Str8-8-Dave

Mario is right and after I read my post above, I should have stated clearly ES11 internal components and ES15 assemblies, if you can find them, are specifically for 60 series cars in 1931 and 32. They may have been used for larger cars later, but for 31-32, the parts I spoke of are for 60 series only. 80/90 series ball studs and housings are larger than the 60 series. ES15's won't work on 31-32 50 series because the external housings are different. Whether the internals from ES11 or ES 15 can be used in 50 series tie rod ends, I haven't a clue.

For my car this has all been solved. 32Buick67 discovered Thompson Products produced replacements, their catalog #ES15 which I have never found. Mario also discovered Thomson Products catalog #ES11 used same internals in a different configuration assembly. Turned out Jim Blair had a NOS set of the ES11's in an E-bay auction and I snapped those up, popped the internals out of the NOS parts and transferred to my housings. The ES11's came with new dust seals, cup washers and seal springs. For sure, Rare Parts is one avenue, and for sure, get your wallet out. I got these NOS ends and did a little work in the garage, but I only have 50bucks in my now like new tie rod ends. New ball stud, clamshell bearings, bearing centering spring and nut were re-patriated from NOS Thompson ES11 tie rod ends. The housing is my original housing waiting to receive the new internal components. This shot shows correct orientation of clamshells and centering spring. New components installed and bottom plug expanded in place. I saved the original bottom plug from my original tie rod ends because it has a patent date stamped on. Rebuilt tie rod ends ready to go back onto the tie rod. Completed tie rod with rebuilt ends. One end of the tie rod is threaded 16 TPI X1.00" dia., other is 18 TPI X 1.00" dia. The 18 TPI tie rod end is lock/indexed to the tie rod via a thick washer installed in the expansion slot of the inboard pinch bolt. The washer extends into a half-moon slot machined into the threaded area of the tie rod. Last 3 pictures show the rebuilt tie rod back in the car.

This story popped up on my MSN News feed this morning. Very interesting... Whatever Happened To The Baker Motor Vehicle Company? (msn.com)

Guess I'm a little slow but Tom VanMeeteren probably has these gears. Tom VanMeeteren has them: 402-359-5762 or tsvanmeet@gmail.com

Soldering stranded copper wire to rod stock could be a challenge depending on what the rod is. If it is just mild steel you might get away with a little tinning acid and soft solder applied with a soldering iron or gun. If it's stainless you won't be able to solder it. That's why I suggested taking a piece of sold copper wire easily stripped out of a piece of vinyl insulated Romex house wire. Like the rod the solid copper wire will be stiff enough to navigate the steering tube without wdding and hanging up. Using solid copper wire you are soldering copper to copper. Split the strands of the horn wire and twist/form them around the end of the solid wire. Use Kester resin core solder and a gun or iron and you will be in business.

One other idea is to remove a piece of solid copper wire from some 14AWG Romex house wiring long enough to reach all the way thru the column tube and solder it to the horn wire and use the copper wire, which will be fairly stiff, to fish the stranded horn wire thru the column tube.

Tom- I un-knowingly bought a set of NOS ball studs that are correct for 90 series from Mac Blair's son Jim. Since the ball studs are by design softer than the cup bearings, the ball studs wear egg-shaped and the cup bearings for the most part survive and could be re-used. If you are interested I will sell them to you for $35+ shipping. Let me know. Dave

Here is a new one in the box from a ford dealer. I bet you can't get your plated for this price... This jack, not the one I just posted by accident.... 1972 1973 1974 Ford Torino Fairlane Ranchero LtdII Bumper Jack NOS D2OZ-17808-A | eBay I don't know what your zip code is but if you go to the shipping page and put in your zip E-bay will calculate correct shipping.

Hi John; I sent you a message. I want this battery cable if you still have it. Please read your message. Thanks. Dave

I joined Ford in December of 72 and I'm gonna guess Ford did not manufacture the jack, they bought it from a supplier. If the original plating was a yellowish color it was probably yellow cadmium plated. In the 1990's that coating was outlawed as a carcinogen and every parts supplier, either basic manufacturing or outside supplier was tasked with eliminating yellow cad from every part at the component level. You may have to go to an outfit like Eastwood to see what kind of safe paint or other coating you could use. If it was silver it may have been galvanized.

She loves me... She loves me not... She loves me... She loves me not... She loves me...

which is another subject that needs exploration to make these old low compression engines run correctly. I currently use Sunoco recreational fuel in my car which is an ethanol free fuel rated at 90 octane. I still run a fully functioning heat control system and it just won't tolerate all the water produced by burning fuel laced with ethanol. But 90 octane fuel has a flame propagation rate that is just way too slow for 4 or 5 to one compression ratios our engines run at. With the initial spark advance set at factory spec, the fuel is still burning when the exhaust valve opens which overheats the exhaust valve because the head of the valve has lost contact with the head and can't transfer the heat of combustion to the head. The exhaust system, manifold, muffler and pipes are all running hot. You can't just advance the initial timing to fix the problem because at 50mph the centrifugal advance fires at 38degrees BTDC which was a pretty good advance for muscle cars of the 60's before EEC. Advancing the initial advance will result in excessive full advance and starts pounding rod bearings because the combustion cycle then starts too early in the crank rotation. In modern cars you would start hearing pinging from pre-ignition. I would like to know how to get the 90 octane ethanol free fuel down to 60-80 R+M/2 octane by adding kerosene or some other additive and experiment with lower octane and no ethanol. I know the combustion cycle is too slow with 90 octane, you can hear the exhaust rumbling and it has fried all the high temp paint off the exhaust manifold. Even the water temp is running around 200 degrees which means things are too hot.

Hello to all. This is the story of an attempt to make a simple repair that almost turned into a disaster. My car has a tendency to wander, especially when confronted with uneven pavement. One possibility is the car doesn't have correct toe setting. Another might be caster angle is off. Obviously loose kingpins or wheel bearings could be a problem. But the easiest to cure would be toe-in. I've had the car on jackstands all winter to work on other things, most of which have been dealt with. Having done some pre-reading of the 31 Spec's and Adjustments manual I knew there was something wrong with the tie rod installation. The tubular tie rod has a bend in the middle that offsets the center of the tie rod. According to the good book this offset was supposed to be oriented toward the front of the car. Mine was drooping pretty close to straight down. Before I could attempt to set toe-in I decided I needed to remove the tie rod which was accomplished by means of a pickle-fork separating tool. Others before me must not have had such a specialized tool, the tie rod studs and nuts were badly hammered. A thick coat of shiny black paint had been applied by the previous owner to the tie rod including the threaded ends to the point of making tie rod and 2 ends appear to be one piece. That paint had the tie rod end adjustment essentially welded-in-place. With loosening the 2 lock bolts on the tie rod ends and liberal application of Aero-Kroil penetrating oil I managed to get the tie rod ends off the tie rod. I used paint stripper and a grinder mounted wire wheel to clean up the tie rod threads. Now the fun started. On one tie rod end the ball stud was very loose and if you rotated the stud it went from very loose to tight suggesting egg-shape wear on the ball. The other tie rod end had a ball stud that was nearly frozen in place, it was very hard to move in any direction and it squeaked. Both ball studs and their stud nuts had been badly de-formed by hammer blows, to the extent cotter pin holes were de-formed. Contrary to very good advice from the 31 Specs and Adjustments manual that applied back when parts were readily available stating tie rod ends should be replaced, not taken apart, I found a socket just large enough to allow the bottom plug to pass, I set the loose tie rod end over the socket and drove out the cap exposing the interior parts. Inside I found two clamshell bearings, a retaining spring for the bearings, a badly worn ball stud and a two-ply improvised tubular shim band that was meant to reduce the inside diameter of the housing to take up some of the ball stud wear. Someone else dis-regarded Buick advice not to take the tie rod ends apart. After I got the paint off the housing and bottom plug the left housing carried a cast-on number 16SV23-F and the bottom plug carried a patent date of 4-8-13. Then I tried to dis-assemble the other tie rod end. I used the same approach, setting the housing over a socket and driving the internal parts out. This one took a lot more hammering and when it finally came apart the interior parts were much simpler. It looked like the housing and ball stud were put in a holding fixture and molten pot metal or aluminum alloy was poured around the ball stud, there were no clamshell bearings or spring, just a ball stud surrounded by cast metal. At this point I became worried that I would not be able to repair or replace the faulty tie rod ends. I also was not sure my tie rod ends were correct for the car because the illustrations in the 31 Specs and Adjustments manual differed from my parts. Before I started a search for parts I asked Dave Dunton in GA for pictures of the tie rod ends on his unrestored 31 model 8-66S. His pictures were identical to my parts, 16SV23-F on the left and 16SV24-F on the right, cast on Dave's tie rod housings. I posted no less than 3 parts wanted ads on the AACA website including pictures and requests for either complete assemblies or internal parts. While several people looked at my posts, no one came forward with parts. I tried my old stand-by E-Bay and got no results but figured out after a while the original tie rod ends must have been McQuay Norris designs as I found lots of tie rod ends listed as and packaged under the McQuay Norris name that featured very similar numbers cast on their housings. I found an old AACA thread on tie rod ends authored by Hugh Leidlein that addressed the needs of a 1924 Buick's tie rod ends and suggesting a possible parts source might be Rare Parts in California who specialized in mostly hot-rod chassis parts but manufactured some ball studs and clam shell bearings. The Leidlein thread had a line drawing of a ball stud that had key dimensions that agreed with measurements I took on my parts. I sent a web-mail inquiry to Rare Parts; they still haven't answered. I saw a thread sadly informing that Mac Blair, owner of the 32 Buick Registry, whom I had bought parts from over the years had passed away and that his huge inventory of Buick parts was going to be disposed of. I thought of making a contact with the Blair estate to see about parts. Finally, I reached out to Mario Coviello and told him I was in trouble with my car. Here was a car mostly finished that would be off the road permanently if I didn't come up with a fix for the tie rod. Mario confirmed my idea of reaching out to Mac Blair's estate thru his son Jim Blair and Mario provided an email address. He also referenced the Leidlein post, Rare Parts, and said he talked to Bob Engle when Mario was faced with worn out tie rod ends on his 32 model 67. Engle suggested turning or sanding the egg-shaped balls back into round and relying on the clamshell bearings to take up the clearance of an undersized ball. Mario did exactly that and repaired his tie rod ends. I could probably have done that on one of my tie rod ends but the one that had the cast metal repair didn't have the adjustable clamshell bearings and the tension spring. I wound up contacting Jim Blair. Jim lives in Alabama and collects lists of parts requests to use to selectively harvest and sell off inventory from his dad's Pennsylvania parts stash. I told Jim what I was looking for and sent pictures and assembly part numbers cast on the housings of my tie rod ends. Jim thought he might have NOS parts in Thompson Products boxes for the 60 series tie rod ends which feature smaller ball studs than 80/90 series tie rod ends. I had unknowingly bought a couple of 31-32 Buick ball studs listed by Jim's son Mark, and they were beautiful NOS parts but too big for my car. Eventually I got pictures from Jim of some used tie rod ends and some external washers, springs, nuts and seal parts. It looked like one tie rod end carried the 16SV23-F number cast on and the other looked like an identical part with no number, maybe an aftermarket item. I bought almost everything in Jim's picture assuming I could harvest good internal parts to rebuild my tie rod ends. Instead, I got one aftermarket tie rod end mfg. by Hubbard according to the bottom cover that had the same size ball stud as my old ends and may have contained parts needed to rebuild one tie rod end and the other contained a ball stud that was clearly too big. I got as far as putting the Hubbard tie rod end in a bucket of paint stripper to clean it up and tear it apart. It's still soaking. About that time I first got another e-mail from Mario inquiring if I had any luck finding parts. Mario included a bullet point list of discoveries he made while investigating parts sources to service the 31-32 tie rod ends. Mario discovered Thompson Products had taken over design and mfg. of tie rod ends for early Buick cars. Exact replacement complete assemblies came in a boxed pair under Thompson part number ES-15. That's good information but if there are any out there, they are languishing in some old shop where they are out of sight from potential buyers. Mario also discovered another Thompson number that was for a different style tie rod end set that contains all the internal parts used in our 60 series tie rod ends under Thompson part number ES-11. That e-mail was sent to me Sunday, 2/18/24. I was still digesting its contents when later the same day I got urgent e-mail and text messages from Mario that there was a brand NOS pair of the ES-11 ends listed on E-Bay. I had found the same auction, and it was just sinking in that these tie rod ends had the parts I needed to rebuild my ends. Mario was insistent- either buy them or he would. I bought them about 1 minute later. And guess who the seller was- none other than Jim Blair! The ES-11 tie rod ends arrived Thursday, 8/21. Next day I disassembled them and harvested the internal parts and built up my tie rod housings with the NOS internal parts. The tie rod tube had been nicked up in spots and I spent a little time repainting it. The right end threaded section of the tie rod tube has a 1/4-moon shaped keyway machined in and Buick installed a thick washer inserted thru the expansion slot in the right tie rod housing at the inboard clamp screw location that engages the 1/4-moon slot and indexes the tie rod to the right tie rod end resulting in proper forward positioning of the offset in the tube forward in car as described in the 31 Specs and Adjustments manual. The washer was missing so the offset hung down in the car. I found 2 old 3/8" Id x 1" od washers were just wide enough for a snug fit in the tie rod housing and fills the 1/4 moon keyway on the tie rod tube to index the right tie rod end. This past Sunday I very thankfully reinstalled my rebuilt tie rod in the car. The project is basically done except I wasn't happy with the cotter pins I had to lock the ball stud nuts in place. I didn't completely tighten the left tie rod stud nut anticipating I may have to separate the left side from the steering arm to make a toe-in adjustment when the car is back on the ground. When the time comes, I will purchase a 2-jaw puller to separate the tier rod end from the steering arm, so I don't destroy the new seal washer or spring. The pictures below provide a pictorial description of the subject project. Enjoy. Dave This is the tie rod assembly I removed from the car last November. Little did I know what a can of worms I was about to open. To aid in re-assembly I measured 48-1/4" from center of one Zerk fitting to the other The previous custodian had the front suspension all apart and when they reassembled it they painted everything, tie rod threads, ball stud, everything. The paint on the tie rod threads was the reason I took the tie rod off. I wanted to clear the threads of paint so the tie rod ends could be adjusted to correct toe-in setting. This is what I found when I disassembled the right tie rod end. I think it was essentially made up of the McQuay Norris component parts the assembly was born with. One clue is the simple patent date on the bottom plug. The cobbled shim band shown between the ball stud and the housing was improvised in a previous repair to take up the excessive clearance caused by a severely worn ball on the stud. This is a closeup of one of the ball studs showing just how scarred the machined surfaces were. Note the collapsed cotter pin hole as a result of liberal application of a hammer to separate the tie rod end from the steering arm. I made a little classier shim from brass tube but I learned later the tie rod assembly did not have a shim band in the original component bill of material. This is a trial assembly of the old parts with new shim. The ball stud was sticky-tight when rotated to put the unworn ball surface against the clam shell bearings and goosey-loose with the worn faces of the ball in contact with the clamshell bearings. Note the u-shaped original McQuay clam shell tension spring. Here are parts harvested from one of the Thompson Products ES-11 tie rod ends I bought from Jim Blair. Note the re-designed Thompson tension spring. Here we have the right tie rod end, 16SV24-F built up with new parts and no shim band. I pressed the wrong cap in the right tie rod end but no matter. Buick designed the tie rod and ends to have one inch dia. 16 threads per inch on one side and 1 inch diameter 18 threads per inch on the other side, not to make the tie rod end installation idiot proof but rather to offer coarse and fine toe-adjustments. The right tie rod end is the one that uses the washer to index the tie rod end to the tube to orient the offset center section of the tie rod tube forward in car. If you knew that and knew the Zerk fittings face rearward in car you would wind up with a correctly assembled tie rod and ends. You can see the canvas seal on the stud of this tie rod end but under it is a thin flat washer to prevent the canvas seal from being forced into the housing. The cup washer, then the spring assemble above the canvas seal. Here are my refreshed pair of tie rod ends. Here is what the assembled tie rod looked like. I did some restorative painting of the tube but I didn't get paint in the tube threads. Forward facing offset in the tie rod tube, rearward facing Zerk fittings on the tie rod ends. Finally- in the car...

So this is my entire list of Corvair stories... The scene for story #1 One of my brothers high school buddies was Wayne Feitzer, he was a car addict starting with the mis-appropriation of his dads 1953 Plymouth Cranbrook, which got then 12 year old Wayne in a heap of trouble after the Plymouth, which was parked in Wayne, (town of) Michigan before Wayne (mal-content 12 yr. old) "borrowed" the Plymouth which was found in Toledo, Ohio! Wayne graduated high school in 1960 and was already hooked on hot-rod cars. One of Wayne's hot-rod buddies was Paul Hatton, who took Wayne under his wing and taught him how to paint cars which eventually got Wayne into Dearborn Steel & Tube and into the prototype car business. Wayne, AKA Butch, made a first new car purchase of a black 1963 Dodge Polara with a 13-1/2 to 1 CR 426 cross-ram Max Wedge with a push-button Torque-Flite and 4-11 Sure-Grip rear. After a couple of passes thru the 1/4 mile at Detroit Dragway, that car was jacked up in his parents driveway, wheel wells were VEERRY carefully cut out and a home-made set of equal length stainless headers were fabricated with drag caps and street hookup. Butch got Al Ansen to make some custom narrow front wheels and some widened rear wheels to accommodate a big nasty set of street prowlers out back and narrow Mickey Thompson front tires. Butch was left with a car that was ripping fast, quite noisy and barley street legal. The car could not be driven in cold weather as it had no carburetor heat which resulted in it being tucked away in his dad's garage during winter weather. So, what did Butch get for his every-day car? A dark red turbocharged 1963 Corvair Monza Spyder convertible! That car was seen driving around Wayne in the early spring and early fall and winter. In fact, one fine warmish winter day in 1963 while walking home from school I almost lost my life with that particular car. Ever see how angry a 20yr old hot-rodder can get when you hit the windshield of his Corvair Monza with a hard snowball! After he got the car stopped I got quite a little road side lecture about that. I credit my brother's association with Butch for the fact I'm still around to write about that particular event. A few years after Butch had sold off the Monza he bought another Corvair. This one was a lot less spectacular than the Monza, at least for awhile. Then one day after a lengthy absence the later Corvair showed up with a fairly nasty small-block Chevy V8 mounted mid-ships. Even though the V8 lump was mounted in front of the rear axle it required a couple of 80lb bags of cement in the trunk to keep front wheels associated with the ground. My last experience with Corvairs came along after my sister married an engineer who wound up at GM Truck and Bus working on radiators. When they married he had a 1956 2-tone red and white Chevy Bel Air with it's original 265 2bbl V8. The car had been restored years before and was traded for a 1964 Pontiac Tempest. The Tempest was an automatic which was a good thing for my sister who could not drive a stick. But alas the Tempest was a leaker, it leaked water on the floor every time it got rained on or washed. My brother in law replaced that car with a white 1966 Corvair Corsa with 4 carburetor 140hp flat 6 and a four speed. It was a really nice car. My poor sister now finally had to learn to drive a stick. It wasn't pretty, but she did survive.

Sorry- I couldn't help myself...

It must be Joan Claybrook...

You can't buy pump gas with as low octane rating as the car was designed to run on. Running ultra high octane fuel is actually not good for these cars because the flash point of the fuel is very high which makes it harder to start the combustion cycle and the combustion cycle will not finish before the exhaust valve opens. Simply stated, you have the hottest gasses being discharged into past the head of the exhaust valve after it opens. The exhaust valve relies on contact with the cylinder head at the valve seat to keep the valve temperature within reasonable limits. When opens with high octane fuel it get heated to temperatures that can cause the valve stem to warp or literally burn the sealing edges off the head of the valve. Lead additive notwithstanding, it is the worst fuel to use in a low compression engine. Regular unleaded gas is around 97-98 octane these days which is much better than 107-110 octane leaded race fuel as far as completing the combustion cycle before the exhaust valve starts to open. The problem with regular unleaded is it contains ethanol which is hard on our old cars because it absorbs moisture. Modern cars use a sealed, unvented fuel system to slow this down but our cars have vented fuel systems where air is constantly changing in the fuel tank adding moisture to the fuel, which actually condenses as water droplets in the bottom of the fuel tank, then is mixed with fuel delivered to the carburetor. It's highly corrosive and can damage parts made of pot metal and raw iron. My 31 Buick has an archaic heat riser system consisting of an exhaust damper valve that sends hot exhaust thru a short piece of exhaust pipe to a double wall heat riser between the carburetor and intake manifold. I ran regular unleaded gas in my car exactly once. With a fresh tank of 87 octane unleaded gas I started the car and watched as big water droplets splattered out of the exhaust pipe joints leaving nice white spatters all over the shiny painted hood sills and front fender. I wound up switching to Sunoco 90 octane recreational fuel which has no ethanol as a compromise. It immediately eliminated the water discharge from the heat riser plumbing and it will store for longer periods of time in the car with a little Sta-Bil added because it does not absorb moisture. 1931 Buick 60 series straight 8 with factory original and fully functional heat riser system. A combination of heat control setting on the instrument panel and cam- operated linkage and butterfly valves in the diverter valve and heat riser that work off the throttle sends varying amounts of hot exhaust from the exhaust damper just above the header pipe thru a small inner tube (not visible) back to the heat riser above the carburetor, then returns the cooled exhaust back to the exhaust pipe thru a larger pipe (visible in picture below). I had a real mess with regular unleaded fuel because big water droplets blew out of the joints between the diverter valve, heat riser, and the horizontal exhaust pipe seen in the picture below. The rod in the background moves butterfly valves in the heat riser on the right and exhaust diverter valve on the left. The water droplets blew out near the 2 hose clamps that hold exhaust pipe seals where the pipe enters the castings.

Pictured is a typical early Buick cage nut. Those spindly little tabs sticking up are inserted into slots in the body sheet metal and bent over to hold the nut in place. Except yours are about 98 years old and some might be rusted off. So then all you need is a little rust on the bolt and nut threads and when you put a wrench on the seized bolt and start turning the tabs break off and now the nut spins behind the sheet metal where you can't see or hold it.

You will find out bolting the body to the 2x12s that go across the width of the body is a waste of time. The 2x10s are going to be outboard of the body sills so you couldn't thru-bolt them. Just use the 2x12 and 2x10 structure to lift the body high enough to get the frame out from under the body and then lower it onto 6 jack stands, 2 front, 2 center and 2 rear. By shimming the center stands when they meet the center cross beam on your pallet you will be able to get the rear doors to open and close properly. That will indicate the body sills are being supported correctly and won't sag while off the frame.

I wouldn't bolt the body to the 2x12s but I would install the 2x10s under the ends of the 2x12s and bolt the 2x10s to the 2x12s.

If you are careful you can use a die grinder and cutoff wheel to cut the heads off the bolts. The bolts go thru oval washers into cage nuts in rectangular holes in the body.

Remove rear fenders. Make sure all body bolts are out. Pay attention to placement of rubber body shims if any and document for future placement of new body shims. Use a pair of jacks under the lower body sills first lifting both sides evenly about halfway between firewall and front door hinge pillar. Lift the front of the body just high enough to slide a 2x12 between the frame and the lower body sills and long enough to be 12" wider than the body on each side of the car under the front hinge pillar directly below the windshield and lower the jacks. Move the jacks to lift the body sills evenly on each side of the car at the rear, about 15 inches ahead of the rear end of the body sill ahead of the rear wheel kick-up jacking up just high enough to slide one 2x12 between frame and body sill that is 12" wider than the between the frame and the body sill at the front door/rear door lock pillar and another between frame and body sills just ahead of the kick-up , again long enough to allow the 2x12 to extend 12" outboard of the body on both sides. Thru-bolt a 2x10 under the protruding ends of the three 2x12s on each side. Install four machine-thread heavy lift eyes, one each right in the middle of the front and rear 2x10s to attach lift chains or cables. Connect proof coil chain that has enough slack to allow the chains be raised close to roof-high to minimize side-loading the lift eyes installed on the lift platform. Place two cherry pickers, one on each side of the car and make a guess how far forward or rearward of the center of the lift rig will result in a balanced body lift and hook the lift chains to the cherry pickers. Make some experimental lifts of a few inches to see if the body lifts evenly front to rear. If the body lifts at the front but not at the rear, adjust lift chains to move the cherry pickers rearward. If it lifts at the rear but no the front, cherry pickers have to be moved forward on the lift chains. Once you get an even lift let the frame down off the jack stands onto a couple of wheel dollys and pull the frame out from under the car. Put jack stands under the front and rear cross member of the lift platform and carefully let the cheery pickers down. That stuff is one guy on each cherry picker and a couple of spotters to make sure platform lands safely on the jack stands. I would raise jack stands high enough so the body only has to be lowered a few inches rather than trying to lower the body a lot, it's safer and will save work when it's time to reunite frame and body. DO NOT try to lift the body at the upper door openings. The lift has to be made under the body sills or the body will collapse. Added: Lift the body with the rear doors in place and closed. Put a 3rd pair of jack stands under the ends of the center 2x12 and shim to get rear doors to open and close correctly while the body is off the chassis. Even if doors open and close correctly when you first remove the body, over time, the body will sag if not supported in the center. Don't leave the center portion unsupported. This will prevent sagging and overloading corner joints and splices in body sills and roof structure.

On 31-32 they used the aluminum filler cap like Dave Dunton showed in his picture and mine below, both Dave and I have 1931 60-series cars. I did learn the hard way though that the 1931 and probably 32 cars use the same style aluminum cap on 60/80/90 series cars but the 50 series cap is slightly smaller and won't fit the 60/80/90 lifter cover fill tube. Neither Dave Dunton or I have a correct original oil filter. Mine is a Bob's setup with a cannister that looks and mounts correctly and hides a modern spin-on oil filter. Dave Dunton's car has a different style filter altogether, does not mount the same as original and uses replaceable cartridges. Both cars do have the filters correctly placed in the rocker arm supply line and both have the original Buick branch fitting at the block which has a controlled size orifice on the rocker arm branch that restrict oil flow rate to the rockers at about 1 quart/5miles at 25mph. A lot of guys replace that fitting with a freer flowing fitting and they wind up with oil fouled generator at best and flooded rocker covers at worst with main gallery oil pressure taking a hit. Thes cars must use the correct fitting or have some method of throttling down oil flow to the rockers. My oil filter looks close to authentic and mounts correctly but has a modern spin on filter inside. Note the aluminum fill cap on the lifter cover and the rocker shaft line that connects to the block just below the head. You can't see it from this picture but there is a branch fitting that supplies oil to the filter which then passes oil to the rocker shaft and sends oil to the front generator bearing. The other branch on the fitting supplies pressure to the oil pressure gauge via the line that disappears through the firewall. This is the plumber's nightmare filter/line/gauge setup that was on my car when I got it. Pictured above is what I wound up with. Here you can see the cobbled brake line fittings that were substituted for the correct Buick oil distribution fitting that restricts oil flow to the rocker arm shaft to 1qt/5miles @ 25mph. Here is the correct Buick fitting which took some time for me to track down but is very important to preserving oil pressure to the main and rod bearings by not over-oiling the rocker shaft. You can be sure if it's Westinghouse- I mean, Buick. Westinghouse did supply detonators for Fatman and Little Boy- the 2 WWII atom bombs the US dropped on Japan and they did live up to their slogan. You can see the correct branch fitting installed in this picture, the open port is for the dash mounted oil pressure gauge.

So I had a friend who was an expert pinstriper. His name was Paul Hatton. He taught my brother's high school buddy how to paint cars. His name was Wayne Fietzer and he wound up with a career at Dearborn Steel Tube running their paint department. Paul was semi-retired and had a small shop inside a cyclone fence on Ford Rd. in Garden City, MI and I had my first 31 Buick on the day I stopped to visit with Paul. While there he told the story of his Ford retirement arrangement after he first, striped a few Lincoln Mark III's at the Wixom assembly plant by hand, then talked Ford B&A into letting him design an automated pinstriping line for the plant, which he did, got paid handsomely for, and retired on royalties. So, while I was there a guy pulled into the lot with a freshly repaired 1968 Ford LTD someone side-swiped and for which the local dealer sent the guy to see Paul about getting the pinstriping replaced. It was a nice warm summer day and Paul got out his pinstriping box, a modified fishing tackle box, whose top tray compartments had been soft-soldered so they would not exchange liquid from one compartment to the next. That tray was host to a small fortune in pinstripe brushes soaking in solvent. In the bottom tray were rags, a thinner can and many tubes of pinstriping paint. Paul spread a cotton pad on the hood of the car, split open an old phone book on the hood, then applied a daub of pinstripe paint to a page in the phone book and started thinning it with a camel hair pinstripe brush. After Paul became satisfied with the mixture he started down the front fender of the car that was missing the pinstripe at a nice slow but steady pace, all the while, never looking at the pinstripe he was expertly laying, instead keeping eye contact with the customer and carrying a banter with him. When Paul got to the door he inquired if the customer would like to have a mono-gram of his initials on the doors. "Oh- that would be wonderful!" he replied and gave Paul his initials. Paul had the mono-gram in place on the damage-repaired side of the car and was working the quarter panel, by now, probably 10 minutes into the job, when the customer made the first mistake. He asked Paul how much his services would cost for the job. Paul, still looking right at the customer, still moving steadily down the quarter panel, stated his charge would be $500!. Then the customer made the fatal mistake and complained that $500 was an outrageous amount of money for what would have been 20 minutes, tops, if Paul had finished the job. Paul's expression suddenly changed as he suddenly stopped painting, took the brush back to the paint box and cleaned it and replaced in in the box, closed the box, removed it, the phone book and the fender pad from the car and took it back into his office. He returned with a rag saturated in lacquer thinner and started at the front fender and at about the same steady rate as the paint went on, the paint was coming off the car, all the while carrying on a conversation with the customer about how some folks just don't appreciate fine arts anymore. When Paul finished, he pointed at the fence gate and told the customer "There's the gate you came in, you can use the same gate to leave!" Paul Hatton - Kustomrama

Only15 more cubic inches- yes. The big difference is the 12 (and 16) has overhead valves, the 8 is a flat head. I never wound up getting a 30's Cadillac 12 because I missed the deal of a lifetime when someone else got to the 33 370 coupe Gull Wing Motors in NY had listed for almost 2 years. I finally sold our summer home in Michigan's UP and had the money (69K) to buy the car which had been professionally restored with exception of installing the Jaeger dash clock, plating and installing some interior window cranks and restoring the duals side mount spare tires and covers, all parts present. But- alas- I lingered too long and missed it. I will say from an economic restoration standpoint the 8 cylinder engine can probably be properly done for half the price of the 12.