"MoCamino" (mocamino)
10/12/2020 at 09:24 • Filed to: None
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"MoCamino" (mocamino)
10/12/2020 at 09:24 • Filed to: None | 3
| 7 |
I saw a 78 Buick Riviera 75th Anniversary Edition for sale at the grocery over the weekend. I’d never seen one before, and I like it. My dad had a 79 Olds Delta 88 coupe (a sister car to the RWD Riviera) when I was a kid. I t’s what I learned to drive in. Dad’s had the Olds 350 with a Quadrajet. For a big car, it was pretty quick. (Malaise-era quick, anyway.) I loved the sound that thing made when the secondaries opened up. To this day, in my head that is the sound of performance. (Nostalgia does strange things to the brain.)
The Rivieras apparently came with the Olds 403 and four-wheel disk brakes . I’d love to have one of thes e. They only wanted $6500 for it, and it was clean . It l ooked like it had been restored within the last couple of years . Sadly I didn’t get pictures, as my wife and daughter were with me and they were getting impatient. I found !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! about them. The one I saw was every bit as clean as the one in the article. Big luxury coupe with four-wheel disk brakes? YES PLEASE!
shop-teacher
> MoCamino
10/12/2020 at 09:52 |
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Oh man, that's sweet!
WilliamsSW
> MoCamino
10/12/2020 at 09:54 |
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Buick Rivieras were pretty much always some of the best looking cars to come out of Detroit compared to their contemporaries.
I’m not generally a fan of this malaise era stuff, but this is a really good looking car.
Speed
> MoCamino
10/12/2020 at 10:24 |
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The two tone is beautiful on this car. If you wanted to keep it simple and fun, a 4 speed behind that 403 and a few bolt-ons would make for one hell of a cruiser. That engine gets a bad rap because of the windowed mains. The crank sort of hangs out down there on pedestals, as you can see here. Torsional stiffness is not a strong point in these blocks, and a girdle can certainly help, but I wouldn’t spend too much money hopping one up beyond bolt ons, a cam and maybe some head work.
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WilliamsSW
> Speed
10/12/2020 at 10:46 |
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Oldsmobile made some great V8 engines. The 403 wasn’t really one of them.
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MoCamino
> Speed
10/12/2020 at 11:01 |
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Yeah, I know the 403 had a bad reputation, but they weren’t bad as long as you didn’t get crazy with them. That Rivy (or my dad’s old Delta) would be great with a stick. You could get the Olds (in the Holiday 88) with a floor shift, but I don’t think they ever sold them with a stick. Shouldn’t be that bad of a swap, though.
I actually had a BOP bellhousing on the parts shelf for a while. I had a 350 Olds that I was going to use in a project and intended to put a four speed behind it. Sadly, t he project never came to fruition, and the engine got sold to a buddy who was selling his 7 9 H/O . As I recall his engine spun a bearing and he needed to replace it quickly before the deal fell through. I had gotten the engine really cheap (reman shop was liquidating models that didn’t sell well) and sold it to him, slightly less cheap but still a great deal. I sold the bellhousing years later after finally accepting I was never going to need it.
BahamaTodd
> MoCamino
10/12/2020 at 15:35 |
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Made me think of this post on the GM design instagram of a designer working on the 79 Riviera using tape .
!!! UNKNOWN CONTENT TYPE !!!
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WilliamsSW
> MoCamino
10/12/2020 at 16:49 |
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Yeah, as long as you don’t try to make a lot of power with that engine, it’s ok.