Ken, No I never thought about making later year conversions. As many of my friends would tell you, and I have stated many times, "My world stops at 1972." There is a GN example out there and it is really nice, but it's too easy to make one of them. With the exception of splicing the sides of the fenders to match the door skins it was simply a bolt on affair. They did not change the sides of the car to match the GN body side. You will understand what I mean once I show the pics of what I had to do with building my body. Funny story about Sam and the car. I had just finished the car and finally got it off the trailer at the GS Nats, and was driving it up to the car show spot when this crazy person (Sam) jumped out between 2 parked cars right in front of me. It happened so fast I almost hit him. He starts telling me we have to talk about this, and then he was gone. Later I will explain why I could not sell the car. Duane
Ok, The next thing I tackled was the frame. As you can tell from the earlier pictures the one I got with the car was junk, but not totally. I started looking around for another El Camino frame and the only ones I could find were between $1500 to $2000 and would entail a good bit of traveling to get them home. El Camino frames are special, they use the same front as our A-body Buicks, but the wheel base is 4" longer like a 4-door. They are also boxed in the middle, like convertibles, and share the same tail section as a wagon. This car was supposed to be done on a budget, and again I really didn't want to spend much money until I knew the doors would work, so I started calling my friends. Jim Hawthorne (who I just bought the 69 car from) had a 70 4-door skylark that he was using for parts. I helped him harvest parts off the car and even though he didn't need it, he kept the frame. He gave me the frame from the 4-door and I proceeded to cut off the rear section of the El Camino Frame and the boxed sections. It certainly took a while to clean my frame parts up, but the nice thing is they have positive stops built into them. That means if you cut everything on the factory weld lines, you simply can't push the pieces into the frame farther then they are supposed to go. The first thing I did was weld the tail section on. At that point Beth and I could turn it over so I could weld both sides. Next I welded on one of the center boxed sections. At that point I had to get my neighbor Dave to help us, and when the last boxed piece went in we had to get Dave's wife Sarah to help spin the thing around. I had originally checked the frame for straightness, and then measured it again when finished and it was all within specs. I used a rustoleum primer and then sprayed it with the old GM "Chassis Black" paint. I loved that stuff, it was inexpensive, worked great, and looked exactly right when it dried. I was able to clean up and paint all the original brake lines and put the front suspension together from parts I had laying around. I even installed a new pair of Big Block front springs, but at this time don't remember where I got them. I also had a Stage 1 spec Engine and trans from a car I sold without the drive train, so I cleaned that up and installed it in it's new home. Duane
The car was now level and on a good frame, and had a suspension under it, so now it was time to attack the doors. From my interior business I knew I could swap any 69-72 2-door front door panel on to any other car. The only difference, besides the pattern, was with the upper metal piece that is under the vinyl skin. For 2-door sedans and El Camino's there is a notch at the front and back to accommodate the metal window frame, but other then that they will all fit. This meant they all had the same size door opening in the shell. (You have to love how GM could use the same basic components to make so many different models.) Anyway, another friend of mine Bob Smith had a couple of junked El Caminos and Monte Carlos, and I harvested a bunch of parts off them. (I got a feeling after a while that I was actually helping my friends clean up their yards.) When you look at the pictures, the Lime Green doors are off an El Camino, and the White doors are off a 70 Skylark coupe. Now that I knew the door openings on the body were the same I figured if I left the door hinge area and the latch mechanism on the same door, and simply grafted in the framework I needed, that they would fit. There were also slight differences in how the light switches were mounted between the two different cars, and also how the El Camino weatherstrips were attached. The resultant pictures showed how I needed to cut and weld them back together. You can see from the pics that the inner panels of the doors are completely different, because one has a vent window and the other doesn't. The El Camino quarters also stuck out further at the top then the Buick doors so I had to cut a piece of them out as well. I aligned the front bottom corner of the door with the front corner of the rocker panel, adjusted the door gap at the bottom, and then closed the door. The thing shut perfectly. Then I did the other side. More pics to follow later. Duane
The next thing I wanted to do was test fit the front end sheet metal so I could make sure the body was not twisted from the accident. My friend Richie gave me the dog house off a 70 GS 350, plus pieces off the rear quarters, which I will go into later. The core support on the dog house was really trashed, and the driver side fender was rotten at the bottom and needed fixed. My friend Jim Hawthorne gave me a smashed up but not rusted 70 core support and left fender, so I started piecing again. I ended up making 2 core supports into one, and you can see from the pics how I fixed the fender. Once that was done, I test fitted the clip and made sure it lined up with the doors. The hood I used was given to me by my friend George Thomas. It was basically a throw away hood, as the entire front lip under the hood chrome was rotted off. I hand fabricated some sheet metal, and welded an entire lip in. It has lasted 20 years, but is finally starting to go. I will probably have to replace it soon. The guy in the one pic is Bill Jennings, I will talk about him later. The next step will show me starting on the quarters. It's starting to look like a car again. Duane
Now that the doors were finished and set correctly I started on the quarter panels. El Caminos have a 4" longer wheel base then regular 2-door A-bodies, this means there is an extra 4" between the rear of the doors and the end of the rocker panels. To fill this space I cut out the front sections of the GS 350 quarters that Richie gave me, but first I had to cut the quarters off the car. El Caminos have a body line on the quarter that lines up with the top edge of the door. I figured to keep that body line and blend the "Buick" sheet metal at that point. I cut the quarters 1" below the body line and then altered the inner brace for the door latch so it would accept the Buick sheet metal. At this point I lined everything up and screwed the front of the quarter in place. What I was basically doing was creating my own door jamb gaps. Once that was done I trimmed and screwed a set of Buick reproduction rear quarter panels on the car. I aligned the forward edge of the rear wheelhouse with the end of the rocker panel and started tack welding everything together. I also welded in the bottom of the quarter solid between the doors and the front of the wheelhouse, as I could not get to that area once the quarter was on. This gave me all the sheet metal from the front of the car to the middle of the rear wheel house. There were still issues to be figured out with the wheel house, and there were large problems with the sheet metal behind the wheel house, but I will go into them later. Duane
Are you guys still with me so far, and does anyone still want to make one. The real fun parts have yet to come up. There is also one other thing I wanted to mention, when I welded parts on the body, I felt it was imperative that I had the car supported as if it was sitting on the ground. This way all the sheet metal was going to be supported as it would be when the car was finished. This kept the metal from twisting due to additional stresses, and hopefully would minimize any paint cracking etc. You will see in the pics that anytime I did any welding on the body, the car was either on it's wheels or was supported on jack stands under the rear axle. Duane
Oh yeah I'm still here. Taking notes and writing questions down. I want to ask when your done posting because sometimes you answer them eventually yourself. And I still want to do something like this. Ever since the old timers flipped thier bumpers upside down and started the kustom world I been hooked when I learned about it. Duane you got me hooked like a hungry catfish over here
Ronnie, Yeah I hear you. Basketball Sam always said I made the car on the wrong coast. He thought it belonged in California with all the other customs. Just remember, the idea here was to make a "Stock appearing" custom car that looked like it could have rolled off the lot. My idea was to hide, not accentuate, the custom features. The best I could hope for was to produce a vehicle where you could not tell what I had done. More later. Duane
...still with you...to have put this together in your garage in a year...Buick's design and concept groups should be ashamed... ...and for a moment, imagine what could have been...
John, My wife and I took the car to a BCA meet in Virginia one year. There were a bunch of Buick Executives that attended the meet. As they walked by my car one of them said "I don't remember building any of these." They all laughed but liked it. They also said at that time they were into building luxury cars and would never have considered building a truck. Duane
OK, now we are going to get into some detailing. Also some of these pics are out of "time sequence" regarding the build, but I wanted to show how certain parts were altered, mounted, and finished. Getting back to the rear quarter and tailgate fabrication, I knew from the start that I was going to put an altered GSX striping package on the car, and knew that the striping was going to interfere with where the gas tank door and the back-up lights were in the tailgate. The first thing I decided to do was remove and then fill in the back-up lights in the tailgate. I noticed that the Buick wagons had back-ups in the rear bumper, and decided to do the same with this car. Then I started thinking about the tail lights. El Caminos use Chevy wagon taillights, so I figured a Buick version should use Buick Wagon tail lights. I purchased a pair off a car in a junkyard, and after some thinking, started hacking pieces off the housings until they fit into the space at the rear of the quarters. I then screwed them to the car and proceeded to build the quarter edge to mount flush with the outer curve of the housings. Once I had that done, I built and welded in 2 brackets to mount the lights in solidly. I made these as positive stops, so the housings would "bottom out" against the brackets and would not put any pressure on the edge of the quarter panels. This gave me the back edge of the quarter panels, but left 2 holes in the housings that had to be filled. I used some fiberglass to fill in these holes, thus finishing up the back two corners of the car. In the 2nd picture you can see the Buick Sport Wagon taillight on the left and the standard El Camino on the right. You can also see the red reflectors in the rear bumper. The 68 El Caminos used back up lights in the bumper, so I got a set of the lenses. I could not find any decent light housings for these, so I took the light sockets out of the tailgate light housings, and installed them in the reflector housings. Basically re-making the 68 back up lights. Duane
OK, back to the quarter panel. As I said earlier I was always going to put GSX stripes on the car, and was not sure where they would end up in regards to the gas tank filler door, so I decided to relocate it. There is a small access panel on both sides of the bed. I figured that would be a really nice place to put the filler door. I took the plate to various junkyards in my area and tried to find the smallest one that would fit in the panel. I think it ended up being from a Dodge Horizon. Anyway I cut and welded it into the access door. The next thing I did was to cut the filler neck off the gas tank. I left something like 2" of the neck sticking past the gas tank body. I knew from looking at how the pipe was going to have to snake inside the quarter that it was going to need some serious bends. The filler neck was 2" pipe, so I went down to our local speed shop and asked to go in the back and see what tailpipes they had. After picking out 2, I proceeded to cut and then weld them together to get my bends, and weld the last 2" of the original gas tank filler neck to the end of the pipes. This way i could use my stock gas cap. After I test fitted this monstrosity in the quarter panel, I took it around to all the local gas stations to make sure the gas pump nozzles would fit. (You should have seen the faces of the guys at those stations.) Then I bought a special 2" rubber hose that is specifically used to connect gas tanks in new cars to the body. It has a flat band of steel molded into it that spirals all the way up the hose. I installed it, and it worked great. It is not easy to put gas in this car, but it's a small price to pay for cruising around in a cool ride. Duane
Very interesting & informative read! I am enjoying reading the thread and learning a few things. Keith
Ryan, my pleasure. Around this time the car went on it's first trip to the body shop. The entire shell with all the front end parts and doors were plastic media blasted, and then were epoxy primered. (The body was only primered from just in front of the rear wheel wells forward. The parts were all "cut in" and any necessary body work was done to the parts before assembly. Then the front clip and doors were installed. This left the back of the car, from the rear wheels to the tail in bare metal. (I still had a lot to do back there, before any primer/paint could go on. We used a Single stage Urethane for the paint, and I believe the closest match we found was from a 1973 Fiat Spyder. I remember the Ryder Truck yellow was also pretty close. I had also been working on the mechanicals. At this time the car stopped, started, and the instrument cluster was in. If you look closely at the second pic, of the passenger side view, you will notice that the body line behind the rear wheel is pointing downward towards the ground. There was still a lot of work to do with the quarters and I was not quite sure how I was going to fix it. This is the condition it was in after 1 year's worth of work. At this point the car missed the 98 GS Nationals so I stopped for a break. Duane
Getting back to the story, as stated above I had worked on the car for a year up to this time and when I say that I mean I worked on it every day after work and Saturdays and Sundays. Most times it was only a few hours after work, but on the weekends I usually went full throttle. I am sure there were a few days I missed, but not many. I did have a couple of "helpers" that came over quite regularly, namely Ukie and Bill Jennings. Ukie was my neighbor's cat who thought he was mine. I would be in the garage and would hear some scratching on the door so I would let him in. He would usually sniff around and then hop up on the roof of the car and go to sleep. I would be grinding, welding, banging on sheet metal, etc, and he just stayed there. There were many times when I picked him up and had to dust him off when I closed down for the night, and by the way he was not deaf. My other regular helper was Bill Jennings, who recently helped me buy the 69 Motion Equipped GS. Billy would usually come over every 3rd day or so. This allowed me to get a lot of things ready, and then he would come over as an extra set of hands. Billy had a new valve put in his heart and was on blood thinners. (He told everyone he burnt a valve.) He helped me constantly while I was cutting/welding the panels on the car and never gave it a thought. I on the other hand made sure he was protected. I remember when we were putting the quarter skins on the car it was like the hottest day of the year. I had him wrapped up in a lined flannel shirt, with gloves taped to the jacket. Once I figured out what to do with the quarters, I figured there was something like 4-5 months of work left on the project, so I ignored it for 6 months and then started back up. (Note to self, never do that again.) Below are pics of my buds. Duane
