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April 13, 2003
2 hours

Sub-Assembly Disassembly

Julia's birthday was yesterday (Saturday), so I didn't get much done then, but I spent this afternoon sorting and organizing all the parts I've removed over the past few weeks. I put groups of parts (gauges,generator, starter, water pump, etc.) into boxes and prepared them to be shipped out to be rebuilt or exchanged. I also grouped the stuff that needs chrome plating together, and things that are already restored and ready to reinstall. In some cases, there were sub-assemblies that needed further disassembly before any additional work could be done, so I spent the rest of the day taking those apart.

The first assemblies that had to come apart were the parking lights. The housings are die-cast, and both the left and right housings need to be re-chromed. For chrome plating, if you don't take the piece apart, everything gets chromed into one solid mass--the chrome platers typically don't disassemble parts for you, and if they do, the chances of losing pieces goes up considerably.

The guts of the bulb socket are held in by a long carriage bolt that has the metal clip for the socket and sandwiches the diffusion lens into place at the front of the housing. Pulling that carriage bolt allowed me to remove most of the internals and the wiring (which I replaced once already).

Then I attacked the headlight buckets. You might remember how sad they looked (click here for a refresher) being caked with mud and asphalt as they were. I removed the retaining ring, unplugged the bulb and pulled the wiring out of the buckets. Then I chiseled the asphalt and old rubber gasket off the bucket and knocked the remaining junk off on the wire wheel. I'll blast the buckets and powder them semi-gloss black this week.

Headlight buckets and bulb housings just before blasting. I love my
blast cabinet. The single best tool I've ever bought.

There is also the bulb housing that seems to have been painted gray originally. I'll blast them, too, and powder them with one of the gray powders I have for the suspension. The bulb retaining rings are polished stainless and are in OK condition, but one of them has a pretty significant ding in it and they're both covered with several layers of paint. I think I'll just replace them--new ones are only $12 or so. I removed the headlight emblems that fit on the outer trim rings (called "doors" for some reason) and set them aside for rechroming. I already have new stainless doors ready to be installed.

I took a closer look at the horns. The horn dome is supposed to be high-gloss black, while the body of the horn is 30% gloss black, so I had to get them apart. There is a screw at the top of the dome which I removed and then the dome came right off. The guts of the horn are pretty cool. It's a little electromagnet that vibrates a thin sheet of spring steel on the bottom of the assembly. The trumpet part amplifies the sound of the vibrations. I was able to easily remove the trumpet from the vibrator to be blasted and powdered as well. There was an odd-shaped paper gasket between the vibrator and the trumpet, so I put the base of the trumpet on my computer scanner and scanned it so I can make new gaskets later.

The horns are pretty neat assemblies. They seem to be in excellent
condition, requiring only a little clean-up and powdercoating.

The guts of the horns are a little rusty, but I think this will be a great opportunity to re-test the Rusteco product. It is supposed to be able to remove rust without attacking anything else, including wire insulation. I'll soak the vibrating plates in the liquid rust remover and we'll see how it does. It shouldn't hurt the horn mechanism at all. I'll post results later.

I soaked the vibrating plate in Rusteco liquid. We'll see what happens.
I don't want to blast the plate or put it on the wheel because it might
change the sound characteristics of the horn. There is a high note
and a low note, denoted on the horn housings with an 'L' and an 'H'.

I also went to the local Buick Club meeting on Friday night and met up with my buddies Jerry and Spider. Spider brought a ton of stuff for me to look at, including some old articles on a car just like mine (right down to the gray over black paint scheme). I also brought my NOS front fender spear that I thought was incorrect, and Spider brought a pair of his for comparison. The part numbers were identical, but placing them side-by-side, my part was clearly more curved. We hypothesized that my part must have been bent during its many years of storage and that it should flex back into the proper shape once I install it on the fender. This is a relief, because I thought that perhaps my fenders had been damaged and repaired incorrectly, which was why they removed the trim pieces in the first place. Now I know that my fenders are fine.

Late last week, I scored a pair of original steel Buick fender skirts in excellent condition for a very reasonable price. I'm not sure if I want to install skirts on my car or not, but it will be nice to have a pair to try before I decide. If I end up not wanting to use them, I'm sure there's a good market for them.

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E-mail me at toolman8@sbcglobal.net

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Last modified on 02/06/2005

Thanks, Fidget!