Rescue Me - '51 41D

Two of the new wheel cylinders I just installed on my '49 have those 10mm metric bleed screws. They are made in China. The 2 new ones for the rear had correct SAE bleed screws and are made in the USA. I have to grit my teeth every time I install a Chineese made replacement part. Its an insult to the car. I wish the parts vendors would list country of manufacture in their catalogs.

I have a few metric tools. One is a Snap-On 10mm wrench.

'Tis what it is...

New wheel cylinders come in that size.

The emblems look real good. How did the clear coat come out on the plastic?

Thanks - I haven't tried anything else yet. Holiday is over. Will add pics when I have something to show.

I missed Mike's (Roadmaster 75) other question - yes, hose replacement is on the list. Got the fronts done. The one in the middle of the car to the rears - the environment wasn't as favorable to allowing either end of that one to break loose (both end fittings of the hose rusted/corroded into the mating parts...). Got it soaking with PB Blaster... And plan to buy a brake fitting wrench before I just round off the little brake line nut... Though the thought has crossed my mind - get a wrench that can apply a huge amount of torque, and just break the head of the nut off...then it escalates to maybe an inline union to give an inch or so to work with & a new brake line end fitting...

Also still working (probably too much) on the trunk emblem. The results are promising...

If the 'brake fitting wrench' doesn't work and before you round it off or twist the line, cut it just behind the flare nut and use a 6 point socket to remove. If the line is still serviceable, just put on a new flare nut and reflare...you only lost 1/4" and most lines can give up that much. If you hate flare fittings as much as I do, this might make them more tolerable.

Buick5563 is right with how to restore the emblem. It is just like color sanding your paint. Go with progressively finer and finer grit then rubbing and polishing compound. I use a swirl mark remover as the final finish and then go over it with some Crest (old style - not gel) toothpaste. Learned that in plastics course in college for polishing acrylic edges. Good luck and show some pictures when you can!

Just polishing the plastics will do nothing to remove the deep internal crazing and cracking. Further, use of any kind of fine polishing compound, toothpaste, etc. will drive the polishing media into the cracks and cause them to be even more visible. It will then be nearly impossible to clean it out.

Anyway, I'm going to ruin the surprise of the finished product. Many hours of acetone & Simichrome (and no steel wool) later...

That looks D**n good!

Ok, here it is:

Starting point:

Where I'm leaving it until maybe I run across some really choice plastic parts:

I'll post the key to this transformation - I don't have the photos on this computer right now...

Ok, how to clear up chrome pitting quickly:

Find 2 more on ebay. One with halfway ok plastic parts, the other with most excellent chrome. Though what you might not see so much fron these photos is the one with the good chrome had blue over-spray pretty much all over it. And the darkness on one end you can see in the bottom of the photo below - maybe it was stored in a greasy bucket of who-knows-what for a while. Fortunately that didn't affect the chrome on the outside, and it mostly cleaned off from the inside of the part as well.

Since I had the paints, I went ahead and cleaned up and repainted the 2 that were used for spares. Now turning them loose via ebay to see how low-cost this re-do can be.

Eric,

Have you found the manual yet? I dug up my CD with the manual on it, and would be fine to send it to you long enough to make a printed copy? If I can figure out how to burn a copy, even better....but will need help for that. Would it help?

Dale in Kentucky

Dale - sent you a PM. Here's what I saw in a little-viewed ebay ad last week:

Just this single photo where most people selling these put 5 or 6. Could be pretty bad on the other side... Plastic looks shot, but if there's pits in the chrome, it's not obvious. Took a chance. Worst case, I throw it back.

Couple hours later with the Simichrome & tiny paint brushes:

BAM!

That's going on the car.

Here's a little of how it went:

I'm still going to put some flat black in between the side bars...

Yes, the front face of the plastic was shot. Blasted as though from many years outside in blowing sand. Then I remembered I'd polished the headlights on my daily driver - you know, the same short-lived plastic headlights that all cars have now. 5 minutes with that stuff on the old plastic, and it was shiny between the larger pits. I'm not going for like-new perfection, but glossy between the larger pits is just fine. (Meguiar's Plastix)

And I got one end of the stuck brake hose loose with some tube wrenches I picked up at the used tools place after a week or so of PB Blasting. The wrenches were cheaper than new, I only had to buy the 2 sizes needed. In picking through, I even found one of them made in the USA. The other end of that hose looks like it's headed toward's old-tank's cut-it-off-and-re-flare idea.

Moving along on the hood...

Before:

During:

The bombsight ornament serves to cover rivets for the cross-beam underneath...

After:

Found the bombsight/spear on eBay a while back. It needed a little straightening. Achieved that with some vise-grips padded with some aluminum scrap...

For my own notes, I was cleaning up the generator brackets (2) and the elbow tube that mounts the water pump. All 3 of these had the "engine blue" paint on them. This came off with the cleaner I was using (brake cleaner).

Still chipping away at it. After a couple of weeks away from the brake line, I finally torqued it until I twisted it. Well, that settles that - there's going to be a new section of line in there. Anyone have a brake fitting tool they could recommend? I was thinking about trying Harbor Freight #66534 for the very limited use I need.

Also working on some SST trim parts. And keeping the pile of "swap outs" down to a level that doesn't draw too much attention via the eBay parts exchange...

Brake line update - I cut out the section where I had twisted the nut off. The thought was to buy a length of brake line tube, some nuts, a union, a flare tool... Then I went to the FLAPS - the guy there is a vintage Buick fan... He recommended - just take the rest of the line out and buy a length already made with a nut on each end.

So last night I removed the rest of the line up to the divider fitting (where the brake light switch is). Figured out there's 2 clips to the TOP of the frame for the brake line (line runs between the frame & body). Forward clip I could see looking back from the divider fitting. Pried that loose.

2nd one - I could see a bit of the frame looking down through the rust hole in the floor. I could see the brake line on the frame there. Could I get to another tube clip through the rust hole? Enlarged the hole a little, and found the clip. This would have been a bigger problem without that convenient missing floor! Got the line out pretty easily once the clip was cleared. Will see about getting a new line today. Should be lower cost than all those pieces & tools I started out thinking I would need...

Nice! When I did mine on the 55, I bought a piece of straight line at autozone, and a tubing bender at harbor freight and went to town!

Brake line frame clip access hole. 63 years in the making...

Well, that had to be much easier than messing around with a flare tool. Hardly even used the tubing bender. Other than a couple of bends near the end of each tube, it was easy to form the middle-of-tube bends with my hands. The original tube measured about 69", by the "trace it with a string" method. I bought a 60" + 8" + 12". Turns out, the 8" was going to be too short, so I'll take that one back. Bent up the 60" starting at the front, using the original as a pattern best I could. Got it to hit all 3 frame clamp points, so must have followed it pretty well. After backing up to get the tube on the necessary side of the speedometer cable, and a little tweaking at the forward end to get it to engage the divider fitting easily, I formed up the little pig-tail for the back end to take up the extra length. Here they are, front to back:

Front to the left, at the divider fitting. First frame clamp point about 14" back.

Through the brake line access port (rust hole) - midway frame clip.

Dives down off the frame to another clip.

Past the torque tube frame cutout to the joint in the line.

12" tube - had to take up almost 4" of extra length with some s-bends.

Yes! Got the brakes bled today. My 7 year-old daughter on the pedal, me doing the open & shut on the wheel cylinder bleed screws & topping off the master. Bled until the non-clear fluid was out of all 4 corners. Pedal is nice & solid at about 1/2 travel, and I haven't tried adjusting the shoes at all yet. Now all it needs is a gas tank, radiator, battery...

Just read through your thread to date. Glad to see you are coming along nicely with the project. I too started my kids out by having them help me bleed my brakes!

Keith

Got the Tanks, Inc. tank. Looks good so far. Need to get a couple of worm clamps for the filler neck joint. It's obvious they do this to keep the shipping box size down. Well packed, and it appears to be painted the silver color. The (made in Taiwan) level sender had a gasket with it, but they include their own little-bit-thicker gasket. The screws for the level sender have o-rings under the heads. The level sender gasket is not symmetrical, so if you're putting one of these on and it looks like the holes don't line up - the notch in the gasket goes towards the back. I ordered a 6V fuel pump from Summit, so I'll put that up by the tank while I'm under there.

- what's in the box.

- nice logo & trying to show the gasket has a notch that goes to the back.

- level sender installed.

Hardest part was remembering where the tank bolts hook onto the frame...

Nice progress, looking good

Thanks! You might be able to tell from the first photo (from the rear) that the tank is designed to be able to shift left-right. I ended up shifting it to the left about an inch to get the fill neck centered in the filler opening.

Eric,

I'm at the trunk chrome, and reading your suggestions. Did you just do the best you could with the fine grade steel wool and mothers on the chrome, and do you try to bring down the pits, or just polish it and take what you get? Also, both of my plastic Dyna and Flow are in great shape, but they are clear.....do you paint the inside, or line with clear red plastic wrap or something? and......did you paint the emblem....mine is pure chrome with no color. Guide me buddy!

Thanks,

Dale

I have not used steel wool yet at all on chrome. Others said it works ok, but I went with the polish on a microfiber towel only. The polish I used is Simichrome. It's made in Germany; sold at motorcycle shops. Don't know if this is better/worse than anything else - I'd just had it recommended to me back when I had a motorcycle, and it seems to work really well. For the chrome itself, I did some ebay trading - the trunk handle that's on the car actually was an ebay item from someone right in town here - even "my side" of town, so I just met the guy at a shopping center in between us. I'm no expert, but as far as I can tell, there isn't really a cure for pitted chrome - if it's a steel part it can be re-chromed. If it's a non-steel "pot metal" part - there's people that will work with this, but if it's pitted, it's very involved to strip it, drill out the metal where the pits are, refill the drill holes, smooth it all down... I'm trying to avoid that whole process by just buying the best examples I can find of the few pot metal parts.

For the clear plastic - clean as much as you can. I used alcohol and q-tips. Also used those #11 narrow-angle x-acto blades to really get all the dust & dirt out of all the molded-in crevices. I'm talking about the "inside" or "back side" of the lenses. For re-coloring, I used Testor's metallic silver in the letters. Be patient & do this over several days - get a good 5-6 coats in there, even though it's slow & frustrating. I didn't get enough in there & the red bled through. After the silver is in the letters, I masked off the perimeter to not get anything on the "outside" of the lenses, and painted the inside with VHT Nite-Shades red tail light lens spray paint. That stuff is pretty expensive for a spray bomb. Got it at the O'Reilly's auto parts, I think, but it's at a couple of the major brand parts stores. This stuff goes on really thin. Took 5-6 coats to build up decent color.

For the emblem - again more cleaning. x-acto knife, alcohol & q-tip, simichrome polish. You want the metal that will show to be as shiny as you ever want it - because there's no guarantees you can polish over the paint with anything - and not just take the paint back off. I painted this with Testor's Gloss Dark Red and Testor's Gloss Dark Blue. I have no idea of the durability of these, but the car will live in the garage, other than being out every once in a while. I took the emblem off from the overall handle part to clean out between the overall part and the emblem, and also to stick the emblem on a little shoe box lid by punching a couple of holes in the lid. Makes it easier to handle & move around. Painted this with the super-fine paint brushes that were at the Testor's display in the craft store. Good luck!

Got the mechanical side of the aux fuel pump done. Thanks to Ben for the hint on where to put it - this was much easier than up by the tank would have been.

Before:

After:

Steps:

Determine mounting hole location - note fuel line has clip on to frame, so needed pump far enough behind that to keep the line in the clip after the job is done.

Drill hole - drilled from inside out because drill wouldn't fit between body sill & frame.

Cut fuel line more or less centered over the hole.

Clean up the nasty, stinky gas that comes out.

Put the pump up there to get an idea of where to aim the tube bends.

Take pump down.

Bend front tube section to meet up with pump.

Put pump back up to see where to cut off the tube.

Pull pump back off.

Cut off tube with ~1" or so to the pump.

File smooth the end of the tube, clean off the 1" or so of tube that will go inside the new hose.

Do same steps for tube at back end of pump.

Final install fittings on pump with sealant. I used Loctite 565.

Put pump in place & tighten down.

Put 1 clamp on each piece of hose, other clamp up the tube on each side.

Install the hose - I did pump end first, then angled the hose over the end of the tube.

Put clamps into the right place.

Nice job!

One step forward... I took out the forward section of fuel line that runs along the engine. Not sure even why I did that. But it's just as well - it's a tube-and-hose assembly, and the hose split right in two! Better to do that now than when it's driving around or something. I'll talk to Inline Tube to see if they have this (but I can't find it in their online catalog). If not, I'll send it over there for duplication. I would think that among all the '50-'52 small engine cars, that someone else also needs this part...

Eric, I may be missing on your thoughts about the aux fuel pump. Are you installing it as a back up, or supplemental? I've still got to try the earlier suggestions about opening the carburetor while cranking it to check fuel flow, but I may need to do a rebuild on my pump, and/or do the aux too. What were your symptoms and did your fix solve it?

Thanks sir,

Dale

Supplemental pump only. For vapor lock & to prime the carb if it's been sitting long enough that the float bowl is dry (this happens on my '55 after 2 weeks, so I try to run it every week). The '51 hasn't run, from what I've been told, in 20 years. So I figured while the lines were still being worked on to install the gas tank, I might as well add this pump now rather than later. The gas tank from Tanks, Inc. is excellent, but the sender unit does not have a threaded joint like the original, so the stock fuel line near the tank needs to be modified to connect the tank back to the line, so while I was under there, I figured I'd do the electric pump, but was since given the hint to put the pump down the frame rail...

Anyway, got the power lead routed, switch mount made, switch installed... Used existing holes under the dash below the wiper switch - may have been an optional something that went there. Either way, it's easily removable & didn't add any holes to the dash...

Got the fuel tank connected (I think). For this, there has to be a fluid and an electrical connection, because the fuel level sender sits on a gasket on top of the tank, and the screws holding it down also have o-rings under the heads, so there's a good chance it's electrically isolated (or at least not guaranteed to make a good ground).

Thus the jumper wire in the pictures.

Of course, tube on the level sender (made in Taiwan) is of some metric size. My first plan was a simple bend of hose from the level sender to the hard line on the frame. The hard line on the frame uses 5/16" hose, as I'd used at the electric pump.

5/16" in no way could fit over the end of the tank-mounted tube.

Next size hose is 3/8". So got a bubble-pack of 2 feet of 3/8 from the FLAPS. They did not have an elbow adapter of 5/16" to 3/8".

So I went to the Ace automotive supply (hardware store), and came up with a combination of 3 fittings that when stuck together, gave a 5/18 to 3/8 elbow.

Cost for this little connection is ridiculous.

FLAPS, trip #1: 5/16" hose + hose clamps: $14.82.

FLAPS, trip #2: 3/8" hose + more hose clamps + dielectric grease: $12.93.

ACE, 3 fittings: $15.64.

So, throwing in the jumper wire for free (already bought for the fuel pump project), and the loctite 562 to seal the fittings (already had it), grand total to connect the tank to the hard line on the frame: $43.39.

All because they don't put the mating end for the frame-mounted fuel tube on the fuel level sender. I know - if they did, there'd be 1400 part numbers of level sender to account for all the different connections, and each one would cost $50 more...

Just saying, be prepared to cobble together way more parts than you might expect if doing this. On the plus side, it's a negative-pressure connection, so if it leaks, it may tend to suck in air. On the minus side, if it leaks and sucks in air, the car may act like the fuel pump isn't working...

I'm sure Summit or someone carries a nice anodized Al reducer elbow by Earl's for $5 or so, but by the time you throw in shipping, it won't be much less than the $15.64 I paid for the brass.

4/7 - Swapped out the radiator mounting frame. The one that was in the car had the cross-brace and diagonal hacked out in order to install a replacement radiator. The core on this replacement is 3 1/2" thick, and it looks like possibly a "universal" intended for pickup trucks (there's additional inlet ports on it that are capped off).

This went easier than I thought. Remove horns. Remove bolts to the fender support sheet metal. Remove electric gizmo on the left side of the radiator frame (horn relay?). Remove the big nut from the bottom (15/16"). Lift old frame out. Used a chisel to separate the spacers from the bottom of the frame. Transferred spacers to the new frame.

Noticed there were NO bolts between the radiator frame and the fender support on the left side.

4/8 - Went to hardware store and got some bolts that matched up as well as some flat washers and lock washers and some more spray bomb primer and flat black paint. Primered the bolts, flat washers, lock washers. Finish off fuel pump: Drilled hole in frame & attached the electric fuel pump ground lead terminal to the frame. Ended up NOT using bolt I got at the hardware store for this as it was too large - used one I had already.

4/9 - Got a tail light bulb for the daily driver, and while I was there, got a "paint removal" wheel. Tried this wheel in the drill motor on the pan that goes in front of the radiator. I have obtained a replacement pan as the original had the rear 1 1/2" or so hacked off to make room for the "replacement" radiator.

4/10 - Continued running the paint removal wheel on the radiator pan. Cleared off a few tight spots with sandpaper. Cleaned the part and primered. Didn't get a "bare metal" photo. Here's the before:

After:

Oh, and the actual chopped-up one that was on the car:

Good thing you found that new pan. Looks good too!

Little things that add up:

4/15 - Reinstalled the instrument panel firewall cover plate. This may have been a waste of time to take this off, but it made access to the new fuel pump electrical connection much easier.

4/16 - Reinstalled the defroster core & defroster firewall housing. Not really necessary to take this off, but it gave me access to see how the flapper door for the defroster / right side cabin air works.

4/17 - Finished off fuel pump ground wire to the frame.

4/18 - Battery tray back on frame. Not really necessary to remove, but cleaned off the frame below it + was out of the way for access to the fuel tube/hose.

4/20 - Replaced the short section of fuel hose near the carb. May have worked the way it was, but why mess with 6" of 20+ year-old fuel hose when I've already got new fuel hose that can drop in there?

4/21 - Replaced fork terminals at starter leads at carb. One was broken off, the other hanging by a strand.

4/21 - Tightened the bolts on the repainted replacement radiator air guide pan (in front of the radiator).

4/21 - Bought 11 feet of coolant hose. This isn't enough to do the system, but it should be enough to run from the pump to the trans cooler & back.

Idea is to just omit the heater & defroster at this point.

4/22 - Installed the coolant hose between trans cooler and water pump.

4/23 - Found heater/water pump block-off caps at the FLAPS. Installed on the heater outlet of the water pump to complete bypass of heat/defrost system.

4/27 - Ordered oil filter from FLAPS (transfer from another store - Fram C4P).

To do:

Oil filter & oil.

Fuel tube/hose along side of engine (working w/ Inline Tube).

Breather tube clamp along side of engine.

Battery.

Radiator.

Radiator hoses, clamps & coolant.

Checkout electrical / add gas / start engine.

Change out trans fluid.

See if it will move under its own power.

Got the battery. I had made a list of the electrical items in the car, so I checked all these quicker than I thought I would:

Dome light - check.

Map lights - unbelievably, check.

Instruments - gas gage = alive.

Instrument lights - Speedometer, check. Left cluster gage - no.

Turn signals - no.

Front marker lights - unbelievably (cuz 1 had no lens for ? years), check.

Rear marker lights - check.

Brake lights - check.

Head lights - no.

Horn - no.

Radio - silent.

Starter - clicks but doesn't turn. Does activate via the gas pedal.

Electric Fuel pump that I added - check. Can definitely hear it w/ no engine.

Under-seat heater fan - no.

Defroster fan (removed at the moment).

Only bad smell was from the last little bit of rotten gas that the fuel pump threw out (fuel line between engine & frame isn't installed).