I Bought my Riviera in the middle of the Swedish winter of 2000 (photo above). I  guess I didn't fully realize
what I was doing, buying a 30 year old car, with no experience what so ever about car restorations.
But, I never regret it.
It took a lot of work an money to get it in the shape I wanted an now August 2006 it's more or less finished.

My ambition has not been to restore the car to absolute show winner condition. The main goal has been
to get a nice looking car that works mechanically good, without destroying anything during the process.
I have tried to follow the original look as mush as possible.
It has been important for me to work on the car during the winters only. This way I have been able to drive
my Riv during the summers. That of course didn't allow a complete tare down of the car.
I managed to follow this rule until it was time for the body restoration in January 2005. The following summer
of 2005 I wasn't able to drive the car, but it was worth it.

Below you can follow some of the restoration steps from January 2000 until August 2006.

The first thing I did after I got the car was to fix the carburetor and the floor.

The floor was almost gone due to rust. So I made new floor pans out of 1 mm thick sheet metal.

This was my first contact with sheet metal work and after some errors I finally got it right.

This was good practice preparing me for the work on the body later on.

The interior received a good cleaning and a new floor mat. I also changed all weather strips.

During the winter of 2000-2001 I restored the upper part of the engine, since I didn't
have the possibility to lift it out of the car at that time.
Some previous owner had the engine painted blue and it wasn't pretty.

 I lifted the intake manifold and the heads and had them restored at a local machine shop.
Then I painted them Buick Red (on my kitchen table as you can see above)

I also painted the rest of the engine (still in the car) as far as I could reach.
This was of course just a temporary solution until I got the opportunity to lift the
entire engine out of the car later on.

The result was fairly good for the time being.

A year later (winter of 2001-2002) I had the opportunity to move the car to a better
garage and with help from a good friend, I lifted the entire engine out of the car.

After a thorough check and changing of some parts the engine got a new coat of red paint.

All parts that aren't supposed to be red, were painted in the correct color and the result was finally as good
as I wanted it.

The rest of the engine compartment was also painted and detailed and by April 2002 the
engine was back in the car again.

The following three years I didn't do any major work on the car besides maintenance and
changing some parts. I guess I saved my energy for the body restoration.

So finally, in January 2005 I decided to start the work on the body. As you can see on the
photo above, my Riv had a strange looking vinyl roof. This is probably the work of some
previous owner or some dealer option I have never seen before on a Boat Tail.
According to the paint codes on my Body Number Plate this car didn't have any vinyl
roof at all from the factory, which is rather unusual on a 73 Riviera.
So I decided that no vinyl roof would be mounted on the car after the paint work was finished.

I stripped everything of the car except of the drive train. Then all the old paint came of and
finally some sheet metal was replaced on lower parts of the body and the trunk lid.

The body project took some time to complete and by February 2006 I left the car at the paint shop.

In May 2006 I got the car back from the paint shop and now the reassembling process began.
It took all my summer vacation in July but it was worth it.

With only a weekend left of my vacation my Riv was ready to hit the road again.

The first trip was to a US-car meeting near by. (Photos above)

A couple of weeks later I drove through the rain all the way to a US-car meeting in Norway.
(Photos above: me and my dog). Fortunately it didn’t rain a drop on the meeting site.
But of course it pored down all the way home again.

I would like to thank my good friends Zoran and Emil, for all their help during the restoration
of my Riviera.
Please visit the Riviera club of Sweden web site: http://rivclub.spinecom.se
and my friend Zoran’s web site: http://www.speedperformance.nu

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