who likes 1959 Buicks?

Discussion in 'A boatload of fun' started by garybuick, May 29, 2016.

  1. 66electrafied

    66electrafied Just tossing in my nickel's worth

    :gp: That's the biggest reason I'm being picky when it comes to finding a 59. They were notorious rot buckets; - it was a first year body style and a badly conceived one at that. They had no idea about rust proofing in those days and really didn't care because the cars were usually hammered to junk within 10 years or 100,000 miles, whichever came first.
    I have yet to see one that doesn't have serious rust issues, although I would bet the lovely 59 Electra flattop pictured above with the Connie is flawless.

    I absolutely love the styling on the 59; the 60 is my next favorite. I had a 60 Invicta flattop; it was the worst car I've ever owned. It was possessed by some demon or something; there's no other explanation for what that car put me through. It taught me to go and look for a nice one if I'm ever to get a replacement.

    So I'm going to be happy with my big mid-sixties convertibles now and maybe lust after a nice 59 from a distance. The prices for good ones are stratospheric and supply has dried up, so the prospects of me coming across one that hits all my buttons right ain't gonna happen for a long, long time.

    The waiting continues...
     
  2. WQ59B

    WQ59B Well-Known Member

    My observations disagree with yours. B-59s are no more rot-prone than almost any other of the immediate period. The 'notorious rot buckets' were the '57-59 Plymouths.

    The OEMs didn't address it, correct, but there is no more rust proofing on a '66 than a '59.

    My Invicta had 105K on it- was built in Wilmington & I bought it out of PA, so it saw plenty of winter. It had minor rot in the rockers & the corners of the front fenders- like everything else that lived it's life in the central east coast that old. Looked at a '55 Bel Air recently- it had those aftermarket 'headlight eyebrow' patches poorly welded in- there was no deckled, door or hood rot on my car, nothing except the very lower bottom edge. I for one don't consider that a rot bucket.
     
  3. WQ59B

    WQ59B Well-Known Member

  4. 66electrafied

    66electrafied Just tossing in my nickel's worth

    Mark, I agree that the late 50's Mopars were worse, so were the Fords. Even rarer than a 59 Buick is a 59 Mercury, I've only ever seen one. But as far as Buicks go, the 59 style was a rush job as they quickly figured out that the old Harley Earl style wasn't going to fly anymore. Chrysler beat them to the punch with the "cab forward" design, long and low, that's what everyone wanted, not the bulky overdone 58s. So they put together a model, and didn't get to do the entire gamut of testing on it. Plus, the steel used then was different ; it was thicker but softer. By the mid 60s they'd figured out how make thinner high tensile stuff, and that alloy was better than the crap they used in the late 50s and into 1963. Chrysler and Ford both changed alloys later, therefore they still rusted like shipwrecks until they finally got it together by the late 60s. The B-59 was the worst of the Buick series for rust; (the 60 wasn't much better but it was already an improvement), but they weren't as bad as everyone else was then.

    Most of the 59s I've looked at have had no floors, no trunks, no rockers left and extensive frame issues. I have yet to see a really solid one. That you've found a solid one to work with is fantastic, because I'm not sure there are many left.

    I'm jealous; I'd trade one of my convertibles for a nice solid 59 Invicta coupe or hardtop sedan in a heartbeat. That said, I'll probably still have my convertibles 10 years from now because there aren't any good ones left that aren't work triple of what one of my 'verts are.

    You're lucky to have one.
     
  5. WQ59B

    WQ59B Well-Known Member

    As time goes by, I do appreciate more & more the examples of vintage vehicles I bought as far as condition goes.
    Finishing up work on a '40 Ford, and bits I swear weren't apart since maybe 1960 have been in surprising condition & working.

    I'm well versed on the gestation of the GM '59s, and while the in-process redesign was much faster than usual, obviously, I've not seen any instance in the car that shows a deficiency of body engineering, other than a plethora of front clip pieces. Now, if you want to talk about that damn center link, I'm game. ;)

    57 B-59 proto3.jpg
     
  6. Smokey15

    Smokey15 So old that I use AARP bolts.

    Crazy, but when it comes to full sized cruisers, like the '59 Buicks, I prefer to own a four door, like Brian's. Anything else, two door.
     
  7. WQ59B

    WQ59B Well-Known Member

    I had a '60 Bonneville flattop for a bit, the rear doors were irksomely small.
    Give me that teardrop hardtop coupe roofline any day!
     
  8. STAGE III

    STAGE III Lost Experimental 455-4 Bolt Main Block.

  9. 66electrafied

    66electrafied Just tossing in my nickel's worth

    The wagon is cool; but there's no way I'm paying that for a car like that. It's just not what I'm looking for. The Invicta coupe a few spots down from that is more my liking, the problem being is that it'll probably hit $20K when it's all over and to pay that and ship it with taxes and everything would end up costing me about $50K in Canadian Dollarettes to get it here, and I can't justify that.

    The 4 door flat-top almost suits the lines of the car the best; - very space age. Back doors being small? I don't know, never was in the back seat of mine when I had one. I thought it was pretty well proportioned for the look of the car.

    And yes, the centre link was not one of GM's better ideas. Had issues with all the pre-61 cars I've had. Put a nice set of radials on and pop sockets.

    Still going to wait...in the meantime, I think I'll go start my convertibles up. It's about 45 degrees out and melting, so it's only a matter of time now!
     
  10. WQ59B

    WQ59B Well-Known Member

    "pop sockets" ?
     
  11. 66electrafied

    66electrafied Just tossing in my nickel's worth

    What that meant is you put a nice set of radials on and the next thing that happens is the ball ends on the idler or the pitman arm pop out of their sockets. If you haven't got enough pressure or if the cotter pin rusts away and the adjusting bolt works it's way out, you've got a popped socket and a centre drag link that now lives up to it's name. I wrecked a number of idler arms and ball sockets with power steering and radial tires.
     
  12. WQ59B

    WQ59B Well-Known Member

    Yikes. I JUST finished rebuilding mine, if anything it feels too tight, but everything has been triple checked and verified, and the end plugs are only in as far as necc. to get the cotter pins in. I put it together with minimal grease- haven't pumped it full yet. But I want to run radials- guess I'll have to keep an eye on the set-up.

    Anyone ever hear of a later retro-fit solid bar that can replace the '59-60 '100-piece' bar?
     
  13. 66electrafied

    66electrafied Just tossing in my nickel's worth

    I looked into it once; the 1961 and later Buick sets had a more modern draglink assembly. It was a major design revolution and was "state of the art" in its day. It improved all of the old problems and made for better road feel and control ability. It might be possible to retrofit that stuff if you had a complete set to pick from. At the time though there weren't nearly as many parts available for Buicks as there are now, so I gave up on it when I couldn't find a suitable donor car.

    The only thing I'm not 100% sure of is how much careful fitting it would have involved; it was one of those things that could work in theory but one wouldn't know for sure what other mods would have to be made until you tried to fit it together. But you'd need a new idler, pitman arm, spindles and knuckles, drums (the post 61 stuff is on roller bearings, not ball bearings) plus the fact that post 61 Buicks use studs and lug nuts in place of screws to secure the wheels. Then there's the whole line up of the steering box and the sway bars; - two things I didn't take into account. I'm not even sure if the older A-frames will allow for the use of the later parts; - you might have to retrofit those as well. If you swapped out the whole front end, you'd get a better handling Buick out of it, but it's obviously an awful lot of work.

    Experience with the older ball and socket stuff taught me to make sure the car was moving before I moved the steering wheel; - this reduced the stress on the sockets and they wear out or "pop". So parking can be an adventure. And yes, grease the hell out of the works, especially that idler arm. Those things are flimsy and as long as they're greased, the threads won't dissolve into rust or grind off due to the added stress of radials. Don't put too wide of tires on there either; - they might look cool, but the tie rods, drag link and idler set up are not designed to take those stresses.
     
  14. WQ59B

    WQ59B Well-Known Member

    I had bought all new front end bushings, then took apart my 105K suspension and saw no visible wear on any of the original bushings. New ones went in, but that's some good engineering.
     
  15. JayZee88

    JayZee88 Well-Known Member

    As I recall from my times driving 59 Buicks equipped with radial tires and manual steering it was never a problem. I'm used to driving non ps, drum brake, radial equipped cars from the era. As I recall my plain Jane 59 was a well planted, easy to drive car. She either aged gracefully in the steering and suspension department of Buick over engineered the components which tends to be the norm over the lesser GM divisions. My Chevys 54, 57s, and 58 didn't handle or track as well.
     
  16. 66electrafied

    66electrafied Just tossing in my nickel's worth

    While I agree that Buicks are well engineered, I say that I've had to replace an idler arm in every old pre-1975 Buick I've ever owned, and I've had at last count over 35 cars of which 29 of those were Buicks of the early to mid-sixties. Maybe it's because the roads are all crap up here I don't know. And yes, most of these cars had over 100K miles on them. The only thing that might be different is that they were exposed to 7-8 months a year of salt and snow.

    My experience with the ball and socket set up was always that the springs would go weak, and in some cases the bushings wore to dust. More often than not the ball itself was fine. Cotter pins dissolved, tensioning bolts would back off, and of course they were never greased. In other words, used and abused. Regardless of who engineered it, it's only a matter of time then when components that weren't designed to do certain things will prematurely fail when loaded up. Fact is, these cars used a design that originated in the late 30s and was never designed for radial tires. It was only in 1955-1957 when Buick dumped the king-pins and the knee-action shocks that had been around since the early 30s. So while the 59s were an improvement, they were no where near as good as the 1961 and later design was which was much more modern.

    After I went through the front-ends, they were generally fine and never gave me too much trouble unless things were abused. All I'm saying is take it easy on the old girl and get the car rolling before you turn the wheel; - don't crank away while stationary. The pump will put out, the wheel will move, and if you don't have the right tension on the bushings, things may pop, or they won't. But the risk is there, whereas with the newer stuff it is significantly lessened because radials were already on the horizon and they were engineering for them.

    As for idlers, it could be a combination of age, chemical degradation and abuse that caused each and every one of them to fail, who knows. It's just with that earlier design, the wear part is the threaded shaft; without enough grease it wears to dust. Nothing is more disconcerting when all of sudden the car refuses to turn left.

    Just sayin'...
     
  17. JayZee88

    JayZee88 Well-Known Member

    I agree. Radial tires load the suspension differently then bias ply tires. The caster, camber, and toe in (Or combination of them) should be adjusted with radial iirc.
     
  18. WQ59B

    WQ59B Well-Known Member

    Buick's '61 solid bar and the move to roller bearings was progress but Buick wasn't engineering suspension for radials until when- the early 70s?

    Over time, there's been all sorts of scuttlebutt on radials on old cars, including 'they'll stress crack your steel rims'.
    I ran radials (hard) on a '64 Catalina for 25000 miles with no issues (no ball/socket linkage, but obviously years deep in bias ply territory).

    I checked a spare B-59 center link I have, and the balls move pretty freely/wobble but it's definitely 'used'.
     
  19. 66electrafied

    66electrafied Just tossing in my nickel's worth

    Continental was making radial tires back in 1953-54; - the Mercedes 180 ("Ponton") was designed to work with them as was the 190 SL. That car wasn't even designed for bias ply tires; I had one and it was hairy until I got the radials it wanted. Then the car smartened right up and had decent road manners, wasn't bouncing around all over the place or chattering.

    So while radials definitely weren't mainstream yet, - (I think you're right, American tire makers started really mass-marketing them by about 71-72) most automotive engineers were looking at what was happening in Europe and probably planning for it. The Italians were already shoving Contis on their sports cars by then, so they'd be on the track. Pirelli was starting to make them as well. The B-59 was probably conceived in 1957; - there was a short gestation period for it, usually they lay a car down about 3-5 years ahead of when it gets released. The 61 model may have gone into planning around the same time (at least technically, the body art wasn't done till much later). The buying public wanted a car that handled like it looked; the new low slung bodies looked "speedy" compared to the ponderous tanks of the late 50s, and people were driving faster and farther. So they had to evolve and change.

    Another thing that helped the handling; - they moved the axle centre of gravity more towards the rear; - the 60 was the last one that had the crossmember ahead of the motor, the 61s straddled it more. Better weight distribution meant sharper handling, and more road feel through the power steering set up.
     

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