A Buick wagon on a road course? You bet! The AirWagon not only looks great, it also drives, handles, and stops better than ever thanks to air springs, disc brakes, and other choice components.
This is where everyone starts: decades worth of wear, tear, grease, and grunge. As you can see, a ShockWave unit was already fitted to the stock suspension. It was such a no-brainer that it was in there before we could even grab a photo. Now all we have to do is tear it apart, clean it, replace the bushings and balljoints, and install the disc brakes. Easy? Somewhat. Quick? Well…
Here’s another preview of the cleaning marathon ahead. This is an area where you can save serious time and money, provided the stock stuff works and you’re not worried about how the bottom of the car looks. We opted to plow ahead with the cleaning, rebuilding, and upgrading.
This is where planning and experience saved time. We knew we were going through the entire car, so we blew it all apart in order to get to everything. When you do it this way, you have to keep close track of how things come apart and where they are stored. Getting things back together months later can be tricky, so organize and label everything, and take reference photos.
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Suspended Animation
Part 2: Project AirWagon Gets ’Bags, Brakes, and a Spiffy Underbelly
By Bret Voelkel
When you get right down to it, I’m a hi-tech kind of guy. Slick paint, smooth trim, leather interior, a futuristic-looking engine bay; that’s the kind of stuff that gets me to stop and take a longer look at a car. The chassis? Well, I like slick and zoomy there too—on someone else’s car! I am far too lazy to clean a polished suspension and undercarriage, and simply unwilling to avoid driving a car for fear of getting it dirty.
To that end I decided to utilize as many OEM suspension components as possible on the AirWagon ’62 Buick project, upgrade parts as needed, and use paint and undercoating as the surface treatment to save time, expense, and hassle.
For obvious reasons, we planned on installing an air suspension. That meant that we first we had to build one. Here at Air Ride Technologies, that’s pretty straightforward stuff: ShockWaves up front, CoolRide in the rear, and a four-way compressor kit—all the good stuff. Now that we’ve built a system, though, we realize that it’s really a no-brainer for a customer to install. Best of all, the AirWagon gets low, rides great, and handles like a new car.
The most serious deficiency with the stock suspension was the brakes. Drum brakes in 1962 were only average even for their time. By today’s standards, they’re outright dangerous. A call to our friends at Stainless Steel Brakes Corporation (SSBC) solved that problem. The company didn’t make a model-specific kit for that car, but was able to find a combination of existing components that worked out well. Pure Choice Motorsports was our one-stop source for the stainless lines and fittings to complete the brake system.
Like most GM X-fram cars, the Buick’s exhaust needed serious attention. We called Kanter Auto Products to secure a stainless dual exhaust system. Kanter also supplied the rebuild kit for the suspension, which included bushings, tie-rod ends, ball joints, and all of the stuff the guy at AutoZone said didn’t exist!
The rest of the undercarriage was mostly a matter of cleaning and painting the existing components and plumbing the air, fuel, transmission, and brake lines. We took extra pains to make sure everything was securely fastened out of harm’s way. I’ve spent too much time trying to fix problems on the road to shortcut this area. Spend the time, spend the money, go to the extra trouble. I assure you it is easier working in your garage than in some parking lot in BFE with no tools, lights, or help.
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