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A text message while out sorting a car….and another car adventure begins….


edinmass

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1 hour ago, sbergharris said:

You didn't post pictures of the cigarette butts.  LOL😄


I will when I get back from Pebble and San Morino. 

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  • 3 weeks later...

Well…….back down south. Lots happening with the Buick. It’s been the opposite of the 1917 White. We have been getting our ass kicked at every turn. This thing seems to be the evil twin of Matt Harwood’s Lincoln. We stopped smashing our head against the wall when fixing the problems….so that way it feels like we are making progress. First time in years I have ever seen Phil back off and shake his head. We slowly worked our way through things and are now headed in the right direction. Photos and more in a little while.

Edited by edinmass (see edit history)
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Ed: 

 Welcome to my BUICK world. Over the years with my car it has always been one step forward... two steps back. I posted elswhere about having to rebuild my rear wheels and finally getting all the wheels the samer color. Oops.... I did something to make her look better.... what will be the next issue that will set me back? The oil pressure on my rebuilt engine (with rebuilt, rebushed oil pump) is now fluctuating between 5 and 15 lbs. On right hand turns it drops to 0. Over the nearly 1,000 miles driven since the rebuild it had been pretty steady at 22lbs. I believe an oil feeder line joint has opened up.

This will be the 3rd time since the rebuild I have had to dig into the bottom end.

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10 hours ago, dibarlaw said:

Ed: 

 Welcome to my BUICK world. Over the years with my car it has always been one step forward... two steps back. I posted elswhere about having to rebuild my rear wheels and finally getting all the wheels the samer color. Oops.... I did something to make her look better.... what will be the next issue that will set me back? The oil pressure on my rebuilt engine (with rebuilt, rebushed oil pump) is now fluctuating between 5 and 15 lbs. On right hand turns it drops to 0. Over the nearly 1,000 miles driven since the rebuild it had been pretty steady at 22lbs. I believe an oil feeder line joint has opened up.

This will be the 3rd time since the rebuild I have had to dig into the bottom end.

 

You may be welcoming him now but you will be wanting to show him the door soon enough.

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51 minutes ago, alsancle said:

 

You may be welcoming him now but you will be wanting to show him the door soon enough.

 

You're only saying that because it's true. Even my loved ones don't like me. 

 

 

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Dave,

         I prefer dealing with a better class of people, so I mostly talk to myself. It’s a great reality. It’s the voices in my head that give me pause…………..😎

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 8/3/2022 at 10:42 PM, edinmass said:

I could be wrong…….sure looks like a 1932 Cadillac automatic clutch…….I know Buick called it Wizard  Control…..sure is a bunch of vacuum lines under the hood……. The vacuum advance in 1934 surprise me. 

Ed,

Can you please post a few photos of the vacuum-powered equipment in Phils car?

 

I have been doing more research, and the 1934 Buick had both vacuum-powered clutch and vacuum-powered brake assist.

 

What I am trying to determine if these two items were on all models, and if the power clutch was for the entire model year, or if it was discontinued at some point mid production.

 

I can send pics of what these items look like, but I suspect you gents have already gone through the car at this point and have touched these items if they were both originally installed.

 

1932 Buick = Wizard Control vacuum-powered, foot-operated clutch.

1933 Buick = an 'improved' version of the vacuum-powered, foot-operated clutch.

1934 Buick = a 'further improved' version of the vacuum-powered, HAND-operated clutch.

 

Thanks,

Mario

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Mario……I will take some photos. We have been pounding on the car day and night. It will probably be running early next week. Cadillac used a similar item in 1932 to the Wizard Control. I have worked on a few of them. But it was thirty years ago. I’ll give some more background on the car and what has been going on soon…….

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This is a mechanical, vacuum, and electrical switch for the 34. It engages the starter by stepping on the throttle all the way. Also I have eyeballed the brake booster. Looks like a Briggs Kellog unit off a later Pierce or Lincoln. Lots of pot metal……..more joy. Phil and I have decided to disconnect all the vacuum lines for initial start up, as we expect lots of leaks in the components.

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6 minutes ago, edinmass said:

If it makes anyone feel better, this car has been kicking our ass big time. 

Don't lose sight of the joys of working on such an unmolested car....when you punch the clock for the end of the day, modern bloody busted knuckles and brain teasers can be an interesting reverie into the lives of the original factory assembly line workers and designers...

 

I am especially curious as to why the owner parked this fine car many years ago...

 

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More Buick progress………Obviously when we took it home, we expected to put ten hours in it and have it running. Figured 80 hours total to get it reliably down the road. One hundred hours in……….and we should be running in another 25. And figure 250 more to cross the finish line. So much for an easy make it run, and get it sorted quick. Valve job is finished. Was surprised to find the head had been off in the past, and some but not all valves were replaced. The evapo rust heated flush treatment worked well in the head. While not perfectly clean, it was very decent. We have done a bunch of very temporary repairs just to be sure it will run and have a good lower end. Had our confidence shaken a few times. Now have it all figured out. With Hershey coming up, and a tour right afterwards, it may not be till late October before this thing goes down the road. The head is surprisingly heavy for a small engine. Nothing on this car has been easy…….and I expect it will fight us the entire way to the finish line. Here are photos of the head reassembled with the valve job finished. In keeping with a HPOV vision, we only moderately clean things so they won’t look out of place in the future.

 

 

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Ed the head weight is the same as it was when you were twenty five. It just feels heavier now that you are in your fifties. It is even heavier to someone like me in our seventies. Isn’t it great to know what the future has in store for you! 
dave s 

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Let’s see……compression,check. Fuel, check, spark, check. It WILL run. What it makes for noise is yet to be determined. 

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Something tells me that neither Ed or Phil are surprised it's taking longer than their optimistic hopes predicted. We can always have hope but I'd guess that about 98% of the time it dosen't work out...that is, unless it's a cut-and-dried job that you've done many times. No matter how skilled you are a car like this is always going to throw some curve balls. But...it's worth it.

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4 minutes ago, George K said:

Perfect timing now you can hop in and get out of the way of that big ass storm heading your way.


My flight to Hershey may get screwed up………I hate to drive 1500 miles………I will be there. Just depends what my mood will be. 

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More later…….ran the car today for half an hour. Shifted it through the gears up on jack stands. Oil pressure is good. Not overheating so far……the evapo rust pre treatment worked great. Generator is charging. Overall everything is progressing easier now. 

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49 minutes ago, edinmass said:

More later…….ran the car today for half an hour. Shifted it through the gears up on jack stands. Oil pressure is good. Not overheating so far……the evapo rust pre treatment worked great. Generator is charging. Overall everything is progressing easier now. 

Dynamic is better than static. Sounds like the tough stuff is in the rear view mirror. Hope it drives as nice as it looks.

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Ok, time for a long overdue diatribe on the Buick…………thoughts, observations, ext……

 

 

Its fairly interesting that we got involved with this thing unexpectedly. I figured I would withhold judgment until we ran it. It was LOTS more work……..(read as time) than I expected. We never got under the car in the garage for a bunch of reasons, and that certainly cost us 40 hours and aggravation. In the end, it was probably for the best. The car now has a new clutch, throw out bearing, and assorted accoutrements. Transmission has been flushed a few times. New seals on the torque tube ball, that kind of thing. 
 

Once we finished the under car…….we went under hood. Just the absolute minimum to be sure we had a runner…….so we did a few end arounds to get it to the point it would run. That under hood was a surprise. I was certain we would dump some fuel in it and fire it off………NOT! Took a while to figure things out. What we initially thought were stuck valves were stuck rockers and valves. Hindsight is 20/20, and we could have gotten away without the valve job but it would have been a half assed repair. The rockers were 99 percent of the problem. It took hours and about 80 percent of my mechanical talent to get the rocker shaft apart without absolutely ruining the entire thing……and still it was a close call on needing a parts engine. Long story short, we did a valve job……..and was surprised to find it had been done some time ago pre 1960, and probably during the war from what we could tell. Car has 60k on the clock. They replaced four valves………kind of stupid back in the day……….but everything looked to have been well done. No missing parts or hardware anywhere under the hood. The rockers have babbitt lined bushings and they swelled up over the 60 years of sitting, thus the stuck rockers. The car has to be the greasiest thing I have ever worked on……no surface rust……but the cars nickname is “filthy”. It’s an understatement! While pulling the head, we were on the do nothing that isn’t necessary to see if the engine would live………rebuilt the starter, went through the cooling system including pump and evapo rust hot treatment. Oil cooler was a pain in the ass. Hoses, total go through of the secondary ignition system, and after a close look at the distributor I pulled it and went through that also. Fan belt was in shreds, and had to pull the fan assembly and rebuild it also. Everything else was “done dirty” using the old manifold gaskets, hooking up a pony fuel system without touching the carb, you get the idea……..fast and dirty. We oiled the cylinders for a few weeks, and pressure pot flushed the entire oiling system with ATF. Cleaned the entire top end and side galleries. Flushed gallons through the engine washing it clean.  Dumped in a old 6 volt battery laying around, using the trashed factory battery cables………did a quick compression check, filled up the carb…….and hit the starter. Fired off in three turns……and no smoke to our surprise. Carb was puking, and we hot wired the car to start it. Had 30 pounds of pressure in less than two seconds…..obviously from the pressure pot prime. Ran it till it was warm with no coolant and then retorqued the head. ………..more to follow after dinner……

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Time is quite the taskmaster. When I started seriously working on antique automobiles as a hobby (I was barely fifteen!), that car was abut 35 years old. I first-started-in-decades a half dozen different cars over about twenty years. A few of those cars hadn't run in fifteen or twenty years. One or two, were closer to forty years since they had been run. Storage conditions make a big difference of course! However, regardless of storage conditions, time does take its toll. That car is now nearly ninety years old, and may not have been run in nearly half a century?

 

Congratulations on breathing life into the old girl!

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Ed, it's really interesting to hear about this.  And as frustrating as it must be to have to spend all that time on it, it must be cool to be able to fix it — and hey, it's better than being the guy who pays the bill when someone else fixed it and found it was a lot more work than expected!).

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Well…….it moved three feet today. Tomorrow morning we are taking it for coffee. Wonder if it will make a round trip. The tires are 60 years old and would scare the hell out of you. Since we are not very bright, we’re going for it! 👍

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