Riviera Body Mounts

It's pronounced "chassy." Brakes, suspension...things that make the car fun or a death trap
Adam
Posts: 2240
Joined: Wed Oct 23, 2013 9:50 pm

Riviera Body Mounts

Post by Adam »

If you are following along, you've noticed that I replaced some things that made the Buick run much better. Consequently, I've been using WOT much more than before, which has been great right up until this afternoon.

On the way back from dropping Jenn off at the alignment shop to pick up her Seville (separate story not shown here), I noticed a strange rattling and some odd steering feet, especially when going over bumps around corners. So I looked under it.

But first, here is an illustration of the engine cradle and suspension of that car. The cradle is basically a large rectangle with 4 ears coming off the corners. Two small at the front and two large at the rear. There are 6 body mounts for the cradle, two at the front and 4 at the rear. Two of those are at the rear corners of the rectangle, the others at the ends of the ears.
buick_suspension.png
Here we go. Driver's side front. Not terrible, just a bit or dry-rot.
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Passenger's side front, same thing, but taken from a different angle.
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Driver's side middle (rear of the rectangle). Seems fine. In the background you can see my shiny new (painted with black header paint) catalytic converter and resonator.
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Passenger's side middle. Where's the rubber?
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Driver's side rear. Seems fine, but pay no attention to the rusty floor or the terrible weld seams.
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Passenger's side rear. Where is the washer? Why is the bolt so far in?
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Driver's side rear as viewed from the bottom of the body. Something is up.
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Similar shot from the passenger's side. Oh...
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So it would appear that a combination of failed washers and rubber have caused 2 of the 3 attachment points of the engine cradle to pull away from the body. So much torque? The good (bad?) news is you can still buy all of these parts from GM. So I will probably fix it.

Other related bad news is the driver's side area that needed rust repair when I bought it has rusted more.
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That all leaves 3 questions:
1. Should I really fix this?
2. The GM bushing listing shows different lower bushings (part #4) as "white" or "green". GM would have put colored stripes on the OEM bushings to denote different hardnesses of rubber. My FE1 should have the softest ones, but I don't know what that is. I'll probably buy the "white" ones as they are $4 less than the other ones.
3. Why do I keep buying rusty cars?
Adam
Posts: 2240
Joined: Wed Oct 23, 2013 9:50 pm

Re: Riviera Body Mounts

Post by Adam »

Also, stupid thumbnail generator/renderer doesn't respect the "rotated" flag.
Adam
Posts: 2240
Joined: Wed Oct 23, 2013 9:50 pm

Re: Riviera Body Mounts

Post by Adam »

Looks like I have the "green" ones. The "white" ones seem to be more solid and were used on the Park Ave of the same era. Doorman appears to make kits to replace these mount set-ups as well. Will compare cost.
Adam
Posts: 2240
Joined: Wed Oct 23, 2013 9:50 pm

Re: Riviera Body Mounts

Post by Adam »

Actually, looks like I need one of each. The "white" ones are the middle ones (at the rear of the rectangle) and the "green" ones are on the cradle ears. So I need one white, one green, two washers and two bolts. Unless I want to replace the dry-rotted ones at the front, then add 2 more green, bolts and washers.
Adam
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Joined: Wed Oct 23, 2013 9:50 pm

Re: Riviera Body Mounts

Post by Adam »

Is this applicable to the current situation?
www.gmtuners.com/swap/3800.htm
kevm14
Posts: 15200
Joined: Wed Oct 23, 2013 10:28 pm

Re: Riviera Body Mounts

Post by kevm14 »

Geez, you want to junk the car already (and transplant the engine)?
Adam
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Joined: Wed Oct 23, 2013 9:50 pm

Re: Riviera Body Mounts

Post by Adam »

kevm14 wrote:Geez, you want to junk the car already (and transplant the engine)?
Just found that "by accident". I've ordered the parts for the repair.
bill25
Posts: 2583
Joined: Thu Oct 31, 2013 2:20 pm

Re: Riviera Body Mounts

Post by bill25 »

Plus, I thought the LS4 was for that, and some of the work is done as when you buy the LS4 for 500 bucks, it is already out of the car.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/05-06-GRAND-PR ... Sw24RbCuRw

(Ok, this was $650 and on the lower end of the spectrum of pricing. The average was more like $1,200. All this LS talk has apparently elevated even the LS4 which was easily 500 bucks a couple years ago.)
Adam
Posts: 2240
Joined: Wed Oct 23, 2013 9:50 pm

Re: Riviera Body Mounts

Post by Adam »

Well, I'm all done with this car.

The "bent" looking bolt at the rear wasn't bent, the welded nut in the body separated from the body. There is no way to remove it without cutting through the body, which is fairly rusty already. I could cut the bolt to remove it, but there would be no way to re-install the bolt without cutting through the body.

The middle bolt (with the missing rubber insulator) turned out even worse. After soaking for a while in PB Blaster, I hit it with the impact gun for a while with no luck. Then I used a breaker bar. You can guess where this goes. The bolt snapped.

So I've made this thing run pretty good just to have the body fail. Time to move on as I'm sick of dealing with this rusty thing. Does anyone want this car? I'm on travel for the next two weeks and will be putting it on Craigslist for parts when I get back.
kevm14
Posts: 15200
Joined: Wed Oct 23, 2013 10:28 pm

Re: Riviera Body Mounts

Post by kevm14 »

I can't really blame you. From a mechanical standpoint, I don't see why that car couldn't have gone to 300k. Maybe not on that trans but certainly the engine. Good thing you have a 1991 Ranger and 2001 325i. I still think that BMW should actually check some boxes for Jenn (and it's a base model, her favorite) so maybe you could "trade" for the Seville or something so you have your all-weather daily. Of course the BMW is worth a few $k so that's why I put the quotes around "trade."
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