Seafoam65

My Riviera has an electric choke and I just get in it and drive. I don't warm it up even 10 seconds....no problems in Winter or Summer. If your car is stalling, the electric choke is not the reason...they work fine.

These hangers are great news! I have a sense that the interest in early Rivieras may be starting to increase, and hopefully more parts will be coming down the pike. There are a lot more of these cars that could be restored if parts were available and if values of these cars would increase a little more. Hemmings Motor News has apparently jumped on the bandwagon as early Riviera's have been in every issue as of late. One thing for sure, early Riviera's are a breath of fresh air at any car event. After you have seen 10 million shoebox Chevies, 20 million 69 Camaro's and 15 million 70 Chevelle's, they start to get boring.

That 63 white interior is gorgeous......there is nothing custom you could put in the car that would look better than the stock black and white!

By horseshoes, are you guys referring to the moldings on the rear quarter panel scoops? I'm a newbie and don't know all the Rivy lingo yet. I guess I need to buy a Riviera dictionary!

Agreed....light duty clutches are for non A/C Minnesota cars.

Wow, awesome pics I had never seen before....thank you so much for posting!

My car is not concours as it has never been restored, but it is a totally original unmolested car with all it's original parts so I would rather have dented originals on it than something that isn't factory, and I can't just remove them because the paint is damaged underneath them. I would describe my car as the way a well cared for Riv would have looked in 1970. Extremely clean with a little patina and of course an undercarriage like a five year old car and an engine compartment like a five year old car. The lacquer exterior repaint that was done 40 years ago looks a lot like the original paint would have looked in 1969....not too shiny and a little grainy, with a few small touched up chips here and there. Some people when they see the car ask if it is the original paint. It's not that my door edge guards look horrible, it's just that all the other metal trim pieces on the car are perfect, so the door edge guards kind of slap you upside the head when you see them because they are the worst thing about the car exterior wise. Being the perfectionist that I am, I'm sure that someday I will put a show paint job on it in the same original color but honestly it really looks too nice to restore and I don't want to be paranoid about getting a rock chip on the highway like I am about my other cars which are 100 point restos. I don't want to trailer this car to out of town car events like I do with my other old cars....I bought this one to drive, but I do want to fix the obvious simple flaws that it has eventually. Actually if I wanted to trailer it, I'd have to buy a new enclosed trailer as the Riv is too wide to fit in my enclosed trailer without worrying about clearing the door closing cables on the rear door. One other point, I really don't want to leave off the door edge guards because they are on my original window sticker. My car is missing the 4 note horns that appear on my window sticker and I asked the guy who owned the car for 45 years why they were not on the car. The reason why they are missing was kind of interesting. The car was special ordered with the horns, and when the car came in, the transport driver backed it off the truck and into a light pole in the parking lot, ruining the rear bumper and dinging the right rear quarter panel. The guy who ordered the car refused to take it because it wasn't going to have all original paint after it was repaired, so he bought a Riv off their lot and had them take the horns off the car to put on his new car which didn't have that option. My car's first owner who owned it till 1967 was the front end guy at the dealership, who bought it at a big discount due to the body repair that was done. The guy who owned the car from 1967 till 2012 was a make -ready guy at the selling dealer. I hope that someday I can find a set of four note horns for the car as they are on the window sticker. The only thing I have now of that option is the holes in the hood for the mounting brackets.

As correct and stock as my car is, vinyl door edge guards would stick out like a sore thumb. As for worrying about dinging a nice door edge guard I would absolutely never throw a car door open against another car or anything else, so once I find some I'll be good to go.

If it only floods and puts out black smoke when the engine is first started, the choke pulloff is not opening the choke enough when it starts. Your AFB has an internal pulloff piston inside the chokebox that pulls back in it's bore from engine vacuum. Most likely the vacuum port for the choke pulloff piston is clogged with carbon from the heat rise choke and the piston has no vacuum to pull the choke open. On the fast idle, you need to turn up the screw on the fast idle cam so it will have a fast idle.....very simple adjustment. When the engine is fully warmed up, you can adjust the two idle mixture screws on the baseplate in the front of the carb. Screw them in one at a time till the engine starts to lean out and run rough, then back the screw out till it smooths out, but no further after it idles it's best.

That's a nice looking Riviera! Have a Bud Light on me!

Those are not 65 Riviera door edge guards......they might be 1966-67 door edge guards. Thanks for trying though....keep those cards and letters coming folks!

If you are concerned about appearances at shows, leave the choke heat tube on but install a plug in the end of it to block flow.

This is my 2 cents worth from the viewpoint of being in the car repair business since 1975. The choke that uses a hot air tube coming off the exhaust manifold was an engineering faux pas and is nothing but trouble to maintain. If it was my car I would remove the hot air choke tube, leave the ports in your intake clogged and install an electric choke kit on the carburetor. One thing to keep in mind is that when they put exhaust ports under the carb back in the 60's people were not running alcohol laced fuel which has a different vaporization rate. GM realized it was a bad design and quit cooking the carb with exhaust in 1968. I've got an electric choke on my Riviera that was installed by the original owner and I was thrilled to discover that had already been done to my car. As for the heat riser valve, I would do away with it completely. I haven't had one on my GTO since 1974 and it runs great cold. Since you live in Tampa ,Florida, the last thing you need on your car is a heat riser that causes problems. It might make sense to have one in Fargo, North Dakota but not Florida.

Rivieras are very rare in Texas at a car show......I see one in about 1 of every thirty shows I attend......very rarely are they anything other than 63's or 64's. I've never seen a 66-99 Riv at a car show in Texas and I've been going to shows almost every weekend for the last thirty years. When it comes to buying an early Riviera in Texas they are rarer still. More likely to see the Loch Ness Monster for sale at Pet Smart than seeing a nice early Riviera for sale around here.

Here is something you don't see very often.......a perfect 50 year old headliner! I don't believe the mint green material is available anymore.

These pics captured the first moments I saw my Riviera when it arrived on the truck from Las Vegas. Man was I excited! Also pictured is the very unusual original documentation the car came with including the original window sticker. The last picture which I first saw on the internet was the one that sold me the car sight unseen......the amazing perfect original package tray with no water damage. My dad's 65 that he bought new had a water damaged package tray by 1970. When I saw that pic I knew the car had never been used or sat out in the rain.

If you don't mind chopping on factory wiring, you can buy fusible links at the Auto supply with big eyelets built onto one end and you just cut off the ends of the big red wires going to the batt post on the left inner fender and splice a fuse link on the end of each wire with wire crimping pliers and a crimp connector. If you don't want to cut your original wires, you can find fuse links that are encased in plastic covers with an eyelet on each end and you can bolt one end of the link to the existing eyelets on each red wire and then put the other end of the links on the batt post on the horn relay. What you have to do to protect the car from an electrical fire is put fuse links on all the wires between the fuse box in the dash and the battery. Every circuit beyond the fuses in the dash is protected by it's existing fuse in the dash. The biggest fire hazard is the big red wire going to the alternator and ignition switch and headlight switch and fuse box(it branches out into four wires)

That is one gorgeous Riv.....If I owned that one you would only get it away from me by prying it from my cold dead fingers. Magnificent.

Ed, you are very perceptive. There is a large warehouse not far from JerryWorld where there are approximately 500 rust free Rivs stored at any given time. When the owners get ready to sell they drag them out then send them to the rust belt where people are craving rust free cars. Oddly enough they are never for sale in Texas or driven down here and you can't buy one down here. You have to go up north for the actual purchase. After looking in Texas for ten years I found mine up north!

ED, having been heavily involved in the GTO hobby for 43 years, I would be of the opinion that the ROA has the right idea in not going overboard with point judging. It would create a lot of arguments and hurt feelings at ROA national meets, and you would have to get a lot larger lot for trailer parking. I've owned an enclosed trailer for 25 years and own several trailer queens but my Riviera will not fit in my trailer and I have no intention of buying a larger one as I bought the Riviera to drive! If someone wants to have their Riviera point judged there are other venues where they can have that done. I've been driving the 65 to out of town shows and I find out quick I can have a lot more fun driving down the highway at 70 miles per hour in the Riv than sitting next to my GTO in a lawn chair!

those have been for sale for months with no takers.....they have some pretty bad dents in them here and there....they are in about the same shape as the ones I have on the car now......not horrible but not very nice. thanks for the tip though! I will continue to beat the bushes for a pair or a single that is very nice. NOS is my fantasy!

The circuit breaker that is attached to the horn relay on the left inner fender is there to feed the hideaway headlamp motor. The power to the headlamp switch is a large unfused red wire that also branches out and goes to the alternator and the ignition switch. The breaker for the headlamps is built into the headlight switch on 60's GM cars. If you look at the wiring diagram on a 65 Riviera you can see that if your alternator or ignition switch shorts out you are going to have a blazing fire. I am in the process of preparing to install a large fuse link at the bat post on the horn relay to feed these wires so that if I have a short in the ignition switch or alternator the car won't burn to the ground. GM didn't start installing fuse links on their wiring harnesses to protect from fires until the 1970's.

Supposedly the plastic teeth were used to cut down on engine noise. My belief is the engineers were playing a joke on the consumer, they were idiots or GM management made them do it as part of their planned obsolescence program. Back in the 70's I used to see them fail all the time in less than 100,000 miles. The worst part of the whole thing when they fail is you have to pull the pan and get the plastic bits out of your oil pump screen or risk ruining the engine from oil flow restriction.

Dave, you didn't mention how many miles are on the engine and whether the timing cover has ever been off before. I just went through all of this on my 65 with 56,000 original miles. When I bought the car it had it's original 50 year old water pump and fuel pump so I changed them both so I wouldn't have a breakdown out on the road. I had one water pump bolt break off flush in the hole of the timing cover and had a machine shop drill out the bolt and helicoil the hole. I didn't really care because I was removing the timing cover anyway to get rid of the aluminum upper gear with plastic teeth which likes to shuck off the teeth and fill your oil pump screen with plastic chunks and leave you stranded by the side of the road. My gear still looked good with no wear on the plastic teeth, but the chain was very loose on my engine. I installed new steel gears and a new chain, but the first timing chain I bought from OPGI was very loose right out of the box. I ordered a chain from another source and it went on very tight like it should. I bought the tight chain from Kanter in New Jersey. Three very important things about this job........make sure you tighten the harmonic balancer bolt to factory specs when you go back with it. If you don't the balancer will fly off on you and do all sorts of damage, possibly even damaging the crankshaft nose and definitely destroying the harmonic balancer. The spec is very high, as I recall something like 250 foot pounds. Just like a Pontiac v-8, the balancer is not a press fit and only the high torque on the bolt will hold it from coming off. Also be sure to replace the front seal while you have the cover off as it comes off from the inside of the cover, not the front. I converted my seal from rope to neoprene. Third, unless you want to replace the thermostat housing gasket ten times trying to stop a coolant leak, don't use a gasket....use "the right stuff" silicone form a gasket from permatex. If your timing cover has a lot of miles on it, it will be pitted to hell on the inner surfaces and you will need to replace it. My cover had some pitting but not bad enough to need replacing yet. While you have all of this apart, it would be a good time to have your alternator gone through as it is a PITA to remove it if you have a problem later. Hope this helps....Winston