1937McBuick

A little anti-seize wouldn't hurt either....

Copper. Working the best so far.

I can't imagine there will be "many". May not even need a whole hand to count them.

The 2019 McBuick Club of Canada Roster showed: 1931 A 90 series, 4 door sedan in essentially original condition at the Canadian Museum of Science and Technology in Ottawa. A 95 series, 7 passenger touring in restored condition. Of which I don't want to reveal the personal contact information for publicly. They listed a 96C Roadster but just as "Buick", not McBuick. Also at the Can Sci Tech Museum. No condition listed. There's other Series listed as well .....not responsible for errors, additions, deletions. DYODD.

Unfortunately, I assume the market for that car customized is much larger than for it restored. BUT, how many were built? Which might not matter..... Might have to find someone who's sentiment and emotions know no financial bounds. (I resemble that remark regarding my 37 McBuick 🤔😟)

They are so small they're hard to handle. The solder balls I made are definitely irregular shape, they conducted the best when in the switch. I lined up about 10 steel shot in the bottom of a small plastic bag and flattened them a bit in a vice. That didn't seem to change much at all. I still have the unmolested originals. I might try to make copper balls by melting a light gauge wire with an oxy/acetylene torch and having the molten copper fall into water. A Google page has copper almost at the top and steel near the bottom of the conductivity list of metals. But how much difference could there really be???

How is this for a starting point? Other than not having a wood frame body, cars like this need EVERYTHING! My suggestion is to advertise it and let the buyer decide if he wants to go "completely under water" with the car. It was partially there once(sorry, poor attempt at humour). If you flip it for a small profit the dilemma becomes the new buyer's. It might have a home, it needs to be advertised in the right places. Few people probably knew it existed. My heart is in "preservation", but its not my car and wouldn't want to take on another project of this scope, I stayed away from the wood frame bodies when I was looking for a Buick project. Someone might be more than willing to travel to where you are to get this big series car. I wonder how many 1931 90 Series McBuicks were built. Best of luck...

But the balls that were in there seem clean after I cleaned them. There's continuity everywhere except in that cavity... although(obviously) none in the glove box door closed position but really none in the open position either.... the odd time if you rock it a bit... but very very very seldom. Where did you find ball bearings that small? Out of what? I thought the shotgun steel shot would have done the trick... nope. Cleaned them in brake clean too. I even tried polishing the old ones with steel wool. The inside of the cavity was even polished with steel wool as was the tapered button contact the wire is soldered into. I think the surface contact is so tenuous because of size and weight that achieving a closed circuit is difficult. You can lay them out end to end in a creased piece of cardboard and contact the leads to each end... nothing. Even if you just try between two balls...nothing...unless you can apply a bit of pressure. Yet barely touch the two leads together and the multimeter buzzes.

This motion switch is crazy. Everything is clean. Those 5 balls barely have enough surface contact to complete the circuit. I dropped beads of solder(small gauge) into water to create balls. They are not perfectly round but they at least they complete a circuit. We even tried #7-1/2 steel shot out of a shotgun shell... no luck. The originals were cleaned with brake clean and fine grit emery cloth, they're shinier than when they came out of the switch. Did it ever work reliably? I haven't set it together permenantly yet. Picture credit to 37 Buick 66C

It's a Mayhew(66000). They come in various sizes(quantity of punches). There's a larger set that has a bigger mandrel that you attach to a handle for bigger punches. There are smaller sets too. I punched a hole in the bottom right hand corner of the inside tray so I could store the 24mm in the case too. I bought it through Acklands Grainger. Like RoadMaster71 said, you can use them on various materials. Even metal up to a certain thickness, unless it's that very VERY thin metal I don't intend on punching metal with it. To protect the integrity(sharpness) of the punches I will only use them with a piece of hardwood backing, 2x6 spruce seemed too soft when using two sizes at the same time.

This may seem like "hair splitting" but a leather washers made with the 7/8 was a little too loose in the regulator channel for my liking and the 1 inch was too tight. So we ordered a 24 mm and that was kind of midway between the other two. I installed the regulators in the doors without glass. They roll up really quite easy and there's some resistance going down but the coil spring is winding tighter while the window is being lowered. There is no lower vertical guide channel(below the vent window divider) installed yet, or the lower rear guide or vent window divider either. All that stuff will be new and shouldn't provide much resistance if everything lines up and the front guide is set properly.

Hello folks. I finally got into doing the window regulators. I had to round up the necessary stuff first. I took a slightly different approach. Instead of welding the stubs that the leather washers are on back onto the regulator arms, I had the stubs drilled and tapped to 5mm(.8 thread) and are using fairing bolts with a relatively low and wide head to secure the stubs onto the arms. The bolt's heads needed to be low clearance in case there would be an issue when the arms cross each other. The machine shop did a good job of keeping the tapped holes centered in the stubs so I could maintain the part of the stub that is inserted into the arm as a centering pilot. They should be very secure. I found a local leather shop with a couple of scraps of leather. They are tanned/processed(not tooling leather) so the washers I punched are good and firm. The two pieces were different thicknesses, the washers that run in the channels are thicker than the ones that ride between the channels and arms. I got a neat hole punch set to help make the washers concentric.

66C Is your clock tempermental? I only had mine cosmetically restored. I thought I heard they can be finickity. My car won't be shown and maybe not even driven much. I am still actively working and we have winter here.

66C, My harness looks the same. But I see 3 wires from the harness(????) Red and white going into the clock. The black one going into the clock face illumination bulb socket. Then that jumper wire(the one I called the pigtail) coming back out of the clock to the glove box light. Mine will be the same at the clock and I may follow your lead on the other end of the harness. Thanks so much for the reply. Greatly appreciated.

Deciding to take another small step toward getting my project closer to finished, I wanted to connect the new wiring harness to the clock in the glove box door. When removing the old wiring from the clock I bought and had cosmetically restored I noticed the power wire to the clock had a pigtail extending to the glove box light. I thought it was strange that the light would always be on because the wire was coming from the live power source. Its a three wire harness. I'm assuming the other is ground and the third is the power wire from the light switch that powers the bulb that illuminates the clock face when the light switch is in a certain position. Back to wiring. I needed to attach the bulb sockets to the new harness. The clock face illumination bulb socket was straight forward but it's the glove box socket that taught me something today. When I took it apart I learned there was 5 small "three-thirty-seconds" diameter balls in the socket, of course I didn't know they were there and they fell on the floor. After alot of searching, sweeping, using a magnet.... I was able to find them(good thing the shop floor is clean as far as shop floors go). At least I think there were only 5(does anyone know for sure). Then it dawned on me...those balls complete the circuit when the glove box door is OPENED. In the vertical position there aren't enough balls in there to complete the circuit but when the door is opened and the balls roll to the side(bottom when opened) of the cavity they occupy the circuit is complete to illuminate the bulb. What next??? I rewire the sockets because I found the braided cloth insulation is usually deteriorated exposing the wire. It's a pain in the butt but I think it's worth it. I sure hope the shop manual wiring diagram shows where the other end of the harness attaches to. I found this unusually interesting.

One more comment. Do you have any other skills that would be useful in the shop part of the business. I'm not saying you need to become a master painter, body man or mechanic but even a helping hand to any of those "journeymen" might help you gain more hours and help productivity of the shop. I guess as long as you help more than you hinder, or cause a bunch of re-do's ....those are real money losers if the shop owns up to their screw ups and not download the cost onto the customer.

kar3516, So if three employees each clocked 6 one hundred dollar hours in a day against the job.... $1800 for that day plus taxes. "Buy the time" that car is finished it would be in the Mariana Trench in the Pacific Ocean. 🤑🤔. 275 of those kinds of days is nearly half a million dollars. That's only about a year's worth of work. I guess that's why I said the industry is broken or essentially dead. Except for a select few. I guess it's really nobody's fault costs out paced finished value. The difference is the price of emotion.

I think there would have to be some sort of a balance found, if a business only reserves their services for customers who can afford "anything".... they will have in effect limited their client base. I think the auto restoration business is already a SMALL niche market. Simply raising prices without looking anywhere else to make the shop profitable will have the same effect as only doing projects for elite rich customers only. Duigoose, there were some good suggestions and experienced insights provided in this topic from people involved in the trade. I am self employed in an large industry that the "cookie cutter" mentality of how to run our businesses probably isn't appropriate. Each of our businesses in my vocation are distinct enough that one size does not fit all, way too many variables on the variable and fixed expenses, capital cost, leases, overhead, etc, to say only one way is the right way. Everyone is on their own road to success and profitability, some are more easily travelled than others.

If that was the case 40 years ago, the passage of time to the present would have likely only magnified that sentiment. I seriously doubt the value of run of the mill cars could have kept up to, or even gained on the inflationary costs of parts and labor of having a car professionally restored. I know my project will be under water in a big way by the time it's finished. I made the choice, but I was given a quote and made my decision based on that. Everyone can or should expect cost over runs but what is reasonable? I intend to see this through to the finish line. Blank checks are big checks. There has to be a close relationship between the customer's expectations and the shop's accountability for each to get a measure of value from the job being done. I wasn't trying to be confrontational when I quoted ansancle's post but what he said rings so true. It was too good not to acknowledge.

Ouch, sounds like a no win situation. So I guess low end cars below a certain value can't be restored to a high standard. Unless of course the owners want to do most of the work themselves and rely on out sourcing jobs outside their capabilities. Restoring a car is like a black hole or trying to fill a bottomless pit. But none of those comments will help find solutions to the problems you're trying to address. Sometimes I think the industry is broken or as good as dead. Seems it will end up being a rich man's game.

There was no battery in the car when I wired the switch. Nobody can call me Sparky.

If you can't live with the ramifications of the potential problems of loaning(or leasing) out your prized automobile after any damage has been done.... leave it at home. It's nice to put old cars on display for others to see and enjoy but I think those times should be chaperoned by the car's owner. And there's times and places for those opportunities. I don't care how well you know or how much you trust someone, it's your responsibility to protect your property. Everyone has different standards and what they feel is acceptable. Even if you think yours are low, trust me there's other people who's are even lower. They may treat your automobile in a way that even you find unacceptable. I may be wrong, but... To each their own.

Where did the picture of the Crown Royal sweat suit go? I hope it is one of a kind. A true fashion statement very very few people could pull off! There is even Crown Royal underwear, some made of the same pattern and material. I even saw some that were made of only a small portion of the bag and the gold drawstring....too indecent to post!

Thanks for the info guys. The reason I wired it in the dash was so the wires would be routed in the best possible position. I did one side of the switch at a time starting at the terminal closest to the dash. I even watched the wires weren't crossing each other more than they had to, or twisted around each other, as I routed each wire from the main harness. The shop who put the switch in had it installed 90 degrees from its proper position.... ya the wire terminals were real easy to access but I couldn't get the cowel vent lever mechanism and support rod in. Geez man!