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Beemon

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Beemon last won the day on May 2 2019

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  • Birthday 12/19/1991

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  1. Willie I am excited to see you progressing! After our phone call a while back now, I have been thinking about your situation. Glad to see root cause was identified. Are you going to put together a list of parts at the end? Looking forward to your first start up, sounds like you are close!
  2. Sounds more like a worn engine problem vs a transmission problem.
  3. Did you replace the hydraulic piston with the new seals? The old piston can corrode and cut the seal cups, creating a leak path. Your primary cup (yellow) if leaking will show some type of bleed back in the reservoir. The secondary cup (blue) will weep through the vent wire. The tertiary cup (green) will suck fluid into the engine - check your vacuum line for wetness. When the pedal is applied, the piston equalizer holes will be in the main hydraulic cylinder and the fluid should not be able to move from the cylinder to the reservoir. If you have any leaking symptoms from either of these locations, then most likely the cast iron hydraulic body is pitted around one of the cups and may need to be sleeved... this is not common though, and the cups as I'm sure you noticed in your rebuild, are an interference fit. In an ideal state, the tertiary cup should always be dry. Also in the rebuild kit is the seal and check valve for the proportioning block. Although I don't think this is your problem, if you don't rebuild the check valve you can end up with lack of pedal feel due to loss of residual pressure in the system. If there are no signs of leaking, the piston assembly can potentially bleed down through the control valve. Put a vacuum gauge in line to the booster before the reservoir. The unit vents to atmosphere through the air cleaner, so if you lose reactive pressure due to a vacuum leak, you will see vacuum plummet. The engine may not see this because there is a check valve on the valve cover to prevent loss of engine vacuum. You would need to disassemble the entire piston by removing the unit, pull all the snap rings that hold all the fingers and plates together, and assess the seals. It's been a while since I've been in mine now, but the rebuild kits should come with all the o-rings and seals, and the control valve diaphragm to rebuild the piston assembly. The shop manual says to lubricate everything with silicone grease, so if you install dry it does have the opportunity to tear or prematurely fail. Hope this helps.
  4. The replacement rubber pieces are a best-effort basis in my opinion... you can pack them on the outside with some closed cell double adhesive like 3M tape, or household window weatherstripping to make it just a little bit thicker. You have to make sure its thin, or thin enough to collapse so you can close the window. The ultimate test is going through a mechanical car wash and see where you are taking in water. In my case, I was left with a quarter inch hole where the vent frame meshes with the window frame due to manufacturing tolerances. I have learned to live with it, and on extended car rides I will stick a small foam ball in there to seal it up. I have not had the space or courage to re-hang my door...
  5. Attaching a new ground wire probably won't fix the issue if it hasn't been fixed by now. The bulb grounds to the socket housing. You are going to need a good bit of scotch Brite or even medium grit sandpaper to polish the socket housing back to bare metal. Then the fit might be off with the made in China bulbs, so you might need to shim or oblong for good contact. Install with dielectric grease to keep from rusting again. Just did this on my 56.
  6. It looks like the original had 1/2 diameter holes for the stamped portion, but you only drilled out the holes through the rubber. Did you have any issues with it squishing or clamping completely? Need to do this soon.
  7. Still no ranco valve fix, but I did pull the 59-60 oil filter housing off the block and put the original can back on. I did an oil change and found out that the gasket for the valve covers came loose and is flapping around the valves... so shame on me, these edelbrock valve covers have been nothing but trouble and not worth the headache. Some wise men on here once told me (more than once, many times) to put it back the way it was and keep it that way. I'm older now and still not listening! Why did I put the oil filter can back on? On the trip to Spokane, my oil pressure kept dropping. The adapter for the 364/401 engines puts the filter straight down, but on a 322, the adapter shoots it at a 45 degree angle right under the exhaust manifold. The filter was getting pretty hot, so I figured I might listen to the old guys and put it back the way the engineers intended, out of the hot zone. The mess has never bothered me anyways, every oil change I've ever done gets messy. I'm sure on single exhaust cars, this probably isn't an issue. Anyways, I'll pull the valve covers tomorrow and see if I've got an extra gasket set tomorrow. But at least I can drive Grandpa's Buick to Christmas. Also I have not been driving my other Buick, the original tires finally gave out. I need to swap my studs on, but I'll do that after Christmas.
  8. They leak just sitting. Landlords hate to see it.
  9. Here are the best shocks money can buy: They are Bilstein manufactured for Race Car Dynamics: Front: 55-R101 Rear: 55-R176 Also found some additional spring part numbers from some old threads, donor car is a 1971 Buick Centurion: Normal: 6363 Heavy Duty: 5383 Progressive: CC611 The factory master cylinder has a weep hole on the front with a little dangling piece of metal that looks like a bent nail. If the seals blow, then it will leak from here: The compensating port allows fluid to pass between the cup and the piston to equalize fluid between the reservoir and line, it's the return path when the wheel cylinder is returned by the shoe springs. If the primary cup is torn, you will get a lack of pedal pressure feel. If the secondary cup is torn, then it leaks through the vent. If the vacuum cup is torn, then you start sucking brake fluid into the intake, and only after the secondary cup is torn (it should theoretically be dry between the secondary cup and vacuum cup). The only sleeving potentially required is where the cup sits in the master cylinder and cylinder plug on the backside between the vacuum tank and master cylinder. The cup seals can be a concern if they were cleaned with anything containing mineral oils as outlined in the Caution note in the manual. Link to the shop manual in case you don't already have it: 1956 Buick Power Brakes Service - Hometown Buick This is the difference between the mirrors: 54-"56" 57-66 I'll have to see if I can dig my old one out. Yeah more or less it was to prevent air cleaner contamination from foreign objects entering through the mesh. I checked the product service bulletin on Hometown Buick, but there was no mention of this anywhere.
  10. Got this thing all taken apart, reading all these rebuild guides... and NAPA no longer stocks the repair seal. Also not sure how people keep the brass tabs from getting chewed up, it looks like I mangled mine. My helper Luna quick work of disposing the old seal. Not sure where it went, surely a mystery for the next tenant.
  11. Unbolt shocks and panhard bar completely from axle. Loosen bolts to spring and leave enough slack but do not remove from rear axle to avoid the spring side loading and slipping off the guide plate. Lift body until spring is unsprung and remove all spring bolts. Reverse process. Its a 2 hour job. I replaced mine with some generic Dana variable spring rate coils (coils are tighter at the top) to help with luggage loading. Check out this thread for some interchange information. The pictures are gone, but you can see my Buick in some of the national threads. Regarding your master cylinder rebuild, you can bench rebuild the power brake units very easily and do not need to re-sleeve any of the internal parts based on the theory of operation. Usually what goes bad on these is the piston starts to rust due to moisture in the brake fluid and it cuts the rubber cups. You should not have a vacuum leak unless the vacuum check ball on the driver side valve cover is defective. Also when you replace the rear view mirror, there are two sizes depending on when your 56 was built. There is the inferior 55 type (small, doesn't let you see out the back entirely) or the 57 type (wider). Make sure you replace whichever one you have with the 57 type. I made the mistake of buying a mirror labeled 56 on the vendor website, which is the 55 size, and my original was the 57 size. Same interchange numbers with the type of vacuum wiper washer jar as an FYI. Also made that mistake, and had to return and buy again. Still haven't replaced my rear view mirror. Is your hood vent flat or mesh? That is usually the indicator for early or late model production.
  12. Do you have a vacuum, dwell, and tachometer gauge available? Check dwell first, then idle RPM, then vacuum. A weak coil would be under load, not really at idle. Your idle might be set too low when the choke unloads after warm up. Not sure about straight 8s, but I've set my 322 to 1200 RPM at high step on choke, and 650 RPM when the choke is unloaded regardless of choke condition. You should verify these conditions by removing the air cleaner and manually manipulating these conditions. To me, it sounds like you are idling off the high step of the choke and when the choke comes off, it dies because the throttle plates are not open far enough. I could be wrong, this is what I am interpreting from your post. Also for a sanity check, if you can open up the distributor, verify the condenser case and condenser lead are not making electrical contact. Otherwise, your condenser is grounded, and it can lead to all sorts of ignition gremlins.
  13. It needs to be PERFECT!! Haha, maybe highway is good. I still don't see flow from the pump into the tank revving the engine, but I idled it for a good 40 minutes with the 4 blade and it never crept above 180 - a huge change over the near 230 temps I saw at the drive thru in Spokane with the clutch fan. I idle right around 650. Looks like I'll need to do another east side trip to verify it's not going to overheat, it should maintain cool around town without AC just fine I would think, I don't remember it ever behaving this way before. I did take Willie's advice and taped up my generator loom. So now it's not just a bunch of wires. I also removed the Ranco valve, I think I'll start a thread for this in Post-War. The kitchen sink is acting parts washer when they aren't looking...
  14. At least you have a "tight" steering box (I played with your wheel when you weren't looking), my Buick bounces back and forth across the lane trying to find center when I hit a rut just right... 😬
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