SpecialEducation

Yeah, we had one that gave our local tire shop some trouble with the balancing because it was a little more out of round than most. After remounting it with the bulge opposite the valve, his machine was able to dial it in. You just have to be smarter than the tire.

We've been running radials on our '56 for 20 years. Just put on our first set of Cokers (bought from Summit) this spring, then drove it 500 miles heading to Springfield and back this summer. They look good, drive nice, and have a decent price. Going faster than 80 is a lot of work, but that's more because of the old suspension technology than anything else. This is the third set of tires we've put on the car, so obviously we are getting about 10 years on a set (and the last set were not bad, the white was just too narrow). UV is the tire's biggest enemy, followed by tire cleaners that make them shiny. Be careful what you wash them with, and keep it out of the sun and they will last a long time. Technically, it's ozone that breaks them down and UV makes ozone, as well as electric appliances (so don't park it next to your air compressor). I've been getting 100,000+ miles out of radial tires for over 20 years (on other cars) because I take care of them and put the miles on before the ozone breaks them down. We were talking with Wallace Wade back in February (they come to a swap meet up here every year), and he said his only problem in converting to radials was that a 205/75R15 couldn't handle the weight of his Buick. He strongly recommended going up to the 225, but said the 215 would probably be OK. We'd always had 205s on it in the past with no problem, so we went with 215s.

We had our doubts with the kit we got for the '56, so we enlisted the help of a local who cut his teeth on Dynaflows back in the day. There were several design changes over a few years, and our kit that was specifically for our '56 still wasn't 100% right. The biggest problem we had is that small green seal. The one in our kit was for a bigger shaft diameter, so we procured a seal locally that fit properly. Upon removal of the old one, we found that it, too, was the wrong size! No wonder it leaked... We DID remove the seal from the ball, and sanded it to make a nice surface. Now the only place we loose fluid is at the front... https://www.facebook.com/1956Buick/photos/pb.169746389767574.-2207520000.1442241644./516507145091495/

Nope, I believe they were all aluminum for '57, but in '56 the 40 series manual seats still had plastic - unless they made a mid-year change I'm not familiar with. Investing in old, degraded plastic doesn't interest us much, but I'm not sure how my dad would feel about changing to aluminum. If they are essentially a bolt-on fit, it would certainly be easier than the alternative: Years ago we were an OEM that made parts like this for several automakers, and we've kicked around the possibility of making reproductions ourselves, but that's no small task. These are not going to be easy parts to make because of the way they lock onto the mold. It will cost us quite a bit to make the tools and we aren't looking to compete with anyone who might already be making them. If we did make repros, we might use heavier material to make them a bit more durable, otherwise we would mimic the process in which the originals were made. With all of the repro parts out there, the fact that I can't find these really surprises me. If the standard fix is to swipe an aluminum skirt from a different year (or just swap in power seats), that probably explains why nobody has bothered to reproduce them.

We have looked high & low for seat skirts for our '56 Special Riviera, and finding a perfect set seems to be impossible. Even very low mile survivor cars show cracks on these panels because they just weren't very durable. When the extremely rare nice set is found, it's at a pretty steep price. While that might be okay for a show car, we drive ours quite a bit and it seems likely that we'd probably crack them out in short order. Reproductions would be preferred for a variety of reasons. We can easily come up with something that looks nice and is fairly durable, but we want it to look correct. Is there really nobody out there that makes seat skirt reproductions?