1965 Buick Skylark 4 door.

Hey all, This “build” has a bit of a back story. A couple years ago, we started a new family tradition of a Father's Day float trip in the Ozarks. I've always been a fan of the concept of the B.A.B.E rally but couldn't commit to the time it required (limited vacation, etc) so I never seriously considered/explored participating. I recently became aware of “Roadkill” on youtube and absolutely love it. This left me wanting for a bite-sized cheap car road trip. Now that I think of it...I've been wanting to do this kind of thing since I was in college. I'm also a fan of the “drivabeater” brand of build ala Dusterbd13...though this won't be of drivabeater caliber. I decided that the float trip would be a good opportunity to sucker my wife, daughters, and any willing friends and family to partake in a fun challenge: Buy a car for $500 or less, load it up with camping gear, and drive it to our float trip. The “$500 Road Trip to the Float Trip Challenge” I suppose. It's a pretty easy trip. Just a couple hours each way, give or take. Turns out, I may be a bit of an instigator. Anyone heard of “Back 40 Racing?” Yeah...I'm an instigator. If anyone here is interested in partaking in this silly $500 road trip challenge, you are welcome. Just holler at me for time/place details. Since most of the stuff I collect (and drive) fits into this sub-$500 category anyway, I'm always on the hunt and it didn't take me long to find and procure this. It followed me home today:

What we have here is a 1965 Buick Skylark 4 door. I believe the engine is a 300 cubic inch Buick V8 and it has an Automatic Transmission (2 speed...maybe?). It had been sitting a while, but with a good battery and a bit of starting fluid to help prime the fuel system, it did sputter to life and ultimately drive onto the trailer under its own power. Don't be fooled...it looks much nicer than it is. I'll show details as we go. I'll leave it at that for now. I have lots of “discovery” to perform on the car. Thanks fellow GRMer Psteav for riding along and helping procure/retrieve this fine example of '60s rolling iron. Also thanks to Mrs. Sparks and the Sparkskids for their willing (or otherwise) cooperation.

She's a good looking car, from 20 feet away... on the internet. I'm a Tri-shield man myself so I'll be watching this thread.

Wow, I haven't seen an old Buick that nice since the 80's. Any chance it has an aluminum V8?

It appears to be all-iron. It was advertised as a '64 on Craigslist, so I was expecting aluminum heads (based on my cursory wikipedia research last night). But the seller had been mistaken (it's a '65). I think in '65 they were all-iron.

Here are a few “as purchased” photos just to show what we have here:

A little rust on the panel just below the trunk lid and the bumper has been bumped:

This is the driver side quarter panel:

Some of the foam is trying to escape from the seat in front:

The back seat is not too bad:

A shot of the engine. I love these old Rochester 2 barrels:

 Acorn shells on the intake manifold were and option in '65, maybe?

acorns? are you nuts?!

Please put a dual-circuit master on it right away. Any GM intermediate '67 or later will bolt on. Front/rear split, check the donor MC's shop manual for which outlet port is front.

i search daily for cars <1k. Nothing EVER looks like that. That car is apparently 2 or 3k here... Good job on the find.

I'm honored

I also apologize for instigating you.

high five for the Buick Build.

if you decide you do not want it any longer, it can find home in my garage where I have a 69 Buick 430/TH400 combo waiting to be dropped in

Looks like fun! Or at least a twisted idea of fun. I love old American 4 doors and the idea of a Roadkill style road trip.

Here's what our conditions are like right now. 

Needless to say, I won't be making fast progress on it anytime soon. Heck, I don't intend to progress quickly even when the weather is nice.

As far as goals and direction for the project:

I suppose the most critical requirement for this car is that it can get us safely and reliably to and from our destination.

It's a little refreshing (to me, anyway) that “high performance” is not a factor here.

I'll need to assess and tend to things like tires, brakes, cooling system, charging system, and fuel system.

I also want to have a way to bring canoes along with us. That means, ideally, a trailer hitch will be added. It would be really cool to haul one on a roof rack (and I have a cool roof rack, thanks to GRM member FoxTrapper). However, we're a family of 4 and need to bring along 2 canoes. The trailer hauls 2+ canoes, so I really need to try to get a hitch on this thing. I figure a Craigslist brand hitch that is wide enough and a bit of backyard fabrication should do the trick. We'll see.

It has some aftermarket seatbelts in the front but I don't see any in the rear. That's something that I'll need to address.

More items will be added to the list, for sure...but that's a good start, I think.

Wheels and Tires.

The 14” steel wheels have tires of unknown vintage. They are radials, at least...and I don't think they're probably super old. But I don't want to trust them for highway travel of any distance. So I'll be thinking of options for wheels and tires. My first thought is that these wheels might look pretty good on the Buick. 

These wheels were on my '78 Malibu when I bought it (and still are, as I post this). Neat-enough wheels but they don't strike me as fitting the style of the Malibu. They do seem a bit Buick-like to me (reminiscent of Grand Nationals and such). I would have to come up with some tires for them.

Nice car. Obligatory: $500 car my ass!

Seriously, with scrap way down again suddenly these cheap barn finds are popping back up. This looks like a decent ride that has a lot of life left with a few cosmetics tended to and the mechanical sorted out. I love folks bringing old unloved hulks like this back to life. I'd DD that.

You are right. I didn't pay $500 for it

Not sure if you figured it out yet, but that 2-speed transmission would be the Super Turbine 300. Not related to a Powerglide in any way, shape or manner. From '64-'67 these were the Buick and Olds transmission. Some even came with super cool switch-pitch torque converters.

I approve 100% of this project! My first car was a 1964 Skylark 2-door hardtop. I loved that thing. If I was ever going to buy another, it would be a 1965. The full width tail lights are a lot better looking.

And +infinity to replacing that single circuit master cylinder with something more modern. My car used to have manual 4-wheel drums and a single circuit setup, and from time to time, the car would sail through intersections because there was no brake pressure at all.

And yes, that 2-speed is a Super Turbine 300. My car had one too. It's not a Powerglide.

An s10 brake booster and master worked with stock firewall bracket on the elky.

A friend of a friend had on of these sitting in a field. It was a parts car at one point. I got it, cut the body off, took 9 inches out the middle to mount it on a metric chassis and raced it. Wasn't fast, but it looked cool .

Love the Skylark. Worked on a few.

Yesterday Mrs. Sparks and I Fired up the Buick and drove it up the road and back. The transmission seemed ok. Brakes work as well as you'd expect 4 non-power-assisted drums to work (actually...maybe better than you'd expect but just right by my expectations).

The interior needs some serious drying out and cleaning up. Right now there is standing water in the passenger rear floorboard. I might try to tackle a bit of that this weekend.

I'll probably also see about starting to do some general preventive maintenance stuff like Oil change, fuel filter, grease some zerks, etc.

I started out the day by emptying out the trunk. A couple old bias ply tires, a full set of beat up hubcaps, the bumper jack, a steak knife, some pliers, and other detritus. Before: 

After:

 There is quite a bit of rust around the perimeter of the trunk floor. I moved on to removing the little bit of various junk from the interior. Match books, skoal cans, artificial tears, water bottle lids, etc. I have to say (after reading another thread here) I'm particularly thankful that I'm not working on a Corvette at this stage of the project. Also, I found 8 cents...so that's cool. I also found this oil change reminder cling somewhere on the floor: A quick glance at the odometer shows... That means the oil was last changed a few hundred miles and one decade ago. Interesting.

Then I got to some fun stuff...trying on different wheels. Here we see the aluminum turbine style wheel I mentioned earlier in the thread on the back and one of the stock hubcaps on the front.

 The hubcap is cool...but I don't think that's the direction I'll go. And here we see a 15"x7" Oldsmobile steel wheel on the front. I really like both of the wheels in this shot (and I realize the lighting sucks...oh well).

 This exercise also helped me visualize tire size. That's a 215/65/15 on the rear and I think that'll be a good size for the car and the cause. I also sold a vehicle that was in the barn today. One of the benefits of that is that there is a spot in the barn to park the Buick and let it dry out. The floors are soaked.

In reply to HappyJack:

That is really cool, HappyJack. So was it a 4 door that you cut down to fit? You're right...it looks great!