Factory correct Chassis pictures

Here are some interesting chassis pictures from an obscure 1970 magazine which tested a 1970 GS-350. It is interesting to see how things were really done. I know there has been alot of debate on how or if the rear ends were painted. This might shed some light. Not sure what plant this car was from but it was most likely a Flint car as they wanted more control on what the magazines got and not just an off the assembly line basic car.
This car is an early car and a California emissions car as well.

Note in this picture the rear end is black and most likely the sway bar. Parts of the exhaust have obvious black on them as well as parts of the shocks. Also look at the dark tank. maybe it got undercoated? I dare anyone to restore a car like this.:eek2:

 

Tough to tell in this front shot if the sway bar is black but the sway bar brackets are bare metal or zinc. The car looks like it went bombing through some mud puddles as test drivers in the day beat the snot out of these cars. The oil filter looks like a plain dark one. Maybe an assembly line red painted filter?

 

Nice pictures :TU::TU::TU:

It almost looks like the steering box is painted


Nelson

As said many times, most all of these cars are over restored

 

Cool Stuff ! Thanks for sharing Dave.

 

The black on the tank and exhaust is undercoating and you will not see that on every car..

I can't see the black on the shocks, but it is a well known fact the Buick A-body frames were "touched up" with black paint after everything was installed on them and before the body was dropped on. (It actually spells this out on several year assembly manuals, and shows the rear axle, front end parts, and even the exhaust ends were painted black)

Many of the original "gray" shocks I have seen are painted black on the rearward facing area where they mount to the rear axle. This is due to the rear axle being "touched-up" by a factory worker with a spray gun.

We would accept the true painting scheme, as well as nice clean "gray painted" shocks. Many owners decide on the clean look because they are taking their cars to other club events where the actual way of painting them would be considered as sloppy work.

I already know where this is going with the front swaybar brackets. I have seen examples of these being painted black on Flint cars, and that is how we will continue to judge them until there is proof otherwise. (NOS units were gray phosphate.)

The pictures here are nice, but are from a magazine article and would not be considered "Factory Information"...................and it would take factory info to prove this.

Dave specifies he does not know where the car was built, (ie which plant) and who can say if something was changed or not. Again if it was a factory pic we would consider it.
Duane

PS. I have seen Buick A-body rear axles that range from barely painted to looking like they were dipped in paint. We accept all of that range on the show field.

 

Duane, You caught me on the sway bar brackets. My NOS units which are from one of the last bags befroe they were discontinued are just bare silver metal(they come 5 to a bag, go figure?). I have been on a mission to find originals from junked cars both flint and Framingham and all I have come up with so far is rust on inner and outer surfaces. This is undoubtably caused by moisture buildup. Magazine pictures such as these are often the best we may ever do to getting what was really done.

 

Neat pictures for sure. That magazine is “Road Test” magazine and I spoke to one of the writers/testers of that magazine and he told me that in the early days they tried to get cars loaned to them from local car dealers instead of getting them from the manufacturers. This allowed them to get real cars from the assembly line and not some ringer that the manufacturer prepped to be better than the average car. He also told me that in the early days of the magazine they allowed no automotive advertising (the magazines had no car ads) because they didn’t want auto company advertising dollars to influence their reviews of the cars. He said there were exceptions when a local dealer didn’t have a car they were looking to test. They also tested the red ’70 Stage 2 4-speed that was later raced by Jones and Benesik and ended up with one of the two real Stage 2 scoop (made of steel).

I bought his entire collection of “Road Test” magazine which was every issue ever published as well as some license plates that say “Test Car” and are seen on the front of cars in the magazine. There are lots of cool photos of the test cars like those of the GS350 on the rack. There mile times are usually slower than the mainstream magazines that had close ties with the manufacturers too. The cars in the real world were not always as quick as the other magazines reported. The “Road Test” magazine was based in California so the cars pictured usually have CA emissions on them, like that GS350.

Here are a couple of other photos of undercarriages of ’70 Buicks. These are both Flint cars because they are both ’70 Stage 1s. One magazine is Super Stock and Drag Illustrated Dec ’69, the other is a feature article in the Nov 70 Issue of High Performance Cars magazine about a Stage 1 4-speed that was being successfully raced in E/Stock at the time. It still has the tiny tailpipes on the car, covered in either black paint or maybe undercoating. Also note that one of the photos is flipped because the fuel and brake lines are running down the wrong side of teh frame.

 

Hey Jason, notice what is on the cover of the June issue?:Brow:

Gary, That is real interesting stuff about that magazine. I also have the pictures you show of the other mags. Good catch on the brake and fuel lines on the wrong side. I always noticed the posi tag on the wrong side but thought it was a worker having a hangover Monday. I will bet the guy in the pictures wife could never figure why her husbands face looked strange.:kodak:

 

Last guy on the assembly line did a light fog of black paint over rear axle ,shocks, gas tank and tail pipes est so when people viewed car from behind it appeared all black.

I bought the remains of a 1971 Buick Skylark back in 2001 that had a tree fall on it when it was 3 days old and 85 miles odometer ,yes 000085 miles.

I have all the original shocks, rear axle, gas tank, from that car and it has all that black paint all over everything like these pics show including inside of rear tail pipes.

 

That's something that I don't think is going to be replicated much on $xxx,xxx.xx resto's.

DL

 

It depends on when your car was built.

For F-41 equipped Buick cars the changeover from spiral to the smooth Pliacell shocks took place between the 5th week of January 1970 (01D) and the 1st week of March 1970 (03A), therefore all but possibly the first few GSX's would have come with Pliacell shocks.

The car in the pic is supposedly an early car so...........................................


I wrote an article about this and could only narrow down the changeover time that far. If someone has info off original shocks within that time period we can get closer to the actual date.
Duane

PS. This response was to a post that just went away. Don't know what happened there.

 

I have done black overspray on a few restoratiions.

It is a mentally tough thing to do after all the work to correctly detail everything!

Lately,I have not done the black overspray due to customer's request.

 

I would not call Road Test magazine "an obscure magazine", but that's just my opion :beer

Anyway, here are scans from the photos in that article.
The next time when you are taking photos from a magazine or book, turn off your flash and adjust the ISO setting on your camera :TU:






I did some more scanning, here's the full article:

Click thumbnails :Comp:

 

Erik

I think the Black overspray is undercoating. My car has the same stuff on it....bugger to remove. Been there, done that before.
Works though, floor pans etc. were mint.

Lot of dealers put that undercoating on every car they got new. Mark-up was very profitable, still is.

Thanks for the scans too.:TU:

 

Jason, Sign me up! Show me how to do the detail and I will help you with the others..............................................................I am guessing the overspray is paint overspray as I will bet this car came out of the Burbank Cal. Buick Center where Bill Trevor worked. If you look closely at the car it has Cal Manufacturers plates on it. I do not think the dealer would have access to those. The dealer would have been the one to undercoat cars.

 

Page 1 says"

the fact that it had an obviously home made ram air system of sorts, even though this hood is normally available only with the stage 1 option on the 455 cu in engine

That looks like the standard air cleaner and foams for the 70 GS to me, what is home made about it?

 

.................what is home made about it?

Nothing, but obviously the writer didn't know that.
Duane

PS. Is it just me or doesn't that front swaybar look a little fat to be stock?