Bernadine: 1978 Buick Regal Restoration/Build

[doood]

I love the '78/'79 cars... I think they are the best looking - more swoopy.

I had the same heater box vs. valve cover interference with my swap with mounts that supposedly put the 5.3L bellhousing mating surface in the same plane as the SBC. Everybody was warning me that my mounts should be an inch more forward (contrary to the kit instructions), and looking back, they were right.

 

[PBGBodyFan]

Nice build thread, just noticed it today. Always cool to see people getting back to their cars they held on to from their youth or those who might of had one/sold/wrecked it and now later on re-acquiring one.

 

[78Regal350]

May 9, 2022: Well, it’s been exactly 300 days since my last update. In the week after I got the body lifted off the frame I got to work cutting out the rusty portion of the left trunk floor “shelf” and left rear inner wheelhouse, as well as got some patch panels fitted for those areas. Unfortunately that’s where progress stopped in 2021, and didn’t resume until April of this year. And as depressing as that is, I will say that in the meantime I’ve spent countless hours finding and purchasing parts (many of which are NOS), tools, consumables, etc., so I haven’t felt completely stuck in the mud.



But as springtime showed up this year, I knew I needed to find a way to make actual progress. For months I had been looking for a weekend, or even 6-8 hours of a Saturday to dedicate to working on the car, which I could never seem to find. So I decided I’d spend any little chunk of time I could on it instead. And by working an hour or hour & a half at a time, 4-5 days a week for the past 4 weeks I’ve been able get quite a lot done! Since April 6th, 2022 the following has been accomplished:

• manual trans shifter hump welded in
• left side trunk floor patch welded in
• left side #5 mount brace welded in
• left rear wheelhouse patch welded in
• rusted area on left rear wheel opening (outer wheelhouse flange & 1/4 panel) cut out, patches fabbed up, and patches welded in
• rusted area at bottom corner of left rear wheel opening & 1/4 panel cut out, patch fabbed up, and patch welded in
• rusted section of right side trunk floor cut out

I’ve set a goal to have all the right side trunk floor, inner wheelhouse, wheel opening, and lower 1/4 panel rust repairs done, seam seal any of the areas I’ve been messing with, prep the rest of the underbody for refinishing, and have the underbody & wheelhouses undercoated by the end of May. At that point I’ll move the body to other side of the garage so I can concentrate on disassembling/restoring/rebuilding the frame.



*** Over the next couple days I’ll make individual posts with pictures and more details about each of the repairs mentioned above so this thread is up to date and visually documented as such.

 

[78Regal350]

Without further ado, here are some pictures:

Here’s the rust issues in the driver side rear inner wheelhouse & trunk floor shelf:

Here are the same areas after being repaired/patched. I was able to reuse the original #5 body mount “brace”, but the wheelhouse & floor were patch using pieces I cut out of a junkyard 4 door.

 

[78Regal350]

Here’s the rot in the driver side rear wheel opening (which also went into the outer wheelhouse lip):

Here’s the patch I made to the wheelhouse lip, which obviously didn’t need to be pretty:

This is the wheel opening patch in place. I still need to finish leveling the weld, and there’s a contour in the wheel opening lip on the ‘78-‘80 Regals that I need to sand/grind into the new section.

There were also small rust holes in the lower driver side quarter panel just behind the wheel opening- 1 on the face & 1 on the underside. Turns out I forgot to take any pics before the repair, but here are pics with that corner cut out & with the newly fabbed corner in place.

 

[78Regal350]

Nothing too extravagant here, but this is the 4 speed shifter hump tack welded in place:

Back when I was in high school I bought a ‘79 Regal parts car, which had a pair of (what I believe were) Civic CRX buckets in it. I thought they were cool, so I wanted to put them in my car. And since mine had a full bench seat and no inner seat mounts, I made seat brackets out of 1/4” thick angle iron and bolted them directly to the floor with 3/8” bolts. (Super safe, right??) I got these unnecessary holes patched on the driver side.

 

[78Regal350]

Last Thursday I got all the remaining original undercoating removed from the rear wheelhouses. I found the method that worked best was using a heat gun and scraping with a stiff 1-1/2” putty knife. I ground the corners off the blade so it better fit the rounded shape of the wheelhouses.

 

[78Regal350]

And this brings us to the current project, which is patching the passenger side rear inner wheelhouse & trunk floor shelf. As of now I have the rusty sections cut out, and the patch panels are ready to be fit in. This side is definitely worse than the other side was, but I should be getting the floor patch at least fitted and tacked in place today.

This is the passenger side wheelhouse & trunk floor rot:

And here’s what this section looks like right now (with the rusty stuff cut out):

 

[Tony1968]

I'm no expert but looks like a good job 👏 👍

 

[Texas82GP]

Good to see you back at it. Repairs look great!