My 76/77 Buick regals going to the darkside!

Nice! Been curious about the stuff.

 

It is quite nice to work with. It does get some overspray but it cleans off easily with soap and water if it is not cured yet. You definitely have to clean the gun. I chose to clean the gun after spraying each coat. The manufacturer says to put it in a bucket of water between coats but I figured, why not start with a clean gun each time.

I can definitely say that I would use it again. I saved some for the roof. I will probably coat the trunk too and once I get to the underside of the car and firewall, I will coat those too. The hardest part is removing the interior. I attached scotchbrite to my dual action polisher on low speed to scuff the new primer and wiped everything down before applying the product.

All in all, great experience with the stuff.

 

Good to hear and excellent descriptions, I am contemplating the same procedure for my roof when the time comes.

 

I already tested the effectiveness of the heat control on a couple drives. I can say that the control point which was the tunnel was significantly cooler than it used to be. I used to touch it and it was very uncomfortable to keep my hand on it. Now I can touch it and keep my hand there all day because it is only warm. The car definitely did not feel super hot like it used to either. I am going to continue testing but it looks like this stuff is working.


Second note, The sound of the exhaust inside the car has changed too. It used to be a bit harsher. Now it is like more mellow. There is a definite drone to the car at the moment which is to be expected with no interior carpet at all. Right now it is only metal, primer, Lizard skin deadener then Lizard skin heat control. I have a feeling that I will be able to drop the noise significantly with MLV and CCF.


Lastly, I totally dig the color of the floor right now.....So much so that I have decided that I may in fact do dark charcoal carpet instead of red. The lizard skin kind of looks like carpet and I actually like it.

You be the judge.

 

So I think I have decided on my interior colors. I saw the Blazer in these photos and I am in love. I think I will go this route but with aa few more white accents.
https://relicate.com/blogs/automoti...gallery/interior-revolution-1969-chevy-blazer

 

Looks great, I like that route.

 

I have been thinking of getting lizard skin also. How big of a bucket did you need to get?

 

I got the 2 gal sound control and 2 gal ceramic kit with the gun off of amazon.

 

I think I have decided to redo the rear end this winter. Not that there is a problem with the one I have. It is simple. Right now I am running a narrowed 8.8 with 2 in adapter/spacers on each side. This works great but I have always wanted to run it without the spacers. I think I am going to take the second rear end that I have and instead, use the two long axles. This will give me a rear end that is 1 inch wider on each side but with no spacers. I figure, what the hell. I already have the stuff to do it and it is only welding! There are other things to do in the meantime but I think this will be a worthwhile modification.

On another note, I realize that I have a big problem in the trunk. I have a feeling that there is significant rot in the rear window area causing rain water to enter the trunk. I left her out in the rain and opened the trunk the next day to find water on the rotten floor. Looks like there is some window removal happening in my future. I was going to cut the rot out of the trunk floor soon and the leak will need to be addressed if I want any chance at making the new trunk floors last.

Another thing happening soon is the tranny pan. The stock 6l90e pan hangs way too low. A common mod is to take a 6l80 pan from a Pontiac G8 and weld an extension onto it ( it is not as long as a 6l90e pan), then use the 6l80 filter. This mod will get me about an inch more clearance. I do plan on getting the regal closer to the ground and this is a 100% necessary mod in order to do that. I have already ordered the G8 pan and a new 6l90e gasket. The filter came in last week.

I have been working out the details for the Audio system. I am struggling to decide exactly what I want to do with the subwoofer/s. I am definitely wanting to try to do an infinite baffle install but I refuse to deal with rattles. After tapping around the trunk area, I realize that there are so many areas that will need a ton of deadening. there are so many cavities that are behind other cavities and the inner cavities are crazy tin can like. I think I will be spending a great deal of time on deadening this car. I will probably need to use another lizard skin kit in the trunk alone. We will see. This car must be dead! No resonance whatsoever! for this reason, I may be taking a break from the idea of raptor lining the interior until I handle the trunk.

 

Well the good news is that While cleaning the wet items out of the trunk and setting up the fans to dry the trunk out, I found what is a huge indicator that I am right about the source of the wet trunk. The second good news is that I found a large opening that should allow me to get deadening into one of the more worry some areas of trunk rattle.

The bad news is that I have now confirmed that my Regal was the victim of the previous owners shoddy workmanship. I found huge globs of silicone inside the trunk that tells me that he just tried to silicone the leaks rather than actually fix them.

I am oddly excited about starting the fix for this. I truthfully cannot wait to dig into the matter and find out what I have to do to fix this!

 

It has been a while now since I have posted but I will add a real review of the Lizardskin since I have had enough time to have an opinion.

Heat- WOW. I can definitely vouch for the stuff. The only change to the car was the Lizardskin SC and CI and it made a world of difference. The car was very uncomfortable after 20min drives and the floor was hot to the touch. Not so hot that your skin burned but hot enough that you do not want to keep your bare hand on the metal for too long. Now that the stuff is on and cured completely, I can drive as long as I want and never get uncomfortable.

Noise- There is a noticeable difference in the noise in the car. My exhaust actually sounds different in a good way. There is far less tin can type noises. Hitting the metal is definitely a more dead sound.

Install- The prep work for this stuff is easy but definitely not as easy as typical Butyl deadening sheets. The biggest reason is because once you remove the interior panels with butyl, you lay it down roll it and it is done. You can also do small sections at a time. With the lizardskin, you better remove the whole interior or you are going to get overspray on everything. Also you will need to spray, cure, spray cure spray, cure spray cure. each coat is .2 mil and the final thickness is .8 mil. Then it takes about a week for the stuff to fully cure. You will smell the latex smell until it is cured. If your car is stripped down already it is not a problem though.

Overall-Mission accomplished. Not only would I use it again, I plan to use it again. Any hotrod build should have an application of this for the heat reduction alone. Butyl style deadeners are probably more effective for the deadening but this stuff really did a great job at reducing the heat. I will be using some of the Butyl stuff over the top of the sound control in certain areas but not due to ineffective lizardskin.

Where to use- If you cannot get into an area to scuff and clean the surface then you probably wont be able to use the Lizardskin. In that case if it is possible to reach Butyl in there it would probably work better. That said, I have seen multiple reports of folks that did not have issues spraying the liazrdskin in tough to reach cavities especially since it comes with a 90 degree spray nozzle with the gun.

What I do not like-
First off, I am impatient. I hate waiting for the full cure.
Second, I wish it was tintable like raptor liner.
Third, the finished surface for the black product is actually a dark grey. While I actually do love the color combo with my white/red interior the surface does scratch easily and needs a topcoat. I plan to raptor line mine either in black or a custom color. I would not expect the normal cured surface to be durable. I would suggest top coating.
Last- Cost. The stuff is not cheap. While there are folks that say you can make your own with microballoons and latex paint, I choose to just trust the formulations that Lizardskin has developed. It works so why screw with it. They are an American business too so I might as well support them.

There you have it. From here on out, all my resto-mods will include Lizardskin SC an CI. I hope to buy more for this car.

FYI- I was not paid for this. I bought all products off of amazon with my own pennies! LOL

 

Thanks for the review info and great documentation!

 

Stellar review good sir, appreciate it

 

It has been a while since I have posted. I am currently doing small things but not hardcore like I was. I am currently in cut mode at the gym every day but once I attain a certain goal, I will be hitting the car hard.

I have recently replaced the two front tires since they leaked bad. I am trying to resist bhying any more tires until I get the new wheels and performance tires.

I have been fitting the horseshoe shifter so I can swap to it instead of the column shifter. I am dreading having to drill a hole in my new sheetmetal for the shifter cable. It has to be done though.

I did some timing tuning and woke her up a bit. The car is much smoother now and has better acceleration. Im on a 93 octane tune now. I will be doing a little more timing tuning this morning to squeeze a little more power out then I will dial it back to safety.

That is it for now.

 

OMG! I cannot belive I just did this. Gots me a package coming next week!

 

Pure car porn....so sexy.

 

The rear shocks are on but I am having a B!tch of a time trying to get the front shocks out in order to do the front. I took a ride with just the rears and I can already tell this is going to be badass! My rear end sway is much better.

Also, my waterproof phone took a swim today and is no longer functioning so I cannot take photos at the moment. It is funny how "red alert" the situation is when you have no means of communication.

 

WOW!! Right as it got dark, I was able to get the shock part of the coilovers installed with the factory springs. All I can say is I am very impressed. I did a few laps around the area doing some tuning of the suspension but tomorrow, I will try to get it dialed in 100%.

 

Today I solved one of this car's mysteries. There was a noise in the front and the car still seemed to lean too much during turns. After looking around, there it was. The sway bar end link on the drivers side was attached but the bottom was missing. Essentially, it looked good from a far but was not functioning at all. So I headed to Autozone and got a polyurethane set and installed them in 5 minutes. Much better!! I am happy but I will need to redo my QA1 shock settings now.

 

Updates..

Last week has been challenging. My Wife's Grandfather died and I had to be Mr. Mom for a week while she flew to Tx for the services. Then I started feeling pain in my tooth but it was not too bad. Then it was bad!!! I tried to ignore it and doing my normal 430AM 3plus mile swims seemed to help. Well on Wed after the swim, it no longer helped. I was in the 2nd most pain of my life for the next 20 hours until the dentist gave me the best pain I have had in years. The moment he drilled out those nerves, I felt like a human being again rather than a tortured zombie. It was such a relief!

So in the mean time, I found some issues with the car and have begun to correct them. With the new rear end, the upper mounts are higher than the factory rear. Then to make matters worse, when I installed the QA1 shocks, it removed the old shocks with helper springs which no longer help the worn out factory springs. What that means is that the location of my fuel filter/regulator (above the axle) no longer works as during hard bumps the rear end knocks a little on the case. I have made up some extension hoses to allow me to move the regulator to the cross member/front 4 link mounts. This is eye opening because I might be going Airride and that will mean that I am going to have to notch the trunk metal eventually once it is able to drop down low. That is good to know.

Another mystery solved was the startup roughess. It was kind of spuddering during cold starts and the simple fix war to revert back to when I could remember I had no cold start issue. I uploaded the initial start settings from Jan 2021 which was in the dead of the winter and I had no startup issues whatsoever. Essentially it starts as a factory 6.0 Liter LS but shifts into more like 6.2 liter performance once in gear.

And today, I will move that regulator and maybe purchased some replacement springs or swap springs with the second 76 regal on the side of the house since it is not sagging. It only had about 66k miles on it vs the over 190k miles on the driving one.
I might even get the floor shifter working this weekend too. Who knows .