Beemon

I think I've bit off a bit more than I can chew here. I've seen some threads indicating that some of you have done work on these in the past, so here goes. Before I did any troubleshooting, I did a lot of research and replaced all the wax and electrolytic capacitors with modern replacements. I checked all capacitors before installing and all were good. The only difference in soldering is that I routed one capacitor to a different ground state. I then went through the circuit and checked every 1/2W resistor to 10% of their resistance values based on the schematic in the shop manual. Everything checked out. One 360 ohm resistor broke so I made a new one from a 100 ohm and 270 ohm resistor and routed them in series. The electrical difference between the two read 360 ohms after soldering. I even checked all mica and ceramic capacitors, which checked out via shop manual. So here's where I'm stuck. My next step, I fired it up. Nothing. Unplugged and pulled the vibrator. I crimped the can back so I could pull it out. Contacts are free, but very cloudy. I used a burnishing tool to clean the contacts, hoping it would work. Put it back in, fired it back up, nothing. This time I took the multimeter and traced the schematic. All heaters check 12VDC, both connectors on the vibrator dock check 12VDC, and two of the three connectors on the OZ4 dock read 12VDC the two pins for the OZ4 that read 12V come straight from the transformer - the third goes to the electrolytic capacitors. The vibrator is still also silent. I then checked for AC current at the vibrator - nothing. AC current at the OZ4, nothing. No surprise because the vibrator didn't want to fire, but wanted to make sure it wasn't just quiet. I should note here that the tubes seem to be ok - they all light up, are a soft glow and there is no indication of damage or loss of vacuum (I was told they would be a hazy gray). So what's my next step here? I'm really a novice, the extent of online tutorials go so far as "replace wax caps, you're good to go". I want to say the vibrator contacts are oxidized to the point where they are not working properly, but I'm also curious about the OZ4 tube. is there a surefire way to get the vibrator vibrating again (a way to clean out the oxidation)? Enjoy some pics of my sub-par soldering attempts:

yes

I wouldn't mind taking that original 1956 WCFB, would just like to see some pictures first. I have been waiting patiently for one to pop up - mostly 54 and 55s.

The choke tube is the smallest brake line you can buy. If you're lucky, what's left of the old line is either missing from the manifold or will come out easy. You'll need a special flare nut that is female end and not male end like normal brake line. You can probably salvage this off of one of the lines on your other spare parts cars if they still have it. When I did my dual quad mod, I was lucky to find an old hydraulic hose shop that does industrial work for CAT and the big rig places in the surrounding areas - they had the fitting as well. The issue is going to be finding a nut that's long enough to seat on those good threads, though. Last time I was at my NAPA, I couldn't find the kit. However, all NAPAs are different. Likewise, CARs still sells the kit.

MrEarl, are you interested in that carburetor?

There wasn't anything specified in the handbook about maintenance cycles, so I figured every oil change or so I would take the screw out of the vacuum advance and shoot a bunch of lithium grease in there (that's the grease hole). Point grease was indeed used as well! I did have to set base timing at 7 degrees again regardless because I pulled the distributor out. I did notice over the two times I've had the car out (it's parked now because I tore the radio out) that under load it has a slight miss, so I'm wondering if it's to do with the point gap. Either way, I'll be re-checking to make sure both sets are dead on each other and to also check timing again. I would like to get my hands on a dial indicator, too, one of these days and do it right instead of hooking up the dwell meter and bumping the starter while adjusting the points.

You tighten clockwise to push the pitman gear into the worm gear. The free play adjustment is at the rag joint, you need to pull the box out and then adjust the preload on the worm gear ball bearings supposedly. You can't adjust the worm gear without a top end disassembly.

I cannot stress enough that a rebuild with modern materials is imminent. The ethanol will sink your pump if using old rubber.

I also have 225/75R15 tires as suggested, and with the 3.36 gears this was the case for me. With 3.23 gears now, it's only 5 MPH off. Radials just flatten out more, even when inflated. It's what they're designed to do, to give the car more rolling surface area. Bias-plys are the obvious choice for vintage cars. They're more firm and taller at their inflated weight, but the junk they sell these days can cause a blow out at 60 MPH and if you're not running tubes, you can be in serious trouble. It's like Pertronix. A couple years ago, they were bulletproof, but now they must be made in China. I think the issue is that the scale is for 28" diameter tires is just that, 28" diameter at full weight road surface. If your 28" radials are 28" inflated off the car, but then loaded onto the car, they may be only 27" in diameter and that will offset the speedo. Bear in mind when looking for 225/75R15 tires, all that's really available over the counter is SUV tires. There's nothing wrong with that, but according to the Firestone clerk, I was a fool for not getting their wider performance tires for my "hot rod". I almost forgot to ask, but ddiaz396, are you running ethanol? It will perforate the old fuel pump diaphragms. Mine lasted about as long as yours did.

I think 57 and 58 boxes might be similar mounting. Oldsmobiles also have the same box and pump. I want to say Cadillac has the same box, but I haven't seen one to know. The local yard out here has a couple 57s, a 56 and some 56 Olds. The guy who runs the yard also has a 56 Olds and he swapped the box for a late 60s Olds box as a bolt in. Don't expect anything from the era to really hold up. I went to pull the steering box off the one 56 because I already pulled the pump and it turned out to be bullet proof, but the steering box had as much slop as mine after it had been rebuilt. I don't know if these boxes came from the factory with heavy slop and relied solely on alignment and pump psi to drive straight or not, but I've seen older boxes with next to zero play.

This is the most important part, because they will bleed you dry and unless you can drive up and raise a fuss, there's nothing you can do about it.

Is your pump original? I can't remember if you had it rebuilt or not, but depending on the fuel used, it can eat the old diaphragms alive. Don't buy bias-ply tires. There was a thread on here last national meet where the quality of bias-ply tires these days are "show quality" only. If I were shopping for white walls, I would go with Diamondback Radials. They use modern tires from over the counter and "braze" a whitewall to it.

Sometimes after sitting, the weight of the speedo barrel causes it to get stuck on the magnet ring. You might be able to pull it yourself and get it free rolling just with a little cleaner. I paid $150 to have someone do a 10 minute fix because I didn't know any better. Any junkyard replacement you find won't be in any better condition. I would look for a speedometer repair guy in your local area.

If I had the money to do it right, it would be Dover White over Electric Blue over Dover White, like original. I'm probably going to settle for a single stage that's close at my local MAACO, though (white/dark blue/white). Are you going to repaint yours original? or is the paint still good and only need a bit of touch up?

Thanks, Willie! I definitely hear everything else now, that's for sure. When replacing the driving gear, you have to take the torque ball retainer off, correct? Thanks for the kind words Willis. I think mechanically the car is rock solid. I still need new coil springs on the rear but the air shocks are taking the slop for now. In terms of necessity, I would like to swap timing covers with a 57-62 to get away from the dual action pump and find a way to either convert a Newport wiper to bowden cable or find a way to adapt that 55 Chevy wiper motor I rebuilt. And replace the timing chain. I also want to do a top down inspection on the lifter valley because I can't seem to shake one noisy lifter and I want to see how wear in is going. Would also like some late model aluminum rocker arms, adjustable pushrods and stiffer valve springs for additional lift, but I think this is getting into the wishlist. Paint is definitely next, followed by clock and radio. I won't have the money to do door panels and carpets/seats/headliner this year, so I'll probably end up pulling the panels off and scrub them down good with some citrus cleaner or Dawn. It worked out well on my driver panel, until I touched it with filthy hands again... I'm also using a Bosch Sun tach remake, which is nice, but would eventually like the real thing up to 5k RPM with the old tach box mounted to the fender. There's a gentlemen in Shelton, WA which is an hour away from me that does radio conversions using the Aurora solid state chips and that's probably where I'll take it, to avoid shipping damages. He also does quartz conversions to the clock, but I'm hoping the clock is just gunked up from years of retirement and just needs a good point file. I've decided to also thin my tax return by doing most all the body work on my Buick myself. There isn't a whole lot to do, just sand and maybe fill pits around the sweep spear. MAACO said they would fiberglass holes in the car for the time being, all I need to do is cover the car in etching primer. Here's hoping I don't break the windshield or rear window!

The plate uses stock points. I was looking at the Mallory units and I figured when it said point set was included that it may be a Mallory point set included...The nice thing about this set is that the break points are the ones located next to the junction block, so if I decided to use single set of points, the timing will just be retarded by 2 degrees due to the offset from the stock plate. To be fair, my stock plate rotates pretty nicely, but it hangs up at the final end of the advance travel going both ways. I also used my dad's fishing weight scale to see what the spring force required to move the advance plate was and there was next to 0 force needed for the ball bearing compared to the original plate (can't remember the number specifically).

KC, I love your thread. Sometime between now and August I'll be getting my car painted. Look forward to your tutorial on removing the front and rear window stainless.

So I gave up on electronic ignition systems after being stranded twice. I really couldn't stop there, though. I went and bought a Renberles Dyna-Flyte breaker plate, model 880C-D. The ball bearing breaker plate is already a step up from the wick pad. I grabbed my squeeze tube of white lithium grease, lubed it up, gapped the points per the instructions at .018" and pulled the distributor. Swapping plates was a breeze. The kit was complete, and included a condenser mounting bracket to go on the side of the distributor. It was just a matter of rerouting the contact and ground wires and I was done. Dropped the distributor back in, wired it up, and hit the starter to check the dwell. The instructions say 27 degrees on each point for a total of 34-35 degrees dwell. Started the car, set timing to 5, and away I went! I don't expect any type of performance upgrade, other than more dwell time for better coil saturation and smoother vacuum advance travel. The only modification I had to make was that I had to grind down the lead wire screw from the insulating block since it was interfering with the primary point set. I guess Cadillac guys eat these up because they go all the way back to 1937. Enjoy some pics! Also pay no attention to my work station there... the garage is a shared space.

I believe you can replace the seal if you pick it out while the pitman arm is off. You just need to drive the new one back into place.

Just wanted to let you guys know after during the forum hiatus, I got everything put back together. John, you must have done this before... lol. Put two 3 feet long 2x2s under the tires and with one ratchet pull, it slid all the way flush. For the entire ordeal, I used one small bottle jack, two 56 Buick floor jacks and a 4 ton floor jack. One of the axle seals also blew on the driver's side, so before I got into bleeding, I replaced the rear set of shoes. It's been cold up here. Crawled out from underneath the car the last night after tightening everything up, only to find all the windows covered in ice. I guess it was 28 degrees outside, but I didn't feel a thing. I got my girlfriend a blanket and used her foot (please no jokes lol) for brake bleeding. The final verdict? The car is dead quiet, except the engine of course. On initial takeoff, there is a small whine that disappears after 15 MPH. I'm not sure if it's the torque converter in the Dynaflow spooling up or if it is the rear end. Over the next couple days, I'll watch the oil level since the differential front seal was suspect. If the wine is the diff, then I would think the oil is maybe too thin and is making a little bit of noise until properly lubed? If so, I'll just put some of that sticky Lucas additive in there... I took the car down the interstate to check the driveline, and there was a vibration at about 65MPH, so per the shop manual, I tested the car in Low at about 40MPH and there wasn't any vibration at all. I'm thinking it's maybe my front drums since one of them was oblonged. That's for another topic. Thanks everyone for all your help. The car feels very refreshed and I'm just ecstatic I can have conversations in the car without talking over the diff, or driving in fear that one day it'll blow. Speedometer is still off, but closer to the real values so much that 65 is 60. and 70 is 65. I'm thinking of trying to put a reducer in there, when I was under the car, there seemed to be more room than I thought.

I wish drive-ins still existed. I was pretty upset when they tore down the old drive-in theater a year before I got my Buick back on the road. Now if I want the experience, I need to find a giant white wall and bring my own projector... not the same! There are maybe two food places still around, but it's a park and walk in thing. I blame drive-thrus.

The drive shaft and torque tube are unchanged, I just swapped the carrier only. I'll try that next John. I was thinking it night have to do with the car sitting.

Following John's advice, it indeed leveled the rear end enough for me to put two ratchet straps on the tip of the driveline behind the x frame to align the drive shaft side to side. I then used another jack to set elevation. The old man came up today to be my wheel expert and he turned the drove wheel for me to set the spline. Was quite a shock when the driveline went thunk and fell right in to place. The torque tube flange is still 1 inch away from the torque ball flange but at least it's in. We double checked: put the car in park, I held the driver side wheel and he couldn't turn the passenger side, put the car in neutral and he could turn it. Thursday is supposed to be clear of rain so I'll pick up there, but I'm glad the hard part is over. Not sure why it won't budge on the last inch. I know it's in because the spline is about an inch and a half and we did the wheel test.

No, the ignition resistor is 1.82 if I remember correctly, ICR13.

This is the wrong forum for that, so I tried to save face by praising the 54 in the background. Besides, it's not a DeSoto....