deekster_caddy's Riv pictures

Looks awesome Derek! I love those Borbets on a Riv. Should find myself a set as well.

Any pictures in the sunlight yet.
The one's in the shop didn't show the silver very well, except for the pic in the spray booth.
The shop lights made it look almost white color.

A bunch:

Some more:

looks sweet!
gotta love those fall colors, and all those fallen leaves.
don't get that here.

Looks very good Derek. Nice job.
I need to take the body shop classes and save some money on our cars as well as learning some new tricks. Access to the paint booth alone is worth it.
I noticed the flat black paint on the trim around your sunroof.
Mine is peeling off the same way. Do you have a plan for that and maybe you could share what your going to do and how.

I haven't mad any plan for the sunroof trim yet. It's very low on my list...

Thanks everyone for the compliments!

Looks great , I am sure you are pleased with your choice of colour, and your finish is quite nice, great job Derek!

Is that your "man cave" in front of the car?

Bert

ibmoses wrote:

Is that your "man cave" in front of the car?

Bert

indeed, I suppose it is. It's not worthy of inside pics though... My '73 LeSabre resides there and I have 455 parts scattered all around right now.

Looks great. It's even better knowing you took a course and did it yourself.

Well, it's time for an update. Many many years later I must say a permanent goodbye and RIP to my beloved '98. I see that many of my photo links are broken, so here are a few to serve as reminders.

1) Black, with the Borbet wheels I used to have...


2) After I painted the roof in Galaxy Mist silver and repainted the right rear and trunk:


In my opinion this photo was taken in it's prime. I never did get to finish painting the rest of the car's black.

Many, many years and two owners later, it's time to say goodbye and RIP to "my" '98. When I picked up my Yukon, I ended up selling the Riv to my brother. My brother put another 100K miles on it, but then rust started taking over again.

In the meantime I got my '73 Buick running well and sold off my Yukon - to my father, who decided he needed to abandon his house and live in a travel trailer, and needed something to pull it with. So now I drive the Volt, LeSabre and MG...

After my bro put a bajillion miles on the Riv (and rarely even washed it, to my disappointment) we decided that the subframe was too far gone and it was time to retire it. There were all sorts of strange cracking noises coming from underneath on corners, the sway bar mounts had torn out of the subframe, brake lines were rotting through and rust was coming back behind the passenger side door where I had repaired it years ago (kicking off the black and silver paint job seen above). So he got another car and we were preparing to part out the '98.

While we were delaying the '98 partout, my dad crashed my old Yukon down in Florida. Pretty bad, totaled the truck and 4 other cars going through an intersection. At the time we questioned his driving, but he seemed aware of the whole incident and thought the brakes had failed on the truck. Fortunately nobody was hurt. While he was in the hospital from the wreck they discovered his prostate cancer... So he's broke and needs a car. We started considering the Riv sitting next to my garage and took a more serious look at what was wrong with it.

Turns out two of the rear subframe mounts were completely shot - one on the right rear had the bolt snap off when we tried to replace it, one on the left rear the sheetmetal around the nut was all cracked and broken. We replaced the subframe mounts that we could, put in new struts, shocks and brakes, and the car rode beautifully! We sent the Riv down to Florida where it could putter around waiting for a peaceful retirement. (we removed the supercharger belt permanently to reduce the likelihood of further damage to the subframe or floor).

Fast forward to now...  Dad has been through Chemo treatments and responded well, moved up here to live near us in MA and have access to some great medical care which is working out well for him. But he's tired. Yesterday he dozed off while driving my Riv home from a job interview (!) and jumped over a couple of driveway embankments, went through about 200 ft of woods, grazed off a tree, then came to a stop back in the road. Amazingly nobody was hurt. After he got out of the hospital I grabbed my car trailer and went down to the towing company that had the car. After further inspection...  I decided not to bring it home even to part out. Once again the Riv shows it's toughness, doing it's job and protecting it's passengers.

A pic of it's demise:


And all of my Riv pictures on Flickr, where hopefully they stay for a while:
https://flic.kr/s/aHsjVRXCc4

So there's the update, and my final goodbye and RIP to what was once my pride and joy.

The pictures tell a story.
The Riv sure served your family well.
RIP alright, it earned it!

Jbird

RIP

It went out with a bang RIP

turtleman wrote:

It went out with a bang RIP

It sure did. That bang was the airbags going off! At least it protected the passengers like it was supposed to.

dang, deek. Glad everyone was kept safe.

*sigh* Glad he's ok, man. RIP Riv

Ouch.

Glad no one was hurt.

Beastly car.

Albertj