1952 Special Deluxe Project

[shadetree77]

I've had this car since April of this year(2011)and I've been meaning to start a thread on here to share some of my restoration efforts with others. I, myself, enjoy reading all of the continuing resto' threads on here and find them motivating and informative so I wanted to start my own. I sometimes find that I forget to take pictures while I'm working on something until I get it done so I'll post what I can. I've already done 100's of things to this old Buick that I wish I would have thought to document at the time. For those of you that don't know me, my name is Robert. I'm 28 and my Dad and I bought this car to work on together. I absolutely love cars from the 50's and older and this 1952 Buick was on my "Dream Cars" list. It's the first of what I hope is many purchases from that list. Anyway, we plan on keeping this car all original using only NOS, original, or reproduction parts when necessary. That being said, it is going to be a driver. I have no interest in having a show car. We plan to go through all the mechanical aspects of the car and get it completely roadworthy for now so that we can drive it around for a few years and enjoy it at local car shows/cruise-ins. Long-term plans are for a frame off restoration which we are planning on doing ourselves as much as possible. Thanks for reading this and I hope it provides as much motivation and information for you as all the other restoration threads on here have for me!

[shadetree77]

Here's a little background on my car and a few pictures from when I brought her home fresh from the barn she sat in for roughly 40 years.

This car is a 1952 Buick Special Deluxe Model 41D. It was originally Venetian Blue Poly(poly meaning metal-flake) with a Sky Gray top and a blue interior that is half cloth half leather. No turn signals, no back-up lights, no clock, no power brakes, and no power steering. It's pretty basic for a "Deluxe" model! I bought it from a guy about an hour north of where I live. The car originally belonged to his grandfather who bought the car new somewhere in Chattanooga, TN in 1952. His grandfather was a well-to-do Buick man who bought a new Buick every few years. There was an owners manual from his previous purchase, a '48 Buick, in the glove box of this car. From what I understand he drove this Buick for a few years then bought another new one and parked this one in the barn only getting it out a few times a year. I found a receipt in the glove box from 1964 where they added seat belts to the car so I know it was being at least slightly driven in '64. Car only has 64,000 miles on it and I've been told it was parked in the back of the barn sometime in the late 60's early 70's and sat untouched until a few years ago when the grandfather passed away. His grandson pulled it out of the barn, did one helluva hack job 12 volt conversion on it complete with a cheapo electric fuel pump, and got it started. He pulled it back in the barn and several months ago put it up on craigslist where I saw it. It's completely untouched and I've yet to come across any missing parts. It's all there. I made the guy dig out the old generator and fuel pump that he had taken off of it and eventually I plan on getting them re-built and converting it back to 6 volt.

[shadetree77]

Here's a few pictures of the old girl about 4 months after I brought her home. At this point I had invested lots of money, time, blood, sweat, and cold beer into it. Re-built brake system, newer tires, lots of cleaning, re-wiring, floor patching, chrome replacement/polishing, carb re-building, gas tank re-conditioning, exhaust system, etc., etc., etc. Really wish I had documented all that and put it up on this forum! Re-building that carb was a fun experience. Anyway, I had it all cleaned up here as I was planning on taking it to a car show the next day about 100 miles away but didn't quite make it. Had a little problem with a clog in the oiling system about 20 miles from home. You can see the result in the last picture. Lesson learned though. I'll never start driving a car that has sat that long again before first cleaning out the fuel and oiling systems.

[shadetree77]

Just got finished with this little job and thought I would make it my first work related post. I am a third shift security guard at a plant that makes artificial turf, so let's just say that I have plenty of time on my hands at "work" to do little things like this. If only I could drag my Buick out here and hook up a work light!! I've been replacing things here and there with NOS and used original parts to give the car a slightly cleaner look. 98% of the original chrome on this car is shot. It can be re-chromed eventually, but for now I have been replacing pieces here and there because replacing is much cheaper than re-chroming! The pieces aren't perfect and I don't want them to be because then they would stand out like a sore thumb. Tonight, I cleaned up the new steering wheel that I bought. The wheel itself has a few cracks but it's a LOT better than the wheel that's on the car now. The metal was another story. It was rusted and covered in a yellowish scale that I'm going to refer to as tarnish. I cleaned the rust and scale with super fine steel wool(0000)dipped in a very small amount of Mother's Mag and Aluminum Polish followed by buffing with a soft towel and 3 coats of wax. I've generally had good results with this method on chrome and it worked perfectly here. Some of the chrome was eaten away on the horn ring arms but there's nothing I can do about that. Here are some pictures of taking the old wheel off and some before and afters of the cleaning process.

[retirednow]

Cool car and story! '50-'52 buicks are my favorite cars

[jackofalltrades70]

Robert,
Great job on the polishing of the steering wheel. I think you're doing a great thing and enjoying the car at the same time. Matt

[JohnD1956]

Wow Robert, great start to an interesting project. I also used Mothers metal and aluminum polish to clean up a lot of parts on my GS' engine. I am very interested in following your progress. How's bout posting a picture of you and your Dad with the car? The Buick Club is about the people and their car.

[shadetree77]

Thanks for the responses guys. I work on this car just about every day for 5-8 hours after I get off work so hopefully I'll remember to look up from what I'm doing occasionally to snap some pictures for this post. I tried to pull the old steering wheel completely off the column today with a 3 jawed puller I got from autozone. Turns out the tips of the jaws are too big and I can't get them turned right when I put them in the holes on the steering wheel. Gonna have to go back to the Zone and see if they have some smaller ones. My dad suggested some long bolts with small heads that I could use with a harmonic balancer puller. Put the heads through the slotted holes on the wheel then move them sideways to catch the slotted part. I might end up doing that. Here's a picture of me and my dad after a LOOOOONG day of re-building the brakes back in April. I also found one my wife took of when I was loading the car onto a trailer when I bought it. Look at those HUGE tires the former owner had slapped on there!! He told me when he dragged it out of the barn to get it started it had the original tires on it. Then he towed it to town and had some used tires put on so he could cruise up and down the road a few times. They were waaay too big for the car.

[JohnD1956]

Hey Robert, Great pic of you and Dad with the prize. I always suspected my Dad liked my cars but he would never work on em with me. His thing was horticulture and while he liked having nice cars, he was not about to spin a wrench.

[shadetree77]

Well, I was able to get out to the garage today and tinker around a bit. I've haven't been able to do anything for about a month now. I hurt my back last time I was working on the Ole' Buick and consequently I was barely able to walk for awhile. Doctors diagnosed me with a bulging disc and sciatica. Luckily, the pain is down to a manageable level now and I'm able to get around a little better. Just have to take it easy for awhile. Managed to pull the trunk handle off today in order to clean it up and install my newly purchased and soon to be repainted dyna flow lenses. Only got about half way through it before I had to call it quits. I'll try to get some pictures tomorrow. Also plugged up my newly purchased Battery Tender. I've never used one before and I wanted to see if they worked as well as everyone says. It's a so-called "smart" charger that turns itself off when the battery reaches optimal charge and then maintains charge by monitoring the levels. It does all this with no chance of boiling or destroying the battery like with a normal charger. It's designed to be left on the battery 24/7. They were plugged up to almost every car in the Don Garlits museum so they must work pretty well! We'll see how it goes.

[shadetree77]

Finally got back to working on the trunk handle. Disassembled everything and polished it up with some super fine steel wool and Mother's Mag Polish. Didn't put any wax on this piece because it's pretty pitted and I was afraid the wax would stick in the pits. Looks better than it did anyway. Little bit shinier and I managed to get most of the surface rust off. One of the mounting studs that go to the emblem in the middle of the handle is broken off as you can see in the picture below. The emblem is made of a really light and thin metal and the studs look to have been melted on somehow. I'm thinking JB Weld to stick it back on there. The rubber pad that the handle mounts to is brittle and cracked but I think it can be reused for now. I can order a new one from CARS later on. A lot of the lens mounting hardware is rusted badly. I think I'll clean it all up and paint it with some rust encapsulator paint. Still have to touch up the Dyna and Flow lenses and I'm going to attempt to repaint that middle emblem too. Have to stop by the auto parts store tomorrow and grab some adhesion promoter spray. All in all it's coming along nicely and I think it will look a lot better when done. Not perfect, but perfect isn't what I'm shooting for right now. Maybe I'll run across one in better shape on EBAY eventually, but this will do for now. I'll put up pictures of the finished product hopefully sometime tomorrow afternoon.

[shadetree77]

Got the trunk handle finished. Turned out pretty good. I repainted the center emblem. I ended up using the adhesion promoter. That's the first time I've ever used it and it worked well. I used JB weld to put the mounting stud back on it. I painted the backs of the lenses with VHT red tail light paint but it didn't fix all of the light spots. I figured out that whoever had the lenses before me painted them with nail polish. The nail polish has begun to pull away from the lens thus creating clear bubbles under the paint. I would have had to strip that off and completely repaint the lenses to get rid of them. I decided not to do this because the chrome on the letters is in pretty good shape and I didn't want to mess them up. I painted the lens mounting hardware with rust encapsulator paint. Also cleaned up the rusted screws with a wire brush and put some anti-seize lube on the threads. All in all it looks a lot better mounted on the trunk. I think I hit my goal of cleaning it up without making it look show quality. Next task is to finish putting my new steering wheel on. I never got to finish that before I hurt my back last month so it's next. Still have to figure out how to pull the old one off.

[First Born]

Looks GREAT Robert!! Good job.

Ben

[MrEarl]

NICE job!!!

[shadetree77]

Thanks for the responses guys. Finally!! My dad and I got the old steering wheel off thanks to a lot of good suggestions by fellow forum members. We started out spraying the shaft down with PB and using a 3 jawed puller like it shows in the service manual. The only problem with that is that the puller shown in the manual is a specialized Buick tool made differently than a regular puller. Also, the Buick tool had a fitting that goes on the middle of the puller that allows all the pressure to be put on the mounting nut and not on the center of the steering shaft. You can't put pressure on the center because it is hollow and contains a wire with a spring loaded horn contact on the end that sticks up through the shaft. I got around this by putting a washer over the horn wire and placing a socket over it. This way the center screw of the puller would make contact with the socket and place all pressure against the washer and steering wheel nut. Anyway, all the pullers we tried had claw tips that were too fat to fit in the 3 holes on the steering wheel mounting plate so we couldn't get this to work. We toyed with the idea of buying a small 3 jawed puller and grinding the tips down to fit in the holes but I came up with the idea of using a harmonic balancer puller with 3 bolts instead. We just needed to find bolts that were long but still had heads small enough to slip into the holes on the mounting plate. We went to Home Depot and bought some bolts to use however, these weren't strong enough and bent on the first try. We went back to town and searched everywhere for some higher grade bolts. We finally found some grade 8 bolts at a Tractor Supply Company. I re-built our harmonic balancer rig with the new bolts and tightened them up on the wheel. Then, as suggested by several fellow forum members, I gave the end of the center screw on the puller a few sharp raps with a metal hammer. After a few more turns of the wrench and a few more hits with the hammer the wheel popped loose! Got the old wheel off and mounted the new one. I think it looks a heck of a lot better! All nice and shiny!!

[wmsue]

Beautiful job Robert.

Thanks for keeping us informed. It's great to see how others solve their problems.

[JohnD1956]

That wheel looks great on that car! Nicely done!

[shadetree77]

I decided to repaint the Buick script lettering on my dog dish hub caps today. All the paint was long-gone on these things. I recently learned a good trick to painting recessed letters and I thought I would share it here. The materials I used were lacquer thinner(in the Mason jar), q-tips, Testors enamel paint, Duplicolor adhesion promoter, a paint brush, a cork, and a small piece of cloth(cut up t-shirt in this case). First off, I shined up the hub caps with super fine steel wool and mothers mag polish. Then I took a q-tip dipped in thinner and cleaned out the letters. After they dried, I dipped my brush in adhesion promoter that I had sprayed into the spray can cap and traced all the letters. I put two coats of this on according to directions on the can. Then I used flat black Testors paint to paint the letters. You don't have to do this part perfectly, that's what the cork and cloth are for. After I finished painting the lettering, I let it dry for a minute or two. Now at this point, I had quite a few spots where I had colored outside of the lines. I took the cork and placed my small cloth over it pulling it tightly over the end of the cork and twisting the end to keep it tight. You end up with the cloth pulled tightly over the perfectly level end of the cork. Then, I dipped the end of the cork wrapped with cloth in some thinner. Now, I used the cork to rub over the letters that I messed up on. The cork end is perfectly flat and as you run it over the letters, it makes contact with the hub cap and doesn't dip down into the recessed letters thus removing the paint on the cap and not messing up the paint in the recessed part of the letters. Hope that makes sense. This technique works wonders and allows you to paint almost any recessed letters without being a professional pin striper. I also used it to paint my trunk handle emblem and plan on using it for my moustache bar script and my tail fin emblems. You could also use it a with a little modification to re-paint a license plate or something similar with raised letters.

[shadetree77]

Actually got to work on the oiling system today for a bit. First time I've crawled under the car since my back injury over a month ago. Felt good to get my hands dirty again! My dad and I managed to get the oil pump installed and the oil pan back on. That pan was quite a job. It was a pain in the butt to get the front bolts started due to the cross member/suspension arms being so close to the pan but we finally got em'. Didn't get any pictures. My hands were covered in that High Tack sealant stuff so I couldn't exactly handle my phone/camera under there. Next thing is the transmission pan. Should be a little easier than the oil pan was.

[Andrew Armitage]

Robert,

The car looks like it's coming back to life. You're doing a great job! You got the right idea. Get it running and driving before you start dumping money into cosmedics.

[shadetree77]

Thanks Andrew. That's the plan exactly. My dad and I are getting all of the mechanical stuff worked out first. Basically restoring everything back to original condition with NOS, used, and reproduction parts to make it into a reliable daily driver. We're planning on driving it around just as it is for a few years before we start the full in-depth restoration. Maybe take it around to a few local shows and just have a good time with it. While I am looking forward to having a pristine looking car in the future, I wanted to enjoy the old girl just as she is for awhile. It's amazing that these old cars have survived this long and I truly enjoy thinking about the journey that this car has been through over the last 60 years that brought it to me. You know what the popular saying is nowadays....they're only original once.

[shadetree77]

Another nasty winter day in Georgia! Cold, grey, and misting rain all day. Managed to get some work done today though. My dad and I got the transmission pan and bell housing dust cover back on. Also managed to install the new speedometer cable. Last time I drove the car, the speedo started making grinding noises. I'm hoping it was due to a messed up cable and not the speedo itself so I put a new cable on. Thought it would be a quick job, but like usual I was wrong about that! Had to disconnect the cable from the side of the trans. It was almost impossible to get a tool in there and when I finally did I could only manage about an 1/8 of a turn at a time! Then, we had to figure out what the best way was to get the cable through the grommet in the firewall. Couldn't pop the grommet out and didn't want to remove the access panel on the firewall. We ended up cutting the old cable and removing it. Then we widened the hole in the grommet with a drill and paddle bit. Put the new cable through and sealed it back up with black silicone inside and out. Back to the trans. pan though. One of the pan mounting studs was loose on the transmission housing itself. It's like whatever holds the stud in place inside the trans. housing has broken loose leaving the stud to just spin. You can't access the back side of the stud. Meaning it is now impossible to tighten a nut onto it. Anyone ever had this problem with a Dynaflow pan? I'm not sure what I should do. Afraid the pan will leak at this stud hole. Thinking about covering it with silicone or gasket glue. Any suggestions?

[Mudbone]

On my 55 the section that the pan studs are screwed into is aluminum. I had to change two of them because the threads were bad. If your studs are stripped out in the aluminum housing, you will have to pull them out and repair it with a Heli Coil. (Thread repair kit) Drilling it out and installing the repair coil so you can install the correct size stud. Mud

[55 SURVIVOR]

Robert; the car looks great! I liked reading your story.get her on the road,the cosmetics can come later.I take my 55 to the shows and she always gets the most attention,people like to see them the way they were/are.Ive had many many people tell me thats why they come to the shows.Your young you have many years to get it the way you want it.I know your looking for a 6v delco generator,for what it's worth my 1955 ferguson tractor To35 has a 6v delco,might be another avenue to explore,and don't forget to change the bulbs back to 6v either.You think the way i do put it back the way it was,thats what makes it fun.I think it's neat your dad helps you on it,thats the way me and my dad was,he passed in 92,I think of him often.good luck ,you got a good start!!

[shadetree77]

Mud,

Thanks for the info. What do the back sides of these studs look like? On mine, the stud is completely loose in the hole. You can push on it and it will go all the way up into the hole and when you let go it will fall back out through the hole but it will not come all the way out. It just hangs there. You can also spin it all the way around. It almost feels like it had a nut or a head of some kind on the inside of the transmission that held it in place. Maybe ours are made differently? If I'm reading your post correctly, your studs are threaded on both ends and screw up into the trans. I don't think mine work like that. When you push up on the stud, it actually feels like if you pushed it far enough into the hole, it would end up inside the trans! Like there's no end to the hole it comes out of.

55 SURVIVOR,

Thanks! My dad and I have always shared a love for cars. When I was little, we would always build models together, play with hot wheels, and sit around and daydream about what cars we wanted to build someday. I really enjoy the time I spend with him working on our old Buick. Even though sometimes we want to throw a wrench at each other, it's still fun! We are looking forward to seeing what kinds of reactions we get when we take her to our first car show next year. There always seem to be crowds around the "survivor" type cars. Captures the imagination somehow to think about what these cars have seen and where they've been. As for the generator, I think I've got it solved. I started another thread on the "Buick General" section and got lots of informative responses like always. Love this forum! Anyway, thanks again!