Buickborn

Appears to me that that IS the airfoil-style body used by the Super and Roadmaster in'42. It just lacks the full-length front fender extension introduced in 1946. If this '42 were a Special, it would closely resemble a '41 Special.

Thanks for the info! I hear what you're saying about the difficulty of finding parts for Buicks of this era. So far, I've been lucky with my '30 roadster, which has suffered only a few broken pot-metal items and tired carburetor/fuel pump innards -- all replaced with new parts from Bob's. Guess I shouldn't push my luck with another such car, especially not a disassembled one. Thanks again.

Shawn -- Have you been able to get a sense of this car's completeness? Are hood side panels, headlights, etc., all there? Has the chicken-coop top been completely renewed? (Hard to tell from the photo of the bottom side.) Does the paint/body work seem to be first-class, in good condition? With more information, I might be interested in this car, but I'd sure hate to be the one to try to tell this poor widow-lady what this item is really worth. Thanks!

This looks to be at least a very usable parts car, especially if it has had any mechanical rebuilding. Aside from the engine (which is slightly different), do driveline components such as clutch, transmission, and differential interchange with 1930 40 series?

Are the chrome-plated A/C airscoops correct? I don't remember ever seeing that treatment on these early A/C jobs. Could the A/C have been added post-delivery?

Interesting topics and hypotheticals, guys. We're lucky we haven't been kicked off of here for straying so far from the thread topic. Here's a related ethical issue: over on another forum, a gent is complaining about a fella who joined the forum asking for help with an unusual car he'd bought. After some members of the group supplied him with parts and research efforts so that he could better his car, he then flipped it -- apparently at quite a profit. So . . . does the doctrine of free enterprise justify this kind of profiteering from the efforts of helpful fellow hobbyists? Does "there's a sucker born every minute" allow this sort of exploitation of others' generosity? Or should we expect that generosity to be so unconditional as to magnanimously accept whatever use the beneficiary puts it to?

Well, blast it all! As if I didn't have enough to worry about, now I have to lie awake tonight trying to figure out why many of the entries on Leif's spring specification list indicate LHD. What difference could right or left-hand drive conceivably make in determining spring rates? Is it possible that even back in the '30s and '40s American obesity was a problem???

Wow, John, you're my kind of guy -- wish you were everone else's, too. Your line of thought about the connection between freedom and responsibility has a very long tradition, going back to the Founders like Jefferson, Franklin, Washington, et.al. -- all strong believers in personal freedom, who also argued passionately that with freedom comes the responsibility to act not only out of self-interest but also for the sake of the common "weal" as required by republican (lower case r) and Classical standards of good citizenship. Obviously, many today sneer at such ideals -- viewing our free society as little more than a common wrestling match of individuals each trying to out-grapple others for his or her own gain. But it's clear, John, that you are not one of those cynics -- and neither am I.

I'm not sure that this is 100% conclusive, but I can tell you that the '41 Cadillac sedanet (series 61) uses a softer rear spring than the 4-door in the same series. Since the Buick uses coils rather than Cadillac's stiffer leaf springs, surely the model-to-model spring differentiation would be greater in the Buick. By the way, are you sure that the nose-high attitude of your sedanet isn't due, at least partially, to too much height in your front springs? Reason I ask is that I once had a car with the same problem -- which turned out to be caused by spacers installed in the front springs, put there, apparently, in response to a sagging problem.

This profit/greed/free-enterprise topic is certainly a hot one. What it boils down to, I feel, is the question of whether it is OK to apply ordinary business practices to dealings with fellow hobbyists . . . or whether these folks should be considered part of a fraternity of sorts -- a little like friends or family, from whom surely all of us agree that it's not right to seek substantial gain. Now, my own feeling is that the factors which place friends and family off limits for profiteering are common interests, common concerns, common objectives, and common experiences which tie us together in ways foreign to the cold world of business. So, too, hobbyists share a kind of commonality -- one that is surely degraded by calculated profiteering off each other. Some things are just more important than money. The problem is that we don't all agree on exactly what those things are.

Thanks, guys, for all the expert advice -- plenty here for me to chew on. Ironically, the car for which I specifically want a trailer (a '30 series 44 roadster) is much smaller than my '54; but I'm damned if I'll invest in a trailer unsuitable for the '54 -- or for either of my two other collectibles, both of which are 18-footers, but, fortunately, fairly narrow.

Acrylic lacquer in any original color, for any car built since the 1920s, can be ordered from TCP Global in San Diego. On their website, autocolorlibrary.com , you can pull up color charts for your car's year and make (just follow the prompts); but, due to the limitations entailed in scanning old color chips, the colors usually appear darker than they should. In any case, if you have a fair idea of the color you're trying to match (or better yet, its name), you will be able to find its product number on the charts and order accordingly. Although TCP Global carries PPG paints, I have had very good results with their private brand, "Restoration Shop," priced considerably lower than PPG -- the lacquer cost savings, however, slightly mitigated by a lower recommended reduction rate for the private brand than for PPG (i.e., 1:1 vs.1:1.5). Still, their thinner is considerably cheaper as well. In addition to being satisfied with TCP's lower-priced lacquer, I have found these folks extremely knowledgeable and helpful on the phone -- which, last time I called them, was the only way to order. Couldn't do so using the website. By the way, I use a HVLP gun on my lacquer jobs with no problems (even with blending, which I do by applying successively reduced coats as I progress further into the original paint) -- or at least no problems that I have attributed to the gun. But, then, one of the reasons I prefer lacquer is that it is completely idiot-proof. Doesn't matter if I drool it, fuzz it, orange-peel it, or drag the hose through it . . . in no time the evidence can be wet-sanded out and re-shot, and no one's the wiser. Except, of course, anyone reading this.

I'm scratching my head over a question that must be fairly common for owners of cars like my '54 Roadmaster 76R, for which specs show a width of just under 80 inches. In looking at possibilities for enclosed car trailers for transporting this Buick (as well as the narrower vehicles among my menagerie of collectibles), I find that the typical maximum interior trilaer width is 96". In light of the considerable thickness of the car's doors, I don't see how would be reasonably possible to enter or exit the car when it's in one of these trailers. Is there some obvious solution to this puzzzle that is eluding me? Since I'm fortunate enough not to be excessively upholstered, I suppose I'm OK with climbing in and out of the car's door window, but I'm wondering if there would be even enough room to do that without undesirably rubbing against the car's finish in the process One possibly helpful scenario that has occurred to me would be to position the car off center in the trailer to allow more entrance/egress room on one side -- in the hope that the effect of the corresponding weight shift would be negligible. But even that approach appears to have its limitations due to the typical intrusion of the trailer's wheel housings into the interior. Suggestions? Thanks! ~ Charlie Manes

Roj -- Sorry to hear about your engine problems, although I can relate. Last fall, I bought a nice, very original, non-running '30 44-series roadster, only to later discover a large welded-up crack in the engine's water jacket. Now that the car is running, the repair seems to be holding; but last weekend I discovered quite a bit of coolant in the engine oil. Hope it's just a head gasket problem. In any case, are you sure your engine's crack cannot be properly repaired?

If I may jump in here . . . eBay is full of misleading claims, none of which are more common than mis-identification of Buick series designations -- particularly in falsely ID-ing the cars as Centurys or Roadmasters -- and it's nice to see a "heads-up" on such items. The dilemma, however, is in that anyone focused enough on a given make to participate in the corresponding forum would probably not be fooled, while a more general audience is hard to reach with such warnings. Another common eBay falsehood is the identification of a car as a "hardtop" merely because it's not a convertible. I've found that attempts to correct sellers on that issue -- no matter how politely worded -- invariably meet with hostile responses . . . no doubt because the value guides always show higher values for hardtops than for other non-convertibles (except, of course, for woodies). On a few occasions, I've seen cars that I have known or previously owned show up on eBay. Usually, I have been appalled by the misleading or incomplete statements concerning their condition or history, and I wish eBay had a "pants on fire" feature which watchers could trigger when appropriate.

Pretty Roasmaster! I remember quite clearly the introduction of the '55 Buicks in late 1954, especially the Roadmaster. As a car-crazy 8-year-old whose parents had bought a beautiful new black '54 76R a few months before, I was very upset by the way the '55s made that fine '54 so obviously the previous year's model. I never dreamed that the day would come when there'd be no telling one year-model of any given vehicle from another. Oh, well -- at least I never have any trouble discerning the year of the shiny black '54 76R that has lived in my garage for the last 16 years.

Y'know, it has been argued by some laissez-faire types that price speculators are not obvious self-serving parasites but useful contributors to the workings of the marketplace. Maybe. But there is ample evidence that conventional supply/demand dynamics do not operate in the sphere of antiques and collectibles. That is, normally, when a seller's asking price is too high to obtain a sale, he/she can be expected to lower that price until the item sells. But in the case of overpriced collectibles, sellers often hold to the price for years on end or withdraw the item from the market entirely. Perhaps this pattern is less a matter of economics and more a matter of egos.

Clearly, what has happened here is that the car is being offered by a different seller. The original C/L listing was out of Stockton CA -- centrally located within the state -- while the current version shows the car the located much further south, in the L.A. metroplex. Further, the background in the latest photos differs considerably from that of the former. Apparently, in this case we have an "entrepreneur" plying his . . . er . . . craft. Imagine that.

I had been wondering what was up with that Riv, considering that the C/L listing had never been pulled. Odd -- I've been on the hunt for many years for an affordable '49 Riv or sedanet, but this one just doesn't do it for me. Not that the white dash, wrong upholstery, etc. are all that difficult to rectify . . . but I guess I'd rather bust my pick trying to undo the normal ravages of time than deal with the aggravation of some knucklehead's poor taste and lousy workmanship.

If I may mildly dissent here . . . In my experience, disassembling pre-war cars for painting should not be an all-or-nothing proposition. Disassembling, painting, and then re-assembling entails substantial risk of damaging, scratching, or cracking the new finish due to the handling required (which has happened in my case more than once). So, in the case of a fender, for example, I've found it safer to pull the piece, paint out the mating flanges, and then loosely re-install the piece (temporarily without welting, of course) before further painting. However, as previously suggested, that sequence wouldn't work well in some applications (such as catwalk valances) due to sanding/buffing difficulties, in which case there's little alternative but to take one's chances by reassembling newly finished panels. Scary! ~ Charlie Manes

Interesting, John -- and enviable. And I'm with you on your feelings about pretentiousness. For example, one of my cars is a nice but thoroughly seasoned original '30 Buick roadster, brimming with untold stories and carying the whiff of an old library. I wouldn't consider trading it for an eye-popping restored version, not even straight across.

John, you raise what I feel is a complicated issue. That is, I suspect that, for most of us, "rarity" is a subjective concept really interconnected with "interesting" -- which means an item's ability to turn heads and create a street response along the lines of "Gee, I haven't seen one of THOSE in a long time." Because most people wouldn't take much notice of a 1967 4-door hardtop Buick compared to a '49 Riv, they would fail to experience the former's greater rarity . . . thereby rendering its rarity substantially irrelevant. Perhaps the question really boils down to the nature of the audience to whom we want to play. While Buick aficionados might properly appreciate the numerical rarity of the '67, the typical person on the street would surely be impacted to a greater degree by the more "vintage" nature of the '49. It's that street appeal that I, for one, am interested in -- as, I believe, are most old-car addicts.

Mr. Earl, I might be tempted by the parts you've posted, but my 76R is (like some of my old girlfriends) the big-body model -- which means that the bumper, at least, wouldn't fit (fit the car, that is. I'm not so sure about about the girls). By the way, concerning preserving details during replating, I've had excellent results with a top-notch plating shop in Sacramento CA (Sherm's Custom Plating) in connection with a '41 Cadillac I partially restored a few years back. But I'm not sure whether even the best shop can preserve a detail as subtle as that '54 mustache/bumper crease.

Concerning jack points, it's probably safe to say that any passenger vehicle is OK to jack up by the pumpkin. But in the case of my '30 44-series roadster, the drain plug protrudes from the bottom of the housing, and I certainly don't like the idea of all that lifting force being applied to the plug. So, whenever I jack the car by the pumpkin, I place a block of wood (ordinary pine) on the jack pad. Soft enough for the plug to sink into it, the block properly spreads the load across the bottom of the housing.

Mr. Earl, your post brings to mind a glitch with my '54 76R that makes me gnash my teeth: I bought it (in 1999, sight unseen, on the basis of an appraiser's report) with a fortune in excellent replating already done, but in the replating process some knucklehead ground out the crease in the center of the bumper bar and grille mustache. While it's an elegant detail, I'm wondering if the crease is too subtle to survive re-plating should I try again with unrestored items. Has anyone had any luck on this, or do I just need to get a life?