First I'm gonna start off with some background information. I am from Maine but currently attend school in Ohio for High Performance Automotive. This Buick is the second vehicle I have personally owned my first being a 1994 chevy single cab short bed. I have owned it for 5 years now and swapped the interior and engine to a 1998 chevy with the vortec 350. I made it into a 355, cammed it, shorty headers, custom exhaust, cold air, and a mail order tune. It does pretty good. Also have a 14 bolt in the rear to handle it. I say this because I don't want people to think I like taking the easy way out or am afraid of doing my own work. So if you have any tips, information, then please let me know. Now on to the car, I got to college and all my friends had muscle cars and i felt left out. Friends car include 95 mustang with 351, 1972 mustang with mild built 302, 1997 lt1 trans am all stock, and a 72 demon that has a turbo 318 only pushing 6psi(Is actually getting parts to LS swap it). I wanted an LS car but never considered ls swap vehicles until a day on craigslist came across a 1981 buick regal with a running LS in it. The engine runs and according to the previous owner it was a 5.3 made into a 396, with ported 799 heads, and a cam. Made 414hp and 456 ft lbs on an engine dyno but he said it was only on there for about an hour.It came with a fairly new interior(previous owner got it that way from the owner before him), a mostly complete kore3 corvette brake kit which I did install, all new stock front rebuilt suspension. After selling some things that came with the car I bought the car for 4000$ which from what I have seen is pretty good. The frame is pretty solid and the body is not bad at all. It came with a built th400 and a 8.5 out of a 72 buick but I wanted overdrive and wanted to make the car my own. So I am keeping the stock 700r4 in it for now,(hopefully can get a 6 speed in next winter). I have a 9" in it with 3.89 gears and my main goal this year is power. It has trans dapt mounts so any information on headers would be great, also not sure what intake to go with(has factory truck intake with 39lbs injectors in it now), and got my kore3 kit in but my lower bracket bolts on the front hit the lower control arm close to full lock. I am all for building my own engines but living in an apartment with no tools makes it hard. My buddy with the 72 mustang has let me store my car at his house and use his garage with lift and tools which is great but his house is 100 miles away one way so its tough. This weekend I am going to work on it and all I need for a test drive is to wire gauges, run some brake lines(main line to the back was a bit rustic for my taste so I want to replace). Progress will be slow since I'm on a tight budget but enough of me talking heres some pictures. Please share you thoughts and opinions and I'm sorry if any of you think I'm ruining a g-body. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPbZRSO ... e=youtu.be I apologize for the poor video quality, the engine itself doesn't make as much noise as the video makes it and the cam lope is a lot more noticeable in person, the car actually slightly rocks back and forth at idle. Complete sleeper till it starts
College Regal Build
- Thread starter ITh4n4tosI
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Interior is pretty good I like the purple just not as much as there is, I will take away some purple like the dash. And the body work/paint department for now will be plastidip to make it one color which I know is terrible but I want to wait till I am out of college and back home to do it that way I can take my time and make sure its perfect. Plus I got all the proper tools back home to do it.
No I'm just gonna do the rattle can I get it pretty cheap at work, but the reason I'm doing power first is because the truck intake on the dyno just fell off at 6,000 rpm so I want to upgrade the intake and just and try to make 400rwhp. Idk if its possible because I didn't build the engine so the owner could've lied but I wasn't concerned he had a online picture/description of the engine being built, and flow sheets for the heads and such but I'll pull the valve covers off sometime because its suppose to have head studs and stuff and just verify everything I can without tearing into the engine to much but like I said I feel like a got a great buy regardless have a running cam 5.3 swap g-body.
No real progress updates. Got my temperature gauge installed and ran my new speedometer cable. Also got most of my interior and all of my dash put back together. Other then that not much just a few small things to do like wire my fans, run transmission cooler lines, and still working on figuring out my brake problems. Got to get it going though I have a school grudge match going on the 23rd and would really like to enter my car. Also my school is starting a third gen camaro drag car that we plan on putting an LS in so if you guys are interested in seeing that let me know and I'll make sure to keep up pictures and make a build thread for that.
Finally drove the car, went to a local car meet. Was still bolting stuff on five minutes before the meet and the car is no where near from done but it made it to the meet and back. It got a lot of attention and gathered a crowd constantly. But I did have one issue with the tv cable, the transmission seems to want to upshift then downshift right after only to upshift again and then it will stay in that gear. It shifts kinda hard as well out of 1st so I thought the cable was to tight so I loosened it but it only made it all worse but i feel like I'm stretching the cable if I tighten it more because it makes it hard to reach WOT. Any suggestions?
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