The All About My 1980 Pontiac LeMans Station Wagon Thread...

[nocooler]

What no slide out mattress option! No GTP option? lol

[Be4u]

Mine cost 17,464

I hope no one ever takes me seriously, I kid alot.
I save my venom for people that tread on me.
If you knew me and my personality you'd understand.

[daveismissing]

exchange rate in Dec 1987 was .754 (sound familiar?) so thats $23,161 Canadian. Plausible.

[reality]

Dave I think your price range is a little high or the equipment is inflated. my oct87 build hardtop,ps,pb.pw.air. tungston headlights. concert sound with no eq.
power trunk was stickered  22,210 in Ham ON


ALSO Did you notice that as a Can the net price you paid was the same if you crossed the border or not in 87 but you can save large now in 2017 if you go Stateside,

[daveismissing]

I know a guy who just moved to Port Perry with goat. Those guys also use Lonnie for transmissions and I was keeping him abreast of the locations of the Nomadic Lonnie.

[motorhead]

The good news is this is a fictitious exercise and I can rewrite the sum total (or contents) to whatever I want.  In retrospect, those options figures presented would all have been USD as no reference I have seen yet carries the CDN equivalent.  So if anyone knows the US/CAN exchange rate for 1980 and wants to apply it, please do so - heck calculate for inflation in 1987 and 2017 (shit look at that, now all of your Buicks are at least 30 years old).

Also, this is the most traffic this thread has ever seen... probably because the topic turned to Turbo Regals. LOL!

[daveismissing]

Exchange rate in 1980 was .856
Since you know what you are doing mechanically  we can only argue about the stupid stuff

[Be4u]

I don't post in this thread but I watch it.

[motorhead]

Since you know what you are doing mechanically  we can only argue about the stupid stuff

Well I am glad you guys are enjoying the Winter BS session.  But, let's not kid ourselves, I am learning as I go here - we'll celebrate my "abilities" when it runs, drives, and stops.

I don't post in this thread but I watch it.

I appreciate it.

[motorhead]

Almost a month between updates? What gives?! Life mostly.

Most of the last few weeks where spare time was made available to me have been spent tweaking and tinkering with many of the parts I had previously installed (like the rear suspension, exhaust, wiring up the cutouts, and other less than exciting things).  Fortunately there is still lots more of that to go - so I will never get bored.

I've been putting off installing the engine for about a month believing that my brother would be dropping by for a visit.  Nope - he was sent to China by the US auto industry to sort out the Chinese (he is THAT guy).  Spring is coming and I wanted this off my plate... so I threw the car up on the wheel cribs. Grabbed Natasha to help ditch the hood. Reorganized the garage so I could approach the car over the DS fender. Bolted the engine and trans together (had exactly .125" set back for the converter to flex plate, this Coan and Hughes assembly fit way better than the Yank and CAT units I used in the TBSS which I had to shim the crap out of to get into spec).  Dropped the nose of the car toward the floor and got to stabbing the drive train and headers in.  Found out that the 1" set back engine mounts made the G-Force cross member fit like total poop - going to chop it up to suit (set it back an inch and drop it down a 1/8" or so).  Somewhere around 2 AM it was all in, went inside to eat some yogurt, and watch some AvE on the YouTubes.

Oh, and the Hooker headers fit great with the Moroso mounts and Car Shop set back plates!

[good2win22]

Looks nice setting in there! 

[motorhead]

Thanks! It is a huge relief to see it in there.  Only challenge I am facing right now is how high the nose of the car is sitting at about 27" to the bottom of the fenderlip - I blame the lightweight parts.  Granted I still have a significant number of parts to install yet (FEAD, A/C, rad and fans, battery, rest of the exhaust, crossmember, hood, fluids, etc) and I imagine the 28" tall tires will shift the bias forward a bit too.

My goal is to have it down to 26".

[good2win22]

I gather it will settle a little when all the other stuff is installed and you get driving it a bit

[motorhead]

I forced myself to modify the crossmember in the evenings this week.  Reason being that when the engine and trans assembly went in last week the back of the trans pan butted up against the crossmember because of the 1" setback, and the Energy Suspension mount would not sit on it.  Fair enough.

I cut and moved the flanges 1" to account for the need, and added some gussets; also moved them 1/4" up, which effectively dropped the crossmember removing the interference with the floor pan (because using a jack to reshape the floor as per the installation instructions is just a shitty concept).  Further to this I sectioned the transmount surface down about 1/4".  All of this allowed the crossmember to be fit easier into the chassis, the nearly 2" tall transmount to be used, and got the floorboard clear allowing me to reinstall the PS heat shielding (and avoid cooking Natasha's feet with header and cat heat).

Right now the driveline angle is sitting at 4* down - which is workable.

[motorhead]

Mounted section width 13.5", and fit fine.  Added 1.5" to the rad hold down support because the Griffin rad is huge.  Started making room for the A/C compressor... I didn't notch it enough the first time. And we aren't going anywhere for awhile.