Seafoam65

Buddy, the easiest check to do is to unplug the two wire connector at the motor and using a test light, probe the wiring harness end of the connector and you should have one wire with voltage with the headlights on, and the other wire with voltage when the lights are turned off. If you have juice at each wire at the appropriate time, that would indicate the motor has a problem. Be sure to do the test with the ignition turned on.

My car, which will be 50 years old in February, still has it's original non leaking heater core. My mileage on the car is currently 56,000 miles. Has anyone else seen one go this far without leaking? By the way, the car still has it's original 50 year old radiator that still looks new inside and never has leaked, along with it's fifty year old radiator cap that still holds pressure and looks great. Obviously the man who owned the car for 45 years was extremely anal about changing out the coolant regularly to avoid corrosion. Anybody like to take bets on how much longer these parts can go without a leak? By the way, I do carry the necessary tools and parts to bypass the heater core in the trunk at all times! Regarding my heater core, I feel like the guy who jumped off the empire state building and announced to people in the window at each floor as he passed that he was doing just great!

Thanks everyone for the help. I removed the nut/washer assemblies, detailed and reinstalled them without any drama, another item off the check list!

Perfect indeed......it looks awesome!

Thanks Ed, I'll wait for you to check and make sure it's OK to remove them.

On my 1965 Riviera, when you open the door and look at the inside area of the door in front of the vent window assy, there is a screw or bolt with a very large washer on it. I would like to remove these(one on each door) for detailing and reinstall them. If I remove them will something fall out inside the door creating a disaster requiring removal of the outer skin or can they be removed and installed without any consequence? Thanks, Winston

You didn't say whether or not you have removed the wheel bearing dust cap, cotter pin, nut and retainer washer from the hub. The drum comes off hub and all. If you have done that and it won't come off you have a lip worn onto the outer edge of the drum braking surface and it is catching on the shoes.

The symptom you are describing indicates a fuel delivery problem. The start up then die means the car starts up on residual fuel then dies when the fuel runs out. If your 87 has a factory theft system, that could be malfunctioning and killing the fuel pump. Also the fuel pump or fuel pump relay could be malfunctioning. You will need to check the fuel pressure when it won't run to see what it reads compared to the specification using a fuel system pressure checking tool. If the car starts up and stays running if you hold the throttle down, you have an idle air control valve problem.

What makes all this lots of fun is if your car is like mine, all the colored stripes on the hoses have worn off and you are looking at black spaghetti. When I bought my car, several hoses had split on the end and fallen off but they were close enough to where they were plugged in that I was able to guess where they went and guessed right. All it takes is for one hose to fall off on any of the hoses and it will blow out the defrost on A/C.

I drove back from a car show today, about a 30 minute drive, and when I removed the ignition key on my Riviera it was very very warm. I touched my fingers to the face of the ignition lock and it felt like it was almost hot enough to burn my fingers if I held them on there. I did have the A/C on next to high blower with the controls on vent. Anybody have this problem and what did you find....bad switch? burned connector on back of switch? There is no burning smell, just lots of heat on the ignition lock. It would seem odd that I would have a problem on the ignition switch at 56,000 miles.

Thank you Ed and Jan for all the great info......looks like I've got another future project to take care of. What is the correct finish on the spring?

UH OH.........looks like my car is missing the jack hold down spring......I hadn't known about that...and I hadn't noticed anything on the trunk floor to hook the spring to....no protrusions in that area.....what say ye ED?

From what I've been reading, there are a lot of people on the forum who are struggling with how to post pictures from their digital camera on this forum. This post will help you through it. It is really quite simple.....First of all, you have to understand that the pictures that your digital camera takes are too large to be used on the forum. You must first load your camera's pictures into your computer by plugging your camera's memory card into your computer. Once you have the pictures in a file on your computer, the next step is to go to Irfanview.com and download Irfanview into your computer. With the Irfanview program installed, enter the text of your forum post and then scroll down to where it says "manage attachments" and click on that. A box will appear on the upper left of your computer screen asking you to select a file to download. At that point you will go to your file of pictures and click on one of them you want to post. You will then click on "open file" at the bottom of the box that is on the upper left corner of your screen. When the file is opened it will automatically be added below the text on your thread post. However, before you can load pictures on the forum, you must first downsize them or they will not be accepted. This is where your Irfanview program comes in. Go to your picture file and click on a picture that you want to post on the forum. When the picture comes up on your screen, hit right click on your mouse and right click on "open with" and off to the side it will say "Irfanview" and roll your mouse on top of Irfanview and click on it. The picture will pop up again on your screen on top of the first picture...this is your Irfanview picture. Now to down size the picture on your screen, hit "Control" and "R" on your keyboard at the same time. When you do that, a box will pop up asking what size do you want. I always pick the choice in the middle which will downsize your picture by half. Once you have made your size selection, hit "Control" and "S" on your keyboard at the same time. this will save your downsized picture on your computer. You can now click on your downsized picture when adding a picture to your forum post and it will be accepted! Now....let's see those pictures!

Since there seem to be a lot of people who are having trouble posting pictures on the forum, please check out my new post on how to do it....Regards, Winston

There is another 63 Riviera in Queens New York that nobody in the ROA knows about. There is an elderly gentleman who lives in Queens who is the original owner of a dark blue with blue interior 63 Riviera with 6,000 original miles on it. His nephew is a customer of mine and I have tried to purchase this car but he refuses to sell it. His wife hates the car and it will be sold in ten seconds after he passes on. I hope at that time that I can manage to purchase it. I have seen pictures and I believe it to be the finest original first gen Riviera in existence. The reason it is such low mileage is that when the car was new, he and his wife went out in it and her high heel punched a hole in the passenger side rubber floor mat. A huge argument ensued resulting in the wife refusing to ever ride in the car again or acknowledge it's existence. So he bought another car that she would ride in, and for the last 50 years he drives it every 6 weeks at 5 am on Sunday morning when nobodfy else is out on the road just to keep the mechanicals in good shape. This car is the ultimate Riviera time warp.....beam me up scotty!

There is a way to diagnose a clogged radiator in ten seconds with no guesswork. You diagnose this problem with a laser temperature gun. You can buy a laser temp gun that you can point a laser at anything and it will tell you the temperature of the object where the beam is hitting it. I keep one in my toolbox and it is a lifesaver on diagnosing overheating problems. If you point the gun at a clogged radiator, you will find that it is very hot at the inlet at the top hose, but there will be cold spots further down, sometimes room temperature if it is really clogged. A good radiator that is flowing will be somewhere between 180 and 155 throughout the core no matter where you point the gun. By the way, an engine that only overheats going down the road and not at idle is a clogged radiator about 95 per cent of the time in my experience. The other five percent is usually a water pump impeller problem.

How right you are Ed. That picture was taken by the seller of the car before I bought it. I have the handle in between the tire and the trunk floor as you suggested.

Yes the jack is exposed. Here are some pics.....my car has the original cardboard with replacement vinyl trunk matting material that is not like the factory.

Here is the final update.......They arrived properly bubblewrapped and in perfect condition, but for some reason the gap on them was closed up extremely narrow. I carefully ran a wedge down them to open them up where I thought they should be. I discovered in removing the old ones that it is necessary to back off all the outer door skin nuts as the door edge guards slide in between the outer and inner door skins and they are pinched and can't be removed till you back off the nuts. I was able to get them on without chipping the paint and they look fantastic....what an improvement! Thanks again to those who let me know about the auction on ebay!

I was looking around on the internet and found a pair of 65 aluminum front brake drums for sale for 100.00. The listing says they have a lot of brake lining left on them. sounds like a bargain to me. You can find the listing if you Google search : Mitula 1965 riviera front brake drums

Your engine compartment looks beautiful! One thing you might want to consider doing is replacing the windshield washer bottle with the correct reproduction from CARS. The yellowed bottle is the only visual flaw in an otherwise totally pristine engine compartment. I did that on my car and it sure made a big difference in the overall appearance. The CARS repro has the correct Buick logo and looks just like the original without the yellowing.

Technically the drums become throwaway when they reach the maximum diameter that is printed on the drum. The throwaway dimension usually allows a little leeway assuming some people will go beyond that point. The drum becomes a hazard when the brake lining on the drum is so thin that it might fail or not dissipate heat properly, or if it is so thin that if the shoes wear down till they are thin that the wheel cylinders will go out so far that the cups won't seal to their bore, resulting in total loss of the brake fluid and catastrophic failure on a single chamber master cylinder system. If you don't have a tool to measure inside diameter of the drum for minimum thickness, the drum manufacturer makes it easy for you.......they put a 45 degree bevel on the edge of the lining of the drum. If the drum is worn down to the point the bevel disappears, you are beyond tolerance.

I agree with Ed.....as I stated earlier, if the center hole on the drums are not a tight fit around the hub, leaving the drum loose will not work, as there is a lot of free movement around the stud holes on the drum. Although technically you might be able to center the drum perfectly and tighten the lug nuts to hold it, that is not a safe setup. I wonder if anyone makes replacement drums with the correct center hole for a 65?

I'm sure you can mount the kyb's with a little ingenuity. When I had my problem I was in a hurry to get the car back on the road for a car event and I intend to revisit the problem at a later date and put the KYB"S on the front. I agree with you that the KYB's still give a smooth ride, they just don't bounce as severely on bad dips in the road. I have KYB's on all my other cars with the stock suspensions and they drive very nice with a smooth ride. It's been a while since I looked at the front lower shock mount.... Do you think there is room up there for an adapter plate that you could bolt the kyb's to then bolt the plate to the lower control arm?

You are correct.....there is no reason why you have to have the drum connected to the hub, as long as the center hole on the drum is a tight fit on the hub so that the drum is perfectly centered with the hub. The lug nuts will hold the drum tight to the hub, as you pointed out. A lot of cars in the 60's had front drums that were not attached to the hub from the factory. You should be fine with the setup you have.