82 Regal Wagon Build Thread

[Mikes455Wagon]

So here are some more pics I just got sent to me from dad on the progress on the motor. Looks like the cylinder walls are cleaning up fine and the crank is good. I also am one ordered brake drum away from having the 9" done. We tore into it and found out it already had 4.30 gears and a mini spool which is like hitting the jack pot for what I am doing. I went through and completely did the brakes and put new drums on. Which finding the drums was a bit of a pain. It seems the rear was out of a mid to late 60's fairlane with the 10x2.5 brake option. Drums for that are $90 each. Turns out ones from a mid 80's Mercury Grand Marquis or Lincoln town car are a direct interchange and cost around $35 each which I can handle. I will probably get pics up of that in the near future. I hope to have it hanging in the car this weekend if all goes as planned. After that I will still need to get a drive shaft made and all that good stuff along with finding some of the correct offset wheels.
(Note the 62 Grand Prix in the background, its the baby of the family)!

 

[78mali350]

awesome progress. congrats on the great rear-end find.

 

[83cutlasssedan]

Sweet Regal man! I have never seen a regal wagon before. Nice.

 

[83cut350chev]

[/quote]


is that.....a purple.....man thong?! lolo no im jk like the car sounds like a ncice project! good luck

 

[Mikes455Wagon]

Ok guys, just thought I would get a few pics with update. I have the 9" cleaned, brakes done, and hanging in the car. I just got my new order from summit of some adjustable shocks all the way around and my budget conforming wheels for the hoosier slicks....The motor is also coming along well also. So picks of a short block thats assembled with cat forged rods and speedpro forged pistons will hopefully be posted soon, stay tuned...

 

[Mikes455Wagon]

So here is how the car sits now, with 9" rear installed and slicks. Got alot of odds and ends stuff done this weekend with some suspension parts. Getting the old u joint out proved to be fun thanks to the original one still being in the shaft, epoxy and all! A little heat and my 20 ton press and it finally came apart. So here is how it sits now with the 400 in it ready to be exchanged with my 455.

 

[Nightmare388]

Looks good! Keep up the good work. Keep us up to date on the mods.

 

[Mikes455Wagon]

Well, thought I would leave an update at this point. My 455 just now made it to the shop for machine work last week. So, looks like it might make the transplant by mid april. However, race season is about here and we were going this weekend until mother nature really shafted us. So hopefully this sunday we will be running with clear skies. So, since the last post I have done the s10 manual steering swap and pulled the 400 in the car down. I did a cam swap to the base line summit brand pontiac cam because in 400's we have had very good luck with that camshaft. I also took the 6x low compression heads off. I did not know going into this what had been previously done to the engine other than a cam that was massively TOO BIG. I pulled the engine apart and swapped cams. Turned out everything was how I figured it was. Its a typical almost stock rebuild with the smog cut pistons bored .030 over. I swapped heads with the cam and put 143 casting heads on. These heads we had that came off a junk car and were about to go in the trash but I figured they had to be better than what I currently had. They are small valve, small closed chamber heads off a 2 barrel big car motor. The motor ran when it came in and was holding 190 psi compression across the board so we swapped them over after a little cleaning and that was it. They brought the compression from a little less than 8:1 to a bit over 10.25 to 1. The motor is now very crisp sounding and freakishly responsive. I also got my headers installed with some slight modifying to the car. Now I pretty much just sit and wait for Sunday and clear weather.

 

[Mikes455Wagon]

Thought I would update what my current times are and so on. I got put on the trailer early because I broke out. We only got 1 timed run and then they told us to dial in. Since that way my only pass I had gotten on this combination I dialed an 8.80. I made a few changes after the first timed pass of 8.87. I ran my first pass and was .015 on the tree, and for some reason my time slip said i ran 7.36, which is pretty good since I was running a 7.50 car and he spotted me over a second and still caught me. I went to the timing tower very unhappy. But, they did give me a free buy back and now i was ready to run. Without having another valid timeslip I left the car dialed to an 80. Went out and was .003 on the tree, 1.88 60 ft, had the other guy covered alot and pedaled it on top end and ran a 8.75. And the track we were at is a slow track. I am hoping to go 8.40s next weekend at another track with some slight tuning. I have 100 bucks in a 8 second motor, im not complaining 🙂

 

[blackhatch]

sick work man!