Terry Wiegand

Edwin, We will be there for sure. If the weather will just cooperate so that the shop building can be opened up I will be able to get everything put back together rather easily. Ben, we're talking about McPherson College and the annual car show that the Restoration Program students put on. Terry Wiegand South Hutchinson, Kansas AACA Life Member #947918

I picked up the Anodized bracket this afternoon. I will get more photos once I can get into my shop building. We have had hurricane force winds here for the last two days. Everyone is pretty much confined indoors. Terry Wiegand South Hutchinson, Kansas AACA Life Member #947918

NZ Buick, I think that you should think twice and think very hard again about using a ball bearing in the roller lifter assemblies in your engine. You DO NOT want to run two hardened materials against each other in a situation like this. It is this persons opinion that this is a recipe for disaster with regard to the camshaft. At first glance a person might think that this is a really slick thing to do, but if you do this, you are inviting trouble in the end. I hope that someone with metallurgical experience will chime in on this. Please do not do this. Mr. Marr and his engineers at the time had things figured out really well. Do no try to re-invent the wheel here. Terry Wiegand South Hutchinson, Kansas AACA Life Member #947918

There is good news to report on the Delco Coil alternate. I picked up the machined parts from McPherson this afternoon. It is nice to see the plans starting to finally come together. This bracket is what the coil that I got from Brillman Tractor Parts will fit into. I asked the folks at the machine shop to not deburr the pieces. I am taking them to Wichita tomorrow and leave them with the folks who are going to do the Black Anodizing. They will run them through their tumble burr machine with a fine grade of media material. I did not want to slip the new coil into the bracket now and run the risk of scratching that new coil. The coil is pictured in the photos above and I wrapped it to protect the finish. I am hoping that the lead time for the Anodizing won't run too long and maybe we could have the car in the McPherson College show in May. More photos as they are available. Terry Wiegand South Hutchinson, Kansas AACA Life Member #947918

I was 9 years old (was gonna be 10 in January) and it was Thanksgiving in Woods County, Oklahoma. My one cousin and I learned to drive in his Grandad's farm pickup. Uncle Dan had this '36 or '37 Plymouth pickup that he used on the farm to haul hay to his horses and cattle. There was about a 5-acre meadow right behind the barn and Phil almost ran the truck into the back of the barn. His Dad and Grandpa and my Dad gave us Hell for doing what we were doing. Needless to say, we didn't get to do any driving until the next Thanksgiving. It sure was fun though. Terry Wiegand South Hutchinson, Kansas AACA Life Member #947918

If I am thinking correctly here, there will not be any noise (motoring sound) coming from the Starter/Generator unit on a 1923 model. I think that this was a big change in 1923. Terry Wiegand South Hutchinson, Kansas AACA Life Member #947918

Joe, A good rule of thumb is to make sure that the valve stems are lubricated every other time that the engine is started and that can depend on the length of time that the car is driven each time. The valve train on a '23 Buick is covered and this will hold the generated heat closer and longer to all of the valve gear. Mr. Heil is the 'resident engineer' on the '23 Models. He can tell you everything you will ever need to know about '23's. Terry Wiegand South Hutchinson, Kansas AACA Life Member #947918

Hugh, The ones I have are polished stainless and I got them from Restoration Supply. They are 3 1/2" in diameter and the rubber pads hold them on to the wind wing glass. Kinda pricey I thought at $38.00 a piece, but they do a great job at letting a person see what is coming up from behind. Don't even ask how long it took to get them adjusted from the driver position so that things are really in the critical field of vision. I climbed in and out of the driver seat a least a dozen times before I was happy with the adjustments. The quality is First Class - couldn't have anything shabby on a Buick. Terry Wiegand South Hutchinson, Kansas AACA Life Member #947918

Hugh, I like the clamp-on wind wing rear view mirrors. I am doing the same thing with the '16. The rear window in these tops makes for an impossibility to see anything directly behind the car. Terry Wiegand South Hutchinson, Kansas AACA Life Member #947918

For those who have early Buicks with the Delco Coil sitting atop the Starter/Generator unit, when these coils give out a serious problem is created. These things haven't been available for almost 100 years. I have learned that there were two fellows in the Twin Cities area that had the capability of rewinding these coils. Hold onto your shorts - it is not a cheap proposition. I was told 3 or 4 years ago that they were getting upwards of $600.00 to do one of the coils. Right now I have two cars that use this particular coil. The 1916's coil went South and the one on the 1920 is still as hot as ever. It bit me and my forearm hurt for almost a half hour. I needed a coil for the '16 and I believe that I have come up with the solution to this problem. I bought a modern 6-Volt Coil from Brillman Tractor Parts and I have designed a bracket to hold the coil in position on top of the S/G unit. I have a friend who is doing the computer work in creating the drawing for me. He should be finished with that the first part of next week. I hope to have the drawing at Chickasha with me next week. We are going to make the holding bracket using Aluminum and the bottom support piece will be salvaged from a Delco coil. Both parts will be Anodized and the idea here is to create a bracket that will look for all the world like it left the factory at Flint on the car. When I get this all done and in place on the car, I am going to make my engineering available to anyone who requests it so that they could do the same thing that I did for their car. I am posting some photos to show approximately what the unit could look like and how it will be placed on the S/G unit. Brillman tells me that their coils are 'HOT' as in 55,000 Volts Hot! The short time that I had the engine running using their coil - it ran perfectly. As things come together, I will be posting updates and photos when they become available. Terry Wiegand South Hutchinson, Kansas AACA Life Member #947918

The Pre-War Swap Meet at Chickasha is coming up on the 18th of March. The early Buick guys will meet at Steve Hammatt's space at High Noon. This is a great opportunity to meet new Buick enthusiasts and renew old friendships. All Buick folks are welcomed to come and join us. See you there. Terry Wiegand South Hutchinson, Kansas AACA Life Member #947918 and 60 year Buick Enthusiast

Somehow I just knew that this was going to start a controversy. Here is where I am coming from with this line of thinking. The machinist who straightened out the water pump bushing for me has a lot of experience with high pressure steam and water applications. He has solid knowledge regarding valves and rotating shaft applications. He has told me that Teflon would be his choice of packing for the water pump on our Buick. I spoke with an Applications Engineer at Garlock about this very issue. Neither of these two ever mentioned that HOT WATER would cause any problem with the Teflon material. They both knew that the application was going to be on a 6-Cylinder automobile engine. The normal operating temperature on an engine like this is going to be in the 180 to 190 degree range. If the temperature range was going to be in the 400 to 500 degree area, then I would readily agree that that could rather quickly cause some serious issues. I mentioned earlier that when the new shaft for my engine was made we used stainless material. Since the shaft is straight except for the gear area, the guys took the finished O.D. to size on a grinder. I think the finish is something around a 4RMS. This is like a plated and polished finish. There will be absolutely no issues with the Teflon packing running on this rotating shaft. One other point that I will bring up is this - IF there is a bit of weepage with this packing material I am not going to get in a twist over it. This will tell me that the bushings are being lubricated. Terry Wiegand South Hutchinson, Kansas AACA Life Member #947918

Oldbuicks2, when you redo the waterpump shaft, since there are umpteen different stainless alloys, consider something corrosion resistant, or something that has high wear resistance. When I did mine, we opted for the high wear resistant material. I am going to go back with Garlock Teflon-coated braided material. The engineers at Garlock tell me that the Teflon material is actually slicker on a rotating shaft than the Graphite impregnated rope material. There are some folks on here who talk about 'lip seals' and how this stops weepage. From everything that I have heard and read this is a total waste of good money. A little bit of weeping on an old Buick water pump is not going to hurt one thing. Terry Wiegand South Hutchinson, Kansas AACA Life Member #947918

The Hoke building (on the corner) is currently being restored and the dealership building is still in place with many modifications having been done over the years. I did not know about this automobile dealership being there until just the other day. A lot happens in 107 years. Terry Wiegand South Hutchinson, Kansas AACA Life Member #947918

The photos of the radiator caps are absolutely amazing. It is wonderful to see that someone knows what they are doing with a camera. Terry Wiegand South Hutchinson, Kansas AACA Life Member #947918

A friend of mine here in Hutchinson who works for an Architectural Firm gave me a copy of this old photograph. The photo was taken in 1915 of the P and O Garage located on the Southwest corner of East First and North Walnut streets in downtown Hutchinson. P and O was the dealer for Overland, Mitchell, Grant, and KRIT automobiles at the time the photo was taken. Here is a question for the early automobile guys - can anyone identify any of these old automobiles? Here is an interesting observation about the cars - there are numerous touring and roadster models in the group and not a one of them has a top up in place. I personally find that very odd that that many open cars do not have at least a few with their tops up and in place. Terry Wiegand South Hutchinson, Kansas AACA Life Member #947918

And I have a letter to one of the former owners of our 1920 K-46 that states that the 1st Junior award given to this car will transfer to the new owner when ownership changes. It only makes sense that the awards stay with the vehicle. The vehicle won the award - not the person. Our Buick won this award before the HPOF was created and we transferred and retired the award so that the car could be entered into HPOF status. Terry Wiegand South Hutchinson, Kansas AACA Life Member #947918

I have heard that Pinky Randall is no longer with us. Can anyone confirm or comment on this? I am into early Buicks and have been for years. Pinky told me once that those old Buicks were nothing but Chevrolets with lock washers. I never forgot that and laugh every time I think about it. He was quite the gentleman if this is indeed true and will be missed. Terry Wiegand South Hutchinson, Kansas AACA Life Member #947918

The roller lifter housings on my rebuilt engine had light surface rust on the exposed areas. The material used was 4340 and I wanted to clean them up real well before they went together. I put them in a pan and covered them with 5% acidity vinegar. I left them in for about 45 minutes. I then washed them in a solution of 2 gallons of warm water with a cup of Baking Soda added to neutralize the acidity of the vinegar. They came out looking like they had just been machined. In this situation the simplest way worked like a charm. There is really no reason to over-think things like this. The old time proven way in most cases works the best. I think I had less than 3 dollars in materials. Terry Wiegand South Hutchinson, Kansas AACA Life Member #947918

When I pulled all of the valve cages out of the engine in our '16 for the very first time I used a BUFFUM cage pulling tool. All of the cages but the exhaust cage in the number 6 cylinder came out rather easily. That number 6 exhaust valve wasn't going to give it up easily no way, no how. My Dad was still alive back then and I asked him what I could do about that. His suggestion was to put the puller on it and get a real good pull on it and leave it set overnight. I did that and filled the top of the counterbore pocket with Marvel Mystery Oil and let it set overnight. That was kinda a hard thing to do by just walking away from it. When I got home from work the next day it was time to see what had happened. I had a long box-end wrench that I used on the tool. I put the wrench on it and snuck up on the pull steadily. Just when I thought that this wasn't going to work the cage broke loose with a bang that sounded like a shotgun went off. I remember very well thinking that something or some things had broken. It really scared me and I was afraid to start looking at things for fear of what I might find. As good luck would have it nothing was harmed and the cage came out all in one piece. This is just some free advice on my part - a person should NEVER,EVER pound on the cylinder block to try and remove those cages. The wall thicknesses of the casting are really thin in the water jacket area and breaking the casting can leave a person up crap creek without any paddle whatsoever. It's called patience and perseverance when working on these old engines. Terry Wiegand South Hutchinson, Kansas AACA Life Member #947918

As always, Hugh does a fantastic job at what he sets out to do. I, and a lot of others, will hope that he will do something like this for the Marvel units without the heat riser in them. There were gazillions of those made before the heat riser came along. The folks closing up the shop in Phoenix dealt a horrible blow to Marvel Carburetor Restoration. They truly understood them and made them work like new when they were done with them. Terry Wiegand South Hutchinson, Kansas AACA Life Member #947918

To take this discussion a bit further, it all comes down to the point that a person has to drive for every other idiot out on the road. In this extremely high tech world that we are in these days, it would be a wonderful thing if the cell phone manufacturers would market a product that would be rendered useless inside a moving vehicle. The ONLY exceptions would be law enforcement folks, fire department people, and medical responders. My biggest fear is that I will be wiped out by some 17 year old, blonde bimbo with a cell phone stuck in her ear and driving a 400 dollar tokyomobile. We are very fortunate to live in an area that is not highly populated. I can drive the Buicks without a lot of traffic to deal with. I WILL NOT destroy the originality of my cars so that some do-gooder can feel better that I have conformed to their way of thinking. As I said earlier, they can just get over it. Terry Wiegand South Hutchinson, Kansas aka Way Out in Doo Dah AACA Life Member #947918

All three of our old Buicks do not have turn signals, brake lights, air bags, electric door locks, radios, heated seats, and all of the creature comforts of a 2022 vehicle. The oldest one is going on 107 years old for God's sake. I have just one thing to say to all of the hand-wringing, scaredy cats - GET OVER IT!! Terry Wiegand South Hutchinson, Kansas AACA Life Member #947918

Mark, thanks for that information. I'll use that when I set the engine back together for the last time. Terry Wiegand South Hutchinson, Kansas AACA Life Member #947918

Where is the car located? IF it has to be completely rebuilt I can recommend the best shop in the country to do it. Terry Wiegand South Hutchinson, Kansas AACA Life Member #947918