There's a lot of good and bad with this car. The Good: The chrome is as good as it looks in the pictures. Have you ever seen a straighter '60 Buick rear bumper? The only piece of trim with any serious issues is the mirror, which is pitted. It's not a Buick mirror; it's an aftermarket Roberk. The car runs just great. Top end is dead quiet. Heater core and radiator are clear and the coolant is a great color. The glass is all original and certainly passable. The windshield has a couple of stone chips (one was a bit of a bullet crack which I repaired with a kit) and the wind wings have a little bit of edge separation, but nothing is cracked. Fenders/rockers/floors/trunk floor are totally solid and rot free. Even the inner fenderwells and quarter panels are terrific. Everything now works including the clock and the cigarette lighter. The headliner has one repairable seam split where the threads dried out. I plan to carefully remove it, repair, and reinstall. Did I mention it runs great? The Bad: The seats. 'Nuff said. The exhaust has a few holes at the clamps from misture buildup. My dad and I will attempt to gas-weld a couple of patches in because the rest is good. Water pump is LOUD. About to go. That hole in the quarter panel. Ugh. Some bondo and bubbling in the lower quarter extensions. Of course, brakes, tires, shocks are shot. Does not sound like much but the budget is tight and that's $1000 all said and done. The steering wheel is cracked to hell. The door panels and quarter side panels are not great. Lot of sunburn. They are expensive pieces to replace. Torque ball is leaking a bit. Overall I feel very lucky. The car needs a million little things but I can get in it, fire it up, and drive it. I paid $2500 for it plus the shipping so I know that I spent my money wisely and Providence smiled upon me as it could have showed up with a rod knock or smoking like a chimney (I aksed questions but you know how it is buying a car from 1300 miles away). I knew I was chancing things a bit but it turned out very well so far. I think if I put another $2000 in the car, maybe $2500, it will be at a cosmetic and mechanical level that I will be very happy with. I plan to do the bodywork and paint myself so that will help a lot.
Bob, Wow!.... What a cool find! From the pics it appears your car is good grade level better than mine in every way. Very worth the extra $$. What part of the country did it come from? That chrome shows some dry west coast garaged climate. True? Has it been repainted? I was told if the wheels are painted body color and have the clips to hold the caps the car originally came through with poverty caps. I can see the color on your wheels. Maybe it had those before? No broken radio buttons! I'll be doing similar work to my headliner too. One split seam and one hole I intend to patch. The change to power steering is very easy.... if you have a parts car with all the little stuff. You need the pump, brackets, hoses, water pump and crank pulleys and MAYBE the center link for the steering. The steering column is the same. Bolts right on, no fuss. I know of a couple parts cars that have the goods should you decide to go that route. I'm jealous........ you're drivin' and I'm still wrenchin' ! I be driving mine soon though! I don't have any good pics of mine as of yet. Here's a couple I shot the other day next to the GS. Can you believe the difference in ten short years between these models? Steve weim55 Colorado Steve
The car came from South Dakota. It was not garaged, hence the terrible seats/package tray and dead paint on the hood and trunk. But it apparently did not see salt at all. I am going to stick with the manual steering. I know that power brakes are not really an option so I was just curious about the steering. Your car's body looks very clean. Mine has some flaws. Overall I think we both have great cars. The GS is awesome. I was once offered a 71 at a price I now hesitate to think about. $500. A guy down the street bought it from the original owner back in the '80s for the princely sum of $1500. It was a super clean original. He beat on it enough to ruin the engine and then stuck a 455 out of a station wagon in it. I had access to both engines. Breaks the heart to think of it now.
Bob, The body on my car is very clean too. The main reason I purchased the car in the first place. These '60s are so prone serious rust issues even Colorado cars usually have a fair amount. My parts car is typical of that. The quarters and rockers would have needed some serious work inside and out and that's even on a low mileage car. While my LeSabre was driven close to 100,000 miles in it's first 15 years, I'm thinking maybe a retired couple used it only in good weather. How else could it have ever survived those humid, snowy Missouri winter roads rust free? Similar story for your car too I bet. The body on mine does have a few issues too but they are pretty minor for a 50 year old used car. I'll address a couple of those in the coming spring. I saw the "salt and pepper" carpet in your pics? Is that original? None of the original carpet is left in mine so I wondered what the original color might have looked like. Another thing I'm gonna try to do is replace just the door "boards" under the vinyl. My passenger door panel is REALLY bad. Very wavy. The vinyl looks OK. I'll hit that in the spring too. V.I.N. # on mine is 4G4025813 with an original sale of 6-4-1960. Sale price on the title is $2,531.00. Steve weim55 Colorado
More Transmission When I took the tranny out it was a "ball" of 50 year old grease on the outside. It looked like it leaked out of every seal possible. I hate leaks. With a passion. In the pics you can see the exposed shaft ends in the main case front and rear. No o rings are used on these shafts. For the front a paper gasket was used originally between the bellhousing and the case to seal that end. That gasket was almost non existant when I took it apart. Going back together I ditched the gasket and used quality red RTV between the bellhousing and tranny. For the rear you'll see my crude but effective "seal" for the two exposed shafts there. The factory relies on the oil viscosity for a seal here..... but that's with no wear between the shaft and the bore, as new. Mine has a little play here and I don't trust it to seal. Red RTV for the case top cover and tailshaft housing. The input shaft uses a leather looking "o ring" to seal the shaft inside the input retainer that the throwout bearing rides on. It was in great shape and showed no signs of leakage so I ran it as is. I'll address the shifter shaft seals in a later post. Steve weim55 Colorado
Pilot bearing The 401 didn't have one since a Dynaflow was behind it before. The cranks are drilled different for sticks and automatics so the original 364 pilot will not work in a Dynaflow crank, 364 or 401. Bentensons sold me a great adaptor to make the swap possible. I dressed the pilot hole in the crank with 3M cloth, WD40 on the adaptor and went to drive the unit in the crank. This is where things got ugly........ The adaptor went in smoothly about half of it's depth..... And stopped. Cold. Long story short that sucker would NOT go in the rest of way. Period. Now I have an adaptor that's completely suck in the back of the crank and the only way to get it out is to cut it out. And I don't have another. Putting some thought into it I found I could knock the brass pilot in the adapter the proper depth and dress the inside hole of the adaptor to clear the input shaft. A total hack job. But it does pass my judgement of permanent repair. It's ugly, but everything clears, the input is propery supported and no chance of anything coming apart later. I won't blame the problem on Bentensons adaptor. I made a couple of big mistakes on this deal. First, I didn't measure the pilot hole and adaptor to check the proper press fit. Second, to put pilot adaptor in the freezer before I went to drive it in the crank. Believe it. That really works. That aluminum will shrink a thousanth or two allowing the pilot to drive right in and expand in place once the temperature rises back to room level. Was there a "step" in the pilot hole I missed? You never know what the production variances and differences will be with all this stuff and the aftermarket can't know 'em all either. The bottom line is I was in a hurry, rushed to try get the transmission back in the car by the end of the night...... and it bit me. Old cars...... we know better don't we??....... Steve weim55 Colorado
Clutch and Throwout Bearing The last thing for me to do before I could stab the transmission back into the car was to install the old clutch to the flywheel. If you look at the pics in the previous post you can see how the clutch disc springs were contacting the flywheel bolts when car was last running all those years ago. Obviously the clutch was replaced at some point and either the flywheel bolts were replaced with the incorrect ones (bolt head too deep) or the disc is slightly different. To correct that problem I removed the washers (did somebody put those in there when they installed the clutch all those years ago?) from under the flywheel bolts and torqued them to spec. with red locktight. Now the disc clears the bolts properly. The throwout bearing wouldn't turn smoothy so I simply drilled a small hole in the case, used a needle tip in my grease gun and filled the bearing with fresh grease. RTV the hole closed and she's ready to run. Spins smooth as glass. Clutch fork and pivot were both in great shape. Clean, grease and go. Finally with everything bolted in place, flywheel and clutch, I installed the transmission. It's a VERY tight fit to get it in the car. The crossmember that is behind the transmission (not the support crossmember) is not removeable and the case barly clears as you carefully aline the input shaft into the clutch. Many tries to get this just right. Ahhhhhh..... the transmission is in! Next, on to the driveline and rear axle. Steve weim55 Colorado
I would love to get my hands on either a 59 or 60 put some big meats and a 455 and make a street/strip car. All the ones I find are $7000+. Nice rides:TU:
Once again I bow to Steve's expertise and creativity. This is work that is just a notch above my level of comfort and experience. I checked the fluid level in my trans today and it would seem that my trans was run very low on fluid as well. I put the better part of a quart of fluid in the trans, and as far as I could tell, did not reach the filler hole, which was a real surprise to me as the listed capacity is 2 pints. I could not really get the whole squeeze bottle of gear oil dispensed into the hole, so probably I am close to full. There was a panicky moment with my pinky finger stuck in the fill hole- no kidding. :-( . Don't do that. I have also discovered that there is a lot of caked gook directly under the steering box. I opened up the steering box and she is seemingly dry as a bone as well. :-( So I emptied the rest of the gear oil in there and will pick up another quart this week. I'll fill both trans and steering box, clean up all of the gook, and see where we are. I do not relish the thought of pulling the trans as Steve has done. As I say it's a little above my level of experience. The steering box seems like an easy rebuild as long as I can get a kit. So far I have not seen any kits for manual boxes. Steve, to answer your question regarding the carpet, it's not straight carpet but a "hybrid" of mostly rubber floor with carpet centers front and rear. The salt-and pepper carpet, actually called Tuxedo, has always been a fave of mine. That is reproduced, but I have been told that it may go away as most casual restorers eschew it because it costs more (sheesh). Obviously the hybrid flooring, or any rubber flooring, is just not available. I called some places that make rubber floor for cabs/cops/trucks, and they said that they do not have vacuum molds made for most cars, only those typically used in these industries. This is a real downer as I love this unique feature and would love to keep it. I have been trying to figure out a way to keep my carpet centers, which are somewhat faded (I only know this from the darker areas that are under the seats) but serviceable. You have great hands and great troubleshooting skills. I don't know HOW you come up with some of your solutions for the auto-to-manual incompatibilies. Please keep posting. I only hope to be able to offer something which might be helpful to YOU. Also, if you and I could PM, I need a couple of things which your parts car might be able to offer. Bob P.S. I have no papers at all and may not have any way to ever trace ownership, because my previous owner did not even remember the name of the guy who sold him the car. But my VIN is 4G4024191.
Driveline and Rear Axle Since I elected to go with the 3.23s I decided just to pull the entire driveline and rear from the parts car, go through it, then switch the assemblies when ready. When I drove the parts car there was a pretty bad "klunk" when shifting from drive to reverse so the first order was to track that down. The "Mystery Tube".... Here's what's in the torque tube, if you look at the pics it's pretty simple. A pair of u joints on each end just like a normal shaft. The difference is the front u joint is encased in the torque ball oiled by the transmission, the rear doesn't attach directly to the pinion yoke at the differental. Instead there is a short sub shaft that slides on the pinion at one end and is supported by a carrier bearing on the other. U joint and yoke in between the two. Look at the pics and you can get a look at what's in there. No special tools needed to take any of this apart. A couple of hours and rear is out of the car with the driveline apart for inspection. The "klunk" wound up being a bad rear u joint. Super easy fix. This is just a standard u joint available from any NAPA right off the shelf. Simple changeout like any typical u joint. I also replaced the only two seals to keep fluids out of the torque tube. The pinion seal at the rear and the torque tube to driveshaft seal at the front. I used the the torque ball seal - unit from the Dynaflow (exactly the same) as it was in great shape and still "tight" in the "ball". The carrier bearing just required grease like the throwout bearing. I just did the same procedure. That took care of the driveline. The rear axle I took a little risk with. I decided not to pull the diff or axles. Both axle hub ends were bone dry showing good seals, the bearings quiet and tight, axles tight in the diff and side gears, ring and pinion backlash perfect. The housing has no drain plug so to drain the oil I removed the pinion nut and seal and twisted the pinion to face down into a drain pan on jack stands for a couple of days. Replaced the pinion seal with a new one, (special order NAPA) torque and locktight the pinion nut, fresh 90W and she's ready to go back in the car. I bolted the front u joint to the transmission output shaft, assembled the torque ball then installed the axle and driveline as an assembly. The only tricky thing here is the driveshaft splines are "clocked" so the u joints are in phase. It's very hard to see the splines as they go into the yoke at the front. It takes a couple of tries at alinement to get these together. Not too bad though...... Also.. the entire driveline and axle as it comes out of the car are exactly the same Dynaflow or stick shift. Steve weim55 Colorado
Well, after filling the transmission yesterday, I checked my drip tray today and there is definitely a good bit more gear oil in it than what I dripped while filling yesterday. I would say we have a pretty decent-sized leak at the torque ball. Can I assume this means that fluid is making its way into the tube? As much as this work is a little over my head, I'm really faced with no choice- I will have to face the fact that I am going to have to remove the torque tube and differential assembly and have at this. My biggest fears are that the universal and torque ball are ruined. Neither one is at all a piece of cake to get, and if I need the universal I will probably have to duplicate Steve's procedure of getting one from a Dynaflow and making the appropriate modifications. A quick call to Fatsco gave me at least some hope that there is a source for a torque ball should mine be ruined. Lloyd said "We probably got something around here somewhere..." I did find a link on Kanter's site where universals are listed for the 1960 Buick, and a picture of what would appear to be the proper on is depicted. So maybe all hope is not lost for finding one without disassembling a parts car. http://www.kanter.com///productdeta...0&Vdr=&Itm=&MDv=1&MDpt=0&MSb=0&Cat=77&Prc=335 Old cars....well, we knew what we were getting into, right? This would all be easier if I had a garage. :-( .
The answer to my own question is that I should not assume that fluid is making its way into the tube, but as Steve did, prudence would suggest that I remove the entire assembly, look at the torque ball and universal, and if all is well, replace the torque ball seal set, the torque tube to driveshaft seal, and the pinion seal. Uh boy. Winter is coming and with no garage, I anticipate that I will not be doing this work until spring. Well, that's life. For the winter I will probably try to just keep enough fluid in the trans for an occasional around-the block drive to keep everything moving. I really fear letting the car sit outdoors without being driven at least some short distance for an extended period of time. I am glad that my jaunts were all very short, low speed trips to the auto parts store or my dad's house for working on the car. I hope I did not wreck anything in that trans by driving the car. Steve, must say that I am grateful to have found this thread and grateful for your work. It's been very educational and I think it will serve me very well going forward.
The torque ball and its sealing issues are fairly well known, and it wasn't one of GM's better ideas. Yeah, chances are that oil is getting down the torque tube. My 60 Invicta used to do the same thing, so did a 49 Chevy that I once had. My 46 Super does the same thing. I've learned to live with it for the time being. Every spring it's the same routine; - dump the axle, refill the transmission. One advantage though, your u-joints are being well lubricated. The 60 Invicta is long gone, but I still have the 46 Super, and I'll probably get that torque ball set up fixed when I finally do the powertrain. Right now the car still runs and drives, it's completely original and has never been pulled apart, so I want to preserve it in this condition for as long as possible before I have to do something. My suggestion for what it's worth is unless it's seriously leaking a lot to the ground, I'd just let it ride, and monitor fluids for a while to figure out how much it loses. If it isn't too bad, fix it when you tear the whole works out to rebuild it.
I am going to pick up some more gear oil to top off that trans, and also fill the steering gear. Then I am going to clean out my drip tray completely, watch, and see where I am at. My feeling though is that the torque ball will be leaking more than I am comfortable with and that I will wind up opening things up. Complicating matters is also the concept of what Steve found in his trans- I have some fears about the universal joint and the torque ball themselves. We shall see. I hope that things look OK when I do open it up.
Just a suggestion, when you do your torque ball, first read the 1957 Chilton's Motors manual (I am sure that the 1960 is the same) on the subject. When followed and using a good torque ball, leakage is minimal until you mistakenly jack the car and let the rear end hang loose from the springs and shocks. Dan '57-76C '57-56R
Is that why they screw up and leak?! Wow, learned something new today...And I can't count how many times the old '46 has been on a hoist with the axle hanging low...great...
