KAD36

Good points above - how bad is the leak - seeping, dripping, dumping? Is it important or urgent to replace now? They do occasionally seal up after use. Also some 1 year only parts on the 56 so take care - awareness only - not meant to scare you off. Flexible brake line is good advice as long as you’re there until you go through rest of the brake hoses/cylinders which assume is high on your list 1) That would work. FWIW some folks use a bumper jack to push the axle back and disengage the torque tube. 2) Think they are standard - can’t recall exactly. See 4) below 3) My method was to put the frame up on 4 jack stands, tires on ground, and ratcheted the axle back. I think my 1 and only floor jack was fit with a big block of wood from a 2x6 or 2x8 and a groove in it for the diff housing to rest on and not get too tipsy. That might be overkill. I don’t seem to recall lifting the axle too high at all, just enough to jiggle the tires and get the driveshaft to reseat during installation. It wasn’t elegant but it worked. See 4) below 4) Listen to the smarter guys with more “practice”. 😆 In the rare event as new old car owner you visualize this procedure over and over in your head while you’re away, the good news is you’ll have thought of everything and it will go almost flawlessly when you get back…😎👍 Question: what’s your overall plan to get from here to “running and driving”. Might be able to get input from the team on best sequence of repairs. Just a thought.

600. Bada-boom-bada-bing

Glad to know you heard something similar - thanks for posting - there were a couple threads on the tri-five Chevy and HAMB sites where guys were fighting this exact same coil mounting and infant mortality issue while others dug in stating they experienced no long term reliability issues. The original 60 yr old Delco coil that was on the car from the 60s still works fine and I must have spun that “new” coil in all kinds of directions to cover the windings in oil and they still failed. I did notice if I shake the original Delco coil when cold I can’t hear it slosh at all but when it’s hot there is a very faint liquid sound. Makes me think they were filled with more oil and of higher viscosity back then but that’s my pure speculation. Maybe the design needed less room to expand when hot and could tolerate less air space. Maybe it was more structurally sound internally also. We could probably all agree current offshore replacement parts are inferior to and have a wider variation in quality and acceptance standards as compared to the Made in the USA products found on our cars when in daily service. For “more better” stories see post 33 and 40 in link below - about summed it up for me. Stupid parts. https://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/threads/mounting-a-coil-sideways-yes-or-not-recommended.688224/page-2

Thought to summarize my findings after all the word salad trying to figure out the stalling problem when hot … waited until there was about 600 miles before reporting out. So far no misfire, stalling, shutdown or weak spark issues at hot even in the 95 deg heat. coil: pertronix “verified epoxy filled” 1.5ohm primary. Am not totally knocking the new aftermarket oil filled coils but this one fixed my run of bad luck with new oil filled coils mounted horizontally. Carry a spare. rotor: the .5 ohm one with no suppression resistance (out of spec but resistor plugs offer secondary impedance) plugs: auto lite 85 resistor plugs (4K ohms each) wires: solid core no resistance regulator: aftermarket idle speed: 550-575 in D with AC off. Add about 120 rpm during AC season (650-675). Helps w charging and cooling at idle w AC on. ballast resistor: modified aftermarket. Trim about 2 coils off end to give 1.4 ohms vs 1.8-2 ohms. It’s possible to fit the new wire element into the old ceramic housing I just haven’t done it yet. The wire to the right of the meter is what was trimmed off to meet spec in the shop manual. Hope this helps someone. Carry on 😎

Wow Mt Carmel PA - my family was from Marion Heights and Shamokin. Sounds like the story of my car sitting in an unlikely shed behind a house. Looked like that too New ignition coils and ballast resistors put me through hell this spring. If after all the above advice checks out take a look at coil measurements. I’ll take a crack at the hot coil complaint. Am assuming hot is like burn to the touch hot and it from just sitting there with key on? if so my hunch would be too much current going through the primary side of the coil assuming your battery isn’t some crazy high voltage. Why did you get a new coil? Make sure the new coil is one with the right primary resistance, not the .3 ohms ones for solid state conversions. If you have a multimeter, primary resistance of correct coil should be 1.5 ohms, secondary 8-10K ohms. If the primary is too low or shorted it would cause too much current running through the coil. Downstream of the coil is basically a connection to ground through the points. Your ballast resistor on the firewall doesn’t kick in until after the car starts. If suspicious you can jumper across/around if. It should be about 1.5 ohms. Also regarding starting spark, check the ignition rotor -there is a 10k suppression resistor in it. Make sure that’s not “open”. It will run with numbers as high as 100k ohms and new ones are all over the map on values. If you don’t have a shop manual get one or go to hometown Buick there’s online literature. Take careful measurements and follow the specs. Let us know how it goes. https://www.hometownbuick.com/1956-buick-electrical-specifications/ Follow up - What’s the state of the gas and oil your trying to start it on? Folks will probably weigh in on fresh gas, clean oil, filters, maybe a prelube of the cylinders. If you don’t drop the pan right away drop it soon. It amazed me the level of crap in there - the cars oil inlet was basically the size of a quarter because there were 40 years of crud covering up the inlet screen. How it ran and had good pressure we’ll never know. Be prepared for a fuel pump and rubber fuel line too - don’t expect the original to last long if at all - those innards are probably dried out and don’t hold up well to ethanol based fuels. Look for spray out from the top of the pump, or it could also leak into the engine but we are getting ahead of ourselves. Congrats on the new ride!

Have not done the rubber seal but thinking about it, it seems less likely to crush than the rope seal (that was .015 high) so flush might be best. Whether you trim it flush or leave it maybe .005 high try it dry first see how it fits and consider a dab of anaerobic sealer to help ensure it seals. Good luck

479. Did you win yet? What’s taking so long? 🤣🤣🤣

378

One last item I use is a headlight wired up with alligator clips as a test tool, I use this to test wiring to see if it can carry amps to operate circuits. I have found voltage and little to no amps cause problems like this. Steve Yeah - better said. ——————————————^

Well, thats a pretty general description on cold, hot, any mods, and few observables so heres some ideas. Thermally related electrical issues can be tough to pinpoint. Am assuming that engine has a generator and points (analog) regulator on it, and if memory serves power windows and power seats run off the same relay and circuit breaker, and thats a thermal breaker and resets itself when the fault is gone. Maybe someone can check me on that. If the switch or relay aren't stuck on causing a motor "stall" condition to trip the breaker, as suggested above, another possibility is a poor (high resistance due to corrosion over time) connection someplace such that a high current load will have just enough power "source" to appear to work at cold (when charging system is putting out the highest voltage to the battery - have seen well over 15V on mine) and then as the regulator compensates for hotter conditions and lowers the voltage the high resistance of that poor connection robs power that would normally drive a high current load, like a motor, to work. The places on my car notorious for that are where there is that flat blade/socket connection in the wiring harness - they are encased in this brittle clear plastic connector that sometimes shatters when you mess with it to make it more better. So my thoughts are: 1) Visual the current gauge - does it behave any different at hot or cold when the windows are operating? If a relay or switch is stuck, the expectation is it would stay discharging after you let go of the switch until the breaker opened. The gauge behavior would also give you a clue as to if there was a hard short pulling more current at hot (it would show more discharge), or just a lousy connection (maybe not much of a drop at all). Although if temp related it would seem to be the relay under the hood being stuck or high resistance across the contact points when closed vs the switch in the door would be more suspect. 2) If you have a schematic, visual all the mechanical connections you can see or find easily before tearing the door apart - any of the connection points discussed above, the wiring to the breaker, perhaps the impedance across the relay, clean up all the connections. 3) Does your car have power seats? If they run through the same circuit (too lazy to get my book), and the seats behave the same, then it suggests a common failure upstream of the seats/window controls and motors. 4) After that next step would probably be to pull off the door panel and get a volt/current multimeter on the switches and the motors to see what is going on. Just thought to give you some things to try before pulling interior panels off Good luck let us know how it goes

What a terrific story! Thanks for a great read. Glad your hard work and perseverance paid off.

Seems the Special and Century 2 door HT have these pieces while the larger Super and Roadmaster have slightly different cutting and do not have these extra pieces. Shazam. I looked at the 50/70 series pic. Sorry bout that. Learn somethin new every day. Let’s see who chimes in…..

Another bit of failure info that may help - two of the failures the secondary resistance failed hardcover open. The last failed at hot measuring well over 150 k ohms on the secondary and 8.5k ohms room temp (12 v system). If your misfire is at hot only consider a secondary resistance check to see how well it holds spec at hot w everything disconnected at the coil, understanding resistance check is only a quick DIY indicator and not a comprehensive coil test. Even with newer wires, the routing to ensure no induced crossfire between adjacent wires, integrity of primary wiring between coil and distributor and other “easy” things should be considered first.

Went through 3 coils in 2 years. Misfire at hot idle and no misfire at cold or during warmup was early indicator. Cars primary and secondary circuits all checked out ok. The original delco coil was filled with a thick oil as are most today. Maybe I just had a run of bad luck but an epoxy filled one mounted horizontal so far works fine. It seems people are successful if a newer oil filled coil is mounted vertically. Or use an older made in USA one if mounted horizontal. Cannot explain it, just sharing results of my research. I wasn’t comfortable running long distance with a 40 or 70 year old used coil as the primary ignition source and was tired of getting stuck.. Maybe carrying a box of old ones and playing swaptronics would be smarter lol.

I installed 2 carpets in 2drht over the years, most recently a Daytona weave about 3 yrs ago through an ACC dealer, and don’t recall any pieces like that - maybe for a sedan? Is that an actual or representative picture? FWIW ACC site didn’t show those pieces. Be curious what you find out

My money would be on the starter switch and the wires going to it. Have had that exact problem with the passage that the check ball rides in getting gummed up, as well as the contacts inside getting dulled. With the power off or battery disconnected you can also push the pedal down and measure the resistance across the carb switch. It’s easiest to pull the carb off, disassemble the switch clean the contacts and the passages, don’t loose the shims and put it back on. x2 on the power wire to the switch (yellow or pink) being unfused and burning the wiring harness - PITA to fix. Also check the connector ends where they crimp onto the wire. The wires on mine got brittle and started breaking off at the crimp points, had to replace them.

Good point. One thing appears consistent. The guy on the right is overdue for a beer, hand on hip, customer being a PITA, Friday 430….

Yes it would help temporarily, I’d be concerned about point life long term because my coils primary is low resistance and it needs a current limiting (ballast) resistor on there while running. Thats an interesting situation on your car - am assuming you have no issues with point life or cold starting? Might the coil on your car have an internal primary resistance of 3 ohms or more instead of 1.5 ohms and doesn’t need an external resistor? Incidentally 3 ohms is he total max resistance in the shop manual for the primary plus ballast! When the charging system (generator and mechanical regulator) is good and hot (underhood - hood closed) with a mild electrical load at idle (like sitting at a long red light or a chain of red lights) it will dip down to 12.2-12.4 volts and thats where my problems seem to start - any stray losses rob voltage from the coil. Just a few tenths of a volt higher at the battery and it totally goes away like the Dodge in the Hemmings article. Or if the hood is open so the regulator doesn’t get as hot, the problem is minimized. Otherwise normal op voltage is around 13+ volts, 14.9 max cold, zero issues. Seems as long as the primary always sees about 6 bolts or more there’s enough secondary voltage to fire the plugs. I have 2 aftermarket regulators and a very old Delco junkyard one on the shelf and not one of those aftermarkets regulate even closely the same over temperature with a good battery - understanding charging rate is lowered as temperature goes up - the one in the car now was the best of the bunch. One of them actually discharged the battery when it got to normal operating temp at highway speeds with no electrical load, and that might be 10 miles down the road, but worked fine when cool and couldn’t be returned. If a new reason is needed to drink a lot of beer try figuring out how to adjust mechanical regulators without blowing something up. Those spring mount tabs are way super touchy. The original-original regulator busted (and also is on the shelf) and had adjustment screws, which are rare as hens teeth, to adjust the spring pressure.

Primary Ignition Resistance tolerances - Hemmings Check out last 2 paragraphs which may help explain the situation. “The problem that the automobile collector deals with today is out-of-specification ballast circuits that look correct but that have the wrong resistance or skew greatly under high heat load in the engine compartment. An ignition coil that has the wrong internal resistance often exacerbates this condition and leads to a poor-running engine for which you can find nothing wrong. ” Tried one more test today just because it was bugging me Long story short, the Delco OEM original ballast was carefully disassembled completely and every metal to metal contact point polished until I got it down to solid 1.8 ohms, lowest it could get, about .25 ohms less than before. Measured the whole primary circuit impedance and voltages and al values were as expected with no stray impedance that could unexpectedly drop the primary voltage. Monitoring battery voltage when under hood temp was good and hot, both in N and D at idle with some electrical loads on/off and playing with the idle speed to dip the battery voltage, the engine used to sputter and die at about 12.5 volts unless I jumped across the ballast quick enough or turned off a big electrical load like the headlights or AC compressor and blower then it would smooth right back out. Now with the lower ballast value after cleaning it just runs rough down to 12.03 volts but doesnt die. Also, coil primary impedance went up as expected from 1.4 ohms cold to 1.7 ohms hot, further aggravating the situation. So looking for a ballast closer to factory low end spec of 1.4 ohms. Alternative would be to improve charging at low rpm but not re-opening that can of worms with hit or miss mechanical regulators and playing the bend the tab game. In my road kit I have a spare delco ballast thats 2 years old that is 2 ohms, also out of spec, so that would just make the problem even worse. Have a couple parts coming into NAPA and will measure them Monday.

Not often no, however If by this you mean the coil wire arc jumps direct to the block during the tests that’s similar to how the Napa coil was configured for 2 weeks with no resistive element from coil secondary to rotor, cap, plug, block. Interesting. Update from the field: Key on, engine off, no crank, points closed: batt 12.5; 5.4 volts across primary, 7 volts across ballast. Engine idle: 13.5 batt, 3.5 across primary, 4 across ballast. Not really pure DC when running but for those interested. Wire measurements all 8 under 1 ohm. .3 to .8 ohms measured from inside of cap brass lug to end of plug boot 143k ohm rotor produced a weak spark by eyeballing it. I tossed it and kept the 2 dead short ones. Cleaned up the used 12k ohm rotor put that in and the resistor 85 auto lite plugs in with the old epoxy coil. Smooth idle no high speed miss fires right up The search for in spec spare parts continues

Fair point Bernie - you are right there are other factors to consider and that’s beyond my math. Not having a way to measure the plug voltages my thought was a rough order of magnitude relationship and the KISS principle. What do you think of a 150k ohm variation in the SAME parts? That impedance seems like a clue since its 10x more than a resistor plug, which is on the order of 5K ohms plus 2 feet of resistor wires which would be on the order of 10k ohms. Doesnt make sense to me why the resistance was eliminated in the new aftermarket rotors ( unless it was a tech oversight like the Napa epoxy coil) and if that could affect the coil reliability? I have a 57 distributor set up but now am hesitant to drop it in until this all makes a little more sense. Maybe just pop in resistor plugs keep the rotor and let it go. Don’t want to overthink it!

In 57 the 10k resistor was taken out of the distributor rotor. Who has a 57 knows where that secondary ignition resistance went - if anywhere.? Were resistor plugs or wires specified? What do you run?

You know this reminds me of the engine fiasco. The spec tolerance was exceeded on individual parts but when connected as a system the error budgets all happened to fall within total system spec. If in the day there were non resistor plugs and solid wires in these cars and the rotor carried the system secondary resistance of 10K would that suggest the secondary current to the plugs was 2.5 - 4 amps assuming the secondary plug voltage was 25000 - 40000 volts? Even with no resistance in the rotor, and running newer resistor plugs and suppression wires I bet the typical resistance of any one line from coil to plug would be in the 15-25k ohm range which would put the current in the 1-3 amp range? Translation: at idle with less than 12 volts feeding the ballast resistor and hence the primary, I bet my 143k ohm rotor if used would limit current and produce a really weak spark being 10x higher resistance than found in a typical system, and the .5 ohm dead short rotors when not using resistor plugs or suppression wires were probably what fried that Napa coils secondary in 2 weeks with too high a current. And the 55 correct impedance rotor was on the prior “newer” blue streak coil and that coil just broke after almost a year - not due to electrical overload - but due to current day workmanship standards and being oil filled and mounted on its side. Where the older oil filled coils (or present day epoxy) can better tolerate horizontal on engine mounting as evidenced as coming from the factory that way. That’s the current hypothesis. More to come. Go ahead, start shooting.

The two on the left were purchased within the past 2 years. They measure .5 and .6 ohms. Like a dead short. The .6 ohm one is in the car. The two on the RIGHT are older ones - the 12.7 K ohm one is very old and out of the 55 distributor with many miies on it but still works ok. The 143K one is new and never installed. These two were purchased probably 10 years ago. You can see the carbon resistor is almost potted in the newer ones and inserted in the two older ones. These are all standard motor parts. The spec says 10K ohms. Hmmm my hip shot reaction is run resistor plugs if using the zero ohm rotors and solid non suppressor wires because the secondary is probably pumping out a lot of current with the low impedance rotor…. Wonder what other brands for rotors measure? More to come…..

I’m gettin there Texas I’m getting there…. Am busy doing a whole lot of nothing and just left NAPA with a corp rep. Apparently a population of the IC676s are marked wrong. He will be getting back with me in next day or so. This is gettin good.