neil morse

Yes, the instrument panel and glove box door on this car should be "engine turned," and correcting this (if you want to) will be costly. Getting the instrument panel off and back on is also a tricky and tedious job. However, I believe that the McLaughlin Buicks from Canada came with painted panels. Is this car possibly from Canada? (The dash on a U.S. Buick should also be wood-grained instead of solid brown -- but that might be different on the McLaughlin as well.) @Buicknutty will have the answer to this.

Thanks, Bloo! I missed that in my search. I just ordered it.

I'm not sure if this helps since it's from the wrong year ('41) and the wrong engine size (248 ci). However, I had the same reaction as Bloo when I noticed the boss on the block that he mentions. It sure looks like the boss for the bracket on my '41.

I have gotten a new doughnut that's a bit thicker and I'm ready to give it another try. The Walker Acousti-Seal recommended by @Bloo sounds like a good idea, but it seems to be unobtanium. I haven't spent a whole lot of time searching the Internet, but everywhere I have found it so far it is "out of stock" or "unavailable." Any other ideas on where to get the Walker's or for an alternative product that would work? As always, thanks in advance for your help.

This looks like a great deal to me. If I hadn't already bought my present car, I would be very tempted by this!

If you search on the forum, you will find several helpful threads about problems with gas gauges. Your situation sounds like a bad ground for sure. You will find a wire that goes back from the gauge to the sender. If you ground that wire, your gauge should go to empty. That will confirm that at you have a bad ground, and will also confirm that your dash unit is good. In a lot of cars (my '41 being one of them), the sender was grounded by the fuel line. If somewhere in the history of the car someone puts a piece of rubber hose where the steel fuel line connects to the sender (which was the case in my car), the sender will no longer be grounded. The solution is to run a dedicated ground wire from the sender to the frame (or some other good ground). But that's not the end of it. Your sender may still not be working. The only way to really get to the bottom of the problem is to drop the tank and check out the sender. You will need to do that anyway to install a dedicated ground wire. Here's the section on my "Me and My Buick" thread where I go over the fuel gauge fix. (Click on the arrow in the upper right hand corner to get to the right post). But as I said, you will find a lot of other discussions on the forum if you do a quick search.

Please tell me more. Was the old doughnut "fatter?" That seems to be the problem I'm having. I haven't had time to do anything about this since I posted a few days ago, but I'm going to start next week searching locally to see what I can find. From what Matt Harwood said earlier, it looks like all 2" doughnuts are not the same. If I could find a fatter doughnut, I think the problem would be solved.

Correct!

They are left hand threads on both sides.

Thank you all for your helpful responses. I'm sorry for any confusion about the configuration here -- I posted the only photo of the pipe that I have from before it was first installed, and it's a bit unclear. Yes, Bloo is correct. The upper pipe reduces in diameter and then extends through the doughnut and down into the lower pipe. I can post much better photos of the whole thing once I get it apart again. The "extension" portion is only about an inch or an inch-and-a-half. Again, sorry to be so vague but I can't measure things until I get the pipe off again. The thing that jumps out at me so far is what Bloo said about the size of the doughnut. It just doesn't make sense to me that those two plates are in contact. It seems like the doughnut should be a bit bigger so that it is still under tension forcing the inside diameter to seal against the upper pipe. But I'm thinking these doughnuts must be standard items? Matt's post makes me think that maybe I can find a doughnut that's a bit fatter. The first doughnut (installed by the muffler shop) was provided by Waldron. The second one (which looked pretty much the same) was one I got from Bob's. I will look around at some local shops, as suggested by Matt. I will report back after I disassemble it again and can post better pics of the upper pipe.

I recently got a new exhaust system from Waldron's and had it installed by a muffler shop. After a few weeks, it had developed a leak at the expansion joint in the Y-pipe just under the manifolds. The joint in question is shown in this pic of the pipe before it was installed. I could hear the leak, and could feel it by holding my hand above the upper, front side of the expansion joint. I took the pipe off and found this damage to the "doughnut" gasket at the joint. I put the pipe back on with a new set of gaskets, being careful to follow the procedure in the shop manual on the order in which to tighten up each joint. However, after a single heat cycle, the pipe is leaking in exactly the same spot. I made sure the bolts are tight, and they are at their maximum. Those two plates are absolutely clamped together. I called Waldron's, and the guy I spoke with was friendly but couldn't offer any particular help. He did say that it might help for the straight pipe to extend further into the lower pipe, and said they would fabricate a longer pipe for me if I couldn't otherwise solve the issue. He also suggested that a product called "exhaust paste" could help. I searched the internet and found several suppliers. This is one: https://www.wurthusa.com/Chemical-Product/Miscellaneous/Exhaust-Assembly-Paste-4-94-Fl-Oz-Tube/p/0890100045 I'm going to send for another set of gaskets and give it another try. Has anyone worked with one of these joints? Any other suggestions or comments? Thanks in advance, Neil

This car is being sold by a forum member.

This looks like a great opportunity for someone who wants a '54 Plymouth -- a seller who lavished a lot of money and attention on a car where he wasn't going to get it back, and yet has enough understanding of the market to price it with that in mind! Looking at the list in the ad, it sounds like this car is practically brand new. (The only thing that's a question mark is the engine.) From the photos, the quality of the work looks very good. (Although the seller's approach to photography is a bit strange -- it's as if he couldn't get far enough away from the car to get a photo of showing all of it.)

Thank you. We used a standard 3/4" 90 degree elbow. The OD of the 3/4" is a bit too big for the grommets, but it just squeezes in. The 1/2" is too small.

That is looking so good, Ken! Your attention to detail is remarkable. Can't wait to see the finished product!

New PCV pipe Not much going on here, but I did take care of getting a proper PCV pipe on my car instead of the piece of rubber hose that a previous owner had substituted. This is what I had when I got the car: It bothered me for two reasons: (1) it didn't look right, and (2) the hose tended to get compressed (and fouled with sludge) to the point that it really wasn't doing its job. Thanks to a great suggestion from @Matt Harwood, and help from Don Micheletti, we fabricated a pipe from a conduit elbow. Don made ferrules and soldered them onto the pipe to keep it in place. Some paint and the grommets I got from Bob's, and this is how it looks. Not a huge deal, but a definite improvement.

I will have to check with the Don Micheletti, who supervised the rebuild of the transmission on my Super, but I can tell you that there is no missing bolt (as in the Pontiac transmission shown by Bloo). Here's a shot of mine after we put the transmission back on the car. It does not leak any fluid from that hole.

Spectacular setting for a photo with the green grass and red barn wall. But why not ditch the trailer, close the hood, and take a more formal shot? It would be a great one! Beautiful car.

Magnificent job, Terry! I'm happy to have helped make sure that as many people see your videos as possible.

JFK (then called Idlewild). That's a Pan Am Boeing Stratocruiser, a post-war Boeing airliner based on the B-29 bomber.

Sensational car -- annoying that the seller doesn't just put a price on it. If I had the money to spend, I would want to thoroughly research what has been done and what remains to be done before making an offer. I passed up an opportunity to buy a '34 Airflow coupe like this back in the 80's and have been kicking myself ever since.