Meet Black Betty, a 1985 Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham Limo. My buddy and I bought/ rescued her from an LA "hair band" recording studio where, before had she broke down, she had been in service for the last 20 years as the official party car for such bands as Slayer, Ratt, White Snake, Aerosmith, and Bon Jovi.
Like most party girls, she's pretty from afar, but far from pretty when you get up too close, or in daytime. Cheap paint, rust, broken sunroof, absolutely trashed interior. Everything you'd expect in a limo with real rock and roll history.
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We bought her for $800 (plus $600 in back registration penalties) on the bet we could get her in motion for a few more grand.
We got two new batteries and replaced the rotted fuel lines and packed fuel filter, and darn if it didn't fire up. We limped around the block only breaking down twice. A tank of fresh gas, some spliced ignition wires (chewed by rats), general tune up, some speed runs to burn off the filth, and we had a wonderful party car that was always on the verge of overheating or breaking down.
While willfully ignoring the mountain of cash it would take to transform this thing into an enjoyable vehicle, it became apparent that the current head gasket leak wasn't going to fix itself, so in an alcohol induced fit of inspiration we decided to pull the motor and rebuild it. For anyone who has ever attempted such a thing you can see where this is going already. The OEM motor was a 4.1L TBI V-8 pumping out an aggressive 135hp. 0-60 was under 30 sec, wet. Obnoxiously underpowered for the task at hand it took about an hour into the tear down to decide to just go ahead do an engine swap. The engine was a total mess and after much research on the webs we found that we'd just be meticulously rebuilding one of the worst engineered GM motors in existence.
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Project funds are depleted and depression sets in. 1 year passes.
After some springtime beer-based research, and based on new budget constraints, we decided to buy an $800 1994 Buick Roadmaster with an 5.7L LT1 that had an output of 280p/ 335 lb-ft, paired with a 4L60E transmission. This seemed to be just enough grunt to pull a bunch of "adults" trying to cling on to their youth. The test drive went well, however on the hour-long ride home I noticed some water temp surging and hard shifts in the transmission.
6 months later and we finally get around pulling everything and scrapped the Roadmaster.
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I have zero fabrication skills so we found a guy that was going to help us with the engine mounts/ set pinion angle, etc. After putting us off for 4 months he decides to leave the country.
5 more months pass.
While we were waiting to find a cheap and good (pick two, right?) fabricator, we decided to rebuild the motor and have the transmission inspected. It didn't make much sense to install an engine with known issues.
I had never rebuilt a pushrod motor before, and I'm a bit OCD when it comes to dirt, so it took me most of the summer just to clean the engine to be able to work on it. New water pump, oil pump, Optispark dist, main and cam bearings, rings, every seal I could find, de-carbonized, de-greased, heads were refreshed with valve job etc, etc. I didn't over-bore the cylinders, just deglazed with stones. The cam and crank were mostly in spec. I had hemorrhaged money on everything else so I decided to just let it be a loose engine. I figured I could run thicker oil, if necessary, and call it a day. It's not a hotrod and the mileage on it will be minimal.
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The engine rebuild took all summer, so in the meantime we got the transmission inspected/ refreshed. We were still waiting on a fabricator who wouldn't string us along or wasn't too busy. So the project sat for another 6 months.
We finally got some help though a very talented and generous friend and after a few more months got it in the vehicle.
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And now the transmission problem... more to come.
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