Here are a few photos of some of the rear axle parts before I assembled them into the housing. I've used Mark Williams hardware for a long, long time, and as far as I'm concerned, it's the best you can get. Buford the Buick has one of Williams' brute strength aluminum through bolt Pro Street 9-inch Ford center sections. It's equipped with a massive pinion support and as you can see in the photos, the billet caps attach by way of through bolts rather than having threads in the bare center section.




When you take a look at the rear, you can see how Williams' safety wires the ring gear hardware (it's all ARP pieces). This car has a 3.89:1 ring and pinion. The Detroit Locker is actually a billet steel piece. The yoke is also billet steel and setup for a 1350 Spicer universal joint (the same as used on many medium duty trucks). Aside from the street gear and the Locker instead of a spool, this is pretty much state of the art for Pro Stock a decade or so ago. They have since gone to larger ring and pinions.




These are photos of the axles I used. They're (obviously) from M-W and are large 35-spline jobs (the biggest possible with a Locker). I've used lightened axles from Mark in the past (he offers them rifle drilled with heavily milled flanges), but those are only for racecar use. In this case, the axles were drilled for ½-inch and 5/8-inch wheel studs. I used the honking 5/8-inch drive studs in the car. FYI, to get all of this stuff to fit with a conventional style backing plate (I used 9-1/2-inch early GM midsize parts), the center bore of the plate had to be milled. The axle register on the brake drum was milled (larger) and obviously, the wheel stud holes in the drums had to be enlarged. I'm now on a first name basis with at least two machine shops <g>.





A few folks have asked me if the car actually has an interior <g>. Yes it does! This is a photo of it with the instrument panel removed. The second shows the back seat and the third is of the door panel. I’m pretty sure the interior is what most would consider to be in pristine condition. There are still places where the factory shipping plastic wasn’t completely removed.





I removed the console because I wanted to run one of these shifters. It's built by Precision Performance. They're big in drag racing with air shifters. I had them build me one in a more conventional hand shift mode. I had the carpet section made up to cover the floor where the console once lived. This little mod actually proved trying. Plan "A" was to simply swap the original carpet for a repro from the, uhm, well known restoration carpet place (since GM cuts the carpet under the console). So…..I stripped the seats out of the car and ordered the carpet and it eventually showed up. As soon as I opened the box I knew I was in trouble. It was (a whole bunch) more brown than GM Carmine. Then I put it in the car. The fit was worse than horrible. Plan "B" was to create a removable center section. After a couple of tries, the upholsterer got it right. There are four snaps used to hold it in place. By removing a snap, there's access to the cable or to route wiring.



Here are a couple of shots of the instrument panel. The panel surrounding the radio is a cool aftermarket piece that allows for the heater delete. I decided to keep the factory AM-FM and the cigar lighter. As you can see, the cluster is out of the car.




At this point, I've reassembled the dash but the actual instrument cluster still isn't installed. You would not believe how much plastic (and how many small screws) is involved in these dash assemblies. Back in the day, I wouldn't have wanted to be the squeak and rattle guy at the Buick dealership. It must have been a nightmare, but I'm getting off topic. I opened up the OEM dash harness connector and peeled out the wires I'd need for a new instrument panel. I used three weatherpack connectors – the big one does everything except for the turn signals. Each signal indicator has it's own weatherpack. I use a lot of weatherpacks in cars. Once you get the hang of assembling them (MSD sells the necessary tools and weatherpack parts), it's pretty easy. I like them because they make for extremely reliable connections.





This is a look at what I'm installing. I built this setup with a custom aluminum panel (anodized black) and eight gauges from SpeedHut (Revolution Gauges). Included in the mix is a tach, speedo, fuel level, voltmeter, oil pressure, water temperature, transmission temperature and fuel pressure gauges. These are all stepper motor instruments. That allows them to be super shallow and of course, to have 270-degree sweeps like a mechanical gauge. The wiring harness assemblies for the senders are similar to the mil spec stuff you see on aircraft. There are ton of options available too. For example, the tach has a three-stage shift light. There are "low" and "high" warnings on some of the instruments. The odometer is a digital readout. Gauge bezels have a polished stainless look and they match the trim in the Buick office. I chose a cobalt blue back light package and traditional red pointers (you can select all of this stuff). It's uber cool, but I screwed up. I had it all assembled, but forgot to order turn signal indicators and a high beam indicator in the speedometer. So that's why it's not in the car. I'm waiting for a speedo with those features (supposedly, in transit).




Once the cluster is completely installed, I'll shoot some photos and add them here. I should track down some fuel system pix too. I sweated some details on that and I think it came out pretty nice too.

And by the way, thanks again for letting me indulge myself here! In the meantime, Happy New Year! See ya' next year.


Wayne Scraba