Daves1940Buick56S

I hope you all went down to your local immediately after and had a few pints of their best bitter! Cheers, Dave

Yup. I would have given up long ago if it wasn't for this group. Cheers, Dave

Yup. I would have given up long ago if it wasn't for this group. Cheers, Dave

Nice '60. I live that wrap around rear window and the thin C pillar. Looks like a nice Crown Vic behind your car there as well. Cheers, Dave

True that! Very nice...and the car is nice as well! I assume it's gone since it's not on your sig. What happened to it? Cheers, Dave

Hahahaha! You bet! We are abt 20 miles away in Rockville. Back in the very early 70s I went to RIT so I lived in your area for 3 yrs. We used to go up to SUNY Brockport on weekends trolling for women since the M/F ratio at RIT at the time was 7 to 1!! We also visited Geneseo, Nazareth College, Highland Hosp Nursing School, even the Rochester Business Institute (they had a dorm in an old convent on Prince St in Rochester). Sigh, good times... Cheers, Dave

Yup. Thanks for your replies and letting me vent! Cheers, Dave

I have an old aftermarket under-dash heater of unknown make, but nothing special. Finish was gold hammertone, probably late 1950s. It was pretty rusty and the motor was slow to turn so I pulled the heater out of the car. I disassembled it and took the sheet metal box to be sandblasted (I am going to repaint in black wrinkle, more in the style of 1940). I disassembled, cleaned and lubed, and reassembled the 6V motor and now it runs great (holding the brushes back is a pain). I took the small 6"x6" heater core to a local radiator shop. After a couple of days he called and said the core was shot, lotsa leaks, need a new one, that'll be $225. Gulp. So I said no thanks and picked up the core. I tested it today - first with air at 7 lbs. Almost no leakage - what there was is attributable to my lashup. Tightened connections and filled it with water and pressurized to 7 lbs. No leakdown after 1 hour and no water leakage. Do these shop owners think we are fools? Or am I missing something? The flow seems OK so unless someone can think of something else I need to check I am reinstalling it once I get the box repainted. Arrrrrgh! Cheers, Dave

After a few minutes of searching I have a better name for the press-on nuts - they are flat Tinnerman nuts. I knew that at one time but that memory slipped the surly bonds of Earth...

Mike - When I did some wiring work last summer I laid out a nice "bed," being especially careful to have a nice level from the hump over to the drivers door - I didn't want to mess up my back any further. By using a few thick blankets and some pillows it was actually pretty comfortable. But I could not get my head on top of the pedals without my nose being rammed into the underdash struts. Maybe my head is way too fat - at least that is what my friends say!! ;) Grant - I think there are 5 nuts on the panel on the '40, at least according to Doug Seybold. And he was the one that suggested lowering the column. The steering wheel idea was mine after I banged my head into it several times when I did the work last summer! Actually, I was working towards getting the grill out but was stopped since on the '40 it is held on by 4 press-on nuts on the 4 large mount studs, and I was afraid of FUBARing something. I do agree it would make it a lot easier to get to the right side if I could figure out a Fail-Safe way to get the grill out. But we all remember what happened at the end of that movie, don't we? Cheers, Dave

If you assume that the gas/air mixture inside the cylinder at the time of firing is homogeneous, I fail to see what difference it would make. Cheers, Dave

I have a 1940 56S and need to get back in there as well. As I understand it, you can either take the panel with the 3 pods out far enough to get to the nuts holding the amp/temp pod in, or try to get the nuts off as it sits with the panel on. I think there are 2 nuts to remove on the side pods. The panel is held in by 5 studs/nuts, 2 on ea side and one at center top (I think). You may have to drop the steering column some in any case, and it might be easier to move around there if you pull the steering wheel. In any case not a fun job and I am not looking forward to it! Cheers, Dave

WOW!! I love it! Cheers, Dave

Hmmm. Well if it only cost 50 cents there couldn't have been much to it. And my concern was a dimensional fit, which 50 cents certainly would not affect. So it sounds like a "yes" with maybe a few bobs to do on the install. Thanks, Dave

Will the Sonomatic 980650 for 1941 fit in a 1940? Cheers, Dave

Jenz: About a month old. And ethanol free as well. I removed the tank and had it RENU'd and cleaned out all lines and added an electric pump for starting purposes. Cheers, Dave

I ran it again today - started right up as before. I isolated the miss to cylinder #3. I looked at the plug - fouled with oil. I looked at #4 - evidence of rich running from before but not too bad. I cleaned them both up and swapped. Restarted and the miss was gone, ran pretty smooth with the vacuum now between 20" and 21". Vacuum needle was not rock steady but the movement is very small, jitters over maybe 1/4". Tailpipe goo is way reduced - I put a cloth over the pipe end and nothing stained the cloth. I noticed that the plugs are AC R45, so I am going to get set of 47's and try those - should help until I get the head off in May and see what's going on there. Cheers, Dave

Bernie: Hahahahaha, yeah...I was 19 when I joined the BCA! Looong time ago! Yeah, it's pretty flat as long as you go East! Let's see, curb weight of my Beast (or, as my wife affectionately calls it, The Money Pit) is about 3900 lbs so not much more than your '38. Actually, the front brakes on mine are essentially new, as are most of the components forward of the drag link. I pulled a front drum last summer and was totally amazed...you could dine off of the backing plate...better than the brakes on my old '66 Fairlane ever looked. As you can see... Cheers, Dave

Well, you can certainly make a good case for retrofitting to a dual system for peace of mind, although I don't really know if you are really decreasing your chances of a major problem or not by doing this. I had a 1966 Fairlane while I was in college the first time, and it had a single master (with a cheesy screw-on top!) and I never had a single issue with it over 100k miles. But like Bernie said, I did maintain the hell out of it by frequent inspection and rebuilding the wheel cylinders as necessary, carefully checking hoses, adjusting the brakes every 5k miles (I removed the autoadjusters), repacking the wheel bearings and new seals every 10k miles, and a full system bleed/fluid replace about once a year - it was nice to have all of that energy back then! Frankly what worries me more on my 1940 is the rather economical amount of brake lining and drum widths on my heavy car. Cheers, Dave

All: In November, I posted this (in part): "So, finally getting back on the engine once more before car hibernation. I had mentioned the plug fouling. I also noticed a lot of gunk coming out of the exhaust, to the point that it leaves a smear on the pavement. I had been assuming that it was all oil related due to the low compression, but on looking into it further - it's not oil. The inside of the tailpipe has lots of black deposit, but it's not oily. A closer look at the plugs reveals the same. And the black smudge on the pavement is not oily, either." Since I posted that, I managed to cadge a used WDO-448S off of Ebay at a real good price. Although filthy, it was complete. I figured I could use some parts off of it on my 440S carb since quite a few interchange. I had hoped to rebuild the auto choke since mine is missing many of the parts but the mechanism on the air horn is different enough that I couldn't do that. BUT, I started thinking about swapping the air horn from the 448S over and it looked like I could. The only real difference besides the choke linkage is the accel pump jets are on the bottom of the horn on the 448S and in the carb body (and removable) on the 440S. If I used a regular screw of the right length inside the throat mating the "new" air horn to the 440S body it should work OK as long as the ports in the body remain open to take the accel pump gas to their respective jets. So I pulled off the carb a couple of weeks ago. Now keep in mind I did a full overhaul in July/Aug of '12 and the carb was pretty filthy as I got it. But I thought I did a good job on it, but - FAIL. I went to check the float height - too high (fuel level) as the float was only about 2/16" off the machined surface of the carb bowl lid (although the needle is one of those flat elastomer jobs so I could not tell exactly where it shuts off - may be < 2/16"). I also checked the float and it leaks some - several bubbles when you plunge it into very hot water. Luckily the 448S float was an exact fit and tested good. Then I did a fit check with the 448S air horn and all looked good. I then semi-stripped the 440S and checked all of my thought-to-be fastidious cleaning of last year and found the outboard accel pump jet was plugged. I cleared it with a 74 drill. I also checked all of the metered orifices and all checked good to proper drill size (although the mains were a bit "loose"). The metering rods looked OK but were about 0.002" too thin, pretty uniformly over each step. Then luck struck and I was able to get Carter NOS parts from OJ in Berryville. So I installed new main jets and new standard metering rods (which checked out exactly to spec). He has a NOS needle (steel tip) and seat for the bowl so I installed them and set the 448S float to exactly 3/16". I confirmed that the fuel level is about 1/8" lower now than previously. Since the accel pump out of the rebuild kit from last year seems to stick a lot I swapped it out with the accel pump off of the 448S which has real nice pliable leather and fits a lot better. I also swapped out the accel pump linkage spring with a much stiffer one from OJ. Unfortunately I was not able to get all of the parts I needed to revive the auto choke from my 440S from OJ so I had to stick with my air horn assy swapout idea. This I did and reassembled all, setting all to spec and waiting for reinstall weather. With the coldest weather in years upon us here, I decided that today with 25 degrees ambient was the right time to do the reinstall and test. Yeah, we are all half crazy, right? At least it was sunny! So I put it back on, reconnected all, fast charged the battery, and primed with the electric pump (man, am I glad I put that in!). Fortunately my carport has walls on 2 sides and is protected from the prevailing wind. I also did not leave tools outside, I only brought out what I needed so I could avoid freezing my hands and fingers. I turned it over and it caught right away! No struggle to start like usual. And the auto choke worked perfectly. So my FrankenCarb idea paid off! After warmup the choke butterfly opened up just like it's s'posed to. So I let it warm up and then set the mixture. The good news is I am now pulling 19" of vacuum - it was 16" before. Bad news is I am still seeing a rhythmic drop and the tailpipe noise confirms that, so I probably have a bad or sticking valve. But overall it seems a lot better. I cannot yet confirm whether the very rich running it still occurring - I need to run it some more and then look at the plugs. So, if anybody asks if you can run an 448S air horn/choke assy on a 440S - the answer is yes! You too can make a FrankenCarb! Now I need to get a trans and get the clutch replaced. Hopefully by Feb... Cheers, Dave

Ha ha - yeah, I always use a 12V battery with the light. The easiest way is to take 2 Radio Shack 4 D cell trays, wire them in series and tape together. Nice 'n' portable. Or a 5 AH 12V sealed lead acid. The Battery Store sells them for about $20. Cheers, Dave

Hey all: So this turned up in my inbox recently, thought I would share: ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A C M E S A F E C O M P A N Y 666 Wiley Road Runner, Arizona 09876 Embargoed for release until 1 April 2014 Agnes Veeblefester, Marketing Director The Automotive Services Group (ASG) at Acme Safe Company is pleased to announce the introduction of a new instrument for use by the automotive maintenance and repair professional community. ASG has received much attention in the past as the primary developer of the "Marie Antoinette" brand automatic car windows with the fastest close time in the industry. This new product is called the "ViewBox" and, using only a user-supplied vacuum gauge and inductive timing light, helps the harried professional determine which cylinder has sticking valves or other problems when the gauge presentation shows rhythmic needle drops. The following illustration shows the ViewBox, with the ingenious "ViewPort" on the top and the "LightPort" on the side. As can be seen in the next 2 illustrations, the user places the vacuum gauge in the bottom portion of the ViewBox and routes the hose out of the exclusive "HosePort" and to engine manifold vacuum. The box is then closed and, with the engine running, the timing light is sync'd to Cylinder 1 and inserted in the LightPort and pointed at the vacuum gauge. The user then can move the sync pickup to each cylinder in turn and, looking through the ViewPort, see where the vacuum readings are low, thus isolating the bad cylinder(s). This wonderful new product should be available for order through our wholesaler, Flerm Industries, shortly after receipt of this Press Release. Price is expected to be in the $10k class, which considering how much money could be potentially saved in recovered burdened labor costs makes it the Bargain of the Year! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Just kidding! Happy New Year everybody!! Cheers, Dave

Happy New Year from Maryland! May all your Buicks run strong through the year!

Yes, a Very Happy Christmas and New Year to all! May the wind be at your back, your radiators run cool and your oil pressure high! Cheers, Dave

Danny: I think it goes without saying that *all* of us car collectors have questionable intelligence!! Otherwise we would be doing something a bit more...logical! Cheers, Dave