Seafoam65

Do you have a new GM relay or some aftermarket relay? Get a test light and check to see if the wiring checks out while unplugged from the relay. Blue wire should be hot with headlights turned on. Red wire should be hot all the time. The black and brown wires should be neither hot nor ground since you say there is no headlamp motor installed on the car so it isn't plugged in. Do these tests and report your findings. Also, is the relay firmly bolted to the inner fender? It get's it's ground from the inner fender, if it isn't bolted down, strange things could happen with the circuit.

The light blue wire is a hot wire that gets hot when the headlights are turned on. It goes straight from the headlamp switch to the relay. When the lights are turned on and the blue wire is hot, the relay clicks and connects the red wire which has a constant 12 volts to the brown wire, which is the open command wire that goes to the headlamp motor. When the lights are off, the blue wire is dead and the relay then connects the 12 volt red wire to the black wire, which is the close command wire to the headlamp motor. If your car also has the auxiliary relay which was added on the later build cars, that relay has a black/orange stripe wire that is hot only when the ignition key is in the run position. When the black/orange wire is hot, the relay clicks and connects the black/white close command wire leaving the main relay to the black wire on the auxiliary relay, which then sends the 12 volts on to the headlamp motor commanding it to close the visors. The purpose of this added relay was to make it impossible for the headlamp motor to continue trying to run if the key is off, keeping the battery from running down if the close position limiter switch on the motor is out of adjustment, the linkage is out of adjustment or the limiter switch for close position is bad. If your car has the auxiliary relay and it checks to be bad, please refer to my other post on how to convert a main relay, which is still available for purchase to act as an auxiliary relay, which is no longer available anywhere. With this setup you would have two identical relays mounted on your inner fender. It sounds like you have a bad relay from your description. You can buy them from your local GM dealer. The part number is 1365166. If your car has the auxiliary relay as well, then get two of the 1365166 relays and do the five minute wiring conversion outlined in my post from two weeks ago , so you can use another main relay as your auxiliary relay.

Bill, in case you didn't know, Legendary Auto interiors reproduces the factory Buick floor mats in 17 different colors, if you'd like to get some blue ones that are correct. The driver's mat is made to fit a Skylark but there is an indentation on the back of the mat that shows where to put a notch in it to go around the gas pedal and fit the Riviera floorboard. Here are my Legendary mats in dark green........

Like RivnNut says I also think the 760R15 would be the closest to original I could come. And I don't mind whitewalls, just can't decide on regular radials or these bias look radials. Is there anyone who tried these? /J Nobody has tried these on their Riviera because they only became available about a month ago, but common sense would dictate being a radial they should handle very nicely while looking correct. If I wasn't wanting to run redline tires, I'd have a set of these bias ply appearing radials on my car. You are officially declared the Guinea pig! Put a set of these on your car and report back with the results! If you decide you don't like them don't worry..... I'll buy them from you for half price! LOL!

Tom is right......oversize tires were an option in 65 on the Lesabre and Wildcat but not the Riviera.

I agree on the handling and ride improvement with the radials.....I used to drive my dad's 65 Riviera when it was two years old with factory bias plies and it was a handful to keep in one lane at 70 m.p.h. My 65 riviera handles and drives like a 2014 model car at highway speeds with the diamondback radials. It holds the road like it is glued down.

Ed, you are the man! According to that chart the 7.60-15 should look good! I love Wolfgang's triple whitewall tires, but I assume they are radials from Diamondback tires and would be a point deduction of 1 point per tire for radials at the BCA meet. Right?

The original size tires on the 65 were 8.45-15. There was an option for an even bigger tire than that. The 7.60-15 would be too small for your Riviera, although they would fit the car I suspect they would look funny. The closest tire you can buy to the the original size is a 225-75-15 Radial. That's what I run on my car. I assume you are looking for a correct tire to avoid a deduction at the BCA point judged show? Nobody makes a thin whitewall 8.45-15 tire at the present time. It sure would be nice if Coker would come out with one, with the correct triple stripe whitewall of course. I already know I'm going to get hammered at the BCA show this summer for my redline radials! My personal feeling is that since you can't buy a tire for a 65 Riviera that is correct, they shouldn't deduct points for a whitewall 225-75-15 radial on these cars.

When my Dad ordered his 65 Riviera in July 1964, the salesman gave us a Buick brochure which I still have that shows the 65 Gran Sport with the small Gran Sport emblems on the fenders. The tooling was completed on these emblems before any of the 65's ever went into production. I say BS on that lady's story.

Unfortunately, the prevailing thought among restoration parts houses is that not enough of these cars exist in restorable condition to be able to manufacture sheet metal and recoup the tooling through sales of the completed parts. There are a lot of rusty Rivieras out there that could be restored if sheet metal was available. To me, this fact makes having a nice one of these cars extremely gratifying. When you see one of these cars, you know you are looking at original sheet metal, not some car resurrected with Chinese parts. I was hoping when OPGI got involved that many parts like sheet metal would be forthcoming, but all they have done so far is buy already existing parts that someone else has bothered to reproduce and mark them up further. This has been a real disappointment, because they have the money and resources to make repro sheet metal happen for these cars. They make so many parts for Chevelles that you can build your own car if you have a cowl lying around. What a shame!

Welcome! I love your screen name......wish I had thought of that one myself. good luck with getting it in shape and we'll try to help when we can......Winston

thanks, John.....I'm keeping my fingers crossed!

To clarify.....the three wires on the door jamb switches ground different lights on the interior. One of the three wires just grounds the sail panel lights as I recall. When these switches go bad, you can lose just the sail panel lights while the other courtesy lights may work. Usually when the door jamb switch is your problem, you can tell because when you open the door on the opposite side of the car, the lights come on. It is possible that both of your door jamb switches are bad on the same terminal, killing the sail panel lights even though they are getting power from the fuse box. The easy way to tell if the door jamb switch in question is bad is to pop it out of the door jamb and unplug the three wires going to it and holding them in your fingers touch the ends of all three to the metal in the door jamb. All the courtesy lights will come on when you do this if everything else is OK on the circuit. You can have these 3 wire switches repaired, but what I did is buy the new ones for sale on evil bay that have only two spades instead of three, but are identical in all other respects. I then spliced one of the three wires to another wire making only two wiring connections to the switch and plugged them in.....works great, and the two wire switches are much less trouble prone than the 3 wire ones, plus you have brand new GM switches, not rebuilt. One other thought......If the door jamb switches pass the test, and you have power on both sides of all the fuse holders, you may have a car that fell victim to mice who got inside the car and started chewing on the wiring harnesses. They love to climb into dark inaccessible areas of cars and chew the wires in two. We see this every winter in my car repair shop about every two weeks. They go into the car to get away from the cold. This is usually a problem on cars left parked outside near wooded areas.

When I did a frame off on my 1979 Trans Am, the brown fiberglass A/C box didn't look very good for a show car, so I took the box down to my local paint supplier and using their paint analyzing scanner on the inside of the box where it wasn't weathered, they mixed me up just the right tint of brown paint and I put a light coat over the outside of the box and it looks great. Don't paint the box black!

Matt, you need to buy a test light at your local auto supply(an ice pick with a light bulb in the handle and a ground wire with alligator clip coming out of the top of the handle that you can ground, then probe with the ice pick end for power) With your new test light, probe the fuse holders in the dash to the left of the column on both sides. a lot of times even though the fuse looks OK, it is blown on the end where you can't see the break, and often times on 60's cars the fuse holders get enough rust on the metal that even a good fuse can't make a connection to the fuse holder. It sounds to me like you have power feed issues at the fuse box holders. Probe the fuse holders on each side for power that lights your test light not just the ends of the fuses. Do this and report back to me with your results.

Awesome thread......keep the pics coming!

I am curious about the rust on the side of the C pillar on the roof. Was this a vinyl top car?

The two sail panel lights are on a different fuse from the other courtesy lights. The fuse in question powers up the two sail panel lamps and the trunk lamp. When I bought my car my sail panel lights were out and it turned out to be that someone had pinched the trunk lamp wire under the trunk lid latch striker and blown the fuse. If both of your sail panel lights are out, it is probably 95 percent probability that you have a blown fuse.

Thanks for the pics....looks like a nice project....keep the pics coming and we'll watch your progress.

Thanks for getting the word out.......Winston

I just finished getting my hideaway headlights working like they are supposed to and thought I would pass on a few tips since I never could find any good info on this while reviewing previous forum posts. When I bought my car, the auxiliary relay had gone bad and the previous owner not knowing how to convert the wiring in order to use an obtainable relay had put toggle switches on the system. Not long after I bought the car I burned up the motor when I forgot to flip the toggles after arriving from a cruise night after dark. (I later determined that my original motor had a bad limiter switch for the closed position, which made the motor want to run forever when the lamps were turned off.) In a previous post last week I covered how to convert your headlamp wiring in order to use a control relay as the auxiliary relay. This post will cover swapping out the headlight motor with a rebuilt one from evil bay and getting it all adjusted so the doors close properly when the car is not apart for a restoration, but all put together. First step is to remove the three bolts holding on the front license plate bracket and remove it from the car. Next gently pry off the rubber water splash shield from the bumper filler it is clipped to and remove it. Next, pop off the two linkage arms where they snap onto the motor pivot(This is very easy, you can use your bare hands, no tools required) and then using bailing wire, pull both of them up as high as you can and wire them to the hood latch so they can't fall down and get in the way. THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT AS IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO REMOVE THE MOTOR WITH THE LINKAGES HANGING DOWN! Next, remove the nut from the right side stud on the side of the motor and loosen the nut on the other end of the bracket that is bolted to the lower bumper brace so the side support bracket can be swiveled off of the stud. It is not necessary to remove this bracket, just loosen the nut and pivot it off the stud and out of the way. Next unplug the motor wiring and pull the entire harness out of the hole that was behind the license plate bracket, being careful to note where the metal clip was clipped that holds the wiring harness to the lower bumper brace so you can clip it back in the same place on the new motor. Now remove the two lower bolts holding the motor bracket to the bottom of the radiator support. Here is where it gets tricky. It will seem to you that there is no way there is room to get that motor assembly out of that tiny space above the lower bumper behind where the license plate bracket goes, but you can in fact remove it through that hole. The main thng you have to be careful of is keeping the big motor bracket away from the fins on your A/C condenser while maneuvering it out. First pull it up till the lower bracket clears the radiator support, then carefully roll the motor over to where the ears of the bracket are pointed straight down instead of up, and pull it out of the hole, top of the motor first. It is literally a press fit when doing this, there isn't a 32nd of an inch extra clearance to get the motor out, but you can get it out, just take your time and don't let the motor hit the A/C condenser when rolling it over to get it in the right position for removal. After you get it out,check to make sure that the headlight linkages and visors move smoothly with no binding. After you have verified the linkages are working fine with no binding, wire up the linkage arms again so they are out of the way and install the new motor in reverse order. You will note that the lower bracket bolts through long slots on the radiator support. You will need to slide the motor back and forth till both headlight visors are the same distance from closing.(You need to install the motor with the pivot arm in the half-way closed position) You can do this by grounding the motor on your work bench and applying power to one of the wires to get it in the halfway position. As you slide the motor back and forth on these slots you will note that moving it either way will open one headlight visor more while closing the other side more. Slide the motor on the slots with the two bolts started but not tight and when you find the spot where both visors are the same distance from closing, cinch down the bolts. You probably will find that you will need to play with this adjustment more than once, so for now leave the side support bracket off till you get this adjustment right. After all the bolts and nuts securing the motor are tight, it is time to plug in the motor and check it for operation. First turn on the lights and make sure the visors open. Next turn on the ignition switch and turn off the lights to make the visors close. If they don't close all the way like mine did, turn the lights back on to open the visors and then with the key off turn off the lights, leaving the visors open. Loosen the adjustment bolt on the top of the linkage arm where it attaches to the motor on the side you are adjusting and grab the visor that wouldn't close all the way and move the visor towards the closed position a little and then retighten the linkage adjustment bolt and retry it. You want to adjust each link to where it just does close the visor all the way and no more than necessary to get it to close all the way. When you think you have the arms adjusted right, it is time to check to make sure the limiter switches are cutting power to the motor in both the open all the way and closed all the way positions. To do this, take a test light with a sharp point on it and right up under the edge of the tape where the tape wrap ends at the top of the radiator support, poke a hole in each wire with the pick of the test light, and with the key on and the headlamps closed, verify that only the black wire lights your test light and not the brown one. Also verify that the visors only close when the ignition key is on. This verifies a functioning auxiliary relay. If the brown is lit also, the limiter switch is not turning off power to the motor, which means you have the visors adjusted too tight. If this is the case, try to pry open each visor a little, and loosen up the linkage adjustment on the side that feels the tightest.Keep adjusting the visors till you get only the black wire showing power when the visors are closed. Once you have verified that the limiter switch is working for closed, turn on the lights and verify that only the brown wire is hot and not the black wire. If it is you will need to loosen the screws on the front limiter switch and raise it up a little till only the brown wire is hot with the lights on. Be careful when tightening the limiter switch adjustment nuts as over tightening will crack the switches. After verifying limiter switch operation, check all bolts for tightness, reinstall the rubber water shield on top of the motor and reinstall your front license bracket and you are done!

1965 models had two keys, one that fit the doors and ignition and another for the trunk and glove box.

That looks awesome!

I'd love to see how bad one of those Overhaulin cars looks 9 months after it is done when all the primer coats that never had time to cure get through shrinking and swelling out the sanding scratches, and all the flat black paint under the hood that was put on over dirt and grease starts flaking off. Sorry Chip Foose, you can't restore a car in 7 days....can't be done. I met Chip Foose at a car show a few years ago, and I have a pic of him sitting in my GTO. I wanted to ask him how crappy his overhaulin cars looked a few months later but didn't have the nerve!

This is the point I was making, you can make bored out max cube engines run at normal temp, but it takes a special cooling system, bigger radiator, electric fans, etc. a lot of times the stock system just can't handle it.