Nathan's 1981 Buick Regal

This Buick Regal came to us initially for a little bit of fabrication and a tune, but unfortunately we found quite a few issues the customer didn't know about once we were able to do a deep inspection. Our work on this Regal consisted of:

• Fabricating the charge piping, intercooler mounts, radiator fan shroud, and cooler pipes
• Rewiring some of the vehicle
• A full suspension setup and alignment
• install of an FTI stage 4 TH400 with transbrake
• install of a forged 5.3 engine
• a completely fresh custom dyne-tune by Eric 

 

1987 Iroc Camaro

The engine bay of Chad's 1987 Iroc Camaro is full of our custom work, fabrication, and attention to detail. We built a set of our custom stainless coolant pipes from FabLab, along with a custom cold air intake specifically fit to the third gen Camaro chassis with an LS swap. 

1967 Pontiac Firebird

A beautiful underside shot of Ricky's 1967 Pontiac Firebird that we rebuilt from the engine to the rear axle. We fabricated complete oval exhaust at FabLab to gain the most ground clearance as possible on this low hanging car.

1972 International Travelall 1210 

This build is one of the first that Big D and Zroc built together the year before Empire Tech moved out of a two bay garage and into the large facility they have worked out of for the last four years. The owner of this International Travelall came to us with a goal of having a sweet sounding cruiser with some power and modern day reliability. He had bought an L76/6L80 dropout from a Caprice PPV and we dug right in to mating the modern drivetrain to the Travelall. 

We built some custom frame inserts and pedestals to mate up to the engine side mounts that were welded in. 

The little L76 and 6L80 feel right at home in the massive engine bay of the International. Keep in mind that we built this in a small two bay shop with the vehicle outside for the most part since it took up most of the shop. 

We went to Texas Speed for all of the upgrades and parts we needed for the L76 to give it a bit more power, chop, and reliability. We went with a stage 2 blower cam, head studs, and other supporting mods since the original plan was to build a Procharger kit for this as well. 

Engine back together with the new oil pump, cam, gaskets, head studs, head gaskets, valve seals, and valve springs. 

The next major task on this build was the front axle swap. Our customer was adamant on getting rid of the front drum brakes that International equipped these vehicles with from the factory. Unfortunately this axle being a ball and socket style, as well as an 8 lug, finding a disc brake kit was unheard of. Instead, we came up with putting square-body Chevy leaf springs up front with custom leaf mounts and using a 10 bolt that had OEM disc brakes. This took a bit of work to make it all function together properly, but we got everything ironed out. 

We decided to get all of the crustiness off of the axle that our customer found at the bottom of the ocean, so we got it sandblasted and powder coated. At this time we didn't do powder coating in-house, but these days we have the whole powder coating operation setup right at the shop. 

It's hard to beat Yukon, Motive, and Eaton when it comes to building a differential. We don't reuse old differential parts when we do axle assemblies, it's better to start fresh and get brand new parts for a build like this. 

Here's a good picture of the whole squarebody suspension and axle under the Travelall. Of course we had to run the Bilsteins for premium ride quality and comfort. 

Now that it's a roller again, we focused our attention onto the plumbing and wiring side of things to get some fire out of the beast. We went with a BTR Equalizer intake due to hood clearance. Our preferred fuel pressure regulators are Aeromotive and we love to use the black braided AN hose where applicable. 

 

The fuel tank conversion for EFI was another tricky aspect of this build because International had either a front passenger side saddle tank, or a rear side mount tank. We ended up sumping the stock rear tank, cleaning and coating the inside of it, and modifying the floor to accept the sump. 

From that sumped tank we fed a Holley 12-1800 Dominator fuel pump. We wanted room to grow and we trust the Holley pumps for vehicles that will be driven a lot. 

At this point with the suspension, brakes, and plumbing done, we had to tackle the wiring. Since we were provided with that complete Caprice drop out, we made the harness a standalone setup and reworked it to be cut down from all unnecessary functions. 

There was a lot of in and out with a long project like this between all of the regular maintenance work we did. 

Here are some brackets made to adapt the DBW pedal to the firewall's stock mounting location and the transfercase shifter mount. There's substantially less room in the tunnel with that 6l80. 

Next on the list was to get a fully stainless steel exhaust built. Our good friend Austin came all the way from Pittsburgh, PA to weld with us for a few days. The headers we used on this are actually some shorties for a 5th gen Camaro. From there we just went with 2.5" straight back to a chambered muffler on each side. This exhaust sounds so good paired with that Texas Speed cam, it's the perfect aggressiveness.

From there, we worked with Austin to build a coolant overflow can/catch can. Since we relocated the battery to the passenger side frame rail, we built this tank to go where the battery once was in the engine bay. 

At this point while we were fabbing these pieces on the Travelall, we had actually moved almost all of our tools out of the old two bay shop into our new 8000SQ/FT building. As soon as we finished the fab work at the old shop, we had the Travelall hauled to the new facility where we could finish up the smaller things that were required to finish it up. 

Parked in its new spot until it can drive out of there. Hanging out with its buddy, the 72 C20 (with an earlier grill) that's next up on the chopping block. At this point, there were only things like shift linkage, rear brakes, some plumbing, and a center driveshaft to finish up before we could tune it and wrap this build up. 

It took some deep digging of catalogs to find the pieces to make that center driveshaft for the divorced transfercase to 6L80. I think it ended up being 7" from u-joint centerline to centerline. 

At this point we had buttoned everything up, it was running, had a few temp cycles, and had street driven it to get the tune dialed in. We just had to get the new wheels and tires put on. 

Now it was time for the street testing and putting miles on it before we gave it back to the customer. This is one of the most fun cruisers you could be in during the summer, it gets all the looks, waves, thumbs up, and everyone's attention. It sounds killer, has the perfect style, and floats along the road. 

Unfortunately after delivering the Travelall, our customer got even busier with his ventures and never had the time to drive this like it needs to be. We have made a few house calls to it for mice chewing wiring, battery chargers getting hooked up backwards and killing the ECM, along with other things. Hopefully this summer we can hang out with our customer some more and all cruise around in one of the coolest Travellalls around.