Seafoam65

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.

Bernie, people who list a car for sale for "best reasonable offer" don't have a clue what the car is worth and don't know anything about buying or selling cars in general. They are afraid because they don't know anything that they are going to get screwed if they just throw a number out there on price, and they are counting on offers to come in to tell them what the car is really worth. They want the buyer to do everything for them including pricing the car for them. They will probably take offers for a couple of months or maybe even longer, then call back the high bidder to see if he is still interested. If not, they now know what to ask for the car and will list it with a price. Personally I detest ads like this....if you want to sell me something tell me how much you want....don't play games!

This car is extremely overpriced. It has been parked and not started since 1970! What that means is that it is a complete and total mechanical disaster. Every single bit of the mechanicals will have to be redone...brakes, brake hydraulics, brake hoses, brake lines, fuel lines, fuel tank replacement, engine overhaul(most certainly completely seized), transmission overhaul, rear end seal,radiator,heater core replacement, power steering overhaul, A/C system overhaul, belts hoses, battery, and the list goes on. On top of that, although the interior might clean up, the paint looks horrid and I suspect all chrome trim is rusted from damp garage storage with no car cover. Letting a car sit for 45 years is the worst kind of extreme abuse to a car. 20 K will buy you an extremely nice non GS 66 Riviera that is ready to drive cross country tomorrow. This car is worth more like 5K max .

Not to be discouraged, I went to Pet Smart and bought a mouse. I picked the one with the largest head, figuring he may have more brain matter up there. The training will start this weekend. I will first try to train him to hold the ratchet wrench in his paws without dropping it and then we will move on to making the ratchet operate properly. I am using mild cheddar cheese as a reward when he learns something new. I'll let everyone know how this turns out. If I get him trained, I will make him available to other Forum members on a rental basis. He might become valuable on heater core jobs as well.

I ran into the same problem a year ago.....very frustrating. I put Monroes on and they allow the car to bounce up and down too much on severe road dips but they do ride wonderfully on a smooth Highway. The overall feel is equivalent to the crappy Delco shocks the car came with when new.

The seats aren't out, but pulling a front seat is a five minute job.....sounds like I need to train a mouse to go in through the ash tray hole and take those two screws out!

Steve, I found a post with a blow up diagram of the console and in studying the diagram, it looks to me like it would be possible to remove the heater bezel on the rear side of the console and stick your hand in there to remove the two screws holding the lens bracket to the ash tray assy. I can't imagine that you could get in through the small hole that the ash tray fits into. I am making the assumption that the heater bezel comes right off from the outside with four screws. Also Steve, what kind of heads do the screws holding in the lens bracket have on them....phillips or hex head?

For those of you out there who are planning on getting your car painted, this post is a very good object lesson. If at all possible, remove the trim from the car yourself and tag it and bag it before delivering the car to the painter. If you don't feel you have the necessary skills to do this, then it would be wise to arrange to take some time off from work when the trim is being removed and bag and secure the trim being removed and take it home with you for safekeeping. I've seen this scenario play out many times over the years.....sometimes with very very rare and impossible to find pieces being lost. Most body shops are working on many cars at once and they don't have room to store the trim properly. What often happens is the trim is inadvertently thrown away by a janitor sweeping the floor or cleaning up from a collision job. Often in some shops the trim removal guy is the most inexperienced man in the shop and he hasn't learned how critically important it is to take care of all trim removed and put it all in a safe place.

Looking good! Since you just changed out your rear console lens, what would the procedure be if I was just changing that lens and doing nothing else? I bought a lens a while back because mine is kind of yellow from old age and was shocked to discover it doesn't just snap into place. It's still in my drawer as a future project.

Ed, thank goodness every other piece of trim on my car inside and out is perfect except for my beat up door edge guards, so now I'm good to go. Now my big worry is that UPS will twist them into a pretzel during shipping!

The above quote was made when the price was 185.00. I was able to win the auction and I now have a perfect set of nos door edge guards and they cost me dearly. With five minutes left the price was at 305.00 where it had been for the last ten hours. I waited till 30 seconds to jump in and I knew someone else was going to be slamming in with a huge bid with a few seconds left, so I entered a max bid of 975.00. Sure enough, another bidder waited till 30 seconds left and put up 655.65! I wound up getting them for 665.65............OUCH! Thanks to everyone who let me know about this auction as I had missed seeing it due to an improper search.

Agreed......I thought it was a defective rebuild on my car, that's why I first tried another one. Since the actual problem was a two minute repair, I'd check the voltage regulator plug very carefully and clean the contacts thoroughly before yanking off the alternator.

I just went through this last year on my 65 Riviera. I had my original alternator gone through and had replaced the voltage regulator with a new one just as a precaution using my original voltage regulator painted cover so it would look original. That's when the hell started.....amp light coming on in the dash and the regulator would make a buzzing noise. Tried a different alternator, same thing....different regulator....same thing, original regulator....same thing. Keep in mind it was fine before I started working on it. At that point I knew it had to be a wiring problem, and it turned out to be corroded female spade connectors on the voltage regulator plug....they were all tarnished and green looking instead of shiny brass. I sprayed WD 40 on the plug and plugged and unplugged the voltage regulator about twenty times.....problem solved!