Hi all, I just want to introduce myself and my ride. I purchased this -66 Special DeLuxe 2D HT a couple of months ago. The car is a Vietnam war veteran, brought to Thailand by US military during the conflict. I found it in a warehouse with about 100 other same era cars, many filled with bullet holes. A thai airforce captain had registered the Buick as a normal road vehicle in 1986, at that time it had already lost the original v8+auto and was running a Mercedes-Benz four cylider diesel with four speed manual. I have already taken it apart, replaced ball joints, brake hardware and some steering components but now I am desperately searching for a SBB 350 engine and transmission. This stuff is quite impossible to find here so I may have to ship everything from the states. Most classic cars here have japanese engines, a Lexus 4 Liter V8 would be an improvement compared to the diesel four banger, but I promise I will try to avoid that. My other classic car is a numbers matching -60 Pontiac Ventura 2D HT but that I drive only 30 days a year during my vacation in Europe.
Nice story, there is a rebuild complete carb to pan with starter etc 350 buick engine for sale with transmission in the for sale section. I will look it up for you. here is the link contact GSDAVE about it: http://www.v8buick.com/showthread.php?t=185245
Yo - In Thailand. . . I spent the last half of 1966 up in Nakhon Phanom, (aka NKP; aka Naked Fanny) - on the Mekong River. Was pretty "nice duty" - a few problems, like the Cobra snake population was pretty heavy, - also Kraits and Bamboo Vipers hung around. They liked to crawl up into the bunks, crawl under the sheets and cam out where the "unwary" might jump into the sack and get bit. Spiders, monsoon rain (every day) living in moist, damp tents - and working duty assignments in the field to clear land, build teakwood buildings, installing aircraft Pilot housing - Single Wides with Honda generators and A/C on the roof. I got to see A/C at hotels in Bangkok every week or two. We were a B-52 direction finder and radar site. We also had the 56th Air Commandos, and some other "Spooky" types floating around. We had a squadron of A-26 attack aircraft (modified B-26's) that ran missions along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. We also hada slew of Cessna O-2 Bird Dog FAC aircraft that flew up and down the Ho Chi Minh Trail and directed other base's F-4's and F-105's aircraft to targets. If you ever saw the movie "Air America" - it was an HBO movie -that's what NKP and surrounding areas looked like. What keeps you in that area of SEA ? If you are looking for some American folks - there's a VFW post up in Udorn, #10249 I think it is. www.vfw10249.org . . . There's another VFW #9876, in Pattya www.vfwpost9876.org . . . I do believe both posts Welcome Ex-Patriots. You might try a Google search for the TLCB -it's a merry band of about 500 folks - mostly USAF, that have NEVER abandoned our Thai friends. There are also a few US Army folks, a few Navy personnel, and some civilians who served in Thailand, Laos, Cambodia. We have shipped hundreds of thousands of dollars to Thai orphanages and spent hundreds of thousands on schools in NE Thailand - as well as college scholarships for Thai kids to attend the American University in Bangkok - expensive scholarships with room and board. Our American political leaders walked away and left our allies to go to reeducation caamps - and they fired all the "local" employees of Embassies and bases where our military worked at. Keith (RIP) Rohring :Comp:
Welcome! Good pic with the Buick 350, have a reputable Buick shop in US or Canada R&R an engine and send it to you.
Thanks for the replies, first I have to check out some rumours of abandoned engines I have heard of. It would cost a fortune to bribe Thai customs to let the engine in, shipping is nothing compared to that. I myself came to Thailand as a young man 16 years ago when the economics was bad in Europe. Got set up with family and my own company and found it too hard to leave.
66 Special DeLuxe 2D HT ... I am desperately searching for a SBB 350 engine and transmission. a SBB 350 wouldn't be period correct anyways. they didn't start production until 1968. http://www.teambuick.com/reference/years/66/66_engine_number.html you'll probably have an easier time coming up with a v8 Rover 3.5L to 4.6L same engine family / design, but lighter because they are all aluminum where the 350 will be all cast iron.
Thanks for the tip, the Rover engine certainly seems like a viable solution. Keith, do you remember seing american cars when you were stationed in NKP? I wonder why they were brought here, in the movies you only see Jeeps. Were they used by headquarters, diplomats or what?
Hi, I just noticed that you have the same name as the new member from Finland, Marko. That's a coincidence. Below are a few links related to your '66 Buick: 1) Buick production figures for 1966: http://buicks.net/years/66.shtml 2) '66 Buick brochure: http://www.oldcarbrochures.com/main.php?g2_itemId=9169 Rob
I was wondering the same thing so I looked it up on google and it seems like it means CIA (but I might be wrong).
I was @ Korat for 6 months fixing F4s and F105s, you are a lucky man. The Air Force had a lot Officers driving US Cars.:bglasses:
\Sorry for my ignorance but what do you mean by spooks? that's slang for spies and intelligence operatives. Rob's guess of "CIA" is accurate as far as it goes, but there are lots more acronyms involved than just the CIA. the US has intelligence arms for all of the major branches of the military and the CIA isn't the only "civilian" intelligence agency ... only the most famous. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_intelligence#United_States http://odni.gov/ as Doug notes though, spooks were hardly the only source of American cars in SEA. don't discount the ability of remf officers to live in style.
:Comp: First of all - Doug - Welcome Home. I was at Korat twice - #1 was the day I flew in on a C-130 full of shrapnel holes - one of which was a handful sized piece of 1,200 degree white metal that an US ARMY SP4 grabbed and burnt all the meat off his hand and wrist. An EXPENSIVE souvenir. He was enroute to R&R in Bangkok - got to the Korat Hospital. #2 was on the way back to Tokyo - from where I came on trip #1. If all this discussion below interests anyone, send me a PM. I can recommend other reading, including a Book - titled A Certain Brotherhood - written by Col Jimmie Butler, USAF Academy Graduate, Retired now in Colorado Springs. Jimmie flew those O-2 Bird Dog's out over the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The original planes were O-1's that flew at max 90 mph - the O-2's went at 110 mph MAX -a great improvement ;-))) Then for Marko - Not TOO many cars in NKP area in 1966. We DID bring in a Jeep Waggoneer, USAF Blue, 4WD, Auto, Woodie (status symbol) for the Province Chief to Bribe Him to recruit and provide a couple thousand laborers to expand and build up this base in his province. In 1972 - MAC-V (Military Assistance Command - Vietnam) moved from Saigon to NKP and stayed there into late 1975. In mid-75 the North Vietnamese overran South Vietnam - remember those photos of helicopters taking people off the Embassy Roof ? Half might have gone to US Aircraft Carriers in the ocean off the coast. The other half - mostly Americans still in Saigon, were airlifted out to NKP. NKP was about 300 people when I got there in mid 66. It was over 3,000 when I left in November. At that time, there were only USAF Blue "official" vehicles in NKP. In the city were afew small 3 wheeled 1/8 ton trucks - called "Sushi Trucks" or "Noodle Trucks" - they would deliver "lunch" or "Breakfast" to locations in NKP City. After awhile, they were allowedto run the 10 Kilometers from the Mekong to the Base Gate and drop off deliveries for people on the base. Lovely, humongous piles of noodles, mystery meat, Thai Veggies with side Rice Dishes (Cao Pot) for maybe twenty five cents. I am sure the prices went up as the population grew. NKP then became a regional Thai civilian airport for 5 years. The airport eventually dried up, not enough need to get there any more. It was a gateway to Laos for a lot of years. As for "Spooky" types - our Black (unidentified) helicopters dropped special forces (Air Commandos and others) along the Ho Chi Minh Trail to train Hmong Tribes to observe and report activity along the Trail. Then planes flew from Thailand all over Laos and Cambodia, and the DMZ area to report on troop movements. We also had VO-67 (do a google for vo-67.org) - a Navy unit, which was modifying AccuBuoys (ocean based sniffers of Soviet naval traffic) to be land based sniffers - with tiny NICAD battery powered transmitters that sensed vibration levels to report on trucks, people, bicycles and so on for MacNamara's Electronic Fence. Well, we reported Elephants as 4 trucks rumbling along, or Bengal Tigers or Black Panthers as troop clusters or sometimes these ADSID's would drop from planes and lodge against tree roots of 100 to 150 ft tall teak wood trees - and when the wind blew, the tree's roots were recorded as 500 troops walking thru. Electronics in the jungle- well, it just wasn't as easy as counting truck engines in a Ford factory - MacNamara's old job. Do a Google lookup for ADSID, and another for "DogPatch II"; a plane running the overhead information collection route every day. The pilot - Lt Bobby Di Tomasso ws from Buffalo NY - became an MIA the day before I arrived at NKP when his C-47 (DC-3 tail dragger ?) was shot down by MIGS. There were a LOT of vehicles that probably all went directly into the Thai economy from all 7 US Bases in about 1976. Buicks ? Dunno ? If I remember correctly - there's a real large Tourist city called Chiang Mai in the far north of Thailand. Might be more engines available up there ? Udorn, Ubon, Korat, NKP, Pattya, Don Maung at the Bangkok Airport. The 7th location would be the Vientianne, Laos Embassy - lots of Americans (some Spooky types, too) hung out there ;-))) The VFW post at UDORN would be the best contact to find engines or whole intact cars. These are mostly Americans - Veterans of the Vietnam Conflict- who stayed in Thailand. Lastly - Marko - there's a lot of pictures and information about the "Secret War" in Thailand at a website for the TLCB Association - TLCB = Thailand, Laos, Cambodia Brotherhood. Take a peek . . .Some of those folks are "still over there". o No: Rip Rohring :Comp:
Marko - I "lost" your thread and jut stumbled across it. I was doing some "Buick" searches in Google and found a rather large lot (250 cars ?) in Chiang Mai. Might be an interesting trip to go forage for an old Buick engine ? I just tried to "duplicate" my search and can't find it ;-((( Keith (Rip) Rohring
hit up MikeM ( formerly ChinaMikeM ), he was working over there for several years. he might be able to provide some pointers for finding the yard.
