Autoblog

With Part I out of the way and the front end of our Buick Roadmaster in pieces, the next logic step is to start putting things back together. In this installment, we'll get the control arms buttoned up, and pay some loving attention to the steering gear. Click through for more grease-under-the-fingernails goodness.

Suspension components, charged with providing articulation while withstanding a constant beating from rough roads, live an incredibly tough life. Proper maintenance that includes regular lubrication helps, but once the odometer clicks over the sixth digit, it's often time for some fresh components. While the slow onset of wear might mask any issues, all it'll take is a spin in a newer vehicle or a look at the tread wear pattern to get some perspective on the problem.

Fortunately, for most of us, like-new handling precision can be restored with a few hours, a couple hundred bucks of parts (and maybe that much again for some specialty tools), and a skinned knuckle or two. We're going to tear into the front end of our 155,000-mile Buick Roadmaster to show you how it's done, and it might get some mild upgrades while we're at it.

In 2006, we spent a lot of time spinning wrenches here in the Autoblog Garage in the process of taking on common maintenance tasks and a few performance upgrades. For your convenience, we've compiled links to each of the posts after the jump.

We already have some things in the works for 2007, but we'd also love to get suggestions for additional posts from our readership. Keep in mind that we need projects that have a relatively broad appeal, and we're a bit limited in our selection of "test subjects"; beyond that, we're all ears, so please share your ideas.

Quite simply, rust sucks. Most any vehicle regularly driven during winters in the Salt Belt will fall victim to corrosion, and the various spray-on undercoatings available from the aftermarket have their shortcomings. Specifically, the spray-on application of these coatings often results in incomplete coverage, and what is applied will typically degrade upon repeated exposure to a decade's worth of abrasive road debris.

After dropping the fuel tank on our 1996 Buick Roadmaster, we found some oxidized ugliness despite the vehicle's near-impeccable maintenance record. Fortunately, the damage was caught before significant amounts of sheetmetal were lost, and modern technology has provided us with the tools to keep the situation from getting worse.

One of the goals of the Autoblog Project Garage posts is to give our readers some insight into the scope of various projects, including a sense of the amount of time it might take to complete a job given our usual variety of distractions. As a case in point, the first post concerning a rear-disc conversion on a 1996 Buick Roadmaster (don't laugh - it's much faster than it appears) took place nearly two and a half months ago, and we're just now wrapping things up with the install of an axle that we rebuilt (see the second and third posts for more info).

So, with that being said, let's crawl underneath the car, remove the old drum-brake axle, and slide in the freshened Impala SS rear axle with its 12" disc brakes, lower gearing, and limited slip diff.

With the axle disassembled in the previous installment of this project, it is now time to start putting things back together with fresh parts as needed.

One surprise that we encountered during the tear-down of the axle was a significant amount of debris; namely, there was a lot of dirt inside the axle. Yet, the internals were in good shape, so we do not believe that the axle was operated with contamination. Our guess is that either it came from a flood car (not exactly a stretch, considering last year's events), or was submerged at some point during the salvage process.

Here's a great example of a project that has undergone a bit of "feature creep". Oh, it started innocently enough, with my wife asking if anything could be done to improve the brake feel of our 1996 Buick Roadmaster. Sure, I said - we can ditch the rear drum brakes, and install a set of discs from either an Impala SS or a Caprice 9C1 (the infamous "cop car" version). That task would be easy to pull off in an afternoon or two.

About five minutes of searching on eBay turned up a complete set of used Impala brakes, but our $200 maximum bid wasn't enough to secure the parts. A little more browsing turned up a complete used Impala SS axle, with 90-day warranty, for $349. That'd allow us to upgrade the Roadmaster's extra tall 2.56:1 rear gears with the Impala's somewhat more reasonable 3.08 gears, and if the used axle's limited slip still functioned properly after 86,000 miles, it could replace the absolutely shot Auburn that wasn't doing a damn thing to keep both of the Buick's rear tires spinning together. A click on the Buy It Now button, a bit of correspondence, and the axle was on its way to a local shipping depot.

The dedicated General Motors supporters at GMInsideNews are tired of waiting for GM to come up with the compelling model lineups that will propel its brands back to market leadership, so they've taken matters into their own hands, with a minisite called Revitalization in Action.

The first marque to receive the group's revitalization efforts is Buick, once tagged by Bob Lutz as one of GM's "damaged brands." The GMI group's product ideas are based on an encyclopedic knowledge of GM drivetrain and chassis architectures, as well as finely tuned Photoshop skills, and include the Buick Roadmaster Coupe shown above - theoretically based on GM's new Zeta RWD platform and proposed for a 2009 rollout as a next generation Lucerne. (We have to admit, the storied Roadmaster name carries much more weight than Lucerne...)

Read about the rest of the Buick dream lineup here, and stay tuned for the group's efforts for GM's other brands.

[Source: GMInsideNews]