JoelsBuicks

Wayne, the very small pin is actually on the steel shaft. This pin, about the size wire of a paper clip, does not traverse through the center of the shaft but rather off slightly to one side. You should be able to feel an indentation of sorts and if not, take some sandpaper and sand the steel shaft and I'll bet you will quickly see where it is at. Good Luck with it! Joel

Ok, I will look for the heavy lube oil or mix up my own with STP. My seal looks good and fits tight so I don't predict a leak problem. Thank you very much for the input. Joel

After cleaning up the inside and replacing a bearing cup in my 36 Roadmaster steering box, the shop manual calls for it to be filled with "... a very light non-flowing lubricant..." Is this just regular gun grease? Thanks,

Looking for a restorable spark plug cover for my 1936 320 engine. This would be the one that is rounded on the ends and along its length. Thanks,

Yes to both of your questions.

So if you do the pits yourself, what is involved? Do you sand away until they're gone? Or do you fill them with something? I've heard of copper plating the piece and then using regular solder to fill the pits. Does anybody do the pits themselves?

What about things like the window garnish? Is it worth taking some measurements to see if they'd interchange and fit my '35 model 57? I would feel much better starting on this car if I could get the garnish. Then again, that would leave me wanting seat skeletons and then the radiator and tail light stanchions, etc. I very much appreciate the discussion on this. Joel

I have a 35 buick model 57 and I'm wondering about the interchange of parts from the 40 series to the 57. My car is needing quite a few parts: rear bumper, all window garnish except windshield, tail light housings, radiator, front and rear seats. Any chance that you'd have any of these? Thanks,

Hi, I am needing one of the little end pieces that fit on the brake shoe adjuster. It's not the piece that fits into the wheel cylinder, but instead, fits rather loosely on the screw adjuster and is held between the adjuster and the shoe. A bit rusty is fine. I believe that many model years will work. Thank you!

Somebody will correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that these water pumps were the same for all models from 41 to 53 and were the same on big series 36 to 40. I see rebuild kits on ebay frequently for these pumps. Bob's has these rebuilt for $105. One of these days I'm gonna buy an ebay rebuild kit and find out for myself.

I rebuilt my '36 - 320 engine and I asked the same question. It was originally cork and there was no way to retrofit to a modern oil seal. I ended up using a 5/16" rope seal available from Bob's. I had to "bunch it up" to fill the void and once I did this, the fit and feel of the seal was very nice. I've yet to start this up but I don't have any reservations about it doing the job well. The part from Bob's is at http://www.bobsautomobilia.com/cgi-bin/shop.pl/SID=1234815873.16195/page=product.html/product=150 Good Luck,

That's some very nice work! I have a question about the exhaust manifold treatment. What coating did you use to get that bright aluminum-like finish? Thanks, Joel

I wanted to follow up on my post from a couple months back. To date, I've had four people tell me that they have the parts that I'm needing for my 35 Buick Model 57. All of these came from London. None have any pics to send although one did offer to send pics but never did. Two wanted Western Union payment and one was so low in price, you couldn't possibly ship the items. Jules looked into three of these suppliers for me and offered extreme caution based on their locations in London. I'm not trying to broad brush overseas suppliers, I just wanted to follow up on the results. Thanks,

Oldohioan, that reminds me of my efforts to rejuvanate a worn commutator on a '36 generator. The individual copper bars that make up the commutator are separated by gaps that are filled with mica. A proper operation is to have the mica recessed from 1/32" to 1/16" below the tangent of the commutator. I found a reference that even suggested that heavily worn commutators may even have the mica standing proud of the surface and that the brushes would skip along the mica and cause problems. Unbelievably, this is how mine was. After truing up the commutator surface, I used part of a hacksaw blade, that I ground to the right thickness, and sawed out the mica. I won't know for a few months how well this worked - just thought it might be a source of Jan's problems. Joel

That's how I did it on my '60. This whole job of replacing the torque ball seal took about 10 hours. I had all the tools, parts, jacks and supports, etc. There's no danger of flying parts but you should take time to note part orientation and sequence of events as you go along. In addition to the normal procedures, the following were helpful to me: Get the rear of car way high - you need the crawl room and you need clearance to move the rear end back with tires on. Remove the brake line mount that is located near the torque ball assembly, you need the access room for the bolts around the torque ball. I used the recommended 3" guide pins (3/8" all thread) to allign the assembly as it went back together. Make certain that the shaft splines align properly as it will only go back one way. Mark the position of the "spline feature" on the outside of both male and female pieces because the spline alignment is hard to see as you recouple these. If at all possible - have someone help you with this. Refill and bleed brakes! This job sounds much worse than it is. However, if you don't have the means to get the car elevated and secured, I'd get someone else to do it. You're going to be pushing and shaking things a bit and it's no place for any shaky jack stands. Good Luck!

You can get it at Bob's Automobilia. Here is a link to it: http://www.bobsautomobilia.com/cgi-bin/shop.pl/SID=1231684532.12764/page=product.html/product=157

Just a quick note on the color. I used a little paint remover and the base color is black. Joel

This is my first time to post a pic and I'm not sure it will work, here goes. This is a pic of an air cleaner for a 36 320 engine. As you can see (hopefully) there is no way to get inside and service this. It looks like the air intake end has some wire wool/mesh - probably copper but there is no way to access it without hacksawing the end. So, how do I clean it and do I somehow charge it with oil after cleaning? My 36 Limited has one similar but it has a wingnut on the end for removal and looks to be made that way. Also, what about the color? I have seen several internet pics of these air cleaners and some are also red. My Limited has a red air cleaner as well. Thank you for your help! Joel http://photos.aaca.org/data/506/medium/Air_Cleaner_002.jpg

I haven't taken mine apart - yet. But, this is an excerpt from an earlier posting: On my 1936 Special the bell housing has to be installed before attaching the flywheel. This is because the two upper most bolts are covered by the flywheel and can't be installed if it's there first. Of course, this make it much more difficult to install the clutch because you don't have alot of room to work in and the flywheel has to be rotated to get at all of the clutch bolts. Hope this helps,

Does the old plate show much wear? I wonder what would happen if you used the new gears and old plate? My oil pump had a gasket between the plate and the pick-up "shroud" but no gasket on the gear side. Perhaps it starts out with a gasket which can later be removed if needed? Joel

Jules, I will PM you with the information. Thanks so much for your help with this. Indeed it is a very kind offer. Joel

Hey Matt, first let me say that I really enjoy following your work that you have so generously made available to us. These supplies were not at all specific about what they had and my list was for some major items like headlights, bumper, taillight housings, and window garnish. I think I'll ask for pictures of the items. I'm really needing to find a cheap donor car for these items here in the US. Thanks again, Joel

I've got a couple later model 320 engines that I'll look at. I'm not really wanting to start robbing them yet. I talked with Bob's and they supply an 8" long 5/16" braided rope with their gasket sets. They are sending me a one foot long piece and I will "bunch it up" and see if it fills that cavity but this stuff doesn't bunch up very much. I'll let you know how it goes. Thank you, Joel

Excellent suggestions! If these companies are indeed legit, their best interest would also be to ensure the customer is protected and they should be willing to use something like PayPal. Thanks so much. I'd also like to hear from folks that have dealt with them, I'm surely not the first. Thanks again, Joel