CA_Kustoms

Since It's warmed up a little today I'm going to pull the carb and go through it again and check all of the passages, then I'll double check the manual settings on the choke side. When I put it back on I'll check for any leaks. I had originally thought about the icing and the vacuum leaks (since everything shrinks when it's cold) Thanks to everyone- I'll check back with results.

1954 Roadmaster------------Is it a Buick thing that these cars will not run in cold weather? I am ready to get rid of this car as it is a daily driver but it won't drive daily. Car starts and idles great but once it's warmed up it will only runs for seconds at a time then dies- have to pump the heck out of it to start again then it only lasts for a few more seconds. Runs great during the summer. Thought there might be ice in the lines so I used some heat. The other day it ran like crap until it idled on high for almost a half hour then it was great. I'm not willing to use ten gallons of gas everyday just so it will run good. Carb has been rebuilt, fuel pump is rebuilt, all electric in ignition and charging system is new. Any remedies or ideas would be appreciated. Right now I'm thinking it's time to sell it and get rid of the head ache.

I have actually had great results using rubbing compound and a little elbow grease. I've used it to take out the normal wear scuffs and scratches from rolling door windows up and down.

It seems mine is Shadow Dancing by Andy Gibb

If you decide that the roadmaster promo will go for sale, please let us know. I'm thinking there could be a very good bidding war between everyone with a 54 roadie on this site.

Just out of curiosity, where are you located? I'm wondering because a fellow just outside of my town has a ton of these beasts, although I don't know how many for sure but he has a big sign out front that reads----- STUDEBACRES. Growing up I always thought it was a funny sign and called it stupidacres until I found out that he had all those cars sitting in the buildings next to his house.

I recently rebuilt the carb on my 54 Roadmaster, it is a carter 4-barrel. I went by the specs in the repair manual and the sheet that came with the rebuild kit. The car idles and runs great at speed but when accelarating it gets jumpy. It feels like when a flooded engine first fires up and it shudders the whole dang car. This occurs with modest pedal usage, however if I really ease on the gas it takes off very slow but smooth and if i give it a bit more pedal than i'd like(sorta like when you're trying to get into traffic) it stutters the same but comes out of it fairly quickly. As I remember, when I drove it home six months ago it ran pretty rough but didn't stutter with pedal pressure.(although it lacked the power that it has now) O.K., O.K., so the question is...... Does this sound like too little or too much fuel? I set the accelarator pump to specs (9/32 from the top flange with the throttle closed.) Could this setting be pushing too much gas in? I know enough about carburators to get me into trouble and I've got a lot to learn, but my hunch is that I should adjust the pump back down(it was quite aways down before) and it should lean it out some and give better accelaration. Am I dreaming or does this sound like I might have an idea of what I'm talking about? (sorry about the rattling on, I know nobody came here to read a book, but a better description gets better answers.)

Holy s&^% ! That makes the $750 I paid for the 54 look like I got robbed. Deffinatly some very nice steel for a grand plus gas, even if the gas was five bucks a gallon. Sweet car !!!!!

My conundrum was all my doing. The 54 was running rough after sitting for six years so I cleaned the lines and tank, changed fuel filter and rebuilt the carb. Start the car and it runs ok for awhile and then floods out. Fiddled with idle screws- no luck. Not good spark? Change plugs, wires, cap and rotor- no luck. New coil- no luck What the %$ ! Let it sit over night.....Falling asleep...wait a minute..did I remove the cardboard protecter around the new accelerator pump?????? Pull the carb- tear it down and there it is, still wrapped around the dang thing,holding it stuck down and allowing gas to pour right through. Took it off and now it purrs. Plugs, wires, cap, rotor - $85 New coil- $45 Slowing down and paying attention to what you're doing- priceless

Sounds great Lamar! I would be greatful if you could send me some prices(or a price)to either my e-mail or in a message on here. If you happen to have a trunk lock without a key, that would be great too,as I will re-do the lock to fit my current key anyway. Today I need to tear into the ingnition switch to get that working with a key instead of turning by itself. I was hoping that the cylinder would come out without taking out the whole assembly but as my luck would have it, it will not be the case. (I even tried the "drill a hole here" trick in the repair manual.) This car has been a blast to work on even though I've had a few "whoops",such as.......dopped the tank to inspect a non-working sender,wire on sender reostsat was broken so I made a new piece and it now works at half tank and below. Good enough till I can get a repro. unit. Anyways, thought I had the tank flushed good enough but I was wrong. Ended up dropping it again, but with it being so easy I didn't mind. Just for those of you wondering..... I did not cut any extra holes anywhere in the car, the door speakers were put in so they would use the front access panel in the doors. If this gets sold someday I want someone to be able to return everything to stock without any problems.

June first through the third I attended the Goodguys Nationals in Loveland, Colorado. The meet was the biggest one I have ever been to and it was great, but after walking for countless miles and fourteen hours I only encountered four Buicks. What a disappointment! Don't get me wrong, the show was great and with around fifteen hundred cars to look at, I couldn't keep my shirt dry with all the drooling. However I was suprised to not see more Buicks in the bunch. There were two station wagons with the little windows around the top of the roof(my father mentioned the name,but I forget sometimes), one 56 convertable (super?,I can't remember)that was waiting for a resto., and one 49 super in the swap area that needed a whole lot of lovin'. I've been traveling to Colorado for 23 years and nothing against those who live there but I've never ran into the friendliest folks I've ever met, but boy were the people at the show a change of scenery. If someone was taking a picture- everyone near the vehicle backed away and never once did anyone walk in front of my camera when it was in use. Like I said, save for the annual Route 385 cruisers show here in Alliance I've never been to a "real" meet, but if the folks everywhere are as nice as the ones I met, then it's no wonder everyone always has such a great time at these events. Anyways, just thought I'd spout out a little bit of my experiance. Since there's no Buick guys around my neck of the woods, I had to tell someone.

Well, it's been five months and alot of tinkering, but it's starting to take shape. At least it's painted and drivable. As you can see it didn't end up satin black nor will it have grey interior,instead it ended up as close as I could mix it to the original gull grey(without the funky green tinge)and the interior went to black carpet and panels with black or blue diamond velour seat covers.(Oh well) I still haven't been able to locate the passenger rear door spear trim(I have the original but it's mangled) or the little piece that goes between the passeger front and rear doors, so for now it's going to get a white vinyl stripe that matches the sweep spear to cover up the holes. The interior is not finished either, it still lacks the carpet and seat covers. Also I haven't gotten the trunk lock.

I believe NAPA is the best place to start. I just replaced the whole blade with thier "classic" series and they're really close to the originals, plus you can't really go wrong for 13 bucks. Good luck.

Just the rubber piece, then I'll be near complete, save for the correct wiper jar (I believe I have one that's too new),the pass. side rear door moulding, and the little piece in front of that between the doors.

right now I have only one rubber separator that holds the plug wires above the valve cover. I've tried searching for one in the usual places to no avail. My question is...... does anyone know if the grommet off of a 55-56 chevy would work? I've found some on ebay and they look comprable but I'm not sure that they are the correct size. I thought it might be worth a try since GM cars shared quite a few other parts.

Thanks for the quick and accurate responses !!!!!!!!! When I took the tail lights off of the car I never took the covers off to look at the bulbs (I knew the park lights worked) So I reomoved the lenses and whadda ya know, wrong frickin bulb. I never thought it would take an extreme amount of smarts to put in the right bulb, but I believe I have just been proven wrong. I don't even know how they managed to get the bulb in the socket, it was the same bulb as the turn signal and the little aligner pins were totally wrong. Oh well, fixed now. Thanks again for the info.

1954 Buick Roadmaster------ finally running and painted (still needs interior) Every time I push on the brake pedal the frickin dash lights light up. They're not all that bright when it happens, and I don't think that the tail lights are getting all of the power that they need as they aren't all that bright either. Does anyone have any ideas as to why this is happening? Maybe corroded wiring causing too much resistance making the power backfeed into the dash? I serched forever on here and the only thing close that I found was a comment on a guy who had the wrong bulbs in the brake lights on a chevy. Doesn't make much sense to me but an electrical expert I am not.

I now have all of the shiny metal off except for the lower front windshield trim and the lower trim and handles on the doors. The rear seat is now sitting on the trunk waiting to find a place to "relax" for awhile, it's amazing how the rear seat is attached in these cars,so simple. I'm finding that some of the trim screws are not located in the same spots from side to side, mainly on the upper window trim on the front doors. The passenger side was all o.k. on but the drivers side there was one screw behind the vent window assembly and I saw no way to reach it easily,so out came the drill, I put a hole just big enough to get the screw out and it went well. I believe when I reassemble that the "out of place" screw will be put in matching the passenger side. Removing a door window sure takes awhile when you don't have surefire directions, but it did finally come out after a lot of head scratching and cussing. After removing the inner rear vent window trim I've found the color that the headliner is suposed to be, however the funky gray-blue color that it's faded to looks good with the rest of the blue interior,so I think it will stay for now. Well enough of my ranting, it's time for bed.

So the side moulding,rear quarter trim,rear lower window trim,and top window trim on the doors is all off. I haven't started digging into the front lower winshield trim yet,but it looks a bit more complicated than the rest. Can anyone give me some advice on removing this? I know the wipers and wiper covers need to come off, but are there more screws that need to be reached through the dash trim? Also does anyone know how much of a pain it is to get the outer door handles off? I believe I've figured out how the lower trim comes off on the doors, but the handles look like they could be painful. I tried to remove the vent window, but I just can't figure out how it's done. Do I need to remove the glass from the frame or will the frame come out with the glass intact? The glass has a horizontal crack in it and I would like to remove it from the car myself to get it replaced. Thanks in advance for any info. Cory

I used to be the service manager at a Dodge dealership and Iwould also question this procedure. I know dodge never had a recomendation for a flush at that low of miles but there could be reasoning behind it...... Buick may feel or have info that the atf may be somewhat scorched after the "break-in" period, or there could be evidence of shavings not being filtered out. Either way to keep everything safe and under warranty I would procede with their recomendations. If you have a problem with the tranny down the road while still under warranty and did not follow their recomendations they may deny any claims made for repairs. The best thing to do is find a warranty certified shop and talk to the mechanics, they should be up to date on service bullitins and will know if this is necessary, also get to know the service manager/warranty writer, in a time of need they can be your best freind or worst enemy, as there are many ways to write up warranty work to get the company to accept it. Hope this helps. C

I do love the blue color on the metal parts on the interior and I wish the fabric on the seats and doors wan't so faded. If I can find material that is close enough to the original blue,I'll probably go with that instead of grey for the seats,doors,and carpet. Although I'm thinking that grey custom fit saddle blanket seat covers with light grey door panels and carpet would look cool with the satin black and the eventual dark silver metallic paint.(it would also go with the grey-blue headliner) There's just so many options that choosing one is confusing. Make it personal or original,guess that's the real decision. <img src="http://forums.aaca.org/images/graemlins/confused.gif" alt="" />

Thanks to everyones information. I think when the time comes I will check witht he local shop and see what they can do for me.

Any glass will do for now, just so I know the window isn't going to fall out when the door is shut. I've thought about checking with the local shop to see if they can cut a piece out of the door window to fit the wing window but I'm told that some of this thick glass doesn't cut so well. Do you happen to Know if any other year window is interchangable with the 54?

1954 Roadmaster 72R - 2 cracked windows,no carpet,1 piece of trim missing,1 trim piece bent,needs seat covered,front door panels rotted,no trunk lock,no kick panels. Body is straight,runs decent,original hub caps and owners guide. Paid $750 right now I'm in the process of getting the shiny stuff polished up. This spring I plan on spraying some satin black,and running some white striping instead of the side mouldings. Would like to return to wide whites, but that may be further down the line. Until I get really really serious and return everything to original,I want to make this a great running,good looking driver.

I'm wondering if anyone knows of a good place to get a passenger side door window and a drivers door wing window for a 54 roadmaster? My local yard has a few 48-54 roadies but to my dismay the glass I seek is broken. I have done some searching but evidently not enough,because I have no leads. <img src="http://forums.aaca.org/images/graemlins/mad.gif" alt="" /> <img src="http://forums.aaca.org/images/graemlins/mad.gif" alt="" />