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1956322

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Posts posted by 1956322

    1949 Buick Road Master model 70 starter issue?

    in Buick - Post War

    Posted

    This might sound odd but bear with me.. Hook a spark plug wire to a plug... Ground plug and see if the plug is sparking..I once had a whole set of plugs not fire on a friends car.. Ran fine pulling in.. Few hours later nothing.. Had spark coming from coil had fuel but nothing.. Plugs were all carbon fouled which caused them to short out... If you have spark at coil but not at plug either it's the plugs or the distributor cap

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    1956 Buick Special Info Needed

    in Buick - Post War

    Posted

    On 12/14/2018 at 12:20 PM, Beemon said:

    There is a pretty neat modern brake setup being sold on Ebay that replaces the fresh air box plenum on the firewall. I cannot justify this modification because IMO the stock power brake system is good enough for me to feel confident driving 80-90 mph on mountain passes. I don't want to say I'm reckless, but I am very spirited in my driving and have yet to have an "oh sh*t" moment with the brakes. I also think this modification is ugly and changes the firewall too much, but could be justified depending on what you want. It's literally a bolt in swap with no hassle, or so I've been told. One way to increase your braking efficiency is to find Roadmaster backing plates and hardware for the fronts. They are 12x2.5" drums instead of the stock 12x2.25" drums and work pretty good. I did this swap on my 56 Century not because I needed to but because I wanted to.

     

    There are disc brake kits that can be relatively inexpensive to install. This starts to get into the range of questionably and is probably only desirable with the firewall kit. I would not use disc brakes with your stock manual master cylinder. I have been told the systems work fine with the stock master cylinder but I have never tested this exact combination. Since ball bearings are becoming increasingly hard to find and the stuff offered on places like RockAuto are junk, I've been reusing questionable 60 year old or so ball bearings on the fronts (for instance, one of the inner bearing outer race tolerances was so poor that the race spun inside my hub). If you can locate 1960-70+ front drums, you can knock the rivets out and use the hubs with tapered BR3 and BR5 roller bearings if you turn the inner ball bearing race down to a thickness of 1/2" as a bearing spacer on the stock spindles. The disc brake kits supply these spacers and bearings with their hardware, so that could be a plus. In fact, I am going to test the validity of whether or not you can really use the discs with the stock power master cylinder over break as a final nail in the coffin. I've been working with a colleague on pressure differences brake efficiencies these last few months and the papers say it could work but pedal effort might be tough even with vacuum assisted brakes.

     

    For power steering, there is also a kit on Ebay for that as well. I wouldn't bother tracking down a stock 60 year old steering box unless you know 100% certain it is tight and in good working order or you have a mill/lathe combo to re manufacture the hard parts inside that are not made brand new. Otherwise, if you send it out for rebuild, the best you're gonna get is a seal kit and 120 degrees of steering wheel play. Ask me how I know this. This Ebay kit is also a direct bolt in swap. You can use the original pump for looks or forego it completely with the new pump in the kit. The seller was willing to split the kit when I inquired earlier this year. You would simply need to modify the drag link with the available kits (manual and power steering cars use the same drag link but different internals for 56). The pitman arm spline count is the same so that is not an issue, and the kit comes with a new pitman arm as well. You do still need to find a power steering column but because its a rag joint, it is easily and effortlessly connected to the steering column. Others on the forum have adapted the CPP 600 steering box. Do a quick search on the forums and you'll find Leif in Sweden's posts (Ebay kit) as well as VickyBlue's posts (CPP box). They are good reads.

     Beemon I can tell you that I've been running the scarebird disk brake set up with the factory power master..probably not the optium set up but I haven't had any real world problems with it in the two years of daily driving it...

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