P6tu

I just must repeat myself... At least I think that I have said it once already. But I admire your enthusiasm, your passion and your spirit with your B-58's. You are a great motivation for me! And I love the feeling to cruise around during late night with all the streetlights shining from the top of the hood. Keep up!

So I was thinkig of doing a first cruise this year and mysterious things happened. First - the pulley was loose... It was loose from the crank and I don't even understand, how was that possible. Anyway, I tightened it and in the process I changed the belts just in case... Second - the generator burnt out. I'm not sure, how it is in english, but I had the generator fully rebuilt. The bearings were changed, I got ALL the copper wires redone (on the rotor and those located on the inner wall of the generator. Third - front right fishbone screw was absolutely loose. This had to be tightened. Also, I noticed that my upper ball joints should be replaced. I can feel a small movement in them. In the process, I also replaced the oil and check the brakes. I have my doubts that the master cylinder is starting to fail. If I apply slight pressure on the brake pedal, then it goes down and does not apply any brakes (like I had bubbles in the brake fluid). There is no air in the brake lines, so it must be the master cylinder. At the moment I am not sure, what I can do with it... Maybe I'll do a rebuilt on the brake system this year. Maybe I damaged something during the rear axle assembly... I'm not sure yet, but I will get to the bottom of the issue. I also have quite good brake shoes, so the problem can not be in the wheel cylinders - at least that is what I think.

Hi again, Winter has passed and I did some overhauling on my rear axle. First off - the noise was from a very small issue and the rear axle is in a good condition. But to make sure of that, a lot of work was done. The oil, that I had in the rear differential was old oil from the transmission. I did not think that so much oil could get into the torque tube. When I got the transmission rebuilt, then I also changed the torque tube ball looking bearing. The old one was so bad that I had oil dripping from it. But it did not pop to my mind that the transmission fluids would make it to the rear diff through the torque tube. Anyway, as suggested above, I got all the possible sealings, U-joints and bearings. Then got the car on stands and took the whole rear axle with the tube away from the car. When it was unbolted and I we moved it, then I immideately noticed a small movement in the torque tube itself. While it was visually looking good and all the bolts seemed to be tight - then it actually wasnt and didn't even have to disassemble the tube. The noise came exactly from that location. Again, I have no pictures, but i had three bolts just a little bit loose near the differential and it allowed the differential and tube to play a little bit. If torque was applied, then it pulled the tube and differential together and there was no noise and the mystical noise was the driveshaft rubbing against the tube wall, when the car was freewheeling. Hard to describe, but main thing is that just a little bit loose bolts on the torque tube give it enaugh movement to cause trouble, so I suggest everyone to check that out. I did have to change one bearing due to that, but it was a lucky call. If I would have kept going like that, then it would not have been so easy. I also changed the bulbs and I repaired the speedomeeter in the speedometer cluster. Bulbs were an easy fix, but the speedometer... Turned out that the problem wasn't within the cluster, but the line that came from the transmission and went into the speedometer drum, that got jammed in certain locations. I removed the line fully (was a PITA due to the tight places and it had been coloured in the past, so I had to damage the colour in the engine compartment). Got the line cleaned and it started working perfectly. I also had issues with the fuel gauge, but it has nothing to do with the cluster - problem is more likely in the fueltank (level sensor working badly in the fueltank). This I need to return to, but haven't been able to do that yet. As I had the top of the dashboard removed, I also went through everything else I had acces to there. This included the firewall cover. It has been removed sometime during the cars life by someone and it wasn't attached correctly (or not at all to be precise). All the nuts that should have held the firewall cover in place, were neatly placed in one cavity. I fished them all out and fixed the firewall sound isolation cover as it should be. I "upgraded" the rear window seal as the readers might have noted sometime earlier. I had to move my car outside for a short period (we are doing a frame off restauration on one old Soviet car and we needed to have two of the same cars together to swap the body and etc.) For my suprise (a bad suprise), the rear seat was wet again from the melted snow and rain... Again, I started to search for location where the water could get in and had to start deliberatly pour water on the rear window and around the rear window to find the leaking location. The problem was with the upper side of the rear window seal AND the nuts that hold the rear window bottom trim, those nuts did not hold any water and a lot of the water that made it to the luggage compartment, got in through those holes. I made some custom rubber seals that would go on the trim clamps (on the trim side and on the nut side). After adding the seals and adding some extra window seal material to the rear window seal, the water problems have been solved (almost). I still get some water coming in from between the rear door and the frame. This is not so much, but it can still make it to the rear seat. I would appreciate it very much, if someone could send me a picture of the rear door small window upper side and from the corner where the roof meets the rear window trim near the rear door (the picture must be from a four door Roadmaster or Super). To Be Continued... I still have a lot to do, but I'm very busy at work and don't have much time... =(. And also, my father is still doing that frame off restauration on his Soviet UAZ 69 and it is a bit cramped in the garage. The unusual part of it is, that my father is working on a car and not on a bike. He has always been a bike guy, but now he wanted to take on a car to restore :D. Well, I've always like cars more than bikes... I don't have anything against bikes, but it's just that they have two wheels missing ;).

Ah, and one more thing - I did get my trunk lid lamp working, but now I have issues keeping it lit. I've understood that it should be an old technique of having a liquid silver kind of switch somewhere that acts as a contact. If it is properly leveled, then the light turns on (the lid is in open position). Does anyone know, where it is exactly located and is there a way to adjust it? At the moment if I have the trunk opened then I have to apply a little bit of force to keep it lit...

JohnD, Smartin, Dei - thank you for the hints about removing the speedometer. I'll try to document my way through the process. There are no picture guides in the internet about the dash removal - might be the first one to do that :P.

I have not been able to start with the speedometer disassembly, but instead I've had to take care some other urgent matters. I've had to keep my Buick outside at the moment (no room in the garage). Lately we had some rainy days and when I looked inside the car, I noticed that the rear seat was wet from the corner. Started to trace down the source and it was the rear window seal. Since it is hard to get one urgently, I just took away the moldings and added silicon to the seal. I have not been able to verify if that took care of the issue, or not, but at least I did something. I also started to investigate the issue with the rear axle. It had been constantly slowly leaking through the breather hole on the left side of the axle: As soon as I got the filling cap unscrewed, the oil started pouring from it. I have no explanation, how that could happen and how is it possible to have so much oil in it and it was rather liquid looking... I've understood, that it should be very viscose. It was also strangely red looking. Anyway, I pumped everything out as much as I was able to and then added proper mineral hypoid oil there (80W90). after I had done that, one strange noise emerged. It is like a bearing is worn out or something. If I have slight torque on the rear axle and keep moving, then it is silent. If I let go of the throttle and start freewheeling, then there is an awful noise coming from the rear axle. How likely it is that the driveshaft bearing has been damaged due to wrong oil in the differential? What needs to be done to get it replaced? I'm also wondering, if it may be the U joint instead... Hard to determine, how much is normal for the U joint to play - I can do clunk noise, when I have the both wheels lifted off the ground and spin one around by hand and then suddenly stopping it. This torque tube thing is so unfamiliar to me... Also, could someone post a picture of the spring that should be pull back the parking brake? I have the spring missing...

Yes, I was referring to the speedometer cluster. I have there few bulbs out and then the speedometer gets stuck in certain locations and I have some doubts of the needels too so it would be good to take it out and do an overhaul on the speedometer cluster... Seems like a days task to take it apart. Should I concider to have any special tools prepared for it? I'm thinking if I'm able to get it done over the coming weekend...

Google isn't helping me enough at the moment...And neither is any literature that I own... Do I really have to take apart the whole dashboard to remove the instrument panel?

Hi John, I heated up to old black goo and it got very sticky so it did the trick. How important it is to have it 100% sealed? Thing is, that there is a quite big gap at the top - on the picture between the left top screw and middle screw. I should have some of the glass glue (black ultrasticky thing) and I may apply that, but I'm not sure of the need. The air will be sucked in from everywhere anyhow when the turbine is on...

So the promised pictures. Since the threads did not stick the shaft to the main pulley, I did a workaround there: I drilled a small hole right in the middle and used a pin to fix the rod with the pulley. Worked very well. I tought that the pulley might crack into pieces, but did it slowly and patiently and finally got throught it without problems. Now, to get the cables attached correctly (if you take apart the main pulley), then I used tape to indicate the points, where the cable enters the supporting pulley: Worked out good. Prior to that I tried many other options, but nothing worked out as well as the tape solution. I got the full tentsion out from the spring in the main pulley. During the wiper transmission installation one accident happened too... One of the shims dropped to the vent hole. At first I was hoping that it dropped through the drain or is somwhere in the drain pipe - pushed a cord through it and nothing. OK, so then it had to be somwhere in the vent opening and took a lot of things apart from inside to get the cover off and everything else - placed my hand inside and still nothing. Then I had to do something that I did not want to in the first place - I had to take off the turbine itself with the cover. It was "glued" together by the previous owned who did the coloring of the car. I had to use a crowbar to pry it open bit by bit. The shim got stuck right between the edge of the vent opening... At least I found it :P. I also worked on my right tail light housing. As the car has had an accident or something then the chrome housing did not stay in it's place and had an ugly gap between the fin moulding and the top of the rear light housing, then I "built" an extra support for the housing itself - the result was perfect and now the housing stays right where it should: The bad and sad side about this is, that the colour of the car has changed a bit in time... I had bought some extra colour for such purposes and after colouring and adding the lacque and smoothing it out, it can still be seen that the colour on the car differs a bit...

The culprit was wiper transmission shaft itself. The tooth have worn out and it has come loose from the main pulley in the transmission. Cleaned, oiled etc... For other, if anyone is ever going to take that transmission apart - it is a real PITA to get it back together correctly if you don't mark the cables... I'll try to make some pictures tomorrow to give you ideas how to do it... In general the assembly is quite straight forward.

Today I also had a small panic when the turn signals stopped working again. Took everything apart and apparently my molten plastic around the screw did not work as intended and was broken off. At first I tought that the whole plastic peg broke completely, but it was just my own structure that wasn't strong enaugh. Therefor I did another workaround: I added a metal plate to the sidewalls of the and fixed it to the lever plate. In that plate I have a screw that goes through the plastig peg (red arrow points to the end of the screw). This should work without issues now. Since the car is outside at the moment and it started to rain heavily, then I began to investigate the wiper system. As I tought, the wipers should move together because they are connected to the same motor: Now I need to get my hands on the wiper transmission idler pulleys and the transmission drive itself. I also have to verify if the cable is correctly installed or if it has come off...

So I've been fixing many minor things like trunk lighting, aligning windows, repaired one window crank (had the know broken off), dome light didn't work (the bulb socket contact springs didn't apply any pressure - replaced them with pen spring ), adjusted the hood to close correctly and aligned it, fixed the rear lighter (the grounding cable had so much corrosion on it that had to be cleaned) and then the glove compartment light didn't work - apparently the fuse was out... Meanwhile the right rear door was little bit out of place again so I disassembled it completely and now I have to work on how to get it fixed in one location. Probably will have to use some jagged edge shims or something similar to get it fixed in place correctly. Picture of the door removed: I also took apart my rear light, because they were missing the top bolts from the chrome housing. I noticed, that both of the rear light housings had somehow gone wider. The inner light reflector that also should hold the chrome piece in place, was much narrower and did not go in place correctly as it should have gone. The rear light housing is this alumiinium like material and I do not want to bend it nor nothing, so tomorrow I will just make sure, that the top bolt will hold the housing as much as it could and the reflector would just sit as tight as possible but would not hold it in place as intended. I also played around with the windshield wipers. I've heard many stories how they do not work and how lousy they are, but I like them. They work as the should, but with one exception - only the left wiper works. Right windshield wiper does not move at all or if it does, then only few inches at best, but then stays there. Could anyone tell, what is that about? I tought that the wipers are connected to each other mechanically, but appears that they are not. How and what makes the right wiper to work? With best regards, P6tu

Hi Dei, The hinges on your Special are absolutely different from what I have :S... I will make some pictures of the hinges that I have tomorrow. Does the limited have the same type of hinges as you Special does? I did get the lid adjusted thanks to Smartin's advice: but I still would like to get it fixed and I do not like it at all how it looks from the inside... The lid still gets "stuck" at the fully open position and I have to use something to pry the "lock" open from inside - not good and not nice. Today I was also adjusting my doors. I was not satisfied, how they closed so got my left side doors adjusted perfectly. I did have to use a special separator for the rear door to work properly: That is a 3 millimeter think aluminium plate that I made. Otherwise the door side lock would have just hit the other end even if the door was perfectly aligned. Now, something random from my car: Those wooden things have been placed to every door. I have wondered if those are some original things or are those fully custom made? I know that the car came from USA without those wooden covers and I can only guess, that they are placed there because all the door panels are very damaged under it. The bottom side edge is like ripped off or something on all door panels - I do not know why... At first I was thinking that I will take those things away, but eventually I have used to them and I even like them =). Adds a little bit of antique feeling to the car - an "original" wooden trim :P.

The Special has a narrower trunk lid. There are many differences between Special/Century and Super/Roadmaster. Unfortunately I can not see the pictures at the moment for some reason, but we do have one Century here in Estonia. We will arrange a meeting to compare the hinges, but first I would like to try out that shimming option. Regardin the pins - they have worn out quite much and there is a good amount of play, but still, only the right side is "out of location". Is there a way to disassemble the hinges without having to weld it back together afterwards?

Just to have the information updated, then there were few other things that I've done on the car also. I had the drivetrain checked and I had to replace only few rubber spacers... Otherwise the drivetrain was in a good condition. I also checked the brakepads and the break system. Only minor adjustment had to be done, but overall the breaks are good. I have some mysterious air somewhere in the linings and I have to pump through the brakes. The carburator had to be adjusted again after the last transmission rebuild... There were supposedly some seals damaged so that in turns fuel goes from the floater chambers to locations where it shouldn't and causes the engine to start stalling for a second. It is not a big deal since I'm not going to take hard turns with it and during a smooth ride it works perfectly.

Regarding the gear lever position issue... _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Lever in D position: _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Lever in N position: _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Lever in P position: _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________ When I had the steering column disassembled, then I studied the build of the gear lever also. At the moment I have the "reverse" light switch at the bottom of the steering column aligned as left as possible and so is the indicator needle. The gears go in perfectly. For me it seemed that the gear column inside the steering column and around the steering shaft was mis-aligned. Is it possible to adjust that? But then again, if I would adjust that, then this would only allow me to put the reverse switch in a normal position instead of having it aligned as left as possible. I'd still have problems with aligning the indicator needle, because at the moment, if I push the lever as up as possible, then the needle would be near the "P" but not behind it. The gear lever would hit the steering column edge... Difficult to explain. I wish I would be more used to taking pictures while working on the car :D. Does anyone have any ideas, what to do with the needle to get it aligned correctly?

I'm a bit confused... My common sense says that if I put anything under it, then it will be even higher... OK, if I put a shim between only the "top" bolt and not the "lower" one, then... OK, I might try that out. I just realized that if i have the "top" bolt shimmed, then the hinge wouldn't also open as much as it does at the moment and it should also avoid the hinge to get "locked" in the open position as it would not go "past" the locking position... Will try it.

Today was somewhat successful day - it was the first time I saw a B-58 turn signals. And they were mine :P. I took the whole thing apart to get to the bottom of the issue. At first I disconnected the cables on the steering column and shorted the circuit the according to the chassis manual - nothing... (I made a mistake there, but I won't tell anyone yet :P). The cables were fine actually... So I was a bit confused and tracked with my finger around the drawings and tried to figure out, where is the issue. When I used the ohm meter, then all cables were good. It took me about 1 hour of checking the cabling and then I found out that the circuit is incomplete if the key is in "OFF" position :D. That was a true "douh" moment :P. OK, so I turned the key to "ON" position, shorted the cables and ta-daa, both of the turn signals worked. So on to the next step - the switch itself. Screwed it off the steering column and started to play with the switch and Ohm meter... It was not working correctly. Took it apart and there was a load of some very old grease that had turned rock hard and didn't let any current through. Cleaned the switch, added appropriate grease to needed locations, connected the cables - TEST passed and the turn signals worked. Placed the switch on to the steering column, moved the signal handle - nothing happened. I played around with it and noticed that the string did not move at all under the switch so there were many issues with the turn signals. There was something wrong with the linkage where the turn signal lever was located... I started to disassemble the steering wheel. Unfortunately I have only one picture of the process: So after I got it all taken apart, I tried to figure out, how the link should move until I realized that the small plastic linkage was damaged. The peg that should be moved by the lever, was broken off. Did a quick-fix there. I drilled a hole across the plastic thing and placed a screw there. To make the screw head more round and more slippery, then I dropped and molded some plastic around it. Came our better than original from my opinion. Then all that was left, was to assemble everything back together. I needed to do a lot of adjusting to get it work right. Overall result - perfectly working turn signals. Now that I have that issue fixed, I came to wonder, are there hazard lights on a B-58? As I had the whole steering column disassembled, I also tried to figure out, why the gear needle is in incorrect position. The needle is pushed as left as possible, but it still indicates a wrong gear. I also recolored the backplate for the gear indicator.

Regarding the trunk lid topic - I've made the pictures of my current situation:

Hi dei, I'll take the pictures today. I'm going to work on the car today anyway... I'm did a little doodeling on your sent image: When looking from the rear, then the right side of the boot is up. There is at least 20 mm gap on the right side near the rear bumper and near the right corner of the bootlid as shown with red (direction of the gap also with red) and there is almost no gap on the left side near the bumper. If I apply pressure to the right corner (light blue on picture), then the lid almost levels and looks OK - almost... I'm aware of the trunk lid hitting the sides near the taillight housings and that was one of the first things that I adjusted a year ago... Right now there is an even gap on both sides and the lid does not hit the sides at all as it is supposed to. From my inspection and my opinion, then the hinge pins itself have worn out and are so worn out that when I open the trunk lid fully, then I need to use a tool to pull the torsion spring down to let the lid free. Otherwise I'm not able to close it since it is almost like locked... If this picture makes things even more confusing then don't worry - I'll make the pictures just in case anyway.

Haven't posted for a long time now. What has happened meanwhile... The engine is now fully rebuilt and all bits and pieces have been replaced that can be replaced. I still need to fully color it. At the moment I still have different colors on it... Not a big deal from technical perspective. The transmission had the front pump plate very worn out and I had also damaged the belt like thing. The brass or some other component that should hold the turbine in place, was shifted and damaged. Lucky for me, the turbine itself was not damaged. I got the transmission repaired and it is working perfectly. I was able to drive for about 300 kilometers with it and one morning when I turned on the car, a sh**load of fluids got blasted around the engine compartment and the car had a red pool under it... It was not blood nor coolant - it was the transmission fluid. You are probably wondering, how is that possible, if I had all rebuilt and etc... I even had the transmission fluid pipe connections redone and upgraded that go to the radiator. What I never checked were the rubber hoses that connect the transmission fluid pipes to the radiator pipes - those were "replaced" in the first repairshop where the engine was supposed to be rebuilt. Well, I must say, that they were replaced - problem is that they were some random RENAULT hoses that did not have any threads and they were definetly not pressure hoses... Both of those hoses had multiple breaking points in them... I got them replaced and I was good to go. No damage was done to the gearbox and everyone was happy... Just a lot of transmission fluid got lost (almost half - 6l). Well, I was able to drive few days without any problems, but the all of a sudden, the starter did not turn the engine. I got quite puzzled with the problem. I was able to hear the plate in the solenoid move and touch the ends, but the starter did not turn. When I connected the ends on the solenoid directly, the starter turned perfectly... At first I wanted to take the whole starter unit out, but I gave up, because I would have needed to remove the left exhaust pipe and I was not up to that. Then I just removed the solenoid and disassembled it. Good news, the same transmission oil made it's way into the starter too - it is amazing how the fan will distribute everything into the whole engine compartment. Cleaned the solenoid, cleaned everything else under the hood too and the car was good to go again :). Now I want to deal with my trunk. The trunk lid hinges are quite worn out. The moving parts have never seen any oil or lubricant and therefor they have worn out quite well. The result is that I can not close the trunk without "special" tools and I'm quite out of ideas, how to fix this issue. The most problematic is the right side hinge. When the torsion like spring locks the trunk in the "up" position, then it does not "unlock" due to the worn out parts. I'm not able to ease anything anywhere there and the hinge seems to be welded together as one whole unit without any options to remove it. Does anyone have any hints, how I could fix it? There is also a bad cosmetic effect too due to the worn out hinge - the right side of the trunk does not close properly and has about an inch of a gap between the body and the molding. I could put even small stuff inside the trunk from the gap and that worries me the most... The rear door stoppers had the same issue and did not close easy - the solution was for me to weld some excess metal to the hinges so the doors would not open "so much". The open about 5 degrees less now, but that's barely noticeable. Few more new problems have emerged - the instrument panel top bulbs have stopped illuminating (need to figure out how to replace them) and then the speedometer gets stuck around 50mph. I knew I had to remove the instrument panel some day - seems like this day has arrived. The rear axle started to make a clinking noise suddenly - the bottom axle spring plate that was supposed to hold the spring in place was totally loose. I was not able to figure out, how did that happen and the threads were all good. Just in case I added an extra nut there to keep it tight. Regarding the noisy hubcaps - didn't stand it any more and added silicon to the backside of the center plastic pieces. The noise was gone =). I'm also still missing the left rear wheel arch front molding. I was late with the eBay listing and didn't get it. So if anyone hears or knows something about that molding, then I'm very interested in it =). Unfortunately I do not have any pictures done lately so nothing to show to you...

What I meant,was that the garage floor got flooded .

Hello, Have had a busy week.Good news is,that the coolant came from the hose that goes to the front seat radiator - so nothing major there.I will replace both of them...soon...as possible . The gearbox was taken to the guy,who supposedly repaired it.What I do know,is that the front pump plate was a bit worn out,but should not have affected anything...I have my doupts about that and it may be the cause,why it isn't working properly.About the pressures - the pressure was a bit lower than the service manual stated.That is why I have my doupts about the front pump plate. One question - how are those things called on the engine (placed on the headers)?They act as plugs if there should be massive overpressure in the coolant system,then they pop out.They are located on the back of the engine (on the fire wall side).There are two of those plugs.I would like those things to be replaced because it was not done previously and it is good to do it,since the transmission is off.Problem is,that I do not know,how to find or where to buy them... And I have managed to get the clock working ... basically ... The cause,why it had stopped,is the winding spring that should hold pressure on the gears to keep moving - it is broken and since it is some type of brass,it is impossible to bend it to make it work again.Now I need to find some other way to make sure the winder would keep the pressure up...Or find a new spring (it is simply replacable,if you could have your hands on another spring). With best regards, Roland

So today was a "good" day...I lost one of my hubcaps and as soon as I stopped - some idiot ran over it... Then later when I was parking my car,suddenly the floor got flooded - probably lost one of those caps that are at the end of the headers that should hold the coolant in...I was told,that those were not replaced... So my car is standing again.I also talked with the guy,who fixed the gearbox and then we played around a bit,at it might be,that the reverse band in the gearbox is badly adjusted.The problem is,to know better,one has to take the gearbox out again... It seems,that the few next weeks (at least few weeks) the car will be in repairs again... With regards,