Buford the Buick

In my last post, I said I'd get some "before" pix posted. In hindsight, I should have done this earlier. Anyway, the first photo is of Buford the Buick sitting at the boat launch in Cowichan Bay, BC. I live on Vancouver Island on the far (far) west end of Canada. "Cow Bay" is a quaint little fishing/tourist village on the south east coast of the island. I lived in the area (Cobble Hill) for a few years before moving to the real backwoods <g>. Where I live now supposedly has more black bears than anywhere else in North America. They're not kidding. And all of 'em must live in my backyard! Back to the Buick:




That same day, I pressure washed the engine compartment as much as I could stand, and then ran the car into my old shop. This is a photo I took after an hour or two of peeling stuff out. It's pretty clear here and in several of the following photos that I didn't pressure wash the thing nearly enough!



At this point, I had the engine and turbo 200 out of the car. Take a look at the crossmember. There was no chance this thing would ever, ever rust <g>. Aside from the oil and grease, the original owner had the car undercoated with that wax-oil stuff. It was wicked to clean with a capital "W". I don't have a photo of the trans tunnel, but that was the worst part. Message to self: You love laying under the car with the pressure washer set on "high". In the process of cleaning up the grease, I literally wore out a dozen brushes of all sorts. Walmart and made-in-China brushes wanted to be my friends.



In the process, I tackled the AC/heater box removal. That thing is the size of a house. Or maybe a Smart Car. I eventually decided that the inner skirts had to come out in order to clean up the mess. I should have removed them before I pulled out the AC/heater box. It would have been a whole bunch simpler. Hindsight is a wonderful teacher ain’t it?





Here's a photo of the car after the scrubbing and pressure washing was more or less complete. You can see how the paint came right off the frame. I used a considerable amount of spray on engine degreaser. For the tough stuff, I'd resort to brake cleaner and hot water hooked directly to the pressure washer. I don't have a lift, so the underneath part of the equation was miserable.



Once that was done (and I'll be the first to admit the cleaning process took weeks of my spare time instead of days), I stripped out almost everything from the engine compartment and masked/taped what little remained. Then I sprayed it with semi-gloss black. I found a near match to the Buick offset too: It's paint for a John Deere tractor. They have two different glosses (one is called "Blitz Black"). One matches the firewall perfectly and the other seems right for the frame. I can't take credit for finding Blitz Black (rattle cans or bulk). The street rodders discovered it long before me. The parts guy at the John Deere dealership I bought it from told me he can't believe how much of the stuff he sells. He didn't know why. I didn't tell him <g>. Oh. See the Moroso frame mounts? I didn't miss a bolt. That's how they're installed. One mount fits both sides of the car and that's where the extra unused hole comes from.






So that's how the project actually began. While this was going on, Mike Pustelny was busy making sparks fly on the rear end housing. Meanwhile, I was melting my credit card ordering parts <g>. Down the road, I'll round up some photos of how the frame was notched. That too turned into a great fab job – this time by an outfit that specializes in some (super) nicely turned out sprint cars here on the Island. I definitely would have used MPR's services for this job too, but his shop and mine are 2597.33 miles (and one ferry ride) apart.

I hope you folks find this a wee bit interesting.

Wayne Scraba