Bloo

The theoretical voltages posted above correspond to specific gravity levels in the acid/water mixture that can be checked with a hydrometer. Anything less that about 1.93 volts per cell and the battery is getting damaged. If it sits long at all, it will be too sulphated to recover. Additionally, discharged batteries freeze easily in cold weather and this often breaks lead plates away from their attachments, disconnecting some of them. In the old days, the cases used to break. That happens less now with soft plastic cases, but the internal damage still occurs. Voltage checks on a battery are great in theory. In real life, they are like solutions to engineering problems that involve a spherical cow, not very useful. Save voltage checks for the charging system where they are useful, and where tenths of a volt really are significant. The best you can do with a completely dead battery is make sure the plates are covered and if not add water, charge a long time with a real battery charger and hope it still works. If it is good enough to start the car, that is a good sign. You are still not out of the woods, as it may be good enough to crank the engine, but still too sulphated to take a charge properly in the car. Drive it for a week. If the battery hasn't gone dead and the car still starts, call it a win. Once again, the idea that a car's regulator cannot be allowed to charge a dead battery is completely crazy. It is definitely not the best way to charge a dead battery, but the system is designed to protect itself from overcurrent. That's why it has a current regulator. Also, it is the *generator* that is really in the most immediate danger in an overcurrent situation, not the regulator.

It did not, the 57 is the hot rod. Still, this would be no slouch. As @TerryB mentioned it is pretty unusual to see the 327 in this body. Most were small sixes.

I don't really have an answer for that, the bead being part of the tire itself. The bead seating area on the wheel changed with the introduction of tubeless tires, still bias, adding a "bump" that the bead must snap over to seat properly when the tire is inflated. The very first factory installations of tubeless tires were on 1950 Studebakers. I do not know what year Buick followed, but I suspect in the mid to late 50s. Going more to the spirit of your question, the switch to Radials occurred in the 70s, and I do not remember the exact year. I believe it was around 1972 as an option on a few models, and more like 1976 or 1977 for most Buicks. I don't believe you would be able to discern any difference in the bead seating surface on the wheel. I hope you get the answer you are looking for. No doubt someone in here will know exactly when Buick made the change to radials.

Have you looked at the floorpan for threaded holes? I'm fairly sure it was an option on some GM cars in 1959, and probably earlier, et least for the front seat. Hope you find the documents you are looking for.

Yes. I have seen another document that contradicts that one I posted. It appears 2 lines are swapped. 17 or 17D then becomes Perugia Blue also known as Pontiac Blue, and 18 or 18D becomes Wenonah Maroon. If we accept that the document linked above just has 2 swapped lines, then the wheels were blue, the fenders were blue ("D" for Duco like the body), and the stripes cateret red. Perugia blue was replaced late in the year with Carribean Blue, but it has a different code. 28 or 28D. I don't know of anything that gets you to 25 or 25D (Denmark Metallic Blue). Could it be Perugia Blue? To answer your question though, I've not seen it myself, but I understand some 36 Pontiacs have turned up with an entirely wrong body, never mind just the color. It is probably possible.

Was this from patterns or lost wax or what? Do you make your own patterns or wax models? I think a lot of us stall at the "how do I get started?" part.

There should be a vacuum advance can on the HEI. Is it possible that you could post a picture of the distributor with the cap and rotor removed? It is possible to run without vacuum advance but it is not ideal. Some cars do it, but cars that do have a centrifugal advance mechanism. The only HEI I remember that had no vacuum advance from the factory was used with computer control of all timing advance, and so it had no centrifugal advance at all. If that is what you have, it won't advance at all without a computer. That would explain a lot.

https://www.machinerylubrication.com/Read/31367/using-polyurea-grease

The vacuum advance would be on the HEI.

Believe it or not, they're probably not shared in a 40 Buick like most other American cars. Buick started in 39 with the first factory turn signals, arrows in a chunk of chrome in the middle of the back of the car. I think they continued that program for a while. Still a good place to look.

The first place I would look is on the back of the headlight switch.

No. Any unused ports on the carburetor need to be plugged, except for a big one, up on top of the box structure ahead of the intake, hidden by the air cleaner. It probably isn't there at all, but if it is there, it needs to be left open (or connected to the charcoal canister system if that's how it was originally). There should be no "front PCV valve". PCV means positive crankcase ventilation, and it is all about using some vacuum air to remove nasty vapors from the engine before they have a chance to form sludge. No engine will tolerate enough PCV air in the intake to do the job perfectly, so there is a limit to how much air the PCV can flow not make the engine run horrible. It looks like you have about twice that much. This^^ There has to be a way for clean fresh air to go in, and PCV dirty air to go out. It's a ventilation system. The way out is through the PCV valve. The way in on some cars is a breather cap (that would work) or sometimes a hose up to the air filter like in the picture. Either way it is just supplying clean air so the engine doesn't suck dirt. No PCV system works 100% of the time. Under load, even a new engine can blow backwards out the breather that normally lets air in. There is always a little mess around a breather cap. As the engine ages, there is more leakage past piston rings, and the PCV system keeps up less and less of the time. The mess around the breather gets bigger. Moving the breather up into the air filter housing (like in the picture) just puts the mess inside the air filter where you don't see it. Also the engine tends to burn the vapors since they are in the air filter housing, and you might smell them less. I'm not sure. I think that one is for the hose that goes to the distributor.

It doesn't work like that. The carb works like a toilet tank. It shuts off when it is full. The return lines being discussed here connect effectively after the fuel pump but before the carb. The return line has to have a restriction or the fuel would all blow back to the tank and there would be no fuel pressure. The restriction is usually welded in the third port of the fuel filter or the third port of the fuel pump, whichever is used. Some in this thread that are suggesting the restrictor is separate and can be inside the return hose. That would work, and although I don't personally remember seeing any that were built that way, it's possible some were. The only requirement is that there be a fairly aggressive restriction. It it often reported on the internet that this system allows any fuel vapor to escape and go back to the tank, thus keeping the lines full of liquid and the car running. I believed that 40 years ago when i added return lines to a few cars trying to combat vapor lock. If so, the return port should be as high as possible, and on a lot of factory jobs it is. On others it isn't. The idea doesn't hold up to scrutiny though. If the carburetor is dry, the float valve is open, and any vapor has a place to escape through the carb and the bowl vent. If the float valve is closed, the carburetor is completely full and the engine should start regardless of what is going on in the fuel line. It was suggested earlier in the thread that the return line helps with vapor lock by keeping fuel circulating and keeping the fuel pump cooler. I have found that to be true by trial and error, but also found it doesn't help nearly as much as you might expect. The restriction is tiny and not that much fuel circulates. To go any further with that idea, we would have to go down the "what is vapor lock" rabbit hole. It is very deep, and it would derail the thread. @carbking explained somewhere what the return line is mainly about. I'd link it if I could remember where. He explained it better than I could, but I'll try. A mechanical fuel pump has 2 one-way check valves in it. One on the inlet lets fuel only in, and one on the outlet lets fuel only out. On a car with no return line, if you shut off the car hot, the carburetor is full or nearly so because the engine was just running. If the gasoline in the fuel pump body should boil, the pressure rises dramatically. The fuel vapor cannot go back to the tank because of the inlet check valve. It can only escape through the outlet check valve, headed for the carburetor. The boiling fuel in the fuel pump pushes any liquid fuel remaining in the fuel filter and fuel line toward the carburetor. That fuel is under much more pressure than the float valve in the carburetor is designed to hold back, and it blows right through, overflowing the carburetor and flooding the engine. With a return line, that pressure would have escaped back to the gas tank. You'd still have an empty fuel pump but the engine, being not flooded, might start right away and refill the fuel pump.

One probably shouldn't be relying on the car to charge up a dead battery anyway, but the idea that you can't is completely nuts. LOL! Who engineered that? Don't buy that regulator. As for buzzing, they work by buzzing! That's how they regulate. I don't recall it ever being objectionable, or even being able to hear it with the engine running unless the lid was off the regulator. The system is designed to protect itself. There are three relays. 1) a cutout disconnects the generator when it is not charging 2) a voltage regulator that buzzes away when the battery is full, and 3) a current regulator that only does anything when the battery is low. I imagine it buzzes too, but you'll probably never have the opportunity to hear it. What on earth did they do to this new regulator so that it can't charge a low battery? Leave out the current regulator relay entirely? Replace it with a fuse? Maybe rivet the cover on so you can't see? In 1940, heck even in 1980 there was a difference between a regulator for positive and negative ground. This is because there are various precious metals on the points to allow for long contact life. Two points that contacted each other would be of different metals. For positive ground that all needed to be done in reverse. Now there is no difference between a replacement regulator for a positive or negative ground car. How can that be? Did they just leave the silver and platinum or palladium or whatever out altogether? Precious metals are expensive. Hmmm.... New regulators don't weigh anything. How can that be? Regulators are made of magnetic steel parts and copper wire. I wonder what they leave out to make them that light? The copper maybe? Copper is expensive. I suppose aluminum wire could be made to work, but the wire would have to be bigger and that would require re-engineering the relays. Hmmm.... There isn't much to go wrong with a regulator. Most of the old ones work or almost work. You typically don't need new. Of course a catastrophic failure of a regulator is possible, and then maybe you need another, but usually it is just dirty points that can be cleaned by dragging brake kleen soaked paper between the points. If that doesn't work maybe one drag of a tiny file. You don't want to lose the platinum or whatever is in there. Less is more with the file. Worst case the voltage may need to be set. I have yet to hear even one success story with recent production regulators. Don't buy that crap.

The only suitable check of a vacuum advance can is whether it holds vacuum. Yes it might matter here, but that is not why I was asking. I was asking because every time the vacuum advance moves, like every time you take off from a stoplight, every time you accelerate, etc. it moves the pickup, and bends it's wires. I think that's the green and white in the photo, but the pic is sort of cut off and hard to tell for sure. Those wires don't usually break, in fact it's amazing how long they usually last. Still, they can break, and probably inside the insulation where you can't see. If they are broken, every time the advance moves the ignition would go away for an instant, or misfire, or fire between cylinders or something. If this is the case you should be able to duplicate it by putting suction on the hose and moving the advance while it is just sitting there idling. It will either make the ignition cut out or it wont. As I said earlier, I would probably retard the timing some for the test because if there is too much vacuum advance it could fool you. It shouldn't matter but it might. The red component is probably just a capacitor to filter radio interference. Could it be the trouble? Maybe, but it's pretty unlikely. I don't remember ever running into that.

I second that.

Carbon button resistance is window dressing. Was the coil ever run without a ground wire? Did you look it over for cracks, marks from arcing, or holes blown in the coil leads? They do fail, but my guess from hunderds of miles away without enough information is that it is fine. Double check your firing order. I sure wouldn't go for a or b yet.... not until the cause is nailed down. c) I'm starting to think so. In any event I can't rule it out. What happens when you put vacuum on the hose to the distributor? Broken wires inside the insulation on the pickup? That would have been the only thing you touched except the module. I'm not going to say it is impossible for the module to cause this, but it is almost impossible. It would be an edge case. Is there any tendency to backfire? What does it sound like revved up to maybe 2500 or 3000 rpm at a constant speed? Is there a steady rhythmic snapping noise in the carburetor? Is there any possibility a vacuum hose could have got broken while you were working on the distributor? The fact that some plugs look different suggests this might be. All vacuum lines matter, but look especially around any vacuum fitting located out on an intake runner. Got power brakes? If there is no tendency to backfire, put your safety glasses on, get it warm and on low idle with the choke open, and look down the carburetor barrels. At a steady low idle state the only fuel should be coming from the idle jets which are under the throttle plates where you can't see them. You should not be able to see any fuel coming out of the discharge tubes in the middle of the venturis. In fact, you should see no fuel anywhere. If there is fuel running out, something is definitely wrong and it is probably the carburetor float. Check the firing order again. I know I keep harping on it. Sorry about that. It is so easy to swap the two adjacent cylinders that follow each other in the firing order. I can't remember nailhead firing order offhand, but it would be 5 and 7 if it were a Chrysler or a Chevy with 18436572. Most of us have done this at some point whether we will admit it or not.

Rubber upper control arm bushings only allow movement by the flexing of the rubber. The rubber is bonded to the shell and core. Any that squeak have broken loose and are bad. The bolts must be tightened with the car on the ground sitting at normal ride height, or the bushings will get over-stressed and break free. Urethane aftermarket bushings are intended to move on the shell and core. They have a tendency to squeak. Many different methods are used to prevent squeaking like graphite in the urethane mix, grease fittings, etc. They do move so they can squeak. Screw-type bushings on a threaded shaft can and do squeak if there is not enough grease. I guess it depends on what you are working on.

I'm not sure what the gas cap has to do with it, but a vented one for now couldn't hurt.

This^^ The engine should have only one PCV valve. In addition to the problem @rocketraider mentioned, two PCV valves will let too much air into the PCV port. Not good if you want the engine to run right. Connect the back one only. For the fresh air intake @rocketraider mentioned, there needs to be a filter or the engine will suck dirt. If you intend to keep the aftermarket air filter, one possibility would be to get an aftermarket breather cap that fits in the oil cap hole, and just plug the second PCV hole. I don't know. It may have been plumbed into the charcoal canister system at some time. It is unusual to see. For now, plug it. Your engine will suck dirt in through the hole if you don't. If you mean vacuum hoses, their age doesn't matter. Anything with vacuum cannot be allowed to leak at all if you want the engine to run decent. They must fit tight around the nipples. If they don't, get new ones. This goes for PCV, power brake, carburetor connections, and anything that might have vacuum behind it. Hoses that do not, like most of the charcoal canister hoses, should also seal, but will have little if any discernible effect, except for the control hose, usually the smallest one. That has vacuum in it. You may be able to find a vacuum diagram under the hood on a sticker. Not all cars of the era have it but some do. It will probably include the charcoal canister system. Take the air cleaner off and look at the top of your carburetor. Look on the box-like structure just forward of the air intake hole and choke plate. Is there a huge hose nipple there? Some carburetors like yours have it, some don't. You might just have a blank plate up there with a couple of screws and no hose connection. If you have that hose connection way up on top of the carburetor, it is a bowl vent that was once connected to the charcoal canister system. it should not be plugged. Any other unused hose connections on the carburetor should be plugged.

If you've been accustomed to electric wipers, I suggest you get a bottle of Rain-X, and don't use wipers at all for a few months and see how you do.

On the fuel filter, there should be a tiny orifice in the nipple that feeds the return line. It sounds like the filter might be missing the orifice or the hoses might be mis-plumbed. The return line prevents the carburetor from being force-fed fuel and overflowing if the fuel pump boils after a hot shutdown. Apparently it wasn't necessary on cars without A/C. It is a good idea though. I wouldn't be in a hurry to get rid of it.

That's pretty much true today. Not back then.

I don't think you want any sort of switch on a high compression 472. Those cars draw what seems like too much current even when nothing is wrong. I had one, and battery cables made of large welding cable are what finally made it crank with authority, even in cold weather.

That wear pattern is disturbing. It looks as though the angle of the teeth did not match. Speedometer pinions in those days were usually matched sets of worm and pinion, in other words you did not just stuff a pinion in with a different number of teeth for a different gear ratio like you do today. When changes like that were made, it was generally both gears. If I remember correctly Buick got interchangeable speedometer pinions starting around 1941. You probably(?) need both gears. Be sure to verify that they mesh properly somehow while the transmission is still out and apart.