LeSabre Conversion to Console Shift

[tz2772]

Before:


And:


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Now:


And:


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View From the Back:


And:


The Car now has Bonneville Wheels and 225-60-16 tires to replace the steel wheels and 205-75-14 tires.

Wheels Shown Here:




Thank you to John (wjcollier07) for his work.

matt

[Jrs3800]

Looks Pretty good... Quality Work John...

[BlackHawk99]

Sweet! Can you give us a picture of the view of the column from the passenger side?

[00Beast]

Looking good!! You guys do good work.

[tz2772]

Passenger Side Pic:


Closer In:


I removed the pin that held the column shift lever and took it out. This will have to do until i can find a blue floor shift saginaw column, perhaps from an Olds 98 Touring Sedan. The console itself along with its carpeting was originally beige or "neutral" and came out of a 1996 Olds 88 LSS. The shift handle was grey and came from a 1994 Olds Cutlass Convertible. The console, carpeting, and shift handle were made dark blue using SEM Color Coat. It is a great product that doesn't come off with normal handling. A strong solvent will remove the coloring though.

The safety features are intact, in that the shift handle is locked when the key is in the off position. Since the shifter assembly came from a 96, it has the BTSI solenoid on it, and I might hook it up as an additional safety feature (1990 did not require the brake to be pressed to shift from park).

The cluster that I have is rather rare on LeSabres/Electras. Being a column shifted car, the instrument cluster has a shift indicator on it, but I have installed a U21 gauge cluster with tachometer from a T-Type that has a trip odometer in place of the shift indicator. The T-Type Clusters have yellow needles and red backlighting.

matt

[RJolly87]

How does that center section of the seat come off? I was thinking I had to bolt in reupholstered AL7's all this time. Probably would still be cool.

[tz2772]

Er, well, it doesn't "come off".....I had the driver's seat altered by a custom auto upholstery/trim shop. They did a decent job with it.

matt

[redmetrix]

Always was interested to see a console shift put in a LeSabre like this. Looks very nice! That's a pretty neat car also, looks to be full optioned. The wheels look great too, I never pictured those wheels on any other car than the 96-99 SSE, I do like how they look on your car.

[wjcollier07]

But even better than how those wheels look on there (which is AMAZING, the pictures really don't do it justice), it made the car handle exponentially better than with the extremely tall 75 series tire. For anyone that isn't paying attention, those wheels came from my 98 SSE. I figured they should be used since the totaled car is sitting in don's yard, and really wasn't using its 70k mile warranty BFGoodrich tires that are still 10/32" of tread. They're certainly improving the Buick.

We definitely spent a lot of hours between finding the correct console, removing from the car, cleaning, dis-assembly, coloring (coloring the carpet was a pain), assembly, fitment, etc. The changeover of the shifter was definitely the most difficult part of the swap. Running the different cable wasn't too crazy, but installing the ignition shift lock was DEFINITELY no walk in the park having to drop the column down to change it out...but all of the work was definitely work all of the experience gained throughout the process. One thing is certain...we definitely had a good laugh of relief when it was all together and actually WORKED.

Good to hear the positive words on the project. It truly was worth it! Console shift FTW.

[John Deere Boy]

That is one sweet mod, and one clean interior. Have you reached for the steering column to back out of the drive yet?

Also, i wouldn't enable the brake shift interlock...I hated the one on my car and disabled it.