Sandy says, yup looks just like our 71x??? Me and you can’t hang out anymore, every time we get together you talk me into another car lol
we found the original dog dish caps in his garage, I have a set of 14” steel wheels from my 69 skylark which I will use for show purposes, I’ll be ordering up the tires from Coker today. Gord
No. There were no provisions for doing that on the Wholesale Car Order Form, which is what they were ordered off of. Duane
Thanks Duane. If a 71 GSX was ordered with the rallye steering wheel, would it have been a 15" or 16" rallye steering wheel like the 70GS would have had? Also, are the 70 GSX steering wheels date coded (or for that matter, any rallye wheel)? I have a 70 GSX steering wheel that has an "A" stamped in it. What does the "A" reference?
If a 71 GSX was ordered with a Rallye Steering wheel, then it would have been delivered with the new for 71 Model Year, 15" Rallye wheel. (The 16" Rallye wheels were discontinued for the 71 Model Year.) (When I put my 71 GSX together, the steering wheel was one of the few options I could not figure out, and as I had an NOS 71-newer Rallye wheel I put it on.) (My car came to me in basically 30 plus boxes, with some parts being doubles and triples. I had to use part numbers and date codes to figure out which parts were correct. I had the Body Shop Inspection Sheet for the car, so I knew it was a GSX, and a Stage 1, but had no idea exactly how it was optioned.) Also, I want to go into this "70 GSX Wheel on later models a little further, because it keeps coming up. For the 71 Model year and later, the 70 GSX Steering Wheel had no Sales Code, or UPC code associated with it. There was simply no way to order that part, from the Factory, for any 71-72 car. Now, it could have been ordered from the "Parts Division", as an "over the counter" NOS" part, and put on the car anytime after the car was purchased, but it never came from the Factory. Date Codes; As far as the numbers/letter codes cast into the steering wheels, I have only seen the numbers 1,2, and 4 cast into the wheels from original 70 GSX cars. Those numbers tracked perfectly with the build dates of the cars they were taken off of, so those numbers match the Month of the year. (A letter code on a 70 GSX wheel, might denote it being one of the NOS wheels that were sold over the counter, I don't know. AND some of them used a different grain, and would not be correct for any car model.) So you need to be careful with buying a used wheel if you want to use it as a correct wheel on a car. As far as the letter codes being date codes, I have never tracked those letter codes, so I don't know if they are or not. Duane
ok thanks again, I’ll be in no rush to acquire the parts and will probably get a few wrong ones in the meanwhile, the hunt begins. I talked to Ajesh and will be taking it to mcacn next month and hadn’t thought about getting it judged. I just wanted to detail it a bit and bring it the way I purchased it. Gordon
I’ve been meaning to post a question about the “fasten seatbelt” light mounted on the dash, this car doesn’t have it but a 72 gs I had did have it? I thought it may have been a Canadian thing but obviously not or Did bucket seat cars get them and bench did not? Gordon
It was a mid-year change. Jan 1st I believe to correspond w/a new federal mandate and only on cars w/gauges. Someone will (please) correct me if I'm mistaken here.
Dano, I don’t remember when it went into effect, but you are correct with everything else. They did not change the gauge cluster for the mid-late 72 cars, because there was no room. So the warning light had to move up to the top of the dash. The cars with the idiot lights had room, so they stuck the warning light in the cluster. Duane
Approximately 12-23-71 was the date that this was phased into production in order to meet the 1/1/72 federal requirement. I'll dig up the service bulletins that address this topic and post them here.
Here are a couple of bulletins related to the seat belt warning system that nail down when this change occurred. The first bulletin dated 1-18-72 is 14 pages but I've just shown the first page to show the dates that the changes went into production. The second bulletin, dated 7-5-72, is just a single page, and mentions that the changes were required to meet the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards set forth by the NHTSA, effective 1-1-72. Although not required until 1/1/72, Buick was already preparing for this change at the start of the 1972 production year as evidenced by one of my '72s that was built in August '71. The gas gauge pod (the car has standard gauges) already has the "Fasten Seat Belt" light incorporated but not functional (and there are no sensors in the front seats). The cars with Rallye gauges of course didn't get the light pod mounted on the dash pad until it was necessary in very late December.
The service bulletins along with the assembly manuals (early, mid, and late editions) have been very helpful in identifying the changes that occurred as running changes during the '72 model year. Some other things that changed during the '72 year besides the seat belts (this is not a complete list): -Super Sport wheels discontinued (very few '72 got them) -vinyl top colors (tan discontinued (not the sandalwood top), brown top made available) -the price of the options changed during the year -the hazard warning switch and knob (word "Flasher was changed to "Hazard") -stereo radio became available -plastic cowl screens replaced the metal mesh -the tail light rubber cushions were changed to make tail lamp light bulb replacement easier -front window stabilizer guide pin and support added
I believe there was a new Federal safety regulation which required both an audible fasten seatbelt warning (existing buzzer) and a (new) visual fasten seatbelt warning. The Skylark/GS line's instrument panel was already several years old and with a total redesign being ready for release (Colonnade style A-bodies), Buick developed a quick fix which did not requre a redesign of the existing instrument panel for the last half of the final '72 MY production run of that body style. I seem to recall that my '68 and/or '69 GSs had a script around the speedometer which said "Fasten Seatbelts". There was a lot of government al effort and PR about using seat belts because the public adoption was pretty low (after seatbelts were mandated in the '66 MY.
