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1958 Buick Century 4 Dr Hard top restoration in Sri Lanka


ceejay

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The top came off and I guess it could go back on if needed. :D

In 1955 the convertible frame had considerably heavier metal in the "X" part of the frame and additional mount points with thinner and denser body mounts as compared to the sedans. On the other hand the 4 door hardtop had the fewest mounts and extra metal and braces in the body. Your service manual, body manual and parts manual should give clues for the differences. It will be interesting to see how it will look when finished and how it stands up to use.

Willie

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hahaha :D:p just playing around with you folks ... I would never do that to the car.

The original roof had far too much deep pitted rust on it. We could have cleaned it up and re used it but the pitted rust always comes back to bite us here in Sri Lanka, no matter how well we clean and treat the steel. I guess its the high humidity.

So I imported a beautiful rust free roof from USA and welded that on :o

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New and old roofs side by side

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New roof

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Here's the old girl sporting her new rust free roof

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Guest 53 Roady

My 57 Olds was in the shop for a year and a half. It had been wrecked everywhere but the top. They were doing a great job but one day Rick called out of the blue and said "We couldn,t help ourselves last night". I asked what he meant. "Well, we painted it black". I knew they weren't crazy about the original pink so I said "Oh...".Rick said" Well there's more. "What?", I asked. "Well, we chopped the top". He got me good.

Pat

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well at that stage, all the rust on the main body shell had been cut out and replaced with hand made panels, the unbolt-able panels like the doors and fenders have been replaced with good rust free panels imported from USA and the roof has been replaced.

So next stage... off goes the body again from the chassis..

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and onto the rotisserie she goes.

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Gets pushed outside..

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and blasted clean !!

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After the body was blasted back to bare metal, it was primed immediately

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Then seam sealer on all the seams on the body

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Next, stone chip and corrosion protection both inside and out.

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Then a coat of spray filler and paste filler over that. the paste filler gets sanded down so that it only remains on any small indentations in the body. We do not leave a whole layer of paste filler on the entire body

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Wow Ceejay! You have come a long way in 5 years. Please keep us updated in the future.

Happy New Years to you and your family!

Thanks Doug and a Happy new year to you and yours too !

Actually the progress shown up to the last set of photos above, has taken exactly 2 and a half years.

Progress since then has not been as good as I want but I had stopped them working on the car because I had them working on my 1960 Pontiac 4 door hard top.

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Since the car is going to get painted a shade of Orange color, the body gets painted in an orange color on the under side and the inside and then gets placed on the blasted, primed and painted chassis.

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Next all the body panels get fitted back and they all get spray filler applied and the whole body leveled with all the panels in place.

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I have a photo of a car which I found in the web. It is a beautiful shade of orange and that is the the color I want my car to be... It is not a stock 58 Buick shade of orange so I had to keep mixing paint and applying on different panels till it looked like in the photo...

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Well, it looks different when I take a photo with my camera than it does in real life.. but I think I'v arrived at the shade of orange I would like the car to be.

The car is now painted in a base coat (not the correct shade) and is sanded back and ready to get pushed into the paint room to get painted... BUT, to do that, I need the suspension fitted up. All the new suspension parts have arrived from USA but I have got the mechanic busy working on my 1960 Pontiac so Ill let the car sit for now and start working on the engine... Pics to follow :-)

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Hi CeeJay

I'll never think about "hot tanking" an engine the same way after seeing your method!

Fantastic!

What kind of chemical is in there? How much juice did you apply to the barrel? and for how long?

Keep 'em coming! BTW, the fan is incorrect for that motor…. but you probably knew that.

mike

<script type="text/javascript" src="safari-extension://com.ebay.safari.myebaymanager-QYHMMGCMJR/c5ad9e5c/background/helpers/prefilterHelper.js"></script>

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Being your car is air conditioned it makes sense that the fan was changed out at some point. I know mine, even with out air, would run hot with just that four blade factory fan when idling too long in traffic after coming off the highway. My solution was to run a new three core rad and an auxiliary pusher fan on a switch when I occasionally needed it.

As to the orange colour you are painting it, here is a shot of an all original Special I met some time ago at one of our local cars shows. Admittedly not quite orange but a different Buick colour you don't often see. The car was his grandfathers which he inherited after his passing. He was willing to sell for $5,000.00 (cdn) but just wasn't good timing for me.:(

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Edited by dei (see edit history)
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Hi CeeJay

I'll never think about "hot tanking" an engine the same way after seeing your method!

Fantastic!

What kind of chemical is in there? How much juice did you apply to the barrel? and for how long?

Keep 'em coming! BTW, the fan is incorrect for that motor…. but you probably knew that.

mike

The "hot tank" contained caustic soda dissolved in water.

The Electrolysis was done with voltage ranging from 12 to 24 volts, maintaining the current draw at around 10 amps. Most of the items were in electrolysis over 24 hours.

The fan is from a 57 Nailhead with AC

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Being your car is air conditioned it makes sense that the fan was changed out at some point. I know mine, even with out air, would run hot with just that four blade factory fan when idling too long in traffic after coming off the highway. My solution was to run a new three core rad and an auxiliary pusher fan on a switch when I occasionally needed it.

As to the orange colour you are painting it, here is a shot of an all original Special I met some time ago at one of our local cars shows. Admittedly not quite orange but a different Buick colour you don't often see. The car was his grandfathers which he inherited after his passing. He was willing to sell for $5,000.00 (cdn) but just wasn't good timing for me.:(

The factory air cars always had a multi blade fan and a fan clutch. This fan is from a 57.

wow that was an amazingly low price he was asking for that car. I paid over $15,000 (cdn) for my wreck !!

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