KingKoser05

Hello all, Recently, my fiance's family has let me dig out the family's 1964 Deville Convertible. This is my second project as I am starting my own shop here in the coming months. The story of the car is this. It's a 1964 DeVille Convertible that has been in the family since 1974. It was bought from the original owner for my fiance's mom and siblings to drive to high school. It served as a daily driver for about a decade until it was parked due to age. It was moved around once and awhile when it needed to be moved from barn to barn and was also used in a few weddings. It narrowly missed becoming a casualty in a barn fire in the mid 1990s, although another Cadillac and an Auburn weren't as lucky. The last time the car ran was about six years ago for a wedding and then was put back in the barn. It sat inside out of the weather on a wood floor underneath a car cover. I had known about the car for a long time now, but it was only until recently that I was finally able to work on it. The car itself if in remarkable shape for what it is. It has had one repaint in the mid 1970s and the interior, drivetrain and top are all original. After decoding the trim tag. It a lower trim level DeVille with the only options being the soft ray glass and power front seats. About 90% of the electrical stuff still works. Currently, It doesn't run, but after a new battery and fresh fluids, it is getting everything but fuel. A new fuel pump will be in order the next time I work on the car. It just needs to be able to run long enough to where I can transport it from where it is on the farm, to my new shop about 10 or so miles away. There it will undergo some routine maintenance as well as some preventative maintenance for the future. I prefer to not have deadlines on cars, but when I do have them, it keeps me motivated, so the deadline for this car is the fall Hershey meet. I'm not sure what I want to do with it there, I am not sure if it would be a candidate for any type of HPOF award or any other class as it will be the first car I ever have in the show. I'll update this thread from time to time and will ask questions along the way, as this is one of my first major projects. I will also try to get some better pics when I can. Alex K.

They both have their places. I go to Autozone/Advance Auto/O'Reillys/etc for stuff like detailing products, tools, and maybe a quick code read. Napa I use for actual parts. Some of their parts are really nice. I needed a master cylinder and wheel cylinders for my vette. So I ran to NAPA and got four wheel cylinders and a master cylinder, and everything fit perfectly and looked the part as well. The old parts will be rebuilt some time but the NAPA parts work, look and fit perfectly.

Thanks alot guys, it just seemed to me that that is putting a lot of faith in the restorers that they represent they're car for what it is. That answered my question. Thanks again.

Hello all, I need some enlightenment as far as judging cars as restored. I heard that when a car is being judged at a meet, the judges do not check VIN numbers and Trim tags, and that really struck me as odd. It would seem that not checking those things would leave the door wide open for cars to be faked and misrepresented. If you could take any type of base model car, and "clone" it into a higher end model, and/or slightly more desirable model, what would be the point of judging it as a restored car in the first place, if there isn't any real verification that the car is what it is made to be? -Alex

Good news and bad news on the build so far. First, the good news. The good news is that the head and crankshaft are completely clean and ready for use. A wire wheel set on an electric drill was used to take the rust off, then brake clean was used to clean off any sludge left behind. Then it was off to the parts washer where it was heat cleaned and degreased for an hour. The two crankshafts were remeasured and decided on the one that, at the most, was 3-5 thousandths in variation on the journals. That was then sent to the parts washer as well for an hour long heat cleaning and degreasing session. Both the head and the crank came out very nicely. The pictures attached show the crankshaft in the parts washer after it had been completely cleaned. The head on the workbench is all clean after being cleaned with the wire wheel set and brake clean and is ready for the parts washer. In the straight on picture, there is some heavy pitting and corrosion in the leftmost combustion chamber. And then the head that is fresh out of the parts washer. All parts that came out of the parts washer are immediately rinsed off with a hose, blown off with an air gun, then sprayed with a solid coat of WD-40 to prevent flash rusting. Now for the bad news, as you may remember, there were two engine blocks when we started, one had a wide variation of bore diameters and excessive ring ridge and our thinking was to not use that because if we bored it over at all, we weren't sure if we could get oversized pistons considering the age and rarity of the engine. The second block had more consistent bore diameter and no ring ridge, but had two small cracks in the water jackets. Our thoughts were that we could braze the cracks shut and not have to overbore. When brazing the cast iron, it was first heated with a rosebud torch head, then wrapped in a fiberglass welding blanket to keep the heat in, then the heads were switched to a welding head. Then, the welding blankets were taken off and we tried to braze the cracks in one inch sections to avoid getting the base metal either too hot or too cold. When finished, it was then again wrapped in the welding blankets to try and slowly cool it down and left to sit over night. When the morning came, we found that the block cooled too fast and caused even more excessive cracking around the brazing area. In hindsight, what should have happened, was to utilize the "lock and stitch" method. But rather than try to spend more time fixing it, we opted to just cut our losses and use the first block. Which means the block might have to be overbored and new pistons to go with it. Pictures attached show the brazing and the cracks after the brazing cooled. Thanks for looking, Alex

New update on the build. Next to work on is valvetrain assembly. There was a lot to choose from considering there were two engines. Way back when the two engines were first disassembled, they were actually taken apart and bagged and tagged really well. All the valves were each tagged intake and exhaust in a bag tagged with which cylinder they came out of. So the first thing was to do was to inspect the valves. The plan originally was to just order as many valvetrain components as we could find and just replace them. As far as we could find, the only company that made valvetrain components was Egge Pistons, and it came out to be more than $800 for valves, guides and springs. So to cut back, we decided to inspect the valves that we had to see if they could be used. The first thing that we did was mach up the valves in one of the heads we aren't using to just get an idea. They aren't in the head as they should be but it's just to keep them in order. As it turned out, the original '32 Buick valves (or really old replacements) were in extraordinary shape! So once they were given the green light to be used, they went to the blast cabinet to be blasted. The cool thing about blasting them was that when they were all cleaned up, all the old factory markings became clear. As a young guy doing this, it was really cool to see that so much pride was taken in making all of these parts back then, that Buick stamped everything with their logo. Even on the back of the exhaust valve, you can just barely make out the Buick logo. Alex

Pete, Thanks very much for your response. I know that the good head we are using for the build did actually come from texas. Alex

Thanks for the information and response! Fixing it is going to be the tricky part. Heating it up is one thing but then keeping at that constant temperature while working on it will be a challenge for a pair of students that combined, have a limited experience with cast iron. Alex

Bob, That is exactly where our cracks are. It is interesting that its a common problem. Our second block doesn't have any cracks that are visible right now. I took a picture of the one crack, the other one wasn't visable on camera. Alex

Big news on the build! Sorry for the lack of posts lately, as not much has happened since some measurements on the bores as well as the crank were determined to be inaccurate and out of round and had to be remeasured. But now everything is back into spec and parts are on the way! First are piston rings. the piston rings that came off both sets of pistons are not original and needed replaced. Rings were sourced from Egge Machinery along with valves, valve springs and valve guides. Also unbeknownst to me and the others in my group, the school had a surplus of parts to use. This included not one or two heads but three separate cylinder heads to choose from. I took some pictures of them all and the one we are going with is the one standing on its side showing the combustion chambers. The head we are using isn't off our parts engine or the engine we are building but from a connection my instructor had in Texas. The other two engines had severe cracks in the center of the heads. It bothers me somewhat that we aren't able to use the head that the block came with, but I am thankful nonetheless for the good condition head we have now. Next is to V out two small cracks in the water jackets on the side of the block so they can be repaired as well as try to clean the head up as best we can as well as try to clean the head up as best we can along with removing the old valve guides and other pieces. Alex

John, Ok that makes more sense. I wouldn't really know anything about that. I would really like that information. Thank you. Alex

John, Thanks for the response. I am not too sure I know someone here named Christina, but I will certainly look more into it. Alex

Thriller, Thanks for the response. I have some contact information to various people, so later on this week I might try and reach out to them. I might have their info as well, I am not sure. Alex

dibarlaw, Thanks for the response. When I got ahold of the specifications and adjustments book, there was some different contact information and haven't reached out to any of them yet. I am just in the process of exhausting other options before I do. Sometime this coming week I will reach out to the contact info that I have. Alex

I honestly don't know a lot about that. This is the oldest engine I ever worked on, my background is in Pontiacs, Mustangs and Vettes.