Not sure how to do this but here she is...
(Not used to this whole forum thing so bear with me as I try to figure out these pictures and stuff haha)
(Instagram Build Page: Project_Betty_White_)
My 1999 Buick Regal GS, Bought her with 80K on the clock back in Mid-October 2014. 3-Owner, completely untouched.
Kind of a funny story of how I ended up with this thing, lets go into some detail!
So I was 15 at the time this all went down. After watching one of my younger sisters soccer games, my dad got a hold of me and asked me to check out this new car he wanted to get. At the time he was driving our 2001 F150 nearing 200,000 miles, and was looking for a temporary car to drive and save on gas before saving the money for a newer car. We proceeded to look at a 2000 Black Regal GSE, almost 100% rust free with 170,000 miles. Meticulously owned by a local oil change place, my dad thought it would be a great car to pass down to my younger sister when she would turn 16 (about 2 years later). We bought it, without knowing this car would lead me into my entry-level "Racekar" career. My dad got the car all tinted out and I thought it was a 'Pimpin' Buick, so did he. At this same time, my older sister was driving a 2001 Blue Regal LS with 220,000 miles. We originally got this car free from a family friend and put $1300 into it to make it a road ready, first car for my older sister. This was our "beater" nothing special, point A to point B car.
Here is the Blue Bomber
Now a year later, im 16, driving my dads 2001 F150 and loving every minute of it, it had been and still is one of my favorite trucks. My sister got a 2004 Rendezvous to drive to college as she was commuting 45 mins each day and we feared that the Regal LS was proving unreliable. The spring before I turned 17, we realized the oil pan rusted through on the LS (I named it the Blue Bomber) and my dad thought it was toast. He thought it was great to have the car as a spare, but with the oil pan looking at being an expensive fix, he was planning on taking it to scrap. I jumped in, researching the forums and youtube to find a fix. Thanks to you guys I was able to complete my biggest repair at the time and I was pretty damn proud of it, laying under the car for 8 hours just turning wrenches made it all worth it, I even got the damn engine mount bolt it that sits way up on the block between the block and trans on the passenger side. After this I kind of "adopted" this regal. Soon after, the trans lines rusted through underneath the radiator where they clip in, a little sanding and JB weld later and it was back on the road. After this I installed an old rusty glasspack we had laying around and an Autozone oval tip and beat the living snot outta this thing all summer.
Just finishing up the oil pan swap
Just as the summer was winding down, my dad got a call from his buddy that owns a Buick/GMC dealership saying that they got a century in on a trade-in with 60,000 Miles! one owner! He told my dad he could have it for a grand so we jumped on it. I convinced my dad that I could clean it up (even though the dealership already detailed it) and flip it, as well as sell the blue regal so I could get a low milage White Buick Regal GS.
He agreed.
Now I was still driving the Blue Bomber trying to sell it as I was searching high and low for a regal to get my hands on, after finding numerous cars and contacting numerous people, we found the one. Located in Ohio, about 4 hours from us was a 1999 Buick Regal GS with less than 100,000 miles. We jumped as soon as I found the ad and a couple days later, we got it.
Now, I dont have a tonn of pictures from when I got it, but I will try to add as much as I can.
I was excited that the car of my 17 year old dreams was in our garage, even though we bought it off a granny!
(Someone has to show me how to upload these pics, It wont let me but I will move on)
A few shots from when we first go it, Pictured from Right to Left (Blue Bomber, Betty White, My dads former/sisters current black regal)
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Before mods:
It wasn't long before I started to mod this Buick, after I cleaned it up a bit, I began to "Tint" The headlights and the foglights to give the car a much needed aggressive styling. I also added an LED strip to run with the headlights for added 'bling' Once this was done I added footwell Blue LED strips to give the interior a nice glow. Im sure I might be forgetting a few things but after that I didnt do much, before the snow flew, I remember putting on some ricey black plasti-dipped fender hashes that would make my 'whip' more ''sporty".
Headlights Done
LED's and The ashtray mod I never mentioned
Ricey Fender Hashes (so glad they are gone now)
Ahh yes, the specialty Tail Lights that I did, where do I begin. After seeing numerous people on the facebook pages tinting their taillights, it was something I thought looked good, but I did not want to follow suit. I forgot to mention that I had already tinted the "Blue bombers" tail lights before adding the glasspack as well. So tinting the White regal's tail lights was already a sort- of "Been there, done that" kind of deal. I began to think of how the early 2000's firebirds had the honeycomb tail lights and really desired that look and thought it would look great on a nice large Regal taillight. Now, I wasnt about to tape off millions of hexagons to make this thing accurate, I gave it my own flavor. I bought 1/4" masking tape and laid parallel lines of it 1" apart on the drivers side taillight. I then taped over everything with thicker masking tape and used an X-Acto blade to cut out each individual diamond/square whatever. I then peeled off the masking tape to reveal only masked diamonds all equal in size and spacing. Then used the infamous VHT niteshades to really make the tail light dark, then peeled off each square and gave it another two coats to give it a light tint that turned out really nice. I had to have been really bored because I repeated this process on the other two sections of the tail light and it took a combined 10 hours for the completed product! Some like it, some hate it, I think its different and makes my car unique.
Some of the first shots!
Needs moar corn in this pic
The car didnt change much over the winter of 2014/15 as the cold and snow set in, although the Buick did find its way into the ditch...only once...begining to sound a little like CaptainBreakALot, eh? No harm done though
Spring came and after reading up all winter, I was ready to mod!
Heres the clean bay before the madness began...
I also came up with a damn good name for her too...Betty White.
Now let me rant about this name. I had been wanting to find a name for this bad b*tch for a long time, knowing ill own it forever. I wasnt going to choose any old name though, it had to reflect the color, the style. One day I was just driving down the road, nearly stopped in the middle of the road when Betty White came to mind. It was perfect to say the least. An old, white, church driving sleeper that was funnier than hell when you got her goin! Plus, Betty White is like my all time favorite elderly actress!
Enough about that, onto the mods.
So my dad is a financial guy, right? So he watches what I spend on things, and since at the time I didnt have a debit card, sneaking parts under his nose was no easy task considering that if I needed to get a part online, I would have to use his PayPal and pay him back with my cash.
Anyway, he knows little about mechanics and such and I didnt want a stock friggin' regal at the 2015 W-body 3800 gathering so I thought a 3.5 MPS setup would suffice. (Told my dad it would improve MPG) On came the headers, I had orientation for school in Flint, and I was convinced a brand new set of OBX headers (Normally $300 on Ebay) for $200 new was a good deal. I put numerous feeler threads out and it seemed that nobody really had these so id try them out. Needless to say a lot of fab work from my home-grown self somehow managed to make these things work leak free! Sorta. The DP kept blowing off at WOT so I welded a few extensions on and she aint coming out! I would look into getting a better set at a fair deal, but in all honesty these things have big primaries and look killer! The CAI, not really a CAI more like a HAI, just took the stock airbox out and put a 3.5" to 4" PVC reducer into the stock rubber tube and threw an ebay cone into the fender, reduced knock? Sure, whatever, I just think it sounded cool! I ended up with a 3.5 mps that got installed at the 3800 meet as well and my setup was complete! oh and sometime before the meet I put the old ratty glasspack on only because the Tip looks killer! The girls only like the tip!
The gathering was great, scored a TB heat shield and some GSX floormats off of Paul for a bargain, let the GSX craze begin! Too bad there was only 4 regals there, I was damn glad to be one of them! Oh and also before the meet I thickened up the fender hashes and changed them from black to grey to match the car better. OH! also I added a cursive "Regal GS" vinyl on the air dam and a "Betty White Edition" Vinyl on the trunk lid.
I also got to meet CaptainBreakALot which was cool I guess
Sooo I returned home after and a few weeks later I was looking for parts, guess who stole a set of 1.9's... This guy
(Just got a really good deal on them)
Installed. Valve covers half assed painted, need to still redo them but thats for the spring!
Ready for a tune!
Hopped over to Grand Rapids for a tune and ended up having valve float from stock springs. So I was 'sent home' and found a set of 90# springs for a good deal. Figured while I was doing these, Im already halfway to a cam anyway
Fast forward to this past summer. Starting my first semester at school (Mind you I go to Kettering, formerly known as GMI) and some guys there are complete gearheads. Ended up finding some cool guys at a fraternity that had an 80 gallon air compressor, I was in.
So I started this swap on a thursday after classes (I still had classes friday too) and I still didnt have a cam in my possession. Tore the car down to where I needed it (Did the swap the CaptainBreakALot way) and basically got the top end apart. Bought a cam setup from a guy not too far away on friday, NIC, LS7 Lifters, ZZP Pushrods, all with 1000 miles. Friday night was a good night, the fraternity I was at had a campus-wide party, I dont party, I make horsepowerso while everyone was enjoying themselves, here I sit, in the back corner of a dark, wet parking lot, getting it in with Betty
. By sunday I had everyting wrapped up except fluids, so I waited until Monday. Fired her up and she ran good. Ended up ripping a CV boot very slightly in this process and didnt care haha. Got a used 3" cutout from a local, spent a night hacking it up and kinda making it work, and hit the woodward dream cruise the next week!
Dream cruise was awesome, lots of looks as we only idled down Woodward in the right lane...the whole day. Had me and my car loving buddies packed 4-5 deep in this grocery getter and watched the necks break...left....and right. People just couldnt figure it out! I knew I couldnt give half the cars on Woodward a run for their money, but it was damn fun watching them think that I could! Some guy even asked me if it was a smallblock, I responded, "Nope, V6!" His look was incredible. Carried out the rest of the summmer, replacing my swaybar and CV and a wheel bearing and stuff. Im sure Im forgetting stuff again. I became broke near the end of summer from all this shenanigains and took it easy, still taking it easy haha. Added a JMB intake and got rid of the ghetto one, also picked up some 60# injectors for e85 goodness, even a racetronix fuel pump! Oh also forgot to mention I did the impala brake swap as mine were really bad.
So this brings me to "Present Day" within the past few weeks I have installed a transgo shift kit,( Forgot to add earlier this year I did a trans cooler). Last weekend I did my heads up display that I have been wanting to do, still needs work, and am converting my entire interior to blue LEDs. Still gotta trace down some sort of leak I have going on and am planning on doing my supercharger coupler and porting it. Also painting it! Should be fun, we will see what the future holds, cant wait for the changes made 8 months from now at the next Wbody Gathering, Y'all should join the fun and be on the lookout for Betty!
