60FlatTop

You could be pun-ished for that.

A statement aimed right at my little heart. Back in 1968-69 when I wasn't making steam in the bowels of Uncle Sam's ship I studied the same kind of exciting stuff I curl up with today. At one time I had two courses going one was an International Correspondence Schools (ICS) Automotive Tune Up and fuel Systems, the other Intermediate Algebra and Analytic Geometry from the Navy school in Madison, WI.. I remember how frustrated it was to read about the drill number size one had to use to cure the hesitation in a 1949 Plymouth carburetor. That was the straw that pushed me into dropping the course and turning to magazine articles in Hot Rod. It took a while for me to figure out that it never really was about fixing an old Plymouth. It was about knowing why the procedure would fix the Plymouth and how it applied the other carburetors and maybe even fluid flow in general. Once I figured out concept and detail could run very well together. It even worked with the math course where the answer to the equation was another equation. The carburetor one took a little longer. I have stayed with the idea of fixing the original in most instance although I have mixed a few internal parts, with intention and knowing I could reverse it.

Got my attention, too!. It was encouraging to see the Finish Line shirt. I bought a pair of those guns to do my '64. Now, if only... I think I will print that whole project out and keep it by my easy chair. Thank you.

This silver with black vinyl top job was on billboards in South Carolina and Georgia when the car was new. 50+ years ago, when it was in context, it was stunning for the GM crowd. It was a luxury Chevy reminiscent of the '66 Caprice when it appeared It was a car way out of reach for a 22 year old sailor. Although I liked the luxury look I went into the showroom and asked for a black two door Biscayne, red interior, 350, and a 4 speed. "Nice car, kid, but we don't make two door Biscaynes anymore. How about an Impala?". They just didn't get it. I bought this instead. About $1800 vs $3800. In early '70s money.

The concept of that design goes back quite a bit farther than some recognize.

Being a happy Malaise car owner I would not have starting hanging that tag on cars until around 1980. The big down sizings of 1977-78 were more of the turning point I saw. My little squared off Buick is the typical outline. When I first started driving it a friend asked "Are you driving a Mercedes-Benz now?". I could have had a Granada!

I came back to the states in 1970 in the new car market and the billboards had a great silver gray Monte with a black vinyl top. If you were there you would know how natural it was. The long nose and short deck might even be considered a throwback by some. There was enough room up there to throw in a new Honda 600 and call it your crumple zone. I might add that I see a lot of hindsight writing that critiques the flavors but doesn't now the taste.

I agree with the heat sink grease comments. It is an over the counter thing that comes in a tube, used to be at Radio Shack as well. Some of the 50 year old cars with HEI may be running with dried out grease. Taking a look should be on the service checklist. In recent years I have started buying off the shelf computers. I used to have them custom built and they had a 12-14 year life span. Twice I had to replace the dried heat sink grease om processors at about 10 years. It is the same stuff. So if you do have an HEI unit it is something to be aware of.

I just noticed the continuation of this post today. I hadn't read the comment quoted here. Just look at it this way, the previous owner did all the inexpensive work for you. That happens a lot.

My rearend is painted with Imron. My nephew laid it on. We did the whole underside of the car with fresh undercoat as well. It might be a little overdone but the 2011 job still looks about the same. On the rebuild of the unknown Dynaflow, I would probably reassemble the car and fill it with fluid before deciding. You have a lot of work ahead of you. If the transmission needs a rebuild it is a 3 hour in and 3 hour out job, not a lot compared to what you have there. Try to take a complete car to the shop and let them do the R&R. If they don't get it right it is at their place. A "Take Out" rebuild is like bringing home a cold fish fry. Professionals taught me that.

We had a '68 LeSabre 400 coupe. That was back when my Peacoat was fairly new. The owner did a tuneup on the car and if wouldn't run smoothly afterwards. I know I paid less than a hundred bucks, threw away the new Champion spark plugs and put in AC's, all it took. In these parts it is nice to have a tall wife. They can brush the snow off the car roof easily. We were just talking about that yesterday. Oh, don't forget, the salesman said the '68 had a new longer hood.

The doctor picked me up by the ankles and gave me a slap on the bottom to install my information that PCV valves bleed. On the topic of Echlin parts, that is all I buy now. Standard and new stock Delco have let me down. Sometimes I will go for old stock Delco if it is early '70s on back. Even as a faithful long time AC Delco spark plug user I have switched to NGK's. Here are some comparison pictures between Echlin and Delco points that I took in 2011. It was not just a random thought to take the pictures. I was inspired by a flatbed ride. The Echlin are the heavier better built ones.

I put a new headliner in my car. There is a dense square cardboard tack strip across the windshield header as well as two at the top of the rear sale panels. I used a standard heavy staple gun to attach the material. Around the rear window back glass I used contact adhesive. The outside edges use a long U-shaped plastic strip under the molding. Mine was cracked in spots so I cut it into 4" sections to space it out. Tack strip is available in two basic sizes.

Got it wrong. Warning others is what one should do. Confronting the scammer to unveil them or act as a cop will only play into their scam. And it is the old guy who bellows to the thief. The thief doesn't care one bit. After supper I will rewrite that part to make it more clear, seemed clear when I wrote it.

My Dad always liked cars and was a great influence. He bought a new Chevy in 1953 and traded ever 3 years until he died quite young at 58 years old in 1978. I was 29 at that time. He had a short life. He worked at Eastman Kodak from around 1949 after he came back from WWII. He was trained as a corpsman and went to an Army Air Force Base in southern England, one with a huge field of gliders along the entry road. He was prepared to die after driving past those. The guys all knew they were wooden coffins. No one said a word. He told me that ride was the quietest time of his life. Everyone was too scared to talk. He was raised by my great grandfather who retired from the post office and ran the garbage route in our town. The Army found out he had a chauffeur's license and he stayed on the base as a truck driver. In 1955 his mother and step father moved out of the city and bought a farm on New York's Ridge Road, The Honeymoon Trail to Niagara Falls. His step father opened a tire shop and used car lot where he worked part time all day Saturday and after supper regrooving tires Tuesday and Thursday nights. He bowled on a Kodak league Wednesday nights. Pretty full schedule, Cat's in the Cradle stuff. Luckily I started working at the tire shop when I was 11 years old so we had all those rides, short break times, and repair jobs we did together on the used cars. I got a car when I was 12 and he never said anything when I overindulged, big yard and lots of pines to hide them behind. We had two special outing together, the 1963 Watkins Glen Gran Prix and the February Atlantic City Car meet in February 1976. We took his new Ford to Watkins Glen. He always had Chevies until 1962 when he bought a Ford. He had his heart set on the 1962 Chevy Anniversary Gold Impala two door, but couldn't get the deal he wanted. He bought a black '63 Galaxie. Once he bought the Ford he could never get enough for his trade to get back into a Chevy. Not only was my Dad an encouragement but I also had support from my mother, my Grandmother, the matriarch of the family with her Buicks, all of my uncles, my mother had 7 sisters and two brothers- all into cars. Family gatherings were quite the car shows. The whole family was into them. Once one of the family left their lights on when they went into a store and ran the battery down. Word of it sifted through the family. My mother remarked that if they didn't drive such a dog of a car they would have looked back to admire the car and seen the lights were on. She always looked back at the black Buick she had at the time. That's the thinking I come from. A whole family of possitive car influence still carrying on the tradition.

I am reminded of the theft and dishonesty so prevalent in my youth. Those people in the 1950s would steal anything that wasn't nailed down, and some that was. When I was a kid working in the tire shop the old guys would open their trunks showing an array of shovels, chains, and other construction tools. They would tell about stealing buckets of coal from a coal yard or taking the windows out of an old house replace cracked and broken ones in theirs house. Kids weren't even safe. I remember going through all kinds of gyrations if I mailed in a quarter for a cereal box prize. You had to tape it to cardboard and make sure it didn't slide. Or they would steal a quarter from a kid. I remember some of them filling scrap radiators with water to freeze in winter or putting big rocks under the tin in scrap loads. And they bragged about it. Real cases of the Robin Hood complex claiming they were poor and leaving out the middleman. Two weeks ago a friend went to Lowes to buy a ball valve to use for a shut off for his water when he travels away. He found one tucked on an upper shelve. Someone had stolen the ferules from the package. Since it was the only one he drove to Home Depot near the city line. He took his items to the self check out where he was only allowed to insert his charge card. An attendant had to scan the items to prevent...theft. He also learned that customers could photograph big ticket item bar codes the using their computer, edit the price to something much lower. The self checkout attendant was tasked to watch for that as well. There are scams alright. Aesop wrote about them 2,000 years ago and the same concepts are in play today. The key is to walk away when you spot it. Thinking it is one's duty to expose the thief and call him out is common for old men to do. Generally you fall right into their plan. You know that story about punching the tar baby, don't you. Read it for a refresher.

One of the subtle pleasures in life is to leave someone ignorant of their mistake. It's like walking out of a restaurant knowing that they will be making home fries like that for the rest of their life.

Don't pass up a chance to buy this book. You will thoroughly enjoy it. https://www.alibris.com/search/books/isbn/9780578011219?invid=12846872084&utm_source=Google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=NMPi&gad_source=1&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI7ZSpn-fkgwMVIwitBh17mgqwEAQYAiABEgJgefD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds I bought a street rodded C39 two years ago. Although I never cared much for Chrysler products I studies up on the 1940s models and may end up buying a good C39 in the future.

I have had the body off my '64 frame twice and also had a '68 X-frame Riviera off the frame. I saw them from the existing old bushings and the way the weight was distributed when I moved the bodies around. To me it appeared the body is actually cradled between the cowl mounts and the mounts at the rear kick up over the axle. Those mounts were crushed the most in both instances. The four rear mounts around the perimeter of the trunk showed little crushing with the rearmost oval showing none. With the body sitting on four jack stands I could easily lift the rear of the body by hand. The majority of the weight was concentrated at the cowl. If I were building my car for a performance application and concerned about body movement against lateral forces I would want to increase the resistance to movement in the steel bushing area of the through bolts. I think that would affect the handling more. I am the tech guy for the Buick Club of America on 1991-96 Buick Roadmasters. I have owned two and also a 1994 Impala SS which is the same basic car and shares much of the Caprice 9C1 police car build. Here is a good write up on GM body to frame mounting for those cars that gives pretty good insight into body mounting. Well worth the time to read. https://www.impalassforum.com/threads/body-bushings-and-mounts.807785/

Here is a French vendor for Never Seez. I use it on all my exhaust system parts. It will keep the studs and nuts from rusting, also help lubricate the brass/steel stud. The old Navy saying was "Bad deal, brass and steel" but sometimes you have to do it. I put the Never Seez on all the joints- flange faces, slip joints, anywhere the pipes and parts are joined. It helps if you want to disassemble the system later. https://www.ubuy.fr/en/product/UV8VNK-never-seez-nsbt-8-silver-gray-regular-grade-anti-seize-compound-8-fl-oz-brush-top-can

That other Knack is not even close. Did Google find it? I am sure Syracuse has at least one bar where the girls dance to juke box songs. Last time I heard My My Sharona was when the girls had me thrown out for playing it too many times. Me and a fist full of quarters on the sidewalk all alone. Here's a powerplant story. Non-engineer MBA Director of Operations says "What a clear night. There were a billion stars out" Engineer One: "You can only see about 4,500 stars with the naked eye." Director: "Well, I saw a plethora!" Engineer #2: "No, a plethora is 10,000" Director: "You know, I hate meetings with you guys." That's a knackerism.

It takes at least two bidders to run the bid up. It would be interesting to see that Riviera show up at the BCA Nationals this year and have some guy say "I was the #2 bidder on this". That is if it shows up in public before it is consigned to the next auction.

One is 64 years old, one is 60 years old, the other is 38 years old. When I got into the hobby there weren't any 60 year old cars except a couple of buggy wheeled things called cars.

Somewhat off topic but still about filters. I wonder about all those MERV 13 filters that were installed in malls and public buildings. Who changed them and where did they put them? It has been a couple of years. They must be due.

Blame it on social media. Social interactions among young people has been increasing exponentially. The Knack is fading.