BadgerRivFan Posted August 23, 2009 Share Posted August 23, 2009 Has anyone noticed this car on eBay?...Buick : Riviera:eBay Motors (item 170373163584 end time Aug-24-09 10:39:35 PDT)Anbody know about the "experimental" air bag that this car claims to have? If it's true, it sure appears that it would be a rare car. Curious if this is fact or fiction... :confused: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest pfloro Posted August 23, 2009 Share Posted August 23, 2009 (edited) I had 1975 sales brochures for full size Oldsmobiles & Buicks. GM did offer the ACRS (Air Cushion Restraint System) as optional equipment in that year...From Wikipedia (hopefully accurate!):*************Ford built an experimental fleet of cars with airbags in 1971, followed by General Motors in 1973 on Chevrolet vehicles. In 1974, GM made dual-stage twin front airbags optional in full-size Buick, Cadillac and Oldsmobile models and called them the "Air Cushion Restraint System". The early fleet of experimental GM vehicles equipped with airbags experienced seven fatalities, one of which was later suspected to have been caused by the airbag.*************I remember reading that the early GM systems used compressed nitrogen which was stored in tanks somewhere in the car.Don't you just love the interior color & seat fabric in that '75 Buick Electra! It brings back fond memories...PaulPS: Here is a fun fact: In 1972 Chrysler offered, as an option, something called Sure Brake in the Imperial... I read about it in a shop manual.It was an early ABS system which operated independently on each front wheel & together on the rear wheels. It had these big modulator tanks tucked up under the front fenders. I believe Ford had a system which operated only on the rear wheels a bit earlier on... IMHO, it's fascinating to learn about the innovations which occurred over the decades... Edited August 23, 2009 by pfloro (see edit history) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest 75RivGS Posted August 23, 2009 Share Posted August 23, 2009 Will upload some scans for you later about ACRS. A search on ACRS will find some threads on this board about it Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BadgerRivFan Posted August 23, 2009 Author Share Posted August 23, 2009 Cool! I didn't know that the ACRS even existed. I may be a little leery about driving around in my collector Riviera knowing that the thing that makes my car the most unique could kill me! Yikes!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CTX-SLPR Posted August 23, 2009 Share Posted August 23, 2009 Didn't GM put ABS on some '67 Rivieras and Tornados? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rick60 Posted August 24, 2009 Share Posted August 24, 2009 In the summer of 1977 I was working at an Olds dealer as a mechanic. I remember seeing a 1974 Toronado with a factory airbag. It was the first time I had seen a huge horn pad. Now when I see an eighties car without air bags those steering wheels look unusual. There was also a network news magazine show that did a story about airbag equipped cars. This was before they were common on production cars. The show told stories of people whose lives were saved by the airbags. The people had purchased their cars used and were unaware that the car had airbags. It was an effort to force the government to mandate airbags. I guess it worked. And so do the airbags! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tim63riv Posted August 25, 2009 Share Posted August 25, 2009 Hi,I worked at Olds and Cadillac dealers in the 70's and 80's and saw a few cars equpped with air bags from the mid 70's. Stanley Hubbard, a wealthy TV and Radio station owner had a Cadillac Fleetwood completely rebuilt in the early 80's because the Fleetwood had air bags and the early 80's Cadillac's did not.I have no confirmation about what inflated the bags, but I never remember seeing any nitrogen tanks under the dashes, and I would suspect that plumbing it to a steering wheel mounted air bag would be expensive and problematic, too. Probably worked like a modern one, a chemical ignited electrically that gives off nitrogen rapidly when it burns and deploys the bag. I was at the GM tech center in Warren MI about 10 years ago and in one of the labs they had a recently deployed air bag from a 74 Oldsmobile that had deployed in a crash more than 20 years and 200,000 miles after it left the factory. There was a "Thank you" note attached to the bag!Tim Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Riviera66 Posted September 4, 2009 Share Posted September 4, 2009 I've previously covered some of this discussion in previous "Options Not Included" articles in the Riview.ACRS is quite rare... only 329 '74 Rivieras had it... not experimental...just another option you could get if you spent the money. Obviously not popular.A separate service manual was issued in '74 and '75 for the system. There was a tank mounted along the lower side of the passenger dash that held the inflator gas under high pressure. It is about the size of a small fire extinguisher... 10 1970 Rivieras had ABS brakes on the rear wheels. It was not regularly offered as an option... they may have all been destroyed by the factory... no one knows. Oldsmobile, on the other hand, offered rear wheel ABS as a routine option (it is this system that's found on Silver Arrow III by the way). But again... not popular at all... only a very low percentage was sold with ABS back in the '70s. Darwin Falk1966-70 ROA Technical AdvisorROA#2077 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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