Bloo

Im hoping the Buick gurus in here will know more about your particular heat riser. On the Chrysler ones I am most familiar with, they HAVE to work for the factory choke to work, and a stuck one will drive you nuts in short order on a street driven car. Other than that, put it in and drive it. If you look too close, you will find stuff. Old cars aren't perfect. When you build this car a new motor, if you still intend to, then nitpick that one and make it perfect. On a used engine for a driver, just drive it!. Check your oil and water a lot, especially the oil. This happened every time the car got filled with gas when it was new. Make sure you are checking it often enough that it doesn't need a whole bunch of oil every time, that way if the oil consumption suddenly gets worse, you wont get a nasty surprise. Change the oil regularly. If it uses a lot of oil, don't fall into the trap of "I'm always dumping fresh oil in there so it must be ok". The real reason for draining the pan is to get the contaminants out. Watch the oil ESPECIALLY CLOSE the first time you drive it across the state. If you have been driving a car around the city for a while and then take it on a long highway run, it might appear to burn a whole bunch of oil. This is because all the gas and water that leaked past the rings all boils out when the car gets really warmed up all the way. Many people aren't aware of this effect and get surprised by it. In any event, you will be familiar with this particular engine's needs soon enough, just drive it!

I wouldn't take too much apart. Get the heat riser working though. The shop manual oughta tell you something about it I think. 99 percent of heat risers work the same way. The thermostatic spring pulls the valve shut. The weight is up high somewhere. as the spring relaxes with heat, the weight pulls down, opening the valve. Any other springs or pads or whatever are there to keep it from rattling. If you think the thermostatic spring might be on backwards, point a heat gun at it and watch what happens.

Sold? To you or someone else?

Get that soaking in diesel, or some high-powered penetrating oil, as soon as possible. Its gonna take a few days at least. I know you are thinking it might be the end. Yeah, I know it doesn't look good. It might not be nearly as bad as it looks, and regardless you'll want to not damage the piston. It's time to go read on some single cylinder engine forums about unsticking a cyinder. In the mean time... DIesel, or Mopar rust penetrant, or Kroil, or liquid wrench or something. Soak the crap out of it and keep it wet. Patience is the key here. I would just fill the cylinder with diesel and keep it nearly full.

If it were me, and I was faced with leaving the car disabled, I would try to get it running. If its good, it still wont be like a fresh engine. I have driven lots of miles in worn out old cars. You have to check the oil a lot. Everyone basically did that back then anyway. If it has a lot of blowby, it might smoke out of the draft tube, etc. It's gonna need tlc. If it has any burned valves, you would have to pull a head or heads and fix them. You just cant work around that problem any other way. On the other hand, maybe this is bad advice because if you need the parts in this thing for your rebuild, they would be tied up. And then again... back on the other hand.... the biggest danger with a project car like this is taking it apart and never getting it back together because life threw you a curve. Were you able to find out anything much about the engine's history? Why was it pulled? If it was a runner when pulled, and it has not been sitting outside, it might be ok. If it sat outside without that carb hole covered up with something it aint gonna be pretty inside. On the other hand, if they covered the hole up with a board or something it might be fine. I live within about15 miles, and the climate here is nothing like Kent. It is dry here. Stuff can sit around a long time and be fine, on the other hand, it gets extremely cold, so anything that did fill up with water is gonna be cracked and broken from frost. If you need someone local to do anything shoot me a PM. I'm sort of tied up today, but I'll be around tomorrow.

Hard to go wrong with Rotella 10-30, and its often on sale. Thinner is better if you can get away with it because it flows faster cold, and most actual wear occurs when the engine is cold. 15-40 is readily available if the particular engine requires something thicker than 10-30. As far as I know zddp was not in use yet in the 1930s, so you have less to worry about than someone with a newer car with a more radical cam profile and stronger valvesprings.

Oops... hes right. 1960 was the changeover year.

That heat riser looks like it had been apart recently and welded? Its stuck? Why don't you take it apart and fix it? On one hand I cant imagine it causing your issue if it's stuck open. On the other hand, the car is never going to really run right with it stuck, so its probably time to fix it. The heat riser is different than mine, so I cant say for sure whether it is open. I will say that the pictures appear to contradict each other. The rusty one does indeed look open (plate tipped in toward the engine). On my Pontiac tipped in like that is "open" and directs most of the exhaust down the side of the plate and out the manifold outlet. If the plate is tipped the other way "closed", out away from the engine, some of the exhaust is directed up into the chamber under the carb, then back down, past the other side of the heat riser plate, and out the outlet. The pictures appear to contradict each other, as the clean manifold's weight looks like a closed position to me. All the weight seems to be up high, and should drop in one direction or the other as the spring relaxes, probably toward the engine on a Pontiac 6. Heat risers do exist that work backwards, and jack the weight up when they open, but that is really uncommon. I think I saw it on a Jeep.

Points will not ground reliably without that wire. The symptom is generally rough running and a bunch of banging in the exhaust, exploded muffler, etc. If the Pertronix is grounding through the breaker plate, it needs the wire. Regarding the carb: If running with the choke partway on fixes it, there is likely trouble in the carb.

I'm not sure. If it were out here in WA, I doubt it would have serious structural rust. Here, I would expect holes in the rear quarters and probably the floors. In the Midwest, I have heard stories of late 50's mopars rusting shockingly fast. A good close inspection is needed.

Oh, and I wasn't trying to give you crap for not knowing theres no frame, not at all. I just meant you better get under there and look close because if theres serious rust, it could be structural. The members that give the unibody its strength are thinner steel than a typical frame.

I don't remember exactly how a 59 is underneath, but what I would expect to find is a front stub frame, bolted on basically under the front floorboard. It probably goes back just far enough to support the back end of the torsion bars.

Wait a minute... How does the pertronix ground? Just through the breaker plate? There should have been a ground wire, a little short piece of special extra-bendable wire, grounding the breaker plate to the distributor case. Is it still there? and unbroken? I suspect the pretronix probably needs it as much as the points did. An intermittent connection there will get you a lot of banging in the exhaust.

Well. the pertronix should have taken care of any points issues. If its ignition I guess it could be the coil. They do go bad, but honestly not often. Maybe take the distributor cap and wires off (as an assembly so nothing gets crossed) and hold the cap up to a bright light and look for carbon tracks. Take a multimeter and check the spark plug wires for resistance. They should all be really low resistance if they are solid core wires. If they are resistance wires, they should be a few Kohm, but all about the same with the longer wires being a little higher. Measure from the plug end of the wire all the way back to the brass or aluminum contact on the inside of the distributor cap. If you cant get a good connection at the spark plug end (it usually turns out this way), use an old non-resistor spark plug at the spark plug end of the wire and touch your probe to the center terminal of the plug. Wiggle the connection if you have to. If you find an open wire, replace the rotor too. Speaking of the rotor, look at the center of it, It will be one of 2 ways. It could be just brass. If it is, there should be a spring-loaded carbon brush in the cap. make sure there is. If the rotor has instead a thin piece of springy metal in the center, then there will be a corresponding contact in the middle of the cap, but probably not spring loaded. The important thing is that it is gonna touch when assembled and not leave a big gap in there. When you look you will see what I mean. Thats about it for ignition. You could take a multimeter and check voltage on the positive side of the coil, and then check it again when it is screwing up. Or you could use a test light and see if it looks about the same during the cold and warm phase. The idea here is to see that the coil is getting enough voltage when things go bad I would be really extremely surprised if its the fuel pump. A cold engine needs more gas than a hot one. Honestly, all of that is grasping at straws considering the symptoms. I'll bet something is up with that heat riser and its boiling the carb.

Its a unibody. Get under there and look.....

Is your heat riser stuck? It needs to be open hot. I don't know exactly what that looks like on a 1949, but on 99% of all cars its "weight down" (as far as it goes) with the engine hot. Look on the exhaust manifold directly below the carburetor. On my 1936 for example, the weight points straight up when cold, and rotates down almost 90 degrees, sticking nearly straight in toward the block when hot. Some, (maybe all?) Pontiac 6's have a steel tube pressed into the intake manifold that separates exhaust from intake. It looks more or less like a piece of exhaust tubing. It is right under the carburetor. The fuel-air from the carburetor flows through the tube, and there is exhaust (for heat) around the outside of it. If it rusts out, exhaust flows back into the intake, causing the engine to run horrible. Maybe someone else can say for sure if the tube exists on a 1949. If you have the carburetor off for any reason, look down in there below where the carburetor mounts for rust holes.

C'mon, guys. I think you all know buying another car is the wrong answer, unless there's just no alternative. It's a good way to get distracted.

Yes, to all of that. The cowl is the whole thing behind the hood and front fenders/wings underneath the windshield, and in front of the doors. It includes the red piece in your picture, and the black cover bolted to it. The red vertical piece of the cowl in your picture would also be called the firewall here. Im not sure how much of that is the same in the UK.

Have a look at the shafts for wear too.....

Probably because no replacements were available? Does anyone make these? No matter, those are too shot to use. He should have stopped, contacted you, and either found better ones himself or asked you to. It should normally be possible for a machinist to regrind them. They cant be used the way they are. Those edges will catch on the tips of the new or reground valves. The ones in your pictures are worn clear through the pads, I don't think regrinding would fix them. There are 2 main issues here, valvetrain geometry and lifter preload. If the geometry is wrong, the rocker will try to scrub the valve sideways as it pushes it down. This will cause the guides to wear out too fast, and might even break stuff, its hard to say. The geometry needs to be checked by the guy rebuilding the heads. Most engines have a spec for valvestem height, and this is the reason. If the valves are a little worn, or reground, the stem will come up higher and the geometry will be wrong. The tips are ground to correct it. Note that when this happens, the valvespring retainer will also be a little bit too high, and the valve spring will have less tension. This is why there is also a spec for "valve spring installed height". When wrong, it is corrected with shims between the bottom of the spring and the head. When the rocker tips have severe wear like that, they need to be precision ground back to the correct contour. The loss of material also screws up the geometry, and depending on how much was removed, may cause the scrubbing sideways on the valvestems I mentioned above. Also it may cause the rockers to have too much angle, and that can put the pushrods in a bind, and even more so with a higher lift cam. It may also screw up the lifter preload. To correct this, a machinist could leave the valvestems a little too tall, but that isn't really advisable, or more likely would machine a tiny bit off the bottom of the rocker shaft support towers. None of this matters though, because those look way beyond regrinding to me. I think you are gonna have to find another set. Hopefully they wont need grinding at all. If they do, maybe they will need a lot less. Lifter preload is the distance the lifter piston is pushed down in it's bore when the lifter is on the base circle of the cam lobe. Grinding material off of the rocker tips also lessens the lifter preload, but lowering the shaft in relation to the head has the opposite effect. A reground cam affects it too, but often not enough to matter. I think you should always check the preload. It can be fixed with different pushrod lengths if wrong. The geometry needs to be right first.

File fit rings are checked way down in the un-worn part of the cylinder. They need to be pushed straight before measuring. An upside down piston can do this if they're flattop pistons, if not find something the same diameter. You want them as tight as possible at the bottom, because no matter what you do, when they are at the top, where it matters, and where the cylinder is worn, they will be too loose. You want them tight up there too, but its impossible because of the taper. You are only making it less bad. If you get them too tight, the ends will touch when they get hot, and the ring will break and destroy the piston and cylinder. In theory you would set them to the tight end of the acceptable range of gaps in the manual. In real life, leave them slightly looser than the minimum acceptable gap. You cant afford to have them touch.

SBC Connecting rods? I wouldn't. Those ones in the pictures look like custom aftermarket rods. You might be able to use them, but no advantage really that I can think of. Maybe get new rod bolts, ARP if theyre available. If you are going to spring for any custom parts in this (you shouldn't have to), get pistons! Arias or something. You would have to know the actual deck height and you would have to CC the heads, because they will ask. Then you could have any compression ratio you want. Pick your cam first, because if it has more overlap you might need more compression. You also might be able to get the pistons lighter than stock, and probably modern-design rings, maybe lighter pins, and any style of pin retention you want. I don't know if its worth it, but along with rebalancing it might make a difference you could actually notice. Fancy rods wont be noticed again once you put the oil pan on. If they're heavier, and they might be, its actually worse. Only use custom rods in engines that have weak rods that might break at random, or that run to crazy high rpm. The Buick rods look forged to me, and forged is what you want. I don't think nailheads had weak rods. I don't ever remember seeing one that broke a rod back in the day. Someone here will know for sure. And speaking of compression, its unwise to believe compression ratio numbers in books or piston catalogs. If you care about the compression ratio, measure! Many American engines will be found to have a higher deck than the book says they should, and this lowers compression. I'm not sure if its sloppiness or maybe the factory intentionally leaves a little more metal for future remachining of the deck. Maybe Buick didn't, but you wont know unless you check it. Know how far off it is (if at all) and take it into account when ordering pistons. The volume of the combustion chambers is also often bigger than the book says it should be. It also gets a little bigger with every valve grind. Measure, and take that into account as well. Most cars of the 50s used steel shim head gaskets. Thicker gaskets are supplied today usually, and that also lowers compression. The compression ratio in most factory service manuals is somewhere between optimism and an outright lie. I'll bet a majority of them are half a point or more below what the book says. And one more thing about compression, I HIGHLY recommend you build this with a compression ratio that will be happy on cheap 87 octane ethanol-tainted fuel. It really is necessary for a daily driver, unless you are independently wealthy and never take it out of town. I once tried to daily drive an 11.25:1 (allegedly) Cadillac 472. Of course I couldn't afford to feed it premium, which wasn't good enough anyway, let alone the aviation gas or race fuel it really needed. I set it up to burn 87 octane to get me to work. I ran the timing retarded and recurved the distributor. I had it running acceptably, and not rattling itself to death, at least if I kept my foot out of it, but it was WAY down on power, exhaust ran hot, etc. A little too much compression is way worse than too little. If its too high you will be doing the sort of stuff I was doing with that Cadillac. No fun in that. If the compression is perfect but right on the hairy edge, then every time you get a load of slightly worse gas, you will be running to the trunk for a distributor wrench to back it off a couple of degrees to stop the pinging before it destroys your new engine. If the compression is a little bit too low, then your horsepower will be a bit down over what it could be, but you get to run ideal timing and fuel curves, and probably wont have to mess around with things much once its initially sorted out, and it will run great. Choose wisely. So I take it those loose pins destroyed the cylinder bores, and is that a broken valvespring? Did it drop the valve? Full floating pins need some sort of retainer in a groove in the piston pin bore to keep them in position. I don't see that. Thats absolutely crazy if he built it that way. If the pins are retained by the rods there shouldn't be bushings. I know it looks horrible in there, but most of the other things are not out of the ordinary. When something goes wrong early in an engines life, and you have to open it, it looks horrible. Most people never see it because nothing went wrong. New engines that aren't broken in yet burn oil, and yes, there will be carbon. Hone marks are a sign of a young engine. It takes a while for a soft aluminum piston to wipe those off. Those bearings look fine to me in the pics, but if the machinist says they're bad, they're bad. He can measure them. Is the valvetrain adjustable? If its not you will most likely have to mix and match some pushrod lengths to get the lifter preload right. Of course the ball has to be the right size o_O . Keep after this, and always prioritize the Buick over the old machinist and what happened in the past. Don't let that distract you from your goals. You are absolutely on the right track by doing it yourself this time. You will have this done sooner than you think.

It doesn't work like that. I completely understand why you might want to get rid of all that high-current wiring under the dash, but you will lose ammeter function. What I don't understand is the "fire hazard". I drove mopars of that vintage most of my young life, running one of them to almost 400k miles, helped friends build more of them than I can count, and I have never heard of someone catching the car on fire because of an ammeter. There is a design issue though, sort of. Where the wires go through the firewall to the ammeter at the bulkhead connector the connections can overheat and burn up. They are just 1/4 spades. Burning plastic smell? Yes. Car wont run or wont charge? Yes. Fire? Call me a Doubting Thomas. This arises usually because of the size of the alternator. Originally most mopars of that vintage used 32 amp alternators for non-a/c cars, 42 amp for a/c cars, and 60 amp for police (there are some exceptions, not many). Usually there was no problem with the connector on 32 amp cars. 42 amp cars were on the hairy edge. Police 60 amp cars had a separate harness with huge wires running unbroken through the firewall, and a +-60 amp ammeter. In the 80s, parts store rebuilt alternators were usually 42 amp with a double pulley. This is really the a/c alternator, but "one size fits all". Later on 60 amp alternators started popping up all over the place. The connectors could barely handle 42 amps. They couldn't handle 60 amps when they were new. Another thing that causes trouble is draw from power-hungry accessories. It is tempting to connect them to the battery or the starter relay, but if you do that you are on the wrong side of both the ammeter and those spade lugs in the bulkhead. Two things will happen: 1) any current drawn by the accessory will register on the ammeter as "charge", which of course it isn't, and 2) All the current drawn by the accessory will flow through the ammeter wiring, the ammeter, and both connections at the bulkhead connector. Connecting accessories like that can overheat the bulkhead connections even with a 32 amp alternator, because they were never intended to handle a constant load originally. Battery charging current may go all the way to the full output of the alternator right after a start but usually tapers off pretty fast. Back to your question. I see no way to do what you want and still have the factory ammeter work. On some other makes there were ammeters that had a remote shunt out under the hood (literally part of the ammeter was under the hood). This resulted in small wires through the firewall. Chrysler may have also done this for a moment or 2 in the 70s. I doubt it would fit your cluster. Almost all mopar ammeters are real ammeters with an internal shunt. The current flows through them. All of it. You can shunt them to make them usable with more current, but you still need the charging circuit running under the dash. If you want the ammeter to actually work, here is what I suggest. Get a big thick grommet (with lots of protection for the wires) and run 2 big wires through the dash, #8 or #10 or so, like they did on the police car. Run one to the back of the alternator, and the other to the starter relay (unhooking and abandoning the old wires). I would fuselink this wherever Chrysler did, and probably at the other end as well. Proper fuselink size is 2 sizes (4 numbers) below the wire size. There may be a small wire crimped into one of the connectors where the charging circuit went through the firewall. You will have to cut that loose from the abandoned wires and reconnect it. It needs to connect on the same side of the ammeter it was before. I have also seen people shove the new wires through the holes in the bulkhead connector where the old spade lugs were. This saves drilling a hole, the only thing it prevents you from doing is ever completely unhooking the wire harness. It looks cleaner, too. Solder everything! This is high current wiring. any questionable connections are gonna get hot. Do not skip this. Insulate all the new terminals with heatshrink or something. Make sure all mechanical connections (like the stud connections at the back of the ammeter) are squeaky clean. Power hungry accessories should be connected to the back of the alternator. Period. The ammeter only has to be able to register the maximum output of the alternator. If its 45 amps or less the stock one should work as intended. If you have more charging capacity than that, or it goes too high, you can shunt it. That link has the right idea, but these ammeters generally don't have marked scales anyway (except police ones, that were marked 60 amps at full scale). You really don't need to calculate. So, do something to make the alternator go to full charge. My favorite method is run the engine at 2000-2500 rpm, and put a load tester on the battery. When you activate the load (just for an instant) how high does the ammeter go? If it doesn't go too high, you don't need to do anything. If it does, make a really short stick of copper wire, start small, maybe 20 gauge. Crimp and then solder ring terminals on it, and put it across the ammeter and try again. Too low now? get a smaller wire of the same short length. Too high? get a bigger wire of the same length. Keep doing this until full charge registers where you want it to be on the ammeter. If you don't need the ammeter to work, you can just run a big wire from the alternator to the starter relay (or the battery). Fuselink it. If there is a small wire crimped in with the ammeter wiring at the bulkhead (there probably is) you are gonna have to cut it loose and extend to your new circuit and connect it. The alternator is best as a connection point, but if your new wire is nice and big, the starter relay or the battery would be fine. Disconnect and abandon the old wires. If you do this you will have no charge indicator at all, as the mopar system does not support an idiot light. You could get an aftermarket voltmeter, as voltmeters use small low-current wires, and mount it under the dash. Best of luck.

I'm in Central Washington, former Seattle resident . I sent lots of stuff to Delta years ago, as did several of my friends. The prices were good and the quality excellent.

Delta cams in Tacoma will regrind a cam to original spec or whatever you specify. I have had good luck with them in the past.