Hi All, I am a new owner of a 1955 Buick Century Resto-mod. I purchased the car a few weeks ago from auction out of Grants Pass, OR. It had "reportedly" been redone 4 years ago. That included interior, paint, chrome and a freshly rebuilt 401 nailhead and 3 speed dynaflow reportedly from a '64 Wildcat. It has a different rear end in it as well but I have no information on it (oh, open driveshaft too). Overall the car is just what I was looking for. A cruise car, we live on the Southern California coast, not a show car. In other words, it looks better from a short distance but not good enough to compare against others When it arrived by transport it would idle beautifully but would totally fall over under any load. I got stuck the first time I took it 1 mile from home and came to a grade. After a week I got that all resolved fairly easily. The first clue was a clogged fuel filter. Clogged with rust! New fuel tank, rubber fuel lines, flush the steel lines, new fuel pump and rebuilt 4 barrel and it runs like a champ. Really smooth and sounds great. has true dual exhaust but I didn't like the sound so I added an H-pipe to make me happy. The next problem has been the front suspension. It wandered all over and swayed really, really bad. The sway bar has completely worn bushings everywhere, the Idler arm had over an inch of play and it was obviously lowered but they kept the original shocks so they have little effect and really could use being replaced. I ordered new parts for a '55 Buick Century but none of them fit So I tightened up the idler arm and had the front re-aligned. Camber and caster weren't bad but toe was way out. It does drive better but I need to do more research on sway bar bushings and eventually shocks. Next problem revealed was that the front lug bolts were essentially "pulling through" the wheel holes! I mean they were barely holding on especially on the drivers side. I temporarily added some washers on that side until I can decide my approach. I did try new lug bolts with larger heads but locally I could only source 1 1/4 bolts and they contacted the shoes when tightened so that was a no go. I've considered many alternatives but I think I will just step up my plan to add disk brakes up front and that should resolve the problem. The car has a recent upgraded power brake booster with double master cylinder so I think I will go with a Wilwood conversion kit. I need to do some final fitment research but I think it looks like a reasonable upgrade. The question is whether or not I need a proportioning valve. Any logic to just skipping one until I install the new brakes and test drive it? When I jacked up the front to work on the front wheel issue I noticed for the first time I was leaking coolant from the lower corner of the radiator where a previous repair had been made. Crap! Oh well, I pulled the radiator and off to a radiator repair shop tomorrow to get that fixed (yeah, on a Monday, I'm long retired ) Anyway, that's a long hello. Sorry but I wanted to get it all out and I probably missed some. Oh, yeah, I did, I also replaced the coil and added a Pertronics electronic module to the distributor.
Hey nice car back at you. Two cars ago I had a 1996 Harley-Davidson Edition WS6! By the time I was done I had blown the original motor and went with a bullet proofed short block out of a vette (so 4-bolt main), professionally done stock heads, supercharged and nitrous injected putting down close to 500 rwhp and 670 ft lbs of tq. Ran 131 in the 1/4 but couldn't break 11 seconds. Just too old with no reaction time Man I loved that car. Full cage and all the goodies. I had a drag strip about a mile from my house here in Carlsbad, CA but they closed it down and developed the land so I made some changes and started road racing it. Fun but heavy and with the blower I had to keep it to cooler months only so I sold it and bought a new Corvette which I modified the suspension dumping the transverse leaf springs for fully adjustable coil overs, headers, ported throttle body and intake manifold, LG long tube headers and a bunch of other goodies. That was a great track car and I enjoyed that for 9 years and now the '55.
