BUILD THREAD JRP's '87 Regal Thread

[MrSony]

Holy hell man you're spending my money for me and I don't even have it yet! Lol

Yeah I plan on doing the T/A oiling mods. The timing set is no big deal, just hopefully the cover comes off without giving me a hard time. It already has an HEI distributor on it, so I'm probably just gonna put a cap and rotor on it. I have several spare coils laying around if the one on it is bad. Im gonna change some other gaskets and little stuff too, but one thing at a time now, lets just get it home and on a stand.

Oilling mods such as passage drilling aren't 100% necessary, but they don't hurt either. It can go well, or very very wrong. Most I would do is radius the oil pickup tube hole to match up with a new 5/8 pickup tube from the later 70s engines, stock for 68-74ish is 9/16. But since this engine runs, I doubt you want to get chips everywhere.

 

[joesregalproject]

Well as much as I'd like to take the truck to get this engine, and I think it would probably be fine, I only have about 20 miles on it since I did the clutch job and I don't want to be 3 hours from home and find out that I forgot to tighten something or some other sh*t, so I'm taking the safe option and taking the Subaru.

Now I was thinking about just putting the engine and transmission in the back of the Subaru, and while I know it would it fit, I think its a little too much weight and would most definitely break the interior trim if it moved, not to meantion get grease and sh*t everywhere.

So I decided that was ****ing dumb and just bought a trailer hitch and wiring for the Outback. I got a Curt Class III 2 inch receiver. Sturdy little unit. Took about an hour to install it today, had to trim the exhaust should a little then open up a couple holes to fit bolts through. Then I made reservations at U-Haul to rent a 5x8 open trailer on Wednesday, but I can change to Thursday or Friday if need be.

 

[joesregalproject]

Not your average Subaru owner, but that should be apparent when they see it tugging a trailer with an old V8 and a transmission on it.

 

[joesregalproject]

Well today was the day I got my motor. 5.5 hour drive to Ft. Wayne Indiana. Made a few stops a long the way.

Tallmadge Ohio-

Fort Wayne, Indiana-

Here's the motor and trans. Seller seemed like a nice guy, got it strapped to a pallet for me and loaded on the trailer. I turned it over with a breaker bar and it has compression and and spun around without any binding or anything. He said it should run no problem. It's only been sitting a year and a half, and it's been stored inside the whole time. Appears to have a brand new starter on it, and it looks like the timing cover was off because the gasket looks newer. It's been converted to HEI which is nice. The water pump appears newer. As I said it was in a Jeep but the seller said it wasn't original to the Jeep, he thought it came out of a '72 Skylark. I haven't checked the numbers on it yet (I'm still in Indiana, still have a 5.5 hour drive home ahead of me). Anyways, that's the update.

 

[81cutlass]

With a turbo hood heat liner, the car is begging for a turbo to be bolted on that SBB 🙂

I think buick V8 swaps are the most underutilized swap in the G body arsenal. They have to be the cheapest 350 of any GM derivative. All the pontiac and olds guys seem to hoard their small blocks but buicks are $250-$600 running complete every day on CL around here.

 

[joesregalproject]

Just got home about 20 mins ago, been on the road since 8 this morning. I haven't even gotten the engine off the trailer yet, and probably won't until tomorrow morning. After 12 hours of driving today, I'm beat.

 

[DRIVEN]

This will be fun to watch.

 

[mclellan83]

Looking forward to seeing more of this

 

[joesregalproject]

I hope to keep it interesting for you guys. Still beat from yesterday, but I did get to work on it a little. Honestly I spent most of the day getting the thing off the trailer. Had to get a new hoist and assemble it, return the u haul, etc.

First here's the casting numbers, according to teambuick.com

Block- 1231447 shows 1971-?
Intake- 1238643 shows 1972-73 2 BBL
And here's the odd/interesting part-
Left head- 1238145 shows 1972
Right head- 1242558 shows 1973

It doesn't show any obvious signs that a head was replaced, unless it was done a long time ago. Any ideas what might've happened there? A few people have told me GM was sloppy with casting numbers, but I don't know.

But so far it's looking good I think. The alternator appears to have been rebuilt-

The starter appears brand new-

The heads look pretty clean, minus the one rocker missing a retainer button. Guess those buttons should be replaced.

The previous owner told me he ran a me mechanical oil psi gauge and it had good oil pressure, and there is evidence of a mechanical gauge being hooked up.

The spark plugs looked pretty good to me-

I drained the oil, it looked normal, dirty, but no surprises. The drain plug was magnetic and had very little of anything on it. Not sure what all this dried coolant is on the front, I can't see any signs of any leaks so I'm guessing it's just spillage from when the engine was removed. Either way the gaskets are getting replaced.

Oh and the previous owner apparently loved RTV, lol-

Anyways thats about where I stopped for today. Tomorrow is mostly gonna be putting tools away and maybe playing with the carburetor a little bit.

 

[pagrunt]

For the odd set of '72/'73 heads check the date code casted in the block heads. They might be correct if the engine was built in January-March of '73