55 Buick

Wipers
Sometimes, chaos presents opportunity.


We have my ’55 Buick fairly torn apart fixing a major LS1 harness failure. Long story short, the dash has been completely removed to address this and other electrical issues. With the dash disassembled, one thing keeps tearing at my eyeballs: the windshield wiper motor and transmission.



55 Buicks had a cable driven wiper system that ran off of a vacuum powered motor. During the original rebuild, we replaced the vacuum motor with an electric unit from Newport Engineering. This worked just fine. It did the job. The problem I have is not with the motor; it is with the transmission. It is the equivalent of a buzz saw under my dashboard! When the wipers are in action, the cables move under the dash. Knowing this lead us to keep wires and air duct hoses well away from this potential for havoc. I’ve mentioned before how little room there really is behind the dash – especially since we put my brake master cylinder under there! When you have such a crowded environment in high value real estate, everyone has to play nice. The wire-driven system had to go!


I saw an article in Rod & Custom that describes the install of a wiper kit that uses an enclosed drive cable to drive the wiper transmissions. It is somewhat similar to a screw drive for a garage door. The cable is driven through a brake line-like tube from the motor to the transmissions. This was perfect for my application. It keeps all moving parts well protected from other vital innards that reside under my dash. And, it actually has a smaller footprint than the existing wire-driven system.

I procured one of these systems from AutoLoc. You might be better off getting yours directly from EZWireing . The EZWiring product is about half the cost of the AutoLoc product. I bet they are the same. The EZWireing package also comes with a wiper switch.

I’ve been using an intermittent delay switch from Newport Engineering. The first order of business was to figure out how to connect the new motor to my existing switch. Since the AutoLoc kit came with lacking documentation and the install instructions for my Newport switch are long lost, this was harder than it had to be. Also, the Newport switch is solid state and/or electro-mechanical; you can’t just use a probe to find out how the thing works. After much experimentation, we determined that:

The new motor yellow wire connects to the blue switch wire.
The new motor’s white wire connects to the red switch wire plus to ignition power.
The new motor’s black (fast) wire connects to the white switch wire.
The new motor’s red (slow) wire connects to the yellow switch wire.



The transmissions are locked to the car by a nut that sits on the outside and squeezes the transmission to the firewall when tightened. The pitch of the threads and size of the post on the transmission differ from the stock units. This meant we had to fabricate a locking nut that fit inside the stock Buick escutcheons and had the right pitch and size for the transmission post.




On stock 55 Buicks, the wiper motor was located in the center of the firewall on the engine side. We opted to mount it under the dash centered on the firewall when we rebuilt it to reduce clutter in the engine compartment. This was a good thing since the cable drive system assumes the motor and transmissions reside inside the car. The mounting location for the motor was predetermined; there was only one logical place that the thing could fit. It had to go where the old motor was located in the center of the dash. There is no room to the left or right of the transmissions.

The cable drive motor really wants to live to either the right of the right wiper or to the left of the left wiper. The cable routs from the wiper to the first transmission and from the first transmission to the second transmission. Since my motor was in the middle, we would have a route that was a bit more circuitous.


We mounted both transmissions with the cable entry part facing upwards. Since 55 Buick wipers sweep from the middle outwards, this would mean that the cable would have to enter the driver’s side transmission from the middle, exit on the outward side, then loop back to the passenger side transmission and enter the top of that transmission from the center side of the car.



Those are some interesting bends! Hint: use your knee.

The Build
As you may recall from the first part of this series, we established that we needed four ISIS boxes: 2 PowerCells, 1 MasterCell, and an InMotion unit. Each unit is 6.52” X 7.22”. This means each box eats up 47 square inches of real-estate. All four boxes will claim 188 square inches of valuable 55 Buick room. The first order of business was to hunt for cubby holes, flat surfaces, or accessible areas to mount the boxes.

Previously, the Buick had a Painless wire harness and fuse box with the additional stock crate LS1 fuse box. These were tucked away in the driver’s kick panel in a custom box that protruded into the fender well. It worked out fairly nice. The custom box was only about 7X7 inches square. It could not accommodate a single ISIS unit. Time to look for new hiding places!

It was obvious that three of the ISIS units should live in the front of the car: the MasterCell to control inputs (mostly from the dash), a PowerCell to power front of the car accessories like headlights, and the InMotion unit to control the power windows on my 4-door Buick. Since the Painless wiring already terminated (or originated, depending on your perspective) at the driver’s kick panel, that became a focal point for our search for a home for the ISIS units.

Since we were also installing a new LS1 harness and PCM (Powertrain Control Module – the ECU), we had to find a home for those, also. The old PCM lived under my custom center console. To gain access to the center console you had to remove the front seat and remove 3 bolts. This really did not meet my accessibility requirements. We elected to reposition the PCM to under the driver’s seat. We built a bracket for it and final mounted it to its new home.



We elected to have the MasterCell and the InMotion units installed in the driver’s kick panel. The wires that controlled the power windows emerged at approximately this spot and there would have been fitment issues mounting the PowerCell there; the PowerCell requires harnesses on all 4 sides of the unit. The MasterCell only has harnesses on three sides. This was the driving factor in placement. We just did not have enough room under the kick panel for two units that required all 4 sides to be accessible. We removed the old recessed box that contained the Painless fuse block and fabricated a mounting panel to recess into the kick panel that could accommodate both the MasterCell and the InMotion units where the old fuse box lived.



Then we cut a matching hole into the body (or rather, enlarged the existing hole) to receive the new mounting panel and attached the ISIS units.



This meant that the PowerCell had to live somewhere else! At the end of the day, we mounted it in the jamb behind the passenger kick panel. The passenger kick panel already had a fairly good load of existing equipment; the A/C hoses all ran through there. It could only (barely) accommodate the PowerCell shoved between the jamb and the fender.



We mounted the PowerCell on a custom bracket that attaches to the inner fender via quarter turn fasteners. This means that, in an emergency, it can be removed with a simple coin to replace an onboard fuse in a pinch. It also leaves enough room that you can inspect the PowerCell without removing it.

Since we were using the old space where the fuse boxes once lived for ISIS hardware, we needed to find a place for a new fuse box to live. Yes, you still need a fuse box when you have an ISIS system! Even though each circuit in the InMotion and PowerCell is protected by an onboard fuse, you still must account for the PCM fuses and other accessory fuses that are required to run a modern car. Consider, from the LS1: PCM power (constant and ignition), coils, O2 sensors, and fuel injectors. For the rest of the car, I have a radio (long story here), A/C, Air Ride, windshield wipers, dash power, and other items. As part of our planning we discovered 16 ignition sources not covered by ISIS and 3 always on sources. Make sure you plan!

So, we required a substantial fuse box. After having suffered through the trauma of inline and inaccessible fuses in the prior wiring escapade, we really wanted a single fuse box that was easily accessible. Since we had already crossed the bridge about putting components under the seat with the PCU, we decided that we could place the new fuse box under the passenger side.



We fabricated a new box. In addition to containing the four maxi fuses required by the InMotion and PowerCell, the box includes a 20 circuit fuse block for ignition sources and a 6 circuit fuse block for always on sources. We also included room for a relay that would power the ignition block. The box is built so that all of the fuses can be inspected by simply peeking under the passenger seat. It is fully enclosed so that nobody can reach under the seat and retrieve a lost electrical jolt.

One of the other considerations in the design of the new fuse box was that we elected to only use mini-fuse blocks for the always on and ignition blocks. The ISIS PowerCells and the InMotion unit each have mini-fuses on board to protect the circuits. With both PowerCells and InMotion, this means that there are 25 mini-fuses already in the system. I did not want to have to carry multiple different physically different replacement fuses with me. Standardizing on a common fuse will save me grief in the future.

The new fuse box serves another purpose: it is the only point where power flows from my trunk mounted battery to the front of the car. As you might recall from the previous post, having more than one path can lead to very serious problems and contribute to hellish diagnosis scenarios. I want to be certain that if there is an electrical fault that a fuse will blow!

This is the story about how and why I installed an ISIS Multiplexor system into my ’55 Buick. I have a 55 Buick Special that is powered by a GM LS1 crate motor. The ISIS multiplexor is a system of controllers, MasterCell and PowerCells, that replaces a conventional fuse box and a conventional wiring harness with a CAN bus controlled system.

The Crisis
I drove back from an event one day and parked my Buick in the garage. When I went to start the car the next morning, it ran very rough. I went to shut it off – and it would not turn off! It continued to run at a very high rate and surge in dangerous sounding ways. I quickly located the fuse block (after a panicked call to a friend) that came with my stock GM LS1 crate motor and started pulling fuses. Finally, I found one that would kill the engine.

I initially suspected the ignition. Once upon a time, I went to a performance shop in San Jose and the mechanic indicated that I had a voltage problem feeding the LS1 PCM (the Powertrain Control Module or ECU). I never thought much about it because of the general apathy of the mechanic. Since that was my first potential clue, I disassembled the ignition and found it to be solid. The ignition on a 55 Buick is dead simple; there are three posts. When the ignition is in the on position, all three posts are connected. The ignition was fine.


Digging deeper into the LS1 harness, I discovered that several of the power wires from the LS1 fuse box to the harness were cooked. They had apparently experienced too much heat at some point. Some pink wires looked brown. The original harness had been butt connected to extend it such that the LS1 fuse box could sit under the driver’s kick panel. All of the butts were at approximately the same location in the harness. They were butted with metal butts, then shrink wrapped over. If one or more of these wires were to get hot, the shrink wrap would be the first thing to melt and a short could form between wires. This is exactly what happened. It was easy to see that the smoke had been let out of that system.

I contacted Robert at http://ls1wiringharness.com/. He agreed to build me a new LS1 harness. I gave him my specifications:
1. I had a GM Crate LS1
2. I have air conditioning
3. I needed 4 feet from the PCM to the fuse box since I wanted to mount the fuse box under the drivers kick penal and mount the PCM in the center console.
4. I wanted him to burn a new VIN into the PCM. Earlier, I had bought a DiabloSport Predator tuner so that I could tune the software settings on my stock crate PCM. The Predator refused to bind to my PCM because it was looking for a valid VIN to associate with the license. The VIN on a stock PCM says something like ‘LS1 Engine’ – not some valid numeric VIN. So, I had a cool tuning tool that was of no use to me.

After much waiting, the harness finally arrived. We went to lay it out and found that there were some critical differences from the existing harness.
1. The MAF plug on the GM Crate harness had 5 wires, the MAF on the harness Robert sent had 3.
2. There was no oil pressure connection. This is the oval connector at the back of the block.
3. The new harness required different O2 sensors.

We could overcome the O2 sensor problem. The other issues, primarily the MAF problem lead me to trace the harness wires back to the PCM to ensure that it was put together properly. To my horror, the large red and blue plugs from the new harness had very little resemblance, from a wiring perspective, to the original!

I got hold of Robert and he asked, “Did you get the other box?” What other box? He said that since he thought that my original PCM had been molested that he did not trust it so he sent me an F-Body PCM. This was good and bad news; my panic resided, but it showed me that Robert probably only knew how to build F-body harnesses. It was nice of him to send me a new PCM, though. Anyway, the new PCM would certainly solve my Predator issues. Now, I have a production PCM and a VIN! The PCM form factors greatly differ. The F-body PCM is somewhat smaller and has different mounting requirements. The old PCM was mounted with custom brackets under the center console. I had to think about where the new one would live.




So, now I have an F-body harness and PCM for my ‘Corvette’ engine. The MAF wiring issue is covered in this post: LS1 Tech Forums. Some of this information, I duplicate here:



The trick is to find the pins that fit the MAF! They are funny L-shaped things. Car Quest has them! See part number CG63, 10229, OEM TERM-GM.

ReWire!
While extracting the LS1 harness, it became apparent that I had bigger wiring issues. In short, there were too many cooks in the kitchen. The biggest crime was that I had a Viper alarm system installed by a local stereo shop. They butchered it. There were so many in-line fuses and bizarre splices that it was next to impossible to determine how the thing worked! There were inline fuses buried deep within the dash. If one were to ever blow, I would never be able to find it – or even access it. On the LS side, I found two places that had more than one relay in the circuit: the fan and the fuel pump. If one of these were to fail, I would probably diagnose the problem to the wrong relay (because I did not even know that the other relays existed).



In addition to the clutter, inline fuses, and multiple relays, there was evidence of fire on some of the wires. Now, I not only did not trust the LS harness, I did not trust the Painless harness and the subsequent butchering of it by the stereo shop.

To further add to the horror, when the car was built, we added three paths from the battery to the front of the car:
1. A 1 gauge wire to the starter. The alternator connected directly to the starter lug. The engine fan was connected to this circuit.
2. An 8 gauge wire protected by a 50 Amp fuse that went to my center console that was intended to power the cigarette lighter and center console accessories.
3. Another 8 gauge wire protected by a 50 Amp fuse that powered the Painless and LS fuse block.

At some point, the 50 Amp fuse to the fuse blocks blew. Nothing happened. Electrons found another path through the system. This was probably the initial cause of my electrical problems. I never found the blown fuse for weeks or months (years?).

It became fairly obvious that something major had to change. As long as my car was torn apart, I needed to take this opportunity to resolve these issues. My new requirements for an electrical system had to meet the following criteria at a minimum:
1. No inline fuses! All fuses will live in ONE place.
2. No multiple relays.
3. Only a single power run from the battery to the front of the car. When a fuse blows, I WANT something to stop working!

ISIS
I saw an episode of Two Guys Garage that featured Jay Harris, the president of ISIS. The ISIS product always stuck in the back of my mind. It seemed fairly intuitive and brought very modern features to the aftermarket community. The concept behind the ISIS product line is that you can have a master controller, the MasterCell, which takes all of the inputs from the car: the switches that tell the car to turn on the parking lights, head lights, brights, blinkers, dome lights, brake lights, etc. The Master Cell sends CAN (Controller Area Network – a messaging protocol utilized by new car manufactures) signals to a PowerCell and instructs it to turn on accessories based upon the inputs. For example, when you press on the brake, a signal is sent to the MasterCell and the MasterCell sends a signal to a PowerCell in your trunk to send power to the brake lights. It gets more interesting… pressing the brake may also signal the TCC (Torque Converter Controller) for electronically controlled transmissions. And even more…



In a typical vintage automobile, power runs through all of the switches; if you turn on your headlights, all of the power to drive your headlights is running through the switch. If you turn on your ignition, all of the power to run and start your car is running through that switch. ISIS is different. All of the signals to the MasterCell are grounds. No power (or microscopic amounts) runs through any of your switches. This means that you can reduce the gauge of the wire used behind your dash and eliminate the potential for fire causing electrical shorts behind your dash. With ISIS, you just send a signal to the MasterCell that you want some function, and the MasterCell does the rest.

Planning

Before I ordered my ISIS setup, I wanted to understand the limitations of the system. The primary limitations are that each PowerCell only has 10 outputs and that the ISIS units, the MasterCells, and the PowerCells, are fairly large at being about 7X7 inches. I have a 4 door vehicle with power windows. Power windows work by reversing the polarity to the motor. This would take 8 very smart outputs. Fortunately, ISIS has an InMotion unit. This product can control 5 motors and hooks right into the CAN bus. As it turns out, I do have five motors: the four windows and the power door locks. So, now I have 4 ISIS boxes:
1. The MasterCell
2. The front PowerCell
3. The back PowerCell
4. The InMotion product that controls windows and door locks.

Now, I have 188 square inches of product to find a home for under my dash, in my kick panels, and in my trunk.

The other problem was making sure I did not have more outputs in the front of my car than one PowerCell could handle. I started counting them. Then I made a list. Then I built a spreadsheet. You HAVE to create a spreadsheet to lay this stuff out. Trust me.

Above is an example of the outputs for the front PowerCell. There were other things that would have been cool to power in the front of my car like my sliding touch screen cover, but I had to make some compromises. Since I knew that I was already squeezing three ISIS units into the front, I was willing to take one for the team and sacrifice some of the nuttier features of my car to ISIS control. You would think that a 55 Buick has enough room up front to smuggle illegal aliens in the kick panels or under the dash. It doesn’t. Every square inch of space is precious.

Talking about spreadsheets – I built one with 20 sheets in it:

ISIS Config
Shows the base configuration sheet provided by ISIS with the Mastercell colors, PowerCell mappings, and personalities of each circuit.
Changes
A page that isolates the specific changes from stock that I use to communicate with ISIS support.
Key Fob
I ordered the InLink RF control module. This means that my key fob has functions mapped to different outputs.
GM Steering Harness
I needed to map the colors from my factory GM/Flaming River harness to the inputs on the MasterCell. And think through how to ground the flasher and blinker circuits.
Doors
Each of my 4 doors has window and lock and speaker controls wires going in and out of it. I needed to map these and associate window and lock controls to the InMotion unit.
Air Bags
I have an Air Ride control system. This page documents the wiring for all 4 bags.
InMotion
Documents how the InMotion is setup.
GSS-2000
I utilize a Dakota Digital GSS-2000 unit to get my backup lights and other goodies. This documents how it is wired up and how it interacts with the Torque Converter Control (TCC) and the Safety Neutral Switch.
PCM
This documents the inputs and outputs from the LS1 harness. This includes things like TCC, speedometer, fuel pump, etc.
Inputs
This page lists all of the inputs into the MaserCell.
Outputs Front
Document all of the outputs for the front PowerCell.
Outputs Rear
Document all of the outputs for the rear PowerCell
Button Panel
I have a custom button panel under my dash that controls odometer reset, air compressor on/off, door locks, and trunk pop. This page documents the wiring for this.
Dash
Document every switch and input/output from the dash. I bought the ISIS InDash dash harness kit. The beauty of this kit is that you can wire your dashboard in such a way that it is removable. I only have two (really a few more) connections from my dashboard to the rest of the car. Before, there was no way the dash could be removed from the car without cutting wires. Now, it is all modular.
ECU Fuse Box
I documented how the new LS F-body harness fuse box was laid out. As you will see, I will not use this but will rewire it to a new integrated ‘fuse system’.
Fuse box
This documents the new fuse box layout and wiring.
Relays
Document what relays the car still uses and where they are.
Gauge
Document the wire color and hookup for my quad gauge (fuel, volts, oil pressure, coolant temperature) and my speedometer.
MasterCell Colors
Document what color wire comes from what bank in the MasterCell. There are 50 of them!
PowerCell Colors
Document the colors of the wires that come from the PowerCell outputs.

This may be a bit of overkill, but the next time I have to troubleshoot something, I know that I’ll have this to fall back upon. The other thing I did was to build the spreadsheet in Google Docs. This allows me to use a portable device, like an IPad, when I’m in the garage to cross-reference or double check things. See the link here: Buick Layout.

Software
Earlier I talked about interesting things you can do with ISIS. Wouldn’t it be nice to have some new car-type features? Here are two ideas that I have added to my system:
1. If I leave the headlights on and open the driver’s door, I want a chime to sound. Don’t you hate draining your battery from a stupid stunt like this? With ISIS, I can change the software (more on that later) such that a chime will sound if both the drivers door is open and the headlights are on. No chime sounds when the passenger door opens.
2. I have a trunk pop button under my dash. It is very close to my odometer reset button. I don’t want to accidently press the trunk pop button when I am driving down the road! I can change the software so that the trunk will only pop when the transmission is in a Neutral safety position (Park and Neutral). The Neutral safety switch is an input to the MasterCell as is the trunk pop button.

The ISIS system is run by software. You can order the InCode programmer from ISIS. This is basically a PIC ROM flash device. Apparently, the entire ISIS system is PIC-based.

The bad news is that there are no ‘user serviceable’ parts to the software. You have to communicate to ISIS support to get changes then you have to buy the InCode unit to flash those changes to your MasterCell. The trick is to get ISIS support to make changes for you! These guys are a small outfit and you can really have a hard time getting them to return messages.

The Build

In progress! Stay tuned for more!

You may have noticed the speedometer on my 55 Buick Special and wondered how you can get one for yourself. First things first: let’s go over what it is we are really looking at. This is a modern gauge using modern guts that appears mostly stock. Mostly in that the style of the speedometer could be mistaken for a stock unit at first glance by a real Buick fan. It’s not stock in the sense that we’ve made major modifications to the face and inner-workings. The face of my unit goes to 160 MPH whereas the stock gauge goes to 120. My face also sports my initials ‘AF’. Additionally, I'm using an all-electronic gauge because I have an LS1 engine under the hood.



I suppose I should also share some history with you that may convince you that you can and should undertake this project on your own. We were getting my Buick ready for the 2006 San Francisco Rod & Custom show at the Cow Palace after a three and a half year build. We had engaged a custom gauge builder from Fresno six months prior to rework all of my gauges. This guy was recommended because he had done some work for Boyd Coddington. I am not going to use his name since I would be remiss to provide any inadvertent advertizing to this kook. Let’s just call him Kook. We provided Kook with all the requirements: It was going into a 55 Buick Special, it should be designed to work with the LS1 engine, and we had a few custom requirements like the aforementioned initials, and a higher than stock speedometer range. We also mentioned that it should look as stock as possible. I believe that the end product had the right appearance we were looking for. I’ll give the kook that. As far as functionality, I think he missed the boat. He also was unable to deliver until the night before the show. And then, only after threats of police action. Oh, and the final cost for all three gauges (speedo, quad gauge, and clock) was over $3,000!

So, we had the gages and were just happy to make the show. After hooking things up, we discovered that he had an ADO metric gauge installed. It came with no instructions. This took a bit of figuring out when it came time to calibrate the thing. We also discovered that he had a remote odometer reset button. This was possibly clever as he tried to maintain our ‘stock’ requirement and did not want to have the reset button integral to the unit protruding from the gauge face through the glass like stock ADO aftermarket gauges have. The other thing we discovered was the fuel gauge stuck at ‘E’ often and never displayed more than ¾ of a tank. This is another story I’ll save for later.

The remote odometer reset is what really drove this thing to failure. It was hooked up to the tiny micro-switch that normally is built into the circuit board of the ADO. Kook de-soldered it and hooked it up to four wires that ran back to the board. He used the stock micro switch because he evidently had no idea how to do anything else. I recall at the time that he indicated he had burnt through a couple of after market gauges to get it right and that this had cost him time and money. I had no sympathy due to his inability to deliver on time with realistic communication. After installing the new gauge, the micro-switch sat behind the dash. One day, I decided that if I had the ability to have a working odometer, I should be able to use its functionality including the trip meter. I relocated the switch to a place I could easily reach just under the dash. This is when I noticed that one of his solder welds had failed and only three of the four wires were hooked to the micro switch. I was afraid to reconnect it because the thing had been working up to that point. Long story short, I reconnected it and the gauge never worked again.

So, here I am without a working speedometer. Most people don’t even use them. They just cruise with traffic. That’s not good enough for me. I like everything in my car to work and this was a fairly obvious part of my dash! I used my onboard GPS and OBD2 system to let me have a general idea of how fast I was going, but it just drove me nuts not having a real working speedometer.

I bought a new Auto Meter Sport Comp Speedometer (3989). These are sealed units. They are not made to be disassembled. I figured I had to do it so I started looking for entry points. There are none. Not obvious, anyway. If you take a small screw driver and start prying along the edges of the plastic (yes, everything is plastic on this model) silver trim, you can pop the trim off. You’ll ruin it. Don’t get too used to the idea that this will be a clean operation.



Not only did I ruin the trim ring, the glass shattered. And the odometer plunger came apart in several pieces. Now, as they say, I was committed.



Once you have the trim ring off, you can unscrew the two screws on the face and pop the face off. You can just pull the needle off; in my experience they just push back on. Removing two screws on the back will reveal the circuit board. This is what we are really after.



I ordered a couple of stock 55 Buick gauges from eBay. I knew that I would need at least a few parts from them and the price was right so I could afford to make a few mistakes. The stock gauges is easy to take apart; you just remove the two screws in the back that hold the guts in and pry the chrome ring off the front by bending the two tabs at the 12 o’clock and 6 o’clock positions.



Next, came a series of mock builds where I was positioning the Auto Meter guts into the stock bucket. I chose to go with the stock bucket because the Buick speedometer is designed to bolt on from the back, being held to the reverse side of your dash with three nuts. The Auto Meter bucket was designed to be placed into the dash from the front and held in place with a bracket that keeps the unit from coming back out of the front. These mounting system are not compatible and there is not enough room behind your dash to come up with something more exotic. If I used the stock bucket, I knew there was a fighting chance that it would fit.



A note on those three nuts that hold the stock bucket in place: The one on the lower right, when facing your dash, is a real bastard! I curse the people that gave me such large hands! The only way I could get a wrench on this was to use my finger wrench. You might be able to approach it from under the dash, but there are real accessibility issues. If you have the luxury of completely tearing down the dash, the best option would be to install the instruments before you put the dash face in place.

Having said that, here is how you take the dash apart on a 55 Buick:

1. Loosen the first three screws that hold the head-liner stainless hold-down strip that runs along the top of the side windows. This will give some wiggle room for the A-pillar pieces.
2. Remove the center cap that is dead-center up against the windshield.
3. Loosen the A-pillar pieces.
4. Remove the pieces that go from the center cap to the A-pillar that touch the glass. You may have to remove the A-Pillar pieces first.
5. Unscrew the upholstery screws that are under the dash. There are a bunch of these. You can see them if you look up when you head is at seat level.
6. Unbolt the bolts that hold the dash in place that are near the window.

Putting the thing back together is similar, but with a lot more swearing. 55 Buick dash tops are big pieces of metal that flex and don’t want to go back where they were. Use some blue tape in those areas that are susceptible to paint chipping when too much coercion is done. This would include the lower sections of the pieces that fit into the A-Pillars.

If you do not have the dash completely disassembled you are not done! You have to loosen the dash face in order to gain a half inch clearance needed to extract the speedometer once you have the three retaining nuts removed that hold it into place. No matter how many contortions you attempt there is no way to get the speedometer out without providing a bit more clearance. To loosen the front dash you need to loosen the bolts that are hidden behind the kick panel relief strip. This is the metal strip that holds your kick panel in place that is located at the front of your doors. Behind that are about 3 bolts that hold the center dash in place.

OK – we have our Auto Meter board and an original speedometer. We can get to work building the new unit. The first conundrum is figuring out what to do with the odometer reset button. As you will recall, I shattered the gauge glass on my Auto Meter speedometer and I did not have a piece of glass with a hole drilled through it for the odometer knob. After much gnashing of teeth, I decided to remote locate the knob like Kook had done. Except this time, I would apply a bit of science to the problem. A simple multi-meter test revealed that the micro switch really just shorts the top two pins to the bottom two pins on the micro switch. I took some nail clippers and cut the switch out of the Auto Meter board. Take a soldering iron and heat up the prongs with one hand while holding the circuit board with the other. With your third hand take some tweezers and remove the pins. Now, take some thin gage wire, strip the ends and heat up the upper left hole so that the solder is liquid and place the exposed wire in the hole. The solder will congeal and you will be good to go. Do the same with the lower left hole with a piece of wire of another color. Get a normally open momentary switch from your electronics store and hook that up to the other end of the two wires. Unit test your work. Make sure you did not destroy it. If so, order a new Auto Meter gauge and be more careful next time! If you did it right, you will see a decimal point appear every time you press your odometer button as the unit goes into and out of trip mode.



There are eight spade pins that come out the back of the Auto Meter board. I only needed three of them: +12 volts, ground, and the signal. These are the left-most top and bottom pins (signal and +12) and the second pin from the left on the bottom row (negative). Take some heat shrink and shrink it over the pins you will not be using to prevent any shorts. You may have to slightly bend the spade pins toward the center of the bucket to make sure there is no chance of shorts.

You’ll probably notice that the rubber that sits behind the glass that keeps it from vibrating has deteriorated to dust after more than 50 years of service. Scrape this stuff out of the back channel in the chrome face ring and use green rubber drip irrigation tube from your local hardware store as a nifty replacement. It will fit perfectly in the trough that originally had the black rubber gasket in it. Just start pressing it in with your fingers or a blunt tool and trim it to length.



With the original face and gears in the bucket, take a Sharpie and mark the depth that the original face protrudes below the rim of the bucket. I drew a ring inside the bucket as an indicator. It is about a quarter inch from the lip. This will serve as the indicator as to how deep we will set the Auto Meter face.



The concept is that we are going to take the stock face and mount it to the Auto meter face. We’ll take the stock needle and push it on the Auto Meter pin. Take the face off of the original Buick speedometer and position it on the face of the Auto Meter gauge.



Notice that the odometer window does not line up. You have three options here:

1. Drill a new hole in the original face that will be position for the needle on the Auto Meter unit. This new hole will be above the existing hole.
2. Snip the original face such that the long oval that forms the odometer window is taller. You would have to cut two perfectly vertical cuts into the original face such that the odometer window now exposes the underlying Auto Meter LCD.
3. Completely tear apart the Auto Meter product and reposition the LCD exactly where it needs to be for the Buick gauge face. If you take this route, you will also have to reposition the needle. Kook went this route and I can’t recommend it. You will probably destroy the unit and/or introduce instability that will lead to a failed unit.

I opted for drilling a new hole for the speedometer needle (option 1). This results in the brushed aluminum decoration in the speedometer being about an 1/8 inch lower than stock. This is noticeable to guys like you and I because we know what it should look like. Most people would never notice or think it just came that way. The other aesthetic problem is that upon close inspection you will be able to see the original hole. The needle hat will cover the hole by about 50%, but it will still be visible. You could manufacture a plug from an inactive beer can’s aluminum bottom if you wanted to. I did not find the problem compelling enough to undertake this surgery.


An image of option 3 appears above. You have to love hot glue. Don't do this!

Now, drill holes in the Auto Meter face that match the two screws in the original face so that we can permanently mount the original on the new face. Remember that both faces are aluminum so be delicate. You may also want to ‘crush’ the original face down somewhat to the Auto Meter face. This will give room for the needle to move without binding. The original ornamental brushed aluminum disk protrudes just a little too much for proper movement of the needle.

During this whole process test the unit after each series of work. This way you will discover any clearance issues, electrical problems, or major disasters early. To test the unit, provide 12 volt power and ground to the proper terminals on the back of the Auto Meter gauge. The unit will run a ‘self test’ at startup. It will move the needle from zero to about 80 MPH then reset back to zero. You should be able to detect any clearance issues during this self test phase. Another trick, and I have not tried this, might be to put the unit into calibration mode. During calibration mode the needle will move to 160 MPH and stay there until the micro-switch is pressed, then it will move to 80 MPH until the switch is pressed again, then back to zero. To get the unit into calibration mode you hold the switch down while power is coming up. I never tried this because I did not think of it when I was building it!

Remove the original face and gears and place the Auto Meter circuit board with the Auto Meter face attached into the bucket. You will be able to see that there is plenty of room to play with placement.

Now, take the face off of the Auto Meter board and sit it in the bucket all the way to the bottom. Find four places on the face where you can drill holes for posts that will hold the unit at the proper level that we marked above. It’s important at this point to ensure that 80 MPH is facing 12 O’clock since the position we choose for the post position will ultimately determine where the top of the range will be. The top of the bucket has an indentation for a tab and the bottom of the bucket has an indentation for a larger tab. If you are like me, you will want to write ‘top’ with a Sharpie at the top to help you remember. Drill the four holes through the face and the bucket while the face is resting in the bottom of the bucket. Make these holes as close to the perimeter of the circle as you can so they don’t interfere with the placement of the guts when they are in place.

Reassemble the face to the guts and drop it in the bucket. Place four long screws through the face with some tubing inserted over the back of the screws as standoffs. Secure it to the bucket with some nuts on the screws from the back of the bucket. I used lock tite to make sure these would not rattle off during operation.



At this point, you pretty much have a working speedometer. The only problem is the original clear plastic insert for the speedometer numbers are set for 120 MPH for a unit that has a much longer sweep (0 and 120 are only about an inch apart on the original whereas the Auto meter has a good 2 inches). Or to put it another way, the original has a 340 degree sweep and the Auto Meter has a 270 degree sweep.



Theoretically, this is an easy problem to overcome; you just create a new clear plastic insert that has the proper numbers and calibration. The reality is, this is the most difficult problem for your average guy. How in the world do you build one of these? My answer: I don’t know. I was lucky enough to be able to use the clear plastic numeral plate that Kook produced. You may be able to work with companies like Front Panel Express to build your replacement insert. Let me know how this goes for you. I’d love to be able to replace mine with different fonts and layout at some point.



After playing with Front Panel Express, I believe that it would be possible to build a Perspex (plexiglas) face. Let me know if you have any questions here. I have at least a starting point for you in the form or a Front Panel Designer FPD design file that gets the design rather close. It would cost a bit more than $100 to have these guys build it for you. The first time. If you get things wrong, you'll have to modify your design and do it again. Like I said, keep me posted on this.

Illumination is something you have to consider now. You don’t want to come to the realization that you can’t read your speedometer at night after you went to all the trouble of taking your dash apart, building a custom speedometer, and putting it all back together. You will get such an appreciation for taking that dash apart that you will want to do something that will keep you from having to do it again in your lifetime. This is why I replaced the incandescent bulbs in my dash with LED lighting. LED lights will not burn out during my lifetime. Leave replacing bulbs behind my dash to some lucky guy from the next generation! LED lights provide a harsher glow, but that is not necessarily a bad thing. The incandescent lighting looks downright yellow next to them. A trick is to buy some 12V LED Tape from The Hoffman Group.



This stuff is pretty cool; you can cut it to length and it has a 3M backing on it that sticks fairly well. I ended up using about 8 ‘bulbs’ on the tape around the top of the inside of my bucket. It provides plenty of light. Make sure that the depth of your gauge face provides a small crack to allow light to seep down to the needle. The speedometer that Kook built for me did not illuminate the needle. You’d be surprised how important it is to see more than just the numbers at night. A word of warning: if you use LED tape, you will have to disassemble your quad gauge and clock and add LED lighting. The glow is just different. Besides, the LED tape comes in multiple colors. You can choose to have white, green, yellow, or red back lighting. I chose the traditional white, but kind of wonder how green would have looked.



Before you ‘final/final’ the build, you want to make sure the needle zero’s to zero. The easiest way to do this is to first power up the unit, and then attach the needle. You know the zero position is at zero after the self-test. During all the unit testing that needle will have come on and off of the unit several times and may not have as tight a fit as it could. In fact, you don’t want to jam the needle onto the post as you can press it hard enough that you will always have clearance issues. It just needs to barely sit on the post. I used a dab of Elmer’s glue on my final assembly to make sure the needle did not come off during operation. It would be one heck of a let down to be driving around one day and see that needle lying at the bottom of the gauge inside the glass! If you are real nervous, you could try super glue. I don’t trust myself with that stuff.



Before you put that dash together, you had better road test the unit. Now, is a good time to calibrate it!

Run out and get the November 2008 issue of Rod & Custom! The Buick is featured on page 28!

I can't tell you how pleased I am with the story and the photos. Kevin Lee did a fantastic job shooting The Buick and Kev Elliot tightened up my ramblings about the car.

R&C also have a web version of the article here.

I don't want this to sound like I'm complaining... But, I don't intend to commute from Santa Cruz to Silicone Valley. Isn't Silicone Valley near Vegas?

Get out and buy that magazine!

Thanks, R&C!!!

You guys are killing me on eBay!

I try to find great collateral material on 1955 Buicks to share with you guys. Once in a while a fantastic opportunity shows up. For example, there was recently an auction for a Buick Engineer Approved Accessories pamphlet.


And there was the auction for the 1955 Buick Product School Manual.


I lost both of these auctions to you fervent 1955 Buick fans! I know, I should have bid higher! It’s not like I’m running the J. Paul Getty Museum. I don’t have unlimited resources or the time to make sure that I’m the last bidder. Obviously, there are some sour grapes here; I’d love to covet those manuals and cherish the glory of ownership.

That’s where I start wondering what’s wrong with me? I’d probably ruin them with drool or coffee stains. I don’t need these manuals as much as I need the information stored in them. You know that my entire modus operandi is to share what I have with the 55 Buick community.

I know that you have philanthropic desires, also. I know that if you can afford to pay $30 for a 50 year old hunk of paper that you also probably have a scanner. Why not scan any ‘55 Buick collateral that you have and contribute it to 55Buick.com? I’ll do my best to get it on the site and share it with the world. My email address can be found here: http://www.55buick.com/andy.html.

This also brings up another point; why do I have a copyright on material on 55Buick.com? The whole point of this site is to share information with you. Sure, I’ve spent a considerable amount of time and effort getting this material together and thought that I needed a copyright to protect my investment. But, the entire point of the investment is to share it. A traditional copyright does not make sense here. That is why I have rebranded 55Buick.com with a new Creative Commons license that allows you to basically do what you want with this material.

As the curator of 55Buick.com, I notice that there is a real potential for disaster. Without me, 55Buick.com goes away. This is the weak link in the chain. I have opened up the copyright protections on 55Buick.com not only to share this information, but to help it persist beyond my tenure. Is there a way to archive this data and make it live as long as these beautiful automobiles will be around? I’m not expecting to depart this earth any time soon, but you have to think about these things. What happens after I am gone?

I don’t really have the answers to this, but as a tech-weenie, it does pose an interesting problem to ponder.

So, there you have it. What’s mine is yours. Now, I just want what is yours to be mine! Please, share your ’55 Buick advertisements, sales material, parts lists, training guides, and anything else with us! The money I save by NOT winning on eBay could keep this site alive for a long time.

After 58 years, the Skyview Drive-In in Santa Cruz is closed. We made a special trip there in the last few weeks to pay homage to this American Icon.

The 21st Texaco Havoline West Coast Nationals in Pleasanton must have had more than 3000 cars. This awesome event, put on by The Goodguys, was enormous in size, scope, and execution. I told my wife before I left the house at 5:00 AM to head to the fairgrounds that it was just fun to be there and to be part of the action. It is not important to win an award – it is just fun to talk to other car nuts.



I had to give her an update call at 10:00 that same morning to tell her that winning still feels good! I was selected for the Coolest 50’s award! There is nothing like being recognized for all the hard work that went into The Buick. I had to admit, winning does add a bit of adrenaline to the whole affair.

But, it did not stop there. Art Morrison and Brock Baker from Art Morrison Enterprises, the wizards that built the chassis for The Buick stopped by to say hello. Art was smiling ear to ear as I described how happy I was with the John Deer green powder-coated Art Morrison frame on The Buick. Brock was familiar with Steve Sellers, who did all of the custom fabrication on the Buick. We both share an appreciation for his genius.



Later, I was approached by Kevin Lee, a Rod & Custom editor. Kevin started asking me what size jacket I wore. I mentioned a size with a bunch of X’s. He then went on to say that he was looking for me on Friday and couldn’t find me. I mentioned that you don’t get a bunch of X’s in your jacket size without visiting a beer booth once in a while. It was then that I noticed that Kevin was filling out the form for a winner in the Rod & Custom Top Tin category.

Kevin had a bunch of questions about how long I owned the car (20 years), who built it (GMP Speed & Machine) and how many miles were on the odometer (5000). He then asked if I ever got down south. I indicated that The Buick had already made two trips to LA from Santa Cruz. He then wondered if I would be willing to drive The Buick down south for a photo shoot. I think I gave him a bear hug.

Needless to say, this made me very happy. Now, I had to get on the phone and tell GMP and Steve Sellers about the great honor of being selected by Rod & Custom. I was a tad giddy. Oh yeah… I called my wife to let her know that I had won another award! She no longer thinks I go to these shows for the pure love of cars and the camaraderie of other car nuts. She is convinced I go there for the awards! I’m not so sure she isn’t right.

I can't say enough good things about this event. It is in a perfect location - on the esplanade in beautiful Capitola, California. The event this year (and last) was blessed with perfect weather. The cars at this fantastic show are first class and the organization, by the Capitola Cam-Snappers Club was top of the line. After the killer parade from the Santa Cruz boardwalk to Capitola, head to Zelda's for that "wake-up" bloody mary to set the pace for the day.




This is one of those car shows where you want to hang out all day. The beach... The food... The cars...

I want to thank the Capitola Public Safety Foundation for selecting The Buick for a Sponsors Choice award!

Do NOT miss this show.

The Buick was the car that pushed the style envelope of the mid-50's. They pushed the chrome threshold and sprouted budding tail fins. Buicks showed us what true automotive elegance could be. From a GM perspective, Buicks fit nicely between Chevrolet and Cadillac. Although a Cadillac was a sign that you had made it, the Buick was a sign that you were on your way. Admit it - your father owned a Buick. Or, your grandfather. This was probably the first brand new car they ever owned. And, when your father or grandfather talk about that car, they get a gleam in their eye and the story always ends with, "I never should have sold that car..."

These cars are special. They hold the history of mid-America. They hold the dreams of entire generations.

Although these road machines of the mid-1950's are incredible, 55Buick.com is dedicated to another machine. It is dedicated to the engineering and marketing machines that made up the Buick Motor Division of General Motors Corporation. It was these teams of craftsmen, artists, capitalists, marketeers, salesmen, and engineers that turned out such a fine car and such a fascinating assortment of collateral material to promote their hard work.. The 1955 Buick collateral material allows us to focus on a microcosm of an era. The era of big steel, flashy chrome, and huge white wall tires!

We took the Buick to the 2007 Goodguys All American get together in Pleasanton, California. I bet there were more than 2,000 cars there! I saw the sites, saw the cars, ate the food, and managed to get a reasonable sun burn! I didn't return for the Sunday event as I wanted to nurse the melanoma I developed on Saturday. The weather was perfect.

There were quite a few people that recongized the car from either Blacky's Fresno Autorama, GMP, or Steve Sellers. You would be suprised how many people have or have had 55 Buicks! I think I will go to the Pleasanton summer Goodguys show and hang out for both days... I really had a good time.

The trick to Goodguys is to pre-register and get there early. I can't count how many guys were cruising around at 10:00 looking for a place to squeeze their car into. Any place that looks like a parking spot is a parking spot. Don't be too picky!

I did the first road trip with The Buick this weekend. I left Santa Cruz on Friday to visit friends in LA. The start of an epic journey.

Preparation was straight forward. I stopped in Capitola to top the tank off and ensure that I had 34 pounds of air in each tire. I fired up the onboard entertainment system and selected an appropriate XM station. I then pointed The Buick south toward the Eastern-most part of Monterey Bay and stepped on the gas!

It is highly tempting to ride with all four windows down on a Riviera. There is nothing like the hardtop look and nothing like air rushing by. This lasted about 10 miles. It was too cool out to justify looking cool. Windows up also cut down on road noise. You can't cut down on all road noise in a 55 Buick because of aerodynamics. As svelte as this car may look, it is not what you would call slippery. Even with the windows up and liberal applications of Dynamat, this car is not a sound studio. Fortunately, the Alpine amplifier had enough punch to neutralize wind noise.

I hung a left at Castroville and then hung a right at Salinas. This put me on 101 South with almost exactly 300 miles left on my trip without having to make another turn. Historically, 55 Buicks love straight highways. This one always did. Even before its current incarnation.

Now, with a straight road, I switched the entertainment system to MP3 mode. I selected some ZZ Top and turned the volume up. Before long, I glanced down at the speedometer and realized that I was going 100 MPH. Nice. The next thought was - "How fast can this thing go"? I eased it up to 120 MPH and my next thought was - "I'm scared". I gave up well before The Buick did. I was more interested in getting to my destination than setting a new 55 Buick land speed record. On the open road, California drivers are normally in the 80 MPH zone. Regardless of actual speed limit. This worked for me and I kept the speed at between 80 and 90 for the rest of the trip.

I decided to get gas in Pismo Beach. Not because the tank was empty, but I needed to clean the bugs off the windshield. The bugs were on there so thick, it looked like I drove through a maple syrup factory. As it turned out, I only needed 9 gallons of gas. It is 275 miles from Capitola to Pismo Beach. That means I was making 19 MPG! I don't recall the gas mileage for an original 55 Buick, but I would think it would be in the low teens. An original 55 Buick could not do 19 MPG if it were in a free fall.

You would be surprised how many people ask me what sort of gas mileage I get. I think they ask to have something, anything, negative to say about the car. My stock answer was always that it gets better mileage than it used to with the original engine. Even though the new LS1 gets almost 180 more horsepower. The LS1 is a great engine. No doubt about it. Now, I can actually quote a real MPG under a real condition. Me driving a car at 90 MPH is a real condition!

The trip was fantastic. The Buick was flawless. And, now we have the first big road trip under our belts!

Drive-ins and old cars just seem to belong together. We took The Buick to the Skyview Drive In Nostalgia Night 2006 yesterday. It was pretty cool seeing the old cars in the classic drive-in setting.

At the end of the day we ended up taking home the Best Paint award. Of course, my thanks go out to Emilio Belmonte at Evil Wheels - (831) 476-0788 - for the nicest paint job I have ever seen!

We have added a new advertisement to the 55 Buick Advertisement page!

"Its got Glamor": A classic ad shows a red 1955 Buick Special Convertible cruising through the country, at an obvious high speed, with a dapper gentlemen at the wheel and a happy blond in a yellow outfit at his side. He appears rather pleased. The interesting thing about this ad is that it shows 5 color swatches for the different convertible tops.

Of course, there are 6 other ads featuring 1955 Buicks on the site that we are sure you will find interesting.

As we find more ads (and find time to post them) we'll be adding them to our collection.

Enjoy!

On a lark, I entered the Buick into the Aptos, California 4th of July Parade (The "shortest parade" in the USA!). My 78 year old mother-in-law is always going on about parades and such. We invited her to be our official "waver" sitting in the passenger seat. The parade really was short. We spent more time in the parade staging area than in the parade.

It was fun! It really made the crowd go wild when I'd drop all the air from the air ride system. The Buick litterally sits on the pavement when I do this. I got such a kick out of it that I did it every 150 feet or so. My little compressor was going wild trying to keep the large air tanks filled. After about the 8th such drop, there just wasn't enough residual air in the tanks to get The Buick all the way up. We took out a few of the reflective markers in the road before I got the car a couple of inches off the ground. No worries. The compressor caught up after a minute and we were fine again.

The Aptos Chamber of Commerce called last night and said that we won! I never expected this. We certainly were not doing it for glory - we entered the parade because it was one of those crazy last minute things that just got out of control. These are the types of events that no level of planning could have improved upon. We really had a great time and I expect that Aptos will see us again next year!