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June 22, 2003
3.5 hours

Back in Gear

I'm almost done with all the house projects that have been eating up so much of my time lately, and I finally got to spend some time with the Buick today. I'm aiming at getting the body off the frame as soon as possible so I can send the frame out to be sandblasted and powdercoated. I'm still hoping to have a rolling, completed chassis by the end of summer--sans engine, however, which I've decided to put off a little while.

With body removal in mind, I decided to remove some additional sheetmetal, including the rear fenders and trunk lid. I also wanted to get into the trunk again and have another try at removing that plywood bulkhead between the trunk and the passenger compartment. You might recall that I was having difficulties removing it because I didn't have trunk access at that time.

I put the wheels back on the rear axle and put the car back on the ground, holding the front of the frame up with my floor jack. Then I pulled it out of the garage enough to allow me to work comfortably in the trunk. The first thing I did was remove the trunk lid itself. There are three bolts on each hinge and two screws holding the prop to the lid. They all came out easily, and once I had the trunklid free, I found that it was in excellent condition with no rust apparent.

Trunklid is in excellent condition with no dents or rust. This will be an easy part to restore.
Sorry about the crappy quality of the pictures today; I forgot my good digital camera
at my mother-in-law's house about two weeks ago and haven't retrieved it. I'm using some
cheap camera Julia got with her new laptop. Now I know why they gave it away free...

Once I had access to the trunk, it was easy to see what was holding the plywood bulkhead in place. In addition to the screws that I was having trouble with, there were four wood screws that held the bulkhead to a second plywood panel inside the trunk that fit up against the bulkhead and covered the axle housing. This piece still has original trunk fabric in it, and I could see that my car uses the "checkered" trunk material.

You can still make out the red-on-tan checkerboard pattern of the trunk material.

Original sample.

I also noticed a few strange things while poking around in the trunk. First, the interior of the trunk seems to be painted what I believe to be Touquet Beige. My data tag says the car should be Carlsbad Black with a Pearl Gray Poly top, and because of that, the inside of the trunk should be black. I doubt that the car was repainted so thoroughly in the past that it was entirely stripped to bare metal (there is no other color under the Touquet Beige), even in the trunk. Hmmm.

Another thing I noticed was that on the driver's side of the trunk opening lip, someone drilled a series of holes, for, I suspect, removing the spot welds. The passenger's side is undrilled, but I can still see the original spot welds. I can't find  any signs of damage, and if it was repaired, somebody did a fantastic job. Of course, you never know what's hiding under paint, so we'll find out for sure when I strip the body. I also removed the taillights while I was in there.

Someone seems to have tried to drill out all the spot welds along the trunk lip. Note the "Matt Zone" sign
in the background. Matt Zone is actually a city councilman my father endorsed, and I grabbed some of his
signs after the campaign. Hence the garage is officially known as The "Matt Zone."

Then I removed the left rear fender--the bolts fought me a little bit, but eventually they all gave up their grip and the fender came off without incident. Again, somebody in the past removed the splash guards and filled the holes with brazing. It should not be a problem to melt the brazing out of the sheetmetal and find the holes again. There is also some filler over the splash shield area, so again, we'll see what it really looks like once the paint is off. I don't expect any surprises.

A note for the future:   my rear fender spears are 21.5" long, not 24". I might have to find some 24" spears if I want to use the fender skirts I bought. Some people say that it was random which spears were installed, while other sources say the short spears are for open fenders while the longer spears are for cars with fender skirts. That makes more sense to me, but stranger things have happened to mass produced autos. One fellow in my local car club says that he's even heard of cars with one of each from the factory. Who knows?

Fender came off without a fight. The car sure looks weird without the fender
or trunklid, but it was nice to see it on the ground again. I'd forgotten how
sleek the body actually is. Note the removed trim, which was hiding some
surface rust, but nothing major.

The last thing I did was remove the stainless trim on the driver's quarter panel, mostly out of curiosity for how it was secured to the body. I gently pried it away from the body and found that the trim fit over a steel channel that was screwed to the body with sheetmetal screws. The channel was badly rusted and broke in several places as I removed the trim, but I didn't damage the stainless at all, which was critical. I wonder if anyone makes reproduction trim channel--if not, I can probably make my own without too much difficulty. But that compound curve on the quarter panel might be hard to duplicate, and since the original was destroyed during removal, I don't have a template. I'll take a look around and report back to you with my findings.

Under the trim I also discovered more Touquet Beige paint and bare metal underneath. I'm definitely curious as to why the data tag doesn't match, but I guess it doesn't really matter. Maybe it was repainted by the factory to help it sell at the end of 1941. I've heard this happened quite a bit to help move some cars. I guess the rebate game hadn't been invented yet...

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E-mail me at toolman8@sbcglobal.net

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Last modified on 02/06/2005

Thanks, Fidget!