Jim Cannon

The fibreglass sheathed wire is probably the resistance wire that was built into the wiring harness to reduce voltage to the coil when the engine is running. This wire is bypassed when the key switch is turned all the way to the Start position and the starter motor is turning. It can be replaced (if it is bad) with a ceramic block ignition ballast resistor used on many cars of this era. You will still want to wire it up to be bypassed when cranking.

For cleaning and polishing the clear plastic lenses for the front (and any plastic, for that matter) I have found the Meguiar's PlastX to be really good. I don't know if it is available around you. https://www.meguiars.com/automotive/products/meguiarsr-plastxtm-clear-plastic-cleaner-polish-g12310-10-oz-liquid You should totally add the mechanical stop light switch if you are going to change to dual master cylinder. Find a '64 or '65 parts car and get the bracket and switch out of it.

Yes, that's the spring to remove from the turn signal switch. And make sure the switch body slides freely on the 2 pins that hold it. The brake light switch was originally mounted to the cast iron master cylinder in the engine compartment. Do you apply the parking brake with left foot or right? This RHD car is very cool. I drove RHD when we lived in England, but park brake was on a pull lever in the center console by the tranny shifter.

Everyone with a '63 Riv knows how the temp control lever (made of potmetal) breaks easily when the hot water valve sticks. I have arranged to have a limited number of new levers fabricated out of steel. See picture below for one of the prototypes. That is a 1 inch grid that they are laying on. I'm not sure how he cuts the metal but it is very precise, like water jet. The angles are crisp. It's a very professional job, done by a machinist that does high-end stuff every day. If you are interested in getting one, please let me know. I will start a list and send them out in that order until they are gone. The cost is $65 + $10 postage to anywhere in the USA. Overseas will be at actual postage cost. You can reply here or you can email me directly at 63Rivvy (at) gmail (dot) com Feel free to reach out with questions. I'm not making any money on these, just recovering my costs.

What color will your interior be? I might have turn and tilt levers here in my parts pile. Do they still have the brake light switch hydraulic actuated? At this time, with the car apart, you may want to put in a 1964 brake pedal bracket with the switch mounted to it, and convert to mechanical brake light switch instead of hydraulic. Easy to swap out now, impossible in the future. (I did that on my car when I had everything apart last year.)

If yours are missing, I think I have some of the green and red lenses from a parts car that you can have. Same with black and grey bulb holders.

There is no lens for fuel. You can put in a blue LED for high beam, if you want, and the the red len out. (I considered that but kept it red.) Cold is a green lens. I also use a green LED bulb. ALT and HOT are red. I used a regular bulb on the ALT and a red LED on the HOT. There is no lens on Fuel. Oil is red lens; I also used a red LED. I left the bulb on the ignition switch out. #5. The outside perimeter bulbs are to light up the instruments. It looks like those are your grey ones. I put in warm white LEDs. Trace the printed circuit lines around and you will find all the instrument panel bulb holes. The shop manual may also tell you. Black bulb holders are for indicators. I put green LEDs in for left and right turn. Numbering the questions is helpful but it would also help if you could letter ID each piece you are asking about and then we can identify it by that letter. The very long skinny green piece is for the center console shifter light. The green piece that looks like Darth Vader's mask goes behind the spot where the High Beam, Left and Right indicator bulb are installed. This mask keeps one bulb from lighting up adjacent lenses.

AFAIK, the '64 and '65 are the same. I have not studied them in detail.

You can just disconnect and plug the vacuum hose to the STV and run it like that. It will run the A/C evaporator at maximum cooling all the time (which is what I do anyway -- because max cooling is still not what we have become used to in modern cars). The biggest downside is that it is easy to get the evaporator core to freeze up into a solid block of ice in humid locations. Air flow through the evaporator stops and cooling is poor. Or you can put in the STV replacement kit, which monitors the evaporator core temperature and cycles the compressor off when the core gets too cold. Stops freeze up. Good cooling all the time. In either case, you will control your comfort in the car with the fan speed. The temp knob on the A/C side of the control panel will do very little, except that when you push it all the way in to maximum cold and you have the fan on high (both knobs), the recirc door will close and you get 100% recirc. All other times you get 100% fresh air in. The STV approach was a bad design, as was "hot gas recirc" used in other large GM vehicles. GM was still learning how to do automotive A/C right; lots of different ideas were developed. Later systems are much better, where the evaporator is followed by a heater core to warm the cool dry air back up to your desired temperature.

Thank you for the pictures, Bill! Worth 1,000 words. I should also mention that there is a long spring up inside the recirc plenum that this vacuum diaphragm acts against. The spring closes the door and the actuator opens it. My return spring was broken. I found a new spring of roughly the same strength at my local Ace Hardware and modified it a little to work. You should investigate while everything is open. I did all this with the fan motor off of the plenum, working through that hole, but with the plenum still mounted in the car. Much easier to do if you have the plenum off anyway for other reasons.

Yes, if we could find a single nipple actuator with the mounting studs spaced correctly, etc., then that would work. Once I figured out that the one that goes on the firewall will also work here, I stopped hunting for the replacement. Yes, the "fresh air/recirc door" now only has 2 positions: 100% fresh and 100% recirc. We have gotten rid of the original "partial fresh -- partial recirc" position (which I never was too excited about).

Yes! Good question! You connect one hose to both nipples with a t-fitting and plug the other hose. It is a quirk of how the original stacked diaphragms worked with each other, compared to how the 2-port unit works. The stacked diaphragms will get vacuum applied to one can or the other, depending on if you want partial recirc (actuator pulls part way in) or full fresh air (fully pulled in). Only one vacuum hose gets vacuum at a time. On the single actuator with 2 nipples, like you have on the firewall, you have to apply vacuum to both nipples at the same in order to get the actuator fully retracted. This is not what you have down under the fan; you have vacuum on one or the other at a time. So if you connect one vacuum hose to each nipple, the actuator will not retract fully. Lots of detail there, but that's the reason. It took me a lot of time studying the shop manual to figure this out.

Yes, fork shaped clips. See photo.

Look in the shop manual for guidance. It is very thorough.

There you go! Remember to use a T-fitting to apply vacuum for "fully open" to both nipples. Then plug the other vacuum hose (the partial recirc line) with a golf tee.

Yes, inside the inner fender was originally lined with the yellow fiberglass. I removed it on mine. The driver's side has come loose and was restricting air flow. I think the insulation was installed to reduce the amount of road noise that entered the cabin through these vents. After cleaning it out, I put a piece of DynaMat in there for a little sound deadener, covered with a piece of DynaLiner thermal/sound insulation. I don't think you need much more.

Have you tried removing the wiper arms and setting them back down on the finely splined shaft one spline lower?

No, those are not the correct actuators. You want a single port. You will not use the other vacuum line to the second can, you will plug it. I don't have a part number for them, maybe someone else will. Glad your other diaphragm tested good.

The upper rectangular hole in the firewall is fresh air into the A/C system. There is a flapper that controls the blend of recirculated air vs. fresh outside air. When no A/C is on at all, the flapper closes off outside air from coming in. When testing the vacuum diaphragm over between the blower motor and the STV, you must apply vacuum to BOTH nipples to test the inside (center) nipple. If the outer nipple is exposed to air, the inner one will act like it is leaking. Put vacuum only on the outer nipple to get the flapper to move 1/2 way (some air out on floor vents, some air out of dash vents). Apply vacuum to both to get the flapper to move to its full inward travel (all air to dash vents). The double can unit under the blower motor is not available new, only used parts car stuff, but can be replaced with a new single can, like you have up on the firewall. There was a recent post about this on this board that refers back to an old post of mine. You use the single can unit, you use a T-fitting to apply vacuum to both nipples when you want full outside air, and you plug off the other vacuum line (for partial recirc) with a golf tee.

Honestly, Rod, I would just leave it alone. Just drive it. If the new condenser fails in a short time, start looking for causes.

Condensers fail due to age, heat and time. I'm pretty sure the resistance is built into the wiring harness (but I am not a '67 expert). With the engine running, you should read about 9 volts. Did the engine ever have electronic ignition? Some of those kits want full 12 volts, so they ask you to bypass the resistance wire.

The '63 vacuum storage can is there to store vacuum just for the power brake booster, so that you will have a couple of brake applications with boost after the engine stalls. Later boosters have this storage volume built into the booster can itself, so no external storage bottle is needed. The 1964 and later vacuum storage canisters are just for the flapper actuators on the Heating & A/C system. There is no backup vacuum for brakes there. This small reservoir was added so that when you accelerate hard (to get on a highway, up a hill) and your engine vacuum drops, all of the A/C flappers do not return to their starting position (mainly it was dash vent air suddenly going down to the floor vents, and then when you let off of the gas, they all flip back to air coming out the dash vents again). It gives the A/C system a small vacuum reserve to hold everything where it is supposed to be. That's why it's so small. 1963 owners noticed that their air dropped down to the floor when they stepped on the gas hard for a long-ish time, then came right back when they let up on the gas. Buick installed the vacuum reservoir in 1964 and beyond to fix that. I have added one to my '63 so that the dash air comes out correctly when I "step on it".

There is not a wiper motor access panel on the '63. It might have been added in future years. The wiper motor remove/replace is discussed in a Dealer Service Bulletin (extract attached). This is the procedure I used. I removed the entire hood, though, because I did not trust the hood to sit up with only one hinge attached. Then I removed the hinge that covers the wiper motor. Reaching down through the cowl vent to get to the motor link was a pain.

Aftermarket cores do not fit properly. I got a used heater core from a parts car and had it recored. Then when I had everything apart, the new core was on hand ready to be installed. If you want to do that, you can have the old core that I took out of my 1963 Riv to have it recored. Just pay postage to you. I do not have a '65 Chassis Parts Book, but attached is a screen shot of the heater core part numbers for '63. They only list one number for the Riviera (4700), with or without A/C. The other full-size Buicks note with and without.

If you can, get the original alternator rebuilt and reinstall it. We have other tricks for the voltage regulator. Remember, it's always good to include the year of the car with questions (but I can see a 1st gen in your avatar).