Project B Type: LeSabre w/ Bonneville front end

[HurstGN]

At the rate you're going Eric, I think I can suggest what would have been a far simpler way to achieve what you are eventually accomplishing. Just put the Buick motor in the Bonne.

Seriously, you're making great progress....keep up the good work, and get more pictures.

[Alibi]

Heh... actually the Buick motor has a nasty knock so I might end up doing the opposite

Honestly, I think the Bonnie was in better shape body-rust wise but the biggest problem was the rust to the fuel and brake lines. Granted those can be replaced but then how would I make a 2 door Bonneville?

Anyway, I've been playing with some color combo's in my head and heres what I'm currently thinking:

Interior

-blue rear seat
-black front seats
-Blue carpet (good quality) or black carpet (crappy aftermarket quality and fit...)
-no center console for now
-gray upper and lower dash
-gray column
-Gray vinyl door panels (recovered... or I could do blue...)

Exterior:

-Black below the beltline
-Maroon or white above the beltline... not sure on which color yet as I'm still on the fence and I'm kinda shying away from black since I already have a black car
-Gloss black trim
-Gloss black grille
-Non T Type rear lights, regular LeSabre lights with maybe a light coat of Nightshade and clear
-Bonneville badges on the doors
-Body color T Type rear spoiler

[JimmyFloyd]

does the bonneville rear bumper cover fit on the car?

[Alibi]

It fits, it just looks funny. I'm planning on using it anyway. There was a guy on Cardomain that used a bunch of SSE parts on a LeSabre and used the bumper... I'll have to see if I can find it.

Here is the other guy that added the SSE skirts and bumper to his LeSabre: http://www.cardomain.com/ride/528575/2

See how it doesn't *quite* fit right? That would be solved by welding on the Bonnie rear light bar though :D

[spidey3479]

You're rt weld the bar & do it rt or don't bother.

[Peterg22000]

Love the progress, you gotta suck it up and splice in those tales though, even if it is a BIG undertaking.

and on the comment you made about exterior color, if you two-tone it, the dark color should go ontop (example that would look good, Black on top [belt moulding up] and a slightly darkend silver belowe it)

[Alibi]

I got some OK progress done to some parts, they're just not in the car yet

First I tore down my old wobbly Buick column to get the key tumbler and I put that into the replacement column. While I was at it I decided to go ahead and take bunches of pictueres and post them as a how-to: http://www.pontiacbonnevilleclub.com/fo ... =20&t=6941

Here is a shot of the radio that's going into the car. This was originally in my ex g/f car until her dad replaced at which point it went into my '90 Olds 88, then into my '89 T Type after I wrecked the olds, then into storage after I replaced this deck with a Pontiac deck, and now its going into the B-Type. I'll eventually get another Pontiac deck and at that point this deck will go into storage yet again



The original T Type radio will go into storage for now too. I need to solder the connections in but that shouldn't take me long but otherwise it should go in without any issues.

[Alibi]

More progress on the home front!

I'm looking into getting this LE Bonneville shifter. It appears to be the same base as the T Type shifter so I'm thinking that I may not have everything lined up right when I was mocking up the Bonnie dash in the T which is why the shifter was in the way. In any case, the gray carpet and the smoother, rounder plastic bits will blend in better with the rest of the bonnie parts so I'm wanting it anyway:



Anyway, I spent some quality time with a soldering iron tonight and got my harnesses put back together.

Here is my workspace:



My first test subject (the PO of both harnesses just twisted the wires together and slopped on some tape)



Starting to get it put together:



I didn't have a small torch handy and I didn't want to mess with the only crappy lighter I had handy so instead I used this to shrink my heat shrink wrap:



All soldered, wrapped, zip-tied, and then back in its surround:




All that I need to do will be hook up the power and ground wire after I put in the dash and then hook up the harnesses and bolt it in place. Shouldn't take more than a few minutes :D

So, on to my next project... one of the main wires on the base of the steering column harness for the ignition was sliced up... probably for an aftermarket remote start. So I needed to patch it back up.



I wanted to solder the ends of the wires together and then wrap... but the wires are just too big of a gage to solder right. Instead I decided to crimp in a bit of extra wire, add some solder to crimps, and then heat wrap.




So, here is the wire being crimped on and filled in with solder:






Unfortunately my heat wrap wasn't big enough so I just wrapped it up good with electrical tape and called it a day:



The weather is nasty and rainy all this week so I'm going to just drop the column off in the car and pick up the plastic dash bits to take home and spray paint in my car port to at least get something done. After the dash is painted, it'll be go in after the column is in, then all the harnesses will be hooked up, drop in the climate control, radio, swap in a different ECM, and test. Assuming everything works, then it will be time to pull the front seats and center shifter and start grinding off the nasty rust on the floor pan and paint it as well as re-wiring my corroded ground busses.

Theres still a lot of work after that... but a lot of it will probably happen next spring :sad5: :sad5:

-use carpet padding from bonnie (yank seats and carpet to get it)
-source a set of new front seats (lesabre seat motors are rusted together...)
-probably swap the motors as the LeSabre motor has some piston slap (I think thats whats wrong...)
-Yank the trans out of the bonnie and if its F79 have it rebuilt for the '89
-sand the car and paint (leaning between maroon and white right now)
-etc, etc, etc....

[93 SSE 4 ME]

Impressive. I had a Monza-type Buick Skyhawk many years back with a Pontiac Sunbird front-clip on it. It was dubbed the Sun-Chicken by my friends, but was a great car. My first 3800 engined car in fact. Keep up the good work, you've got a knack for it.

Mark

[Alibi]

I got a little bit of work today.

First I crawled under the bonneville to get a pic of the trans ID tag to find out if the car still had the original F79 trans. If id does then I think I'm going to transplant the entire drivetrain to the B type, junk the B types current knocking engine, and have its transmission rebuilt for use in the '89.

So here is the tag, if anyone can tell me what the gearing is I'd be grateful:



The next order of business was to yank the rear seat out of the Bonnie to save for the B Type:




Yeah...my storage of parts is getting pretty big :D



Next I finally figured out that the LeSabre has an extra bracket around the column mount that I don't need so 2 10mm bolrs later it was off:



At this point I could have either dropped in my recently repaired column and called it a day or I could have poked around for the leak that I've had in the car since I got it... well I chose the latter. I turns out that the foam padding at the firewall was soaked and was very musty smelling so I started just ripping it out after moving the HVAC unit aside. There was some nasty stuff in there...







Surprisingly, there wasn't much rust behind the foam but I did find a bunch of water just below the wire harness from the firewall side so thats probably one leak. The rest of it is probably coming in from the cowl area somewhere.



I brought home all the plastic dash bits and I'm going to paint those for installation this weekend pending good weather. I'm also going to seal up the entrances for the wire harnesses through the firewall and I'm going to yank the cowl off and spray a bunch of sealant inside and then leak test.

The next update will be of dash bits being painted

[radomirthegreat]

This. Is. Awesome.

I voted for white. You've just got to do it! Awesome progress! This is the most carnage I've seen on here in several months. Maybe I should get back to my carnage. I really envy you for having some space somewhere at all. I'd like to have that some day. Keep on keeping on.

[Alibi]

Carnage is a very appropriate word!

I've never been that far into a dash before myself so that was fun too! I think I've got most of the nasty wet foam out so the next project for the interior will be getting the (unpainted as of yet) dash back in, the seats removed, and the floor sanded and painted in some kind of paint with a de-rusting agent in it (rustoluem, POR 15, etc).

Since I am removing some of the foam/sound deadening material from under the dash I've got some leftover tar paper insulations (fake dynamat from a project on the '89) that I'm going to use on the firewall and floors after they're painted.

It rained all day today and I haven't checked the weather yet, but if I have a nice couple days this weekend then my goal is to at least get the floor cleaned and painted this weekend.

And white, eh? I'm still on the fence between maroon and white. If I keep the beltline trim I think I'm goign to go with maroon below the beltline and white above for a nice two tone effect. But at this point I'm considering deleting the beltline trim since the LeSabre trim doesn't match the Bonneville trim and I can't think of a good way to blend them together.

[Alibi]

I had a nice day today so I got a bit more work done on the Bonnie project. As of now all I need to do is get the steering wheel aligned and back on right for the car to be street legal again :D

A comparison of the old hubcap centers and the new ones (old one is faded and the clips on the back are broken):




The first thing I started working on today was spray painting the main section of the dash. I'll paint the rest probably tomorrow. I had a couple runs and a few bubbly spots but they were towards the bottom so I doubt many people would ever notice. I can always go back and fix it if it bothers me enough to do so.




Then I spent a couple hours installing the column and the dash. I had to grind a little off the column shaft to get it to fit right but thats nothing new. Otherwise everything lined up all right.



I still don't like how little room there is for the ash tray...



The only issue I have is that the manual climate control cluster from the Buick is too short so I'll have to make some sort of adapter but that shouldn't be hard to fab up out of some sheet metal.



So I went ahead and stuck the gage cluster in and fired up the car... all the lights work so thats a good sign :D The oil gauge maxes out and the speedometer quit but it did that on the old cluster too so I'm not worried. I think I just need to replace the VSS and the oil pressure sending unit.



So what I need to do next is finish the dash, yank the seats out of the Buick, wire-brush the floor and paint it, and then gut the Bonneville interior and use its carpet and some of the wiring and go from there. I think I'll try to get the interior done when I have a nice day here and there throughout winter and I'll swap in the engine from the Bonneville this spring since the Buick motor has a bad knock.

[radomirthegreat]

Very nice! How is the weather over there? That dash fits in very well. How does it feel when you touch the spray painted part? Are you going to coat it in something to make it tougher?

[Alibi]

As of now I'm just going to leave the paint as-is. I'm using Krylon so it should be OK once its cured all the way. Today it was nearly 50* and tomorrow its supposed to get close to 60*. Crazy weather for December, if you ask me...

The dash fits flush with everything else at it should so there aren't any major compatibility issues thus far :D

[crzydmnd72]

How will you paint this? shop or do you have a place?

[radomirthegreat]

He has an odd way of painting. His black T-Type had Rustoleum brand black paint rolled on. It seems that if you do it just right and do a buttload of sanding, you can actually end up with a good looking car.

[Alibi]

Yeup, this will be another rolled-on rustoleum job in my driveway

The '89 is going to get re-done this summer since I didn't get as many coats on as I wanted to last summer. Also, I've learned a couple new tricks to get the finish better this time around too. The '89 will need some body work first though (new front fenders... again... stupid brittle plastic) but the Bonnie will be relatively quick to paint. I'm going to delete the belt line trim since the Bonnie and the Buick trim doesn't match worth a flip and go with rustoleum regal red since its similar to the original maroon. The worst part of the repaint will be getting the super crappy blue paint off the bonne front end and getting the crappy peeling clear coat off the trunk lid.

[radomirthegreat]

Do you have a tractor store in your area? See if you can find some Valspar tractor paint. You might get a better red match. Rustoleum is very nice, but tractor paints can be cheaper or better, whichever you feel like buying. A friend of mine painted a 1960s truck with flat black tractor paint, and it looks great.

[wjcollier07]

Not sure if you ever found the info you were looking for on what gear ratio that transmission in the Bonneville is.

Sometimes they're not exact...but the codes are definitely unique.

2.84: 9BHH 9WRH
2.97: 9BWH 9WUH
3.33: 9PAH 9PBH



So since that says BP..the closest would obviously be 3.33.

To be sure, check the RPO tag if there is one (somehow I vaguely remember you saying there wasn't) for codes. IIRC, 3.33 is GX3.

If it does have the 3.33...that sure is one very strangely optioned vehicle..well..WAS a strangely optioned vehicle, heh. Now you've REALLY made it strange!