1958buickforum.net

greetings fellow Buick enthusiasts, it is time for me to start a Member Project page of my own. here i will post photographic updates of my progress. ive had my '58 Special for about 3.5 years, so i will be posting alot of 'old' photos of progress in (abridged) chronological order until i get up to date. feel free to ask questions if you see something that needs clarification. any kind of feedback, suggestions or criticism is welcome!

enjoy.

-David

02/14/2006 - bought my four-door Special on eBay. here are a few photos from the auction. it has been repainted (in similar colors as original) sometime, perhaps in the late '80s. as you can tell, it has kept the sheet metal in pretty decent shape; not much rust at all. the frame/undercarriage is in great condition as well.

here are some photos from my carburetor rebuild--its a 2 bbl Carter WGD. if anyone needs any detailed photos of a WGD disassembly, i have extensive photographic documentation.

Glad to see you've started this thread...I'll keep an eye on it!

as one might expect with a 50 year old car, alot of the electrical systems & accessories were non-functioning when i bought my Special. some problems were as simple as replacing a dead bulb or a fuse, but others--like the tail/reverse lights--were quite infuriating. i ended up rewiring both tail light clusters. the drivers side cluster was functional after that, but the passenger side still didnt work. i had to remove the light socket from the reflector and grind off the corrosion that had built up. it was preventing a complete circuit because it wasnt grounded to the housing. the frustration paid off in the end; here are the fruits of the labor.
(in the second photo you can see the wires running out of the trunk because i hadnt bolted the unit in yet--i was expecting it have to remove it again for more troubleshooting.)

the first time i changed the oil in the 364 Nailhead, i was horrified to find there was NO oil filter in the canister. whoever changed it last just didnt bother to install one, and from the look of it, it had been a LONG time since the last oil change. needless to say, the oil filter canister was literally filled with sludge. yuck.

here are before & after photos of the canister. note the thickness of the sludge in the 'before' shot--i had wiped around the rim to see how thick it really was, and you can definitely see the difference.

Update: i recently bought a house with a garage, so now i have a place to store my Buick. until today, i had my '58 Special parked at a storage unit... not the greatest place (especially with no electricity), but i didnt have much of a choice while living in an apartment. today i drove the Buick several miles across town and parked it in my garage. here are the photos:

It is great having a garage at the house, isn't it? My problem is that I can only fit three cars in a four car garage (lots of junk in there too) and I have three other cars under cover outside. I need a big shop building...

it is wonderful having a garage, i just went out there to look at my Special, just because i could!

one of the houses for sale here had a huge garage, complete with a mechanic's pit in the floor! too bad the house wasnt what we were looking for...

sometime in the past, it appears a battery leaked out and ate the battery tray and half the inner fender. nothing like seeing the tire when opening the hood... the photo of the damage is from the eBay auction (i forgot to take a better picture). i got a used, intact battery tray/inner fender on ebay. removing the rusted panel was easy, but getting the new one in was quite a challenge. i REALLY didnt want to start taking off other body panels since it was still parked at the storage unit at the time, so after a couple hours of angling and re-angling, i somehow managed to get the 'new' panel into the right spot. im still not quite sure how i did it...

I'm impressed that you were able to replace that without taking the fender off.

yeah, i tried so many different angles, i dont even remember how i got it in there.
nothing was damaged in the process either, though i believe i used the metal's inherent flexibility and 'memory' for some good, old-fashioned elastic deformation.

Cool! The old tray/inner fender was pretty eaten away!

Was there anything else damaged by the battery acid?

What are your long term goals for the car? Make it mechanically sound and enjoy as is? Or like me, foolishly start a frame off restoration on a 4 door?

the battery acid toasted a few bolts that held the inner fender/battery tray onto the other body panels, but those were easy to replace. it also caused a bit of accelerated oxidation on the radiator surround, but not enough to compromise the structural integrity... i will replace that eventually, but im not worried about catastrophic failure. so, the majority of the damage was, thankfully, just on the inner fender/battery tray that was replaced. i looked underneath the battery tray to see if there was any apparent damage from dripping of acid through the tray, but could see nothing out of the ordinary. my hypothesis is that the car was parked for an extended period of time and the battery slowly corroded the metal.

as for my long-term goals, i would love nothing more to fully restore the car to its original beauty ('Buick is a Beauty Too' ). however, due to current monetary constraints (mainly from just buying a house), i am forced proceed with the 'a little at a time' method and see where it goes. in the mean time, i can still enjoy the car as is.

here in the midwest, weve been hammered the past few days with loads of snow. the garage comes in handy once again, and the Buick is thankful!