Catching up on the Story

Dear Readers -- 

 I find it hard to believe how much time has passed since my last post.   Since November of 2013, I've done so much to Tom's Riv, and Tom himself has shuffled off this mortal coil. Some quick bullet points:

*  Shortly after Labor Day of 2014, I drove the car over to Then and Now Automotive, and gave them what I thought was a generous budget of $7,000.  But the pay-as-you-go plan soon laid waste to that idea. 

* After several months and a little more than twice the budget spent, the Riv came home in May of 2015 with a new engine, a new power steering system, and a few other needed repairs.

* Tom Ettinger, the man who sold me the Riv in 2008 after ten years of stewardship, died in September of 2015.  Fortunately, I had made it up to see him with the Riviera. He was sick, to be sure, but I hope I brightened his day a little.

* In October of 2015, I joined the other North Georgia Riviera owners for their annual meet at Lake Lanier.  It was a beautiful day, and Tom's Riv is the second car in.

*  Then yesterday, I took the family for a first top-down drive of spring.  We cruised down to Morgan Falls Park, and caught lunch on the way home.   That's when the idea of checking in on the blog began to set in.   Let's see if I can keep it up!

New Whitewalls

In early October, I had a set of new Whitewalls installed at the local Goodyear shop.  They'd been on the car about a day when I took the Riv to the Georgia regional meet of the ROA.

She then got to go to the Classic Car and Hot Rod Show put on by my Kiwanis Club.   I'm ashamed to say that I didn't raise the hood, but it was a fun show nonetheless.

And then in December, I added some streamers, a couple of flags, and a few balloons to prepare for the 7th Annual Johns Creek Founders' Day Parade.

Good times.

Debut at Caffeine and Octane

I took the Riv to Sunday morning's monthly car gathering in Alpharetta called Caffeine & Octane.  It was looking pretty good until a restomod Cadillac with an LS1 Corvette engine and a spotless paint job parked next to it and pretty much sucked the oxygen right out of the air.   I was almost ashamed, but the Riv was unique among those who showed up, and the only convertible to drop its top during the snow.

2011 ROA Georgia Regional Meet

"How cool was that?" I kept saying after taking Tom's Riv up to Lake Lanier and joining not one, not two, but three other white convertibles built in 1983 and 1984. The four of us lined up for this iconic photo -- I am on the far left.

Some fixes are definitely now in order: whitewall tires, a new top, and a burgundy leather tonneau cover.

The guy to my right is a professor at Georgia Tech, and bought his about a year ago. The couple on the other side of him inherited that 1983 from the wife's father and had the most information to share about the options available from the factory. And the man on the right is also named Chris. He bought his Riv from an eBay seller and has done extensive work on it. A very cool afternoon!

Recharged

New seats went into the Riv this summer, and a new license plate was added in September...

Yep, I talked Tom into letting me trade him a check for the title to absolve my guilt for taking so darn long to get her cleaned up...that and I was having a mighty hard time putting her on Autotrader.

It helped that my daughter loves to ride around with the top down and have the wind blow through her hair....that and I could keep it to ride in parades.

So the next parade is Dec 5th: the 3rd Annual Founders' Day parade. It's coming up fast so this past weekend, I added a new battery and shined up the wire wheels. In the past month or so, I've been steadily adding a coat of carnuaba wax. She looks good, though her top no longer closes -- I've got a shop picked out, but the rains we've been having in Atlanta have kept me afraid of sending her in for a few days.

At any rate, there are a few items on the to-do list sometime before the parade:

• add some transmission fluid
• vacuum the carpets
• shine up the dashboard

I'll let you know how it goes.

Two Months Later

The last two months have seen moderate progress on the Riv, but it's still not listed for sale.

When I last wrote, I had found an auto re-upholsterer in Cumming, just north of where I live, and he knew on the phone just what I was talking about when I said the words "eighty-four Riviera."

So I started by taking in the back seats that I'd unhooked in early February, and they came back great. Next, I unbolted the front passenger seat (a 15-minute task), and took it in. When he called to say that was ready, I set to work taking out the driver's seat, a much more difficult task. Four of the bolts holding the seat to the floor came up pretty easy, but the other two were covered by the seat itself. Two Sunday afternoons later, I gave up trying to push the seat forward on its frozen power-seat track, and cut my way through the black plastic trim pieces to get to the bolts holding the seat to the track. Voila! That, too, has gone in and come back all shiny-and-new.

Here are pictures of the passenger seat as it came out...the camera wasn't handy when the driver's seat came loose.

And I haven't taken pictures of any seats in their reincarnated state yet, but they match well, and they're in the garage waiting for me to shampoo the floor carpeting and install the seats.

Next step? Well, now that the spring rains have slowed down, I need to get it into the shop for some engine and suspension work.

Oh, and there's another Riv for sale in Atlanta with the identical color scheme...asking price? $6,500. See this ad for the 1982 comparison.

Hope Springs Eternal

I've been slow to push forward with Buick repairs, but I do have an upholstery appointment scheduled for Tuesday afternoon. The guy I spoke to could picture the car and compared it to an Eldorado convertible of the same era that he'd done a few years ago. That's a good sign.

Another good sign is that a Carolina-blue clone of the Riv has just gone up for sale on Autotrader in another northern Atlanta suburb...its asking price is $12,500. I'm not at all sure it'll pull that, but it's nice to know that someone else thinks it's worth that much, especially this year...one big difference: the blue one (shown below) has about one-third the miles.