Just thought I would share pictures of my 56 Buick Special "Riviera"

It belonged to a friend I met when I worked at a car museum. He bought it for his father in law sometime around 1985. Mr. Humphries drove it for six years and then parked it due to health reasons. About two years ago I asked my friend what was wrong with the Buick in the shed, he said," Nothing, it was just parked." So I asked him if we could get it out and work on it some. After he died his wife called me and gave me the option to buy it and would not sell it to anyone else if I wanted it.


Its got a 322 "Nailhead" V-8 and a Dynaflow transmission. It was sitting for 16 years before I purchased it. I will update with more pics and info as the restoration progresses. I bought it in September 07 put a battery and a fuel cell in the trunk and had it on the road in a few days but it always had a skip like it was running on 6-7 cylinders and massive amounts of blow by. Thanksgiving it finally decided to do whatever it thought it needed to do and all the gas/compression from the dead cylinder ignited and blew fire out of every orifice of the motor. So during spring break I got the motor pulled and disassembled and discovered a flawed piston.

I have been driving the car for two months now since the rebuild. Ive put about 350 miles on it. The brake install went ok. Replaced all the hardware but it would not pump up. Went back and inspected the master cylinder again it was fine, turned out to be the diaphram in the check valve had some debris in preventing it from closing and retaining pressure.

The starter solenoid was on its way out so I have replaced it. That was a pleasant $60.

On the highway during the journey home I averaged 18mpg around town it gets a cool 11mpg. The dual exhaust and glasspacks sound real good. I went ahead and installed some lowlight led's in the portholes and hard wired them into the headlamps. When the headlamps are on the portholes have a nice blue glow (no pics its hard to get it to focus on the lights.) Installed an aftermarket radio on the center hump in an awesome homemade console. Put some nice (free) speakers under the front seat and ran the the wires under the carpet. Unplug the antenna and a hot wire and its cleanly removed in under a mintue.

Asides from the exhaust, lights in the portholes and the aftermarket radio. My plans are to make a nice driver and keep it as stock as possible. Perhaps in the future I will have the funds to bring it back to showroom condition.


Front shocks and a Front end alignment are next on the to do list. Only thing is not many people know how to align it anymore or refuse to even touch it.

[img]http://i217.photobucket.com/albums/cc24/asdh241/DSCF0092.jpg?t=1206737001[/img]

When I bought it.

[img]http://i217.photobucket.com/albums/cc24/asdh241/Photo0111.jpg?t=1221008561[/img]

Taken last week at school.

Nice 56 Inga. would like to se a pic of your home-made radio console. What size speakers did you put under the front seat, and how did you mount them? Can they be heard clearly?

Very nice indeed. It's nice to hear you are essentially keeping it stock, but adding some personal touches to the car.

I am working on a pic, should have it sometime soon. The console is nothing spectacular it is a plywood box my father made for his work truck and it fits nicely under the heater controls on the floorboard. I used 6" long x 3" wide X 3" tall (estimated) home theater speakers. I secured them to the floor with gorilla tape folded to be sticky on both sides. I had to pick the seat up so the speakers could fit under it. Makes it nice since the speakers wont come out unless you unbolt the seat and pick up the back of it. Sound is nice my car has alot of wind noise at highway speeds so it does get muffled some but over all I am pleased with it. The radio isnt something I am majorly concerned with thats why everything I put into it were supplies I had just laying around.