A Dutch 1976 Buick Estate Wagon says hi

Hello everyone, I just bought my Buick, it's good to see there's an online community for stationwagons!

About the Buick, it's a mostly stock 1976 Estate Wagon, still weaing the original paint. One of the previous owners stuck an Edelbrock carb (I still have to look which model it is) on the otherwise stock engine and placed a LPG system in the car. LPG is about half the price of gasoline, so it's a must over here. The TH400 transmission is also stock, as is the diff.
They also grafted a Flowmaster exhaust to the stock headers. I need to look into the exhaust though, because the tip scrapes the road when rolling up a steep incline (like a parking garage entrance and such).
The front bench has been removed and they placed seats in it and for some reason a center console with a floor shifter, something I'll in time restore back to stock. The seats aren't that great so they'll be replaced as well sometime.
Both the interior and exterior need a little work, but overall it still is in good shape. Only real downside: the tailgate window regulator is missing, so I have to move the window by hand. If anyone can help me with that, it's very much appreciated! Those clamshells are great, as long as they work...

About me, I'm an industrial design engineer, currently working as a modelmaker primarily. Plus I dabble with music, playing bass the most.
The Buick comes in handy, since I can finally move my double bass

Well, I guess that's it for now. Back to browsing the forums!

 

EZ! How you doing, nice lookin wagon! Those tail lights are cool love the way they curve around the back. Glad you have an alternative to feed your new ride. Gas is nuts here it's really over the edge there!

And your in a band, I've always wanted to play a piano but I'm not very coordinated. My son plays a bass guitar. He use to take my CCR cds and imitate them...sounded great to me. He wanted an acoustic guitar for Xmas so we'll see how he makes out with that

Well glad to see you found this great little place hope you stick aroud and make a few new friends.

 

Welcome EZR! So glad you joined up!

Love your Estate Wagon! :2_thumbs_up_-_anima I'm a Buick guy myself, so I'm always happy when another clamshell wagon shows up.

Curious about the interior. Please post some pics of it when you can.
Also, is the entire rear window regulator gone, or just the motor?

David

 

Welcome.Good looking wagon.

 

Thanks for the harty welcome everyone!

Fannie, if your son plays along to CCR then he has good taste! He'll do just fine
Hmm, guitar is a bit more difficult then bass in my experience, but basically the same though. And... practise makes perfect!

Wixom, I'll try to make and then post some shots of the interior tomorrow. Stay tuned!
The entire regulator assembly is gone by the way, including the outer guide for the window cable. The motor however is still there and to my surprise is working fine. The regulator probably seized or broke down, at which point it was removed to make the window movable by hand I guess.

 

Always been intrested in the LPG thing as its cheap around me, but only decent kits and stuff is offroad only stuff.

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exhaust should dump out the sides, not straight out the back, back window will suck in fumes.
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I resemble that last one, see my sig link, but I kept the split bench seat n put in a floor shifter. Had to keep it comfy.

 

The motors gets weak and can't move the window up anymore, why they take em apart, but once off the motor seems to work, cause there is no load on it.

Mine is now that way,[hand operation] either gonna rebuild the motor one day[just needs new brushes probably], or turn it into a hand crank.


Course yours could be different, here is what my motor looks like.

 

By offroad only you mean those LPG kits aren't road legal?

I've been looking at some pictures of 1976 EW's and I couldn't find the exhaust, I guess now I know why. Thanks! I'll remedy this once I get to the exhaust work. I'm also going to have to change the ehm.. I guess downpipe/collector (that's what you call it?) as for reasons I can't fathom the stock version has the left bank downpipe entering the right bank downpipe at a 90 degree angle... A bit of a letdown to me from the Buick engineers, gasflow theory was already pretty common knowledge in '76.
Also, LPG burns really clean, so I haven't noticed any exhaust smell.

The pictures won't show in your car's thread. I don't know if it's my browser?

The pictures in your reply don't show either...

Hmm, haven't thought about that. Then again I couldn't test it as I have no regulator. If it's that weak I'll look into refurbishing it. Or... maybe replace it with a modern actuator. I'd probably have to machine some couplings for the drive cable but that's no biggie.

 

Just shot some pics of the interior!

The front seats aren't that fresh. Plus, they're electric seats, and most of the adjustment motors aren't working... This is especially annoying for the driver seat, as the seat seems to be stuck in a really low and tilted forward position, as you can probably tell from the picture. Not that comfortable!

The back seat seems original and is in excellent condition, so that compensates a little for the front seats.

The LPG tanks have been installed underneath the load floor in the back, so I still have the full space available!

The dash isn't quite as fresh as well, but still acceptable (for now). The glovebox is missing, so I'll fabricate a new one sometime soon. It probably was one of those kind of cardboard like material mouldings? They tend to fall apart over time. There are also a couple of extra gauges mounted in the dash, but they seem unconnected. I'm working on getting some diagrams and get them operational. First thing I'm adding though is a rev counter. I just cannot have a vehicle without a rev counter, I guess that's a tic I have. Oh and note the little silvergrey hatchback above the steering wheel, that's my first car and my trusty daily driver for ten years now, my 1986 Peugeot 205 XR. Quite the difference with the Buick, huh?

The biggest downside to the interior is the damage to the roof liner in the back, I'll get busy with a needle and thread at first, until I figure out something of a more acceptable solution.

Well, that's the inside!

 

You must not have images turned on, either your browser or the forum settings in your profile are set to off.

Maybe a mod can check your profile?

you could also hit the quote button for my messages, in he quoted txt it will give the links to the images, you can try to load them direct. [lots more work that way ]


Yea the affordable how to kits for LPG say for off road only, 4x4 guys like it cause it don't matter if the car is on a 45* hill, the gas still flows, where with reg car gas, it will run out of the carb at certain angles.


And yes Im sorry to say but the Y pipe is made like that stock.
With sharp angles where it joins. Why going duals is a good idea to increase flow if you want more pep. Cut the Y pipe where ya want and run two pipes and mufflers.


I dunno about your motor, you say yours has a cable, mine just has a gear like a hand crank. If you ever seen a hand crank door apart, my window motor just replaces it, why for me, doing a hand crank would be easy and a direction I might go. I know for sure it will last forever

Does your tail gate still swing down and out ok?
[should go down like a wagon, but also swing out like a car door]

 

I see what you mean about the floor shifter n console, they put it to far forward. should be closes so you can still lick back and have fun jammin gear getting on it. [Whole reason for any floor shifter in the begining.]

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Oh and your tanks are under the load floor? You don't have the 3rd row seat or was it removed for them? [most had the backwards facing 3rd row seat] and are the tank right under it, still inside the car? or under it and under the car / outside the body.

part of the reason here, LPG tanks have to be mounted outside the car body for road use.

 

I tried the direct links, but I got a "403 - Forbidden" error

Oh yeah, the vehicle angle could be a real offroad problem I suppose!
It's a real shame 'cause LPG burns really clean (so green!) and is high octane, so you can boost the compression. I gathered the stock compression is about 8.5:1 on my buick, which is just rediculously low. Too bad you have to take the engine apart to fix that, otherwise I'd be doing it right away. For now, I'm adding that to the 'To Do list of Vehicular Joy'

'Y pipe', that's a term good to know. Yeah, I'd love going duals, especially for that nice V8 tone. There just ain't no engine that does that goosebump burble like a cross-plane crank V8... Every time I hear and feel that engine go in my Buick the world is such a heavenly place...

The '76 is a fully powered clamshell tailgate, so no swinging out. Converting a mechanism like this to a handcrank would mean a lot of machining of custom parts. Although I could do that, I'd rather keep it powered. Also because that looks sexy
About the motor, the motor has a drive cable coming out (still present!) going to the (missing) regulator, which in turn should drive the window cable.

 

Yeah exactly, it's quite the half-baked job that floor shifter... Personally I don't need it at all, so it's back to column shift for me! And probabaly a 60/40 bench, with a nice and grippy fabric. I've sat on a 'traditional' vinyl covered bench once in a teste drive of an (I think, it's many moons ago) '73 Pontiac Grand Safari and that really makes you hang on to the wheel in the corners.

Yeah the 3rd row seat has been sacrificed for the tanks. All the tanks (I haven't looked at the system yet, I'm guessing it's three 40 liter tanks, getting about a 100 liters net of LPG gas) are located inside of the vehicle, which is no problem over here! I've been told by the previous owner that the owners before that lowered the floor a little to fit the tanks.

 

PM me your IP address,

I own a big motorcycle forum and in the past have blocked whole section of that side of the world for trying to run out dated hacks and floods. They may not work but they still get annoying. Seems like it goes round the youngster groups Id say. As its a different section of the world trying things that hadn't worked since the 80s, yet some how it just got around to them. And its new to them, and they think we are still in the 80s too. [all my sites use the same server, so a block on one, blocks them all from a IP]

 

Well the length of the wagon will get ya in a turn first, I often forget I have 18ft of car behind me and dive into a turn like Im in my Firebird, to then member its a wagon when it rolls over like a boat [so far at times I wanna toss open the door n stick out my foot like a dirt biker in a corner.]

Though the vinyl seats are apparent now with my shift kit in the trans.
It kicks like a muel when your on it and with the vinyl, you can feel the car lung out from under you and you feel weightless for a sec


And yea the tanks must be outside the body here or its not legal.
Why most kits are off road only, they got room under it for big tanks.


now liters n gallon is easy to mix up for me to compare what your paying,
but the typical 20lb back yard grill tank cost $17 to fil here.