Buick brakes all most done

Ok, first it was the waverunner and now Buick stuff. I'm fabricating stuff for the Buick since you just can't go call up a place and have new parts delivered to your doorstep. The 1961-63 Buick Specials (and other BOP cars) were the red-headed step children of the GM family. The only good thing that I suppose came from everything was the 215 V8 that went onto become the 3.5L Range Rover motors, that even eventually wound up in the MG's. Talk about coming full circle?

I've got the brake lines up and going. I'm adapting a Ford Granada dual master cylinder to my early brake setup. The hardest part so far has been adapting the pedal rod. I've had three attempts at this before settling on something that I think will work. That's the hard part of working on something -- figuring out what will work. We'll see how all this goes together tonight, hopefully getting brakes back on it. I'm hoping that with brakes and some cosmetic things, this will make the car easier to sell. I don't know if it will or not, but we'll see. At the very least, it's giving me a lot of practice on welding and fabrication work. I can cut in some new pieces on the rear quarter of the Buick to give me some more welding skills on the MGB frame.

Doc report

Ok . . . so I broke down and went to a doctor for my back. He confirmed the obvious . . . I'm not a teenager anymore. Boy, that was a shocker. He said I probably pulled a muscle and affected a nerve. That would explain the shooting pain that feels like someone has driven a railroad spike from my back to my front . . . and out my ribs. He said he did something similar putting a door up . . . suprise, he's got the mind of a 25 year old, but not the body of one (He's in his late 40's?). I was sitting there thinking . . . 25? That was SOOO ten years ago. Yike! I am old. My first time that I was slapped with reality was when I went to the amusement park. I was moseying along and these two cute girls came up and asked "Sir -- do you know what time it is?" Oh, the horror . . . and that happened about TEN years ago. I've completely bypassed the cool era. I'm just about into the mid-life crisis time frame. Sad but true. (At right . . . my FOUR year old daughter . . . already driving.)

So, there I've blown my HIPPA privacy crap all to heck . . . he put me on two Alleve in the morning and two at night. He said to take it easy for SIX TO EIGHT WEEKS! That's just not possible . . . I mean I have a car to work on. *Sigh*

So this weekend is supposed to be all rainy and crappy. Friday night it was pretty noisy from the thunder and rain. I imagine we got about 2 inches or so of rain. I decided it was time to get the Buick in the dry if I was going to work on it. I did some shuffling and low and behold -- I got both cars in the garage. I just gotta remember, if I'm going to have cars, they can't be much heavier than the MGB . . . the Morris Minor was light enough to slide the rear end by hand. (We literally lifted it up on the ramps when it left to straighten it.) Here's a pic of the "fleet" in the garage. The only left in the driveway is the daily drivers, and the Dakota. Maybe I need to get the Dakota done first . . . so far there's been few takers on the Buick. I just saw a two door Skylark that went for $2300 . . . with some scallops and about 42,000 miles. Figures . . . two extra doors and it's not worth $1600? My car is in a lot better shape than that.

(More pics online via new Google Album)

Yea . . . the license plate says it all. You've gotta have a good woman to put up with all the crap I put her thru. This car is her car, even if she doesn't think so. Where we'll stick the kids . . . I don't know. Of course, in another 4-6 years my son will be beyond "riding with the parents". The daughter will have a few more years before that, but someday she'll get to that age too. By then I'll be . . . . let me think . . . REALLY FREAKIN' OLD. Ugh. Oh well, I'm going to have fun till they slide me in the ground. Like the saying goes, I want to slide sideways into the grave at the end going "Wow -- what a ride", used up and smokin'. I think I've got that "used up" part done on the ol' back already. :)

Slowly but surely

Ok -- so I'm going to need money to get the MGB on the road and my old Buick (clever -- no?) is going to need to be out the door one of these days. I had started on the brakes on the old girl last year, but got sidetracked along the way . . . 100+ degree days with 1000% humidity will do that to you. When it was all said and done, it was just easier to roll it out of the way rather than spend time working on it. This spring/summer was the waverunner and boat stuff . . . so now I'm finally able to get some time to work on the car. I had one side back together and the other apart, so getting everything together and remembering how it went was a bit of a stretch. Luckily I had bought a 1961 Buick Special Deluxe shop manual and could reference it for the brakes. While working I found an interesting bit . . . the brake shoe snafu of the primary one being the short one, not the long one like you'd think. The primary shoe is the one on the front of the wheel and for some reason, it's the short one. I knew I had the passenger side wrong . . . afterall, I didn't read the manual and didn't take pics of how it came apart.


Let me tell you, my memory hadn't faded on how much of a pain the little springs are on those PITA things. The springs to hold the shoes on can be really fun. Here I'm using the tool for the springs to go chasing after the one retainer spring that has tried to fly the coup by bouncing off my head and then rolling to the middle of the car. (Tip: Always wear safety goggles for anything that could have objects hurtling at high speeds towards your eyeballs . . . there's enough ways to go blind without something silly like a spring sticking out of them.)



So after some extreme cursing fits, some creative tool usage, and my more than my fair share of cuts/bruises . . . I ended up getting the brakes back together on both sides . . . on just the front. I still have to do the rear. Ugh. After this much practice, maybe the back drums will be a lot easier. Yea right . . . I'm having some landing lights installed to guide the flying primates forming a squadron out of my a**.

Oww . . . oww . . . . oh the pain . . .

Remember the distraction of the waverunner? When I put the seat back on it after blowing the last piston I really wrenched my back. This week I thought maybe it was getting better this week. I had an installation (Blue Springs Masonic Lodge) to go to this weekend, so the wife went down to the lake and I stayed here to work on cars and go to that. I worked Friday and Saturday on my old Buick . . . finishing the brakes from long ago. I realized while doing the brakes that the primary shoe (on drum brakes on this GM car) is not the big shoe, it's actually the smaller shoe. I did the drivers side and then went back and re-did the passenger side, since I knew I had put those on backwards. I also tried to get the shock mount fixed with a cool little fix-it kit. The shock mount took several hours of fits of rage . . . so I gave up and decided to bleed the brakes. The rear passenger side bleeder worked fine, but the driver side rear stripped. DOH! After that fiasco (still not done) I decided to work in the garage.

I was up and down, back and forth while working on the car, and was getting sore. I found I was even more sore while lifting up some new cabinets on the wall. I was really having a bad day as the plastic anchors for the cabinets were not working right. I went to bed and decided I'd hit in the morning. The next day I got the cabinet up, and was doing the second one and had a searing pain in my back. It literally knocked the wind out of me. I gingerly laid in a chair for a while, then I came up and watched "The Worlds Fastest Indian" on the big screen. (I first saw it on my tiny 7 inch one on the boat . . . not the same effect.) My stupid waverunner experience has now led to another week of agony as my back is very sore. I don't know what's wrong exactly with it, but it feels like some spasms and other problems going on. I causes pain all the way around to my chest and ribcage, so it's gonna be something big I suppose. Figures. I've got stuff scattered around the garage, a car in the driveway with no brakes . . .and the yard needs mowed and recycle stuff needs taken out. *Sigh* Freakin' waverunner.

Fruits of my labor

Ok -- it's not very much to look at it . . . and it's not even shiny (I used Krylon Flat Black), but it's painted and ready to go back on the car. The old gasket that goes on the thing was very krusty and non-existent . . . which probably just provided a nice waterfall effect into the drivers floorboard and lead to it's subsequent demise. The pedals come up into this box (the covered area) and without proper sealing I'm sure things can be ugly.

The next victim . . . err . . . subject, in my remake is going to be the master cylinders that go into this contraption. The brake master cylinder seems to be in good condition, even pumping fluid by hand. I have a rebuild kit already here -- supplied in my box of goodies from the PO. The clutch and it's slave seem to be another story, and I'm afraid it might be kind of ugly whether it can come apart to be worked on. The clutch master cylinder seems to be rusted and stuck in the bore. I've applied a variety of penetrating lubricants and I've polished out surface rust, but as of yet it still hasn't budged. I'm probably going to get some stuff together and see if I can't extract a little more pressure in the form of some hydraulic persuasion to see if that will get it moving. One suggestion has been to rig up some line to a grease gun and use it to push the thing out. Another suggestion was air pressure, but from other comments, it sounds like the air pressure route might make the piston into a mini-torpedo when it does break free. Not my idea of something I'm wanting to dodge. We'll see what happens with the grease gun idea.

Fantasy . . . dreaming about something four wheeled

I like this photo -- lifted from a 2003 pic from a Texas MGB website . . . GIMP'ed (free Photoshop) by me. I like the lines and flow of the early MGB's. The stick-on stuff to meet U.S. laws became more and more ludicrous, culminating in the rubber bumper version to meet bumper safety laws and such. (Not to knock those cars!!!) I would like to peel back the car a bit and give it some more flair like the earlier coupes had. I don't know that I'll go for wire wheels, but giving the car some of my own touches will make it my own. Yea, the purists might thumb their nose at it and pick apart the flaws, but I'm not driving it to take it to a Barrett-Jackson auction. I'm driving it because it's a cool old car. It's not a numbers matching barn-yard find or a coddled and pampered show queen. Nothing wrong with either . . . but if they're just to become another cog in a balance sheet for someone else, it's not quite my cup of tea. So to speak.

Oooo -- I'm painting stuff . . . don't worry, I'm not inhaling

I'm off to build the brakes back first. I was going to toss everything together but then I sat back and thought . . . when am I going to have time to take it back apart and make it pretty? So, I'm very carefully taking my time here and making things a bit prettier while proceeding. Last night I sanded the pedals down and primed/painted them. Tonight I did the same to the pedal box and cover. The pedal box and cover were pretty filthy. I took a wire wheel in the drill and sandpaper and attacked things as best I could. I even knocked the 33+ year old welding spatter off the pedal box. The pedals have turned out pretty nice. I'll soon have the rest painted also, I'm using flat black . . . it shows less flaws that way.


I can't wait to start getting things back together for the brakes . . . I'm anxious to see how much work they'll need to make them operational. If I can get the clutch and brakes together, I could even take a little victory drive in and out the garage under it's own power . . . . as long as I keep my feet up out of the floorboard. Maybe I'll wait on that.

The welder is just sitting patiently in the corner . . . I want to weld on something SOOO bad . . . . I bought some new welding clamps the other day also. They were some $3.99 cheapies from Big Lots . . . Made In China stamped all over them. If I was building cars for a living, I'd give the nod to some quality American made versions. Instead, I'll circulate a few dollars in my local economy at least.

My last bit of progress was another concession in the interest of "cheap" . . . . it was a PDF of the factory manual that I printed . . . all 416 pages worth. It barely fits in the 3-ring binder I had on the shelf. This will be a great addition to working on the car . . . . but once I have some more money coming in, I will eventually buy a bound copy also. Laser printers are very handy.

Interruption written off . . . back to cars

Ok, so like I said before, I've been playing wave runner mechanic all summer and I can say with a fair bit of certainty that I'm not real great at it. It's not for a lack of trying . . . I did everything but stand on my head a whistle Dixie out my a** to try to get this thing to run right. I got about an hour and a half of good running from it on Saturday night . . . and then poof . . . nothing more on Sunday. I checked compression and sure enough, cylinder 1 (magneto side) was as holy as swiss cheese. This lead to the interesting jux position on owners that I'm dealing with. The wave runner was something that someone just flat mislead another on . . . versus the MGB which was, just what I got. It wasn't sugar coated or made to be any more than what it was. You can see in the pic, the time the MGB's previous owner took to bag and label parts . . . very handy to put things back together. The other pic shows what the wave runner's previous owner did to just get the thing patched back together long enough for sale. Sad.

Minor interruption in progress . . .

ARGH! I've done nothing but play wave runner mechanic all summer it seems like. We bought a 1994 Polaris "Fix or Repair Daily" 750 SLT. I spent about a month stripping the old decals and ugliness from it and redoing it . . . then I went onto mechanical repairs . . . and I'm STILL doing that. My latest misadventure has been figuring out the lack of fuel problem that previously toasted one of the pistons in the beast. Here (at right) I've made a setup to check the pop-off pressure on the carbs. Since a waverunner operates in a variety of positions, having a regular float type carb would be nearly impossible. Instead it uses a diaphram and spring type arrangement to keep fuel in check. The main part of this is a spring that keeps tension on a needle to keep the fuel from flooding the engine. As the vacuum changes on the engine it allows fuel to come in more freely. I was hoping I'd hit a revelation on why one cylinder seems lean, but alas . . . I'm still scratching my head. I dismantled all the carbs last night and cleaned them up and reassembled them. Tonight I'll put them back in the waverunner . . . a 1/4 turn at a time with nuts that you can't hand tighten. Ugh. This weekend it goes back for more testing on the water . . . hopefully to a good prognosis. Otherwise -- anyone have a match?

Tech Tip: Keeping a record

Ok, this is my first little handy tech tip -- and this might sound painfully obvious. Keep a record and build your own manual of stuff about your car. I've printed stuff from the Internet, copied wiring diagrams from manuals, and had various resources on a variety of cars through the years. Bookmarking a web site is great, until 3 years later you realize that the page is no longer there, a victim of someone changing ISP's or some other cruel web problem. That printed copy will prove even more valuable when your in the middle of BFE with no computer or Internet connection in sight.

My book already contains a color coded wiring diagram and other helpful tidbits that I've gleaned from the vast amount of great MGB web sites out there. A 3-ring binder and hole punch and your ready to roll. If you want to make sure your stuff remains pristine for years to come, some vinyl sheet protectors are a worthwhile investment too.

Go for main engine start . . . Houston we have liftoff!

Ok, I'm worse than a little kid. I got burned pretty bad this spring on a "running" waverunner. I spent a month+ on making it pretty and then got it to the lake and it wouldn't run. I didn't want to have that fiasco again, so I had to do it . . . I had to start the beast up. Guess what? IT RUNS!!!! It's a little pathetic sounding, but it's not adjusted in right and needs some TLC on the carbs, but it runs! I'm so happy. I've got great oil pressure, all the right sounds and no leaks. I had to get out and do the little "I started you up" jig in the driveway . . . my son (Justin) wanted to crawl under a rock. He was hoping no neighbors saw that little show. Heheh! He's not had the elation of something that looks like it should be shoved over into the crusher and have it breathing and firing under it's own power. That's a fun feeling. Now if only the brakes and clutch were done . . . I could at least putter back and forth in the driveway like I did with the Morris Minor. (It was missing the brakes also . . . funny how that happens!)

UPDATE: Now with SOUND! Enjoy! WAV

Ok -- so there's a little rust . . .

Driver's side:

Passenger Side:


But some areas aren't bad at all . . . .

Front:














And the trunk looks great -- rust free!

Trunk: