack, which is a common problem. No one re pops these and a used one would probably have the same issues. So I'm just gonna do a little plastic repair and fix this one.

A big hump is formed where the sun has baked the plastic. So I'll need to get it leveled off. And I've never like these perforated built in speaker grill.

So since the crack runs right through it, it's getting filled in,

I'll also be the edges of a crack to give the adhesive plenty of surface area to grip.

Some masking tape will acts as a form for the glue until it dries. This is a two part plastic repair adhesive and has to be mixed really well before it's applied. Make sure you mash it in all the holes and don't lay it on too thin or the repair won't last.

Once it sets up a quick hit with a rotary grinder will prep it for the glaze coat.

This glaze is a flexible filler and won't crack like regular body filler would. But you do have to sand it just like any other filler. And once it's smooth, it's ready for sealer and paint.

Well, Tom has been working on the dash. I got a wrecking yard bucket seat set in place and they feel pretty good. They're out of a 1974 cut list and they're in pretty good shape. So all we have to do,

clean them up and dye them.

Hey, man, I gotta wait for that dash to dry. So I'm gonna go ahead and take these off your hands. If you don't mind, would you find the rear seats and get them cleaned up for me? Sure, I can do that. Thanks brother.

The best way to prep your seats is to take them all the way apart. It's worth the effort because your dye job will look better and last longer, then you can hit it with some dish soap.

One thing to watch for is your cleaning and prepping your seats is to see if the water beads up. If it does that some form of oil wax or conditioner that must be removed for the dye to adhere properly

and make sure to rinse them off with clean water. Once they're done,

Rick got the back seat all cleaned up, but there's one small little problem. A

couple of the seams are busted.

No big deal. I'll just stitch them up and it'll be ready for a new coat of color.

I've got to get to the backside of the vinyl, so I need to do a little disassembly with material this old, you've got to be really careful not to cause more damage. Once the backing is opened up, I can grab my poster needle and heavy duty thread and go to town.

Let my grandmother be brown.

Let's see what we got.

Yeah, that doesn't look bad at all. Especially for somebody that doesn't operate a sewing needle a whole lot.

This thing is ready for some color. Now

I'm using a professional vinyl dye. It's easy to apply and gives an original looking finish.

In fact, most people won't be able to tell these parts didn't come this color.

Well, Tommy gets another coat of color laid down on the seats. I'm gonna get the console and shift or installed. They came out of the same vehicles our front buckets did in 1974 cutlass and they're pretty similar vehicles. So hopefully the stuff will go in without causing me too much hassle.

Now, first, I'm gonna see if I'm lucky enough to have pre existing mounting points.

I must have been good somewhere because the holes are already factory stamped. All I have to do is cut a shifter hole and run in some self tapping screws as markers.

Now, next, I need to set the carpet in place to cut the access holes. Now, I know the color looks a little reddish on camera, but trust me, it's black. The studio lights are just playing some tricks with us here.

Now, I can take the marker screws back out, mount the shifter and check the fit of the console and trim.

That wouldn't easier than I thought. I think I'll pull this thing back out, sneak into the pile of parts that Tom's getting ready to die.

I

bet he won't even notice.

Coming up. Rick shows you how easy it is to keep the bugs out of your teeth.

Hey, welcome back. I've got most of the interior parts painted including the dash pillar, post and console. I've decided to two tone the door panels because I've got this factory trimmed out area.

The front ones are all done, the rears mask up and they're ready for the great

when you're dying an interior, you can be as creative as you want. I'm doing a two tone instead of one solid color. But if you feel like masking a lot, you could take it even further with different color inserts, stripes and accents.

Sweet. That looks pretty good.

Now, how we lack is a couple of pieces on the inside and we'll be ready to throw all these pieces in it.

There's not a whole lot in here. I need to hit with a spray can, the lower dash, the steering column and a trim panel at the speaker deck. Rick's already got it all prepped out for me. So all I gotta do is tape it up

while the dash dries I can get the rear speaker panel covered. A local upholstery shop sold us some vinyl and upholstery board. I cut it to fit and a can of glue is gonna hold it all together.

A poster board is a thick cardboard. It's textured on one side so you don't have to cover it, but to get a cleaner look, it can be wrapped like I'm doing here. A

poster glue is really easy to use. Just spray it on both sides. Give it a few minutes to set and stick the pieces together. Make sure there's no wrinkles or bubbles before you let it dry.

When you're wrapping the edges, make some relief cuts. So it won't bunch up in the corners.

We could have bought some black vinyl, but to make sure the color will match with the rest of the panels. I'm just gonna spread with the same dye.

After some dry time, we can install all the parts. We revived

the controls, gauges, radio and vents are all original parts. We just cleaned up and they don't look bad at all.

It'll be fun.

There was no help for the old steering wheels. So we caught up summit racing for one to match the new color scheme

to complete the interior. The original back seats can drop in and the recycled buckets can find their new home.

Like most of the parts that we've put on today, the glass is original to the car. It's in pretty good shape. So all we did is clean the stuff up and we'll go ahead and reinstall it. Our only real money that we had to spend was on some clips. A little bit of urethane.

I clean the glass first with some heavy duty cleaner and four a

steel wool. And now I can apply the urethane primer around the inside edge

and step is actually doing two different things here.

It's gonna help the urethane stick.

But beyond that covers up all the little bubbles along the edge

and don't forget to apply some to the window channel too.

Next come the clips, there's a lot of different styles, but they all basically install the same way, slide them over the tab and lock them into place.

This car originally used a beetle rope seal, but Urethane is a safer alternative. A simple caught gun and strong forearm are all that's needed. Cutting the tip and a V will give me a taller bead than a straight cut. Would

the glass needs to drop in immediately before the urethane starts to skin over? So don't wait around, get it as close as you can before you drop it into place. What I'm doing here is just kind of working some of this Urethane back in. I like to do it just because I hate it when you get this thing all done put together, you wash the car for the first time

and you see that little trickle of water going down the inside of your windshield.

It's right here will help prevent that from happening.

In keeping with the no chrome look, we blacked out all the trim.

There we go

with all the trim installed. There's just one thing left the exhaust. His cherry bombs are budget friendly and they sound great. So I'm gonna go ahead and hang some pipe under the buick but stick around because later on in the show, we're gonna be taking blue collar out for a maiden voyage

up. Next is this Buick the fastest four seater muscle car ever made. Decide for yourself.

Today's flashback. A 1970 Buick GS stage one.

What would you guess is the fastest four seater of the muscle car era?

The GTO

Boss Mustang.

No, wait, it's got to be a heavy

car, right?

No. Would you believe the one that beat them all was to get this? A buick?

The car was the 70 Gs stage one.

Well, at least that's what muscle car review claimed back in 1984 and it raised the eyebrows and blood pressure of many folks, especially Chrysler fans.

The ranking was based on a compilation of all the lap times recorded by the major car max back in the day. Motor trend clocked a 1338 et at a

five miles an hour in the quarter mile edging out a 68

hemi chargers 13.50 to 60 took just 5.5 seconds.

They called it an engineering tour de force without a taste of Geritol.

The stage one option was a bargain at just 200 bucks. It transformed the already potent 455 into a deadly weapon.

If you look at it a high lift camshaft with a longer duration, the heads had a higher 10.5 to 1 compression and were machined with larger ports

plus the intake and exhaust valves were oversized as well as the tail

pipes.

Initial timing on the quick curve distributor was set at 10 degrees instead of six and a heavy duty radiator was thrown in to handle the extra heat from the motor twin hood scoops fed cool air through styrofoam sealed ports

directly into the air clinic

that was do

GS but stage one's got a Rochester quadrajet with bigger jets. Buick claimed the stage one only out of 10 horsepower but that was just to beat the insurance wrap. Total output was really boosted from 350 to well over 400.

Now, horsepower is one thing but torque is what gets you off the line fest

and

this beast was a torque

510 ft pounds and it made all that at just 2800 RBM.

The stage one option also got you a posi traction rear end with 364 gears.

Everything else was ordered on a cart like the hurst four speed and rally gauges, even the heavy duty suspension wasn't included. Buick kept the car low key, no stripes or graphics. The only outside markings were the stage one back

on the fenders. Other than that, it looked just like a stock GS

that made the stage one kind of a sleeper and it was easily overlooked. Well back then and even today, people don't think of Buick and performance in the same breath. Buick only managed to move about 3000 of them way less than other cars in the same price range.

When you think about the low production numbers,

the maximum performance that you get right at the top of the heap luxury

you don't get any better. You've got everything sewed up in one package

ever since the car was ranked fastest four seater. Folks have been fighting over whether or not it's really true.

There have been countless stage one versus hemi

shootouts over the years with no clear cut winner

in our record book. The title is still up for grabs

after the break. Project Blue Collar Buick is out on the prowl.

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We started out with 10 grand burning a hole in our pocket and that bought us the 73 Buick century plus a few upgrades between paint parts and power. We slid in just under budget. Some cars are built to burn up the track or carve through the back roads. But this one's more about going slow low and being seen,

we topped off the tank and pointed it towards the tallest buildings. We could find

it cruised the freeway like a champ. But when we hit the streets of downtown, it felt right at home

with this 455 stoplight action would be no problem. But that wouldn't give people time to stare.

The clouds over the city are nice. But now that the motor's broken in, we're headed to our secret back road

to make a few clouds of our own.

You know, these old Buicks ain't really known for the horsepower, but they're known for their torque.

You know, Rick, this thing definitely belongs on the road. I know guys

to spend a whole lot more to get a whole lot less. That's for sure. Hey, man, after riding around all day, I'm about ready to grab a bite and maybe something cold to drink. You cool with that. No joke. Me too, buddy. Hey, for this week we're out of time. So

next time

we're out of here.