Classic Hifi Care

While you guys are going on about Packards and Cadillacs, I'm getting by with my Fords and Chevy. The Chevy has spent the whole 2nd half of the summer at the new transmission shop. The problem with an X-frame car is that many lifts won't fit. The shops need to use the drive-on lift. And this shop's drive-on was out of service. I called every 2 weeks to remind them that I was waiting and my winter storage guy wanted the car stored in Oct. Last Monday Bob told me that he was waiting for a parts delivery and then asked who had worked on it before. He was not impressed. Old parts used; one part missing; several leaks; shoddy work all around. That was no surprise. The last shop was messy (bad sign) and the owner was always blaming problems on somebody else. But the target was getting it done by Friday. "Call me Thursday." I'm hoping.... If it's ready I'll take Friday off work and drive down to pay the ransom and rescue the car. The sailboat comes out on Monday so I need to get at least one last sail in and the un-rigging done, plus I need to drain the pipes at the cottage My neighbor will help me raise the repaired flag pole after I made a concrete base for it last weekend. Too much for one weekend.

Chris Campbell

GM called the "X-frame" Cruciform. Body shops called them "Crucified" because if you were in a side-impact crash, you stood a good chance of a crucifiction happening to you. The four-door hardtops that I loved so much were not good in a side impact collision. Buick tells you not to lift a Cruciform frame Buick on a frame-contact lift. The driveshaft passes thru the rear part of the frame and will contact the frame when the rear axle drops. The proper procedure is to use a wheel lift with provisions to lift the front or rear of the car as needed for access. You can't remove the rear wheels on a Buick unless you raise the rear of the frame and let the axle dangle a bit so the wheels can be removed from under the fender. My guess is that the shorter wheelbase cars may not have been so critical about this. The shop was right, in my experience, to not hoist your Chevy on a frame contact lift.

You were saying that the job done on your Chevy's Powerglide was not very good. That stands to reason given all the issues you had, most notably the shifting situation. I will keep a good thought that this shop can sort the issues and that your Chevy can once again be dependable for you to enjoy. The Buick is going in next week to a shop I have not done business with before. Anxious moments may lie ahead.......

As you were raised with sailboats and classical music, I was raised with Buick and Packard being as much a part of my life as sunshine and rain. Grandpa worked for Buick and all his considerable family drove GM cars, Buicks, Olds, Pontiacs. Grandma's people were all school teachers and drove Packards. They might have had a Dodge or a Studebaker to drive "for work", but you can bet old man Anderson and each of his six kids had a Packard in the garage. Grandma never drove grandpa's Buicks. She rode in them, but when she drove, she drove her Packard. I was hauled home from the hospital in grandma's new 1950 Custom Eight with Ultramatic. It was black with gray whipcord interior. Grandma always ran black wall tires on her Packards. She considered whitewalls "showy". I reckon it wasn't showy to drive a Packard Custom Eight......

Been through all of this. My 57 cadillac was the first car with the X frame. Lifting it incorrectly would twist the frame and crack the windshield. And if the center section rusted, forget it.

BTW: WE'RE ALL built on an X frame!!!!!

Yeah, but we don't rust.

Or at least, we're not supposed to...

electra225 wrote: ↑Thu Oct 12, 2023 4:24 am Buick tells you not to lift a Cruciform frame Buick on a frame-contact lift. The driveshaft passes thru the rear part of the frame and will contact the frame when the rear axle drops. The proper procedure is to use a wheel lift with provisions to lift the front or rear of the car as needed for access. You can't remove the rear wheels on a Buick unless you raise the rear of the frame and let the axle dangle a bit so the wheels can be removed from under the fender.

My Chevy has a double, center-bearing driveshaft. I assume it can be lifted without damaging the drive train, because the car--as they all did then, came with a bumper jack. I'll yell--A BUMPER JACK!!!!

Who invented those abominations? It's bad enough that they were made of flimsy stamped sheet metal and were prone to failure when you put weight on them. You had to raise the car body far enough to run out of suspension travel so the tire would eventually leave the ground.They always terrified me. I invested in scissors jacks to stash in the trunks. But as Greg noted, on some cars you needed to hoist the body anyway to let the tire clear the rear wheel well opening. It was not a problem on my '60s Oldsmobiles, with big round wheel arches, but the Chevy is another matter.

Apart from being inadequate at raising heavy objects, they were also the body shop's friend. Often enough the bumper or its brackets would crunch the body sheet metal and mess up the paint if you used the jack to raise the car (which, of course, was its purpose). No wonder the Japanese ate our lunch when they first started importing their well-engineered, precisely-built little cars. My '80 Datsun came with a scissors jack and wheel chocks, all of which I still have out in the shop. They are in the nice vinyl tool pouch that they came in. The car has gone to the great scrap smelter in the sky, but its tools live on.

All of which reminds me that I need to buy a scissors jack to put in the Chevy's trunk.

Chris Campbell

The Buick also has a two-piece driveshaft. When you use a frame lift, the rear half of the driveshaft can contact the frame, thereby tearing up the center carrier bearing and/or bending the rear half of the driveshaft. The wheelbase on my Buick is longer than your Chevy, so perhaps the Chevy driveshaft is not in danger using a frame lift.

When did Buick stop using its torque tube?

Chris Campbell

1960 was the last Buick with a torque tube. I have told the story about the Super Turbine transmission that was supposed to be introduced on the 1961 models. Buick engineers, utilizing the old Cadillac Dynaflow conversion hardware from the Hydra-Matic plant fire in 1953 to hastily convert Dynaflow to open driveshaft for 1961. They used that setup with the Cruciform frame thru the 1963 models. The '64's had Cruciform, but they also had the new Super Turbine transmission. Buick engineers tested an all-aluminum version of the 425 V-8 with turbocharging, but the bean counter put the kaibash on that project.

The Chevy was ransomed from the transmission shop today. I drove around doing errands in light rain without windshield wipers and tomorrow morning it goes to storage. Next summer I aim for top-down driving.

Chris Campbell

Did they do the repairs to your satisfaction? I think this has been discussed before, but I'm old and forgetful. Why no wipers?

Bill

How did the Powerglide shift? Okay, I hope. IIRC, the wiper motor has a wonky park switch, is my memory foggy? Are they single-speed or dual-speed wipers? Overlapping wipers? Did they get the leaks stopped? Curious (and nosy) minds want to know......

I drove the Buick 100 miles the other day. The plan is to put 1000 miles on it this winter. Deputy Frank is "sitting" on the main artery out of San Tan Valley, looking for "campers" in the inside lane. Guess where I drive the Buick.

The new shop was critical of the craftsmanship (lack thereof) at the last shop. One repair required our old friend, JB Weld, because the last shop had nicked a casting. Another part had to be replaced because they had drilled out a ball check valve. I did not get a lot of test driving done because my storage guy wants the car in during Oct., so it went in this a.m. It's wet and nasty today and that takes the sting out of putting it away.

I had a couple odd shifts but I'll wait until next spring to follow up. The guy who runs the shop said to let him know.

There are no windshield wipers because they are not working. It's probably a relay inside the housing and disassembly requires removing the engine. Just kidding, but it does require removing lots of stuff. Meanwhile, on advice of this list, I'm relying on Rain-X.

Chris Campbell

electra225 wrote: ↑Sat Oct 21, 2023 3:40 pm How did the Powerglide shift? Okay, I hope. IIRC, the wiper motor has a wonky park switch, is my memory foggy? Are they single-speed or dual-speed wipers? Overlapping wipers? Did they get the leaks stopped? Curious (and nosy) minds want to know......

Yup, a park switch issue in two-speed wipers. First they won't go on, then they won't go off.

The trans. guy said "It's not going to leak now."

Your goal may be 1,000 miles but mine for next summer is to drive around with the top down. If you have a convertible, that's the trade you make--more noise with top up but the glory of driving in open air when it's down.

Chris Campbell

Two-speed wipers were an option on a Chevy. They were standard on the "C"bodies. So you would also have the overlapping wipers. Those are better. The park switch many times suffers from the old record changer malady, dried grease. You have to pull the wiper motor to effect the repair, but it's not a bad job. Getting that sheet metal that is under the wipers off so you can get to the motor bolts might be the trickiest part of the job. I use Rain-X on the windshield of the Buick so the wiper blades don't fog the glass. I put a piece of black tape on the contacts of the wiper motor so it won't run, but still appears to be connected.

electra225 wrote: ↑Sat Oct 21, 2023 4:31 pm You have to pull the wiper motor to effect the repair, but it's not a bad job. Getting that sheet metal that is under the wipers off so you can get to the motor bolts might be the trickiest part of the job.

That, yes, deterred me. And isn't there a special GM tool for removing those wiper arms? My car need a re-application of Rain-X after sitting outside for extended periods this summer at the shop.

Chris Campbell

Ironically, when we got the car done, the first show we went to we had to leave early due to the threat of rain. It started raining on the way home with my wife driving. She spent almost two hours under the McClintock Road bridge while the rain stopped and the roads dried. She got nary a drop on the Buick anywhere. We also had a white '63 Electra 4-door hardtop then and I was driving it. I pulled it under a canopy at a bank drive-in out of the rain. But, for the most part, you're right. The chances of getting in rain here with that car are pretty slim.

The internal switch (I believe the same for all GM.) occasionally pops up on ebay. I needed one for my car. Wipers wouldn't park.