Hi all, First of all I want to introduce myself once again. My name's Benny and as you can guess from the thread's title I live in Switzerland. Up in the northern, german speaking part 5mins away from the German border. Right now I am 33 years of age and I do work in a Volkswagen / Seat / Mitsubishi / Suzuki dealership as the workshop manager with a team of 10 men. Been a GM guy all my life. Grew up in a 79 Cutlass Saloon and a 81 Cadillac Seville (yes...V-8-6-4). Had my share of US classics even as daily drivers. Had a 77 Estate Wagon as a daily driver once and an 81 Regal Somerset. I still regret that I have sold a very original 67 442 10 years ago But I always wanted a 455 car...442 or GS. Finally found this 71 GS 455 in California. Bought it unseen but got some nice pictures. Seller didn't mention every flaw but the price was ok and I do not regret the deal yet. Car arrived in switzerland just before christmas 2014. Haven't worked on it a lot since then. My plan is to get it ready for the swiss streets before may. My wife and I are expecting our first baby in middle of may and I do plan to get them home from hospital in the buick Going to post pics of the progress in this thread. Need to do some things to get it to pass the swiss car inspection. Hoping for comments this is the car after I got it home from the customs in zurich. All dirty from it's journey across the atlantic:
washed the car for the first time and made a first visual check: here's a video after getting the dirt off: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjkPvV4YVVY car is much louder than in the video. this is what the engine bay looks like with the air cleaner removed. all dirty. going to clean things up and I think I'm going to switch back to a quadrajet later in the future: underside of the car. virtually rust free but with an awful exhaust system. all welded up the ugly style and with some flowmaster series 10 mufflers. extreme drone and you can barely talk at road speed. to correct that, i have ordered a complete factory exhaust system from Gardner. Going to write a separate review on that one in near future: when I got the car, the drivers side door could not be unlocked neither from the out nor from the inside. had to get off the new door panels while the door was locked...you can image I started to sweat quite a bit. After about 1 hour I got it open and found out the lock is defective. Already ordered a new one: you can see there's some window film on the all glass but the windshield. Going to remove that as well....I know this is going to be a pain.... this was all done in december and the car sat in my garage at home until 3 days ago. It was way to cold to work on it...
Since it's mandatory in Switzerland to have kilometers per hour on the speedo I had to do something. Before I even had the car I bought a used 71 GS speedo on ebay. I disassembled it and sent the dial face to a german company who had it reprinted in km/h. they used the dabber printing method so it looks very original. Speedo is off a lot anyway. Looks like there is a very short ratio Chevy 12 Bolt installed. Going to deal with that later on. The lens was very scratched so I wet-sanded it with 2000 grit paper and polished it afterwards. Came out very nice. But judge for yourself:
That's a pretty slick deal on the speedo! Looks like a nice solid car, should a good "tinker while you drive" type project. And I bet those single chamber flowmasters are LOUD!
Hi Benny, Looking good. Would love to see it in person. Maybe we will see ea at a show in your area (my in-laws live just across the border). "My wife and I are expecting our first baby in middle of may and I do plan to get them home from hospital in the buick" That was also my motivation, so I installed a child retention system for the new Baby to be safe. Good luck with meeting the dead line ;-) Patrick
Do you have any info on this one? It's pretty hard to find any child retention seats for 2-point belts... WIll start to work on the car tomorrow. As I drove the car to the shop today I noticed a loud noise coming from the underside of the car. Turns out it comes from the rear of the TH400...seems to be the tailhouse bearing Noise is almost louder than the Flowmaster Series 10 mufflers....
Awesome. Love the car. One day I hope to visit Switzerland and Germany. I am Swiss/German. So I am told. My last name use to be spelled Zully with 2 dots over the U. Now it is Zuelly with the U being silent. Needless to say not many can say my last name correctly.
Nice work on the speedo! I had a KM/h speedo in my old car, and my friends would freak out, thinking we were going 130 on the freeway:grin:
Thanks for all the comments. I have worked on the car the last weekend and put the Gardner exhaust under the car as well as replacing all brake hoses. Will do a write up and a separate review of the fantastic Gardner Exhaust in the next days. Absolutely love it. Still waiting for parts that will hopefully stop my trans noise...
Time for an update: Worked on the car last weekend. Here's a link to my review on the Gardner Exhaust System: http://www.v8buick.com/showthread.php?294515-Gardner-Exhaust-Review-for-71-GS-455-N-25-Car Removed the old system. look at this frankenstein exhaust....there are like 5 different pipe diameters on it and those Series 10 Dronemasters... this is what I had to find after removal of the exhaust....what on earth ou: they did the same with the back hangers...everything welded to the frame... To my luck my brother showed up and was kind enough to do some cutting, chiseling and grinding to get rid of all this mess. Much better: after smoothing it down some more we put on a nice coat of underbody coating: Meanwhile I replaced the whole steering linkage. Everything had a lot of play and had to go. Replaced all the brake hoses. Thought Raybestos is a US Brand that produces in the US but I was wrong...made in china If I ever get to rebuild the car from the ground up those hoses will go. But I guess they work fine for now. Just sad you have to put Made In China parts on your US muscle car... When replacing the rear hose broke the left brake line on the axle....well....had to bend a new one. Used the old protective spring-like something that goes over the brake line... came out pretty nice. Note the ugly chrome cover on my Chevy 12 Bolt.... While under the car I noticed I have what looks like a 1975 Cadillac TH400...can anyone confirm this?? It's supposed to be rebuilt in 2009. Wonder why all those rebuilt transmissions must have this ugly coat of paint on them.... Here's the car with the Gardner exhaust installed: and here running with it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgU0TqEXQqA to be continued....
Did some work on the grille. It's painted all silver and looks hideous like that. two tips were broken off so I made some plastic pieces to glue in. Used 2-component adhesive to put them in place: plastic putty applied: Missing plastic piece "reconstructed": Another badly damaged area. Grinded a V-groove in it. Ready to glue together: Realized that the grille is probably taking the most time to repair. Going to sand it and then put some filler on the repaired areas. Looking forward to mask the grille for painting :eek2:
Benny, The progress you have made on this car is fantastic. The grille does look terrible painted all silver. Here is a picture of the grille on my 71 painted original colors. Squares are painted a charcoal metallic and the recessed areas are painted satin black. http://www.v8buick.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=213208&d=1321148581
Thanks for the compliments Dave The grille takes so much time to get it right. Did some work on it today: Filler sanded: primered: First coat of silver applied: going to do the black areas next and the charcoal squares last. But want to let the paint cure troughout before I put some masking tape on it.
Got rid of the awful window film as well: everyone who has done it before knows how much a pain this work is...got lucky and after heating it up with a hot-air gun a lot of the glue came with the film. the rest is a mess to clean... but under the film beautiful soft-ray factory tinted glass appeared: you cannot imagine how much more the car looks like a classic without this ugly window film on. Much more elegant and stylish as well. window film is cheap...I don't like it...
Benny, I usually tape for both the black and charcoal and back mask for each color. This saves time in between colors.
I'm not aware of a 71 GS 455 with the rear deck spoiler. I was under the impression that only the GSX had the spoiler. Just wondering... I'll bet that turns some heads in Switzerland! I saw a 69 Chevelle when I was in Helsinki, Finland about 5 years ago and it really stood out amongst all the European cars. It immediately made me homesick.
Beginning in 1971 and continuing in 1972, The GSX pieces could be ordered on any GS and in any combination. Front Spoiler, rear spoiler and hood tach were stand alone options. WA6 REAR SPOILER $ 73.72 WA7 FRONT SPOILER $ 26.33 UB5 Hood Tach $ 42.13
Buicks were built in Switzerland. You will find more Buicks at a car show in Switzerland, compared with a show in North America. Click here for photos :Comp:
