Stacy, here's what my research shows. Those are #1383497 discontinued by GM in the 80's with no replacement shown. My 72 parts book says 1968 30-40 are the exact same number. AMK has headlight nuts B-15032 and says they replace #'s 1383497, 1379013 + 1385235. CARS sells 1969-72 nuts that I assume are the AMK nuts. Any GM number change always means some change in the part. So...I don't know...could be they are a hair fatter, longer, more flutes, less flutes, beefier, I don't know. What I know is they should physically snap in the core support. I know if you have an original to compare you can figure it out. New is better than used. Wait, I'll link a catalog. Page 61 CARS has them on ebay. https://www.amkproducts.com/wp-content/uploads/Catalog_BulkFastener/BULK_55-70.pdf https://www.ebay.com/itm/4-GM-Buick...:Buick&hash=item569b8f540a:g:SlgAAOSwo9VbBHDi
Thanks for the advice Frank, I will take a look at at the part when I back at the shop. It sure looks like the 69 through 72 part.
The headlight door nut appears to be the same as what Frank found. I will get some on order. I got the core support out, stripped off most of the parts, degreased and pressure washed it. It's pitted under the battery tray but looks in pretty good shape, all things considered. I am going to have it bead blasted and painted before it goes back in the car. Sure is easier to get to the engine now. I also completely dissembled the console, pressure washed it then sanded the remnants of the old flocking and glue off with a scotch-brite pad before masking it off. Here's a shot after application of the flocking glue. ...and after the flocking fibers are applied. Its lumpy looking because of the extra fibers. After everything dries I will remove the excess flocking and it should look good as new.
No progress due to a weekend house project over the last few weeks. I have been framing up my 3-season porch for windows instead of working on Buick stuff in my spare time. Trying to get it done before winter hits. I am taking the core support to get bead blasted today. I stripped all the small parts off of it last night. I found this hidden up under the the top channel of the core support: It must have been hiding there for the last 50 years or so. The picture below shows the holes in the core support for the battery hold-down doohickey. Either they needed another hole for an unusually tall battery or the original hole became to wallowed out and they welded that washer in to fix it. Nice welds by the way. But I suppose whoever did it was operating upside down, bent over into the small space where the battery goes. Either way I am going to have it properly fixed while the core support is out. Does anyone know if that top hole (where the washer is) should be there or not?
No Stacey, that hole shouldn't be there. This is about the best pic I have of my core support and it shows only 4 holes in the battery area. The washer and hole need to be removed.
Picked the core support up from the blasters and dropped it off at the painters. Amazingly there was some corrosion under the battery tray but no pinholes. Its nice to have a California car to work with! Blasted core support: The painter does corvette restorations and new car collision damage. Two businesses run by the same guy. You drop stuff off at the collision shop and they take it over to the restoration shop. When I explained to the collision guy that I wanted the extra hole in the core support patched and bodywork done on the corroded areas of core support he looked at me like I was stupid. He just said "that's going to be expensive" like I didn't already know this and expected it to be free. Received the hood latch back from the plater. Looks brand new. Got the car up on jack stands so could get the driveshaft out and start disconnecting the transmission mounts before pulling the engine. Ran out of time to do more. While picking up/delivering parts I also picked up my '61 from the upholstery shop. This is the tail end of a multi-year saga (otherwise undocumented here in V8Buick) to have the interior reupholstered with NOS fabric from SMS. SMS is one of the least organized places I have ever dealt with. It's finally done:
FINALLY! I also learned the hard way that you have to remove the starter before pulling a BBB. I hits the cross member otherwise.
Now I am stripping down the engine to reseal and paint it. Here's the trouble-maker hose clamp that fell inside the engine, just lying there minding his own business even though I had to pull the %$**!# engine to find him. So what parts were normally painted on a '67 Big Block? That low mileage GS400 that RK Motors appears to have had it's fuel pump painted, which makes sense. Instead of masking it off, the pump was probably just installed before the engine assembly was painted. Was the engine dipstick handle painted too? Anything else? https://www.rkmotors.com/vehicles/1210/1967-buick-gs400 I painted the exhaust manifolds a couple of years ago with high temp exhaust paint. I found that it was already flaking off in spots. So this time around I am going to try having them ceramic coated instead. Here's the hood latch after plating: Super exciting! if you are into that type of thing... I am bagging and tagging all the loose parts so I can remember what goes where when this thing goes back together. I also started detailing some of the small parts like the shifter linkage and the master cylinder - de-rusting, de-greasing, and painting. I need to start organizing everything by paint color and set up a little paint production line. I have some time off around Thanksgiving and Christmas so I plan to spend a few days flailing away at this thing some more then.
I'll have to find the receipt but it wasn't too expensive from memory. BrakeBoosters.com did it. I stripped the old paint and removed the rust with Evap-Rust before I shipped him the part. It took a couple of weeks to turn around. Every time I ship him parts he claims to be in the process of retiring and selling the business so call him before you ship him anything. https://brakeboosters.com/
I downloaded a "how to rebuild your Turbo 400" video from Youtube and started blowing the transmission apart so I could, you know, rebuild it. i got about three steps in before things started looking different from the video. The video was clearly for a newer version of the turbo 400. I figured most of it out but got stalled out after removing the clutches. Can't figure out how to remove the center section parts. I will have to do a little more research.
There's a 3/8" 12 point bolt in the bottom of the trans that holds the center support shaft in you need to remove it inorder to get it out. Look at this pic and the location of it is circled. https://images.app.goo.gl/rqxFZgLUxWqhqpGx8
Thanks! I saw that fastener poking through the valve body, didn't know what it was for. Now I know. I don't have internet access in my shop so I wasn't able to ask Google what to do next... I also broke the wire to what I believe is the switch pitch solenoid on the back side of the pump assembly. I was disassembling everything on a welding table and rolling the transmission on it's side when I need access to the valve body side and then back to the upright position when working through the front. I must have pinched the wire under the pan gasket surface when pulling the pump out. I am going to buy one of these things: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Transmissi...841984?hash=item420b256680:g:7y0AAOSwcjBcrWQm Also forgot to mention that I checked end play before pulling everything apart. Front end-play was 28 thousandths and rear was about 5.
Also continued stripping the engine block of parts for paint. I was surprised to see that the inside of the timing cover at the water pump looked like this: Is that normal? What would have caused that erosion of the material? It looks like the cooling system was full pea gravel. The impeller side of the pump looks fine. Whatever it was, I will be installing a different timing cover.
Any recommendations on Gasket sets? Need to get that on order along with transmission kit. I am going to use BOP Viton rear main seal but am looking for a good source for all the other gaskets and seals. What say you? TA performance? Fel-Pro? Sealed Power? Doesn't matter?
Transmission is going back together but I am stalled out trying to install the direct clutch/intermediate sprag assembly. The sprag assembly is supposed to index with the clutch drive plates so it will bottom out properly. I messed around with the direct clutch/intermediate assembly for an hour, rotating it counter-clockwise trying to align the teeth but couldn't get it to seat properly. Is there a trick to this that I am missing? The teeth that I am talking about are on the inside diameter of the clutch plates in the photo below:
I am taking a break from transmission for a bit and working on the pump and timing cover assembly. Installed a T/A performance oil pump booster plate, new pump gears, and new oil pump relief valve as there was some light scoring on the oil filter housing from the pump. Packed the oil pump cavity with Vaseline before bolting everything to an NOS timing cover that I bought here on the board a few years ago. I got the core support back from the body shop. It looks great: I am considering pulling the heads to (at a minimum) remove the carbon buildup from the pistons. There is also a bunch of buildup on the backside of the valves. The car has about 70,000 miles on it and the engine doesn't appear to have been apart or decked. Original partial VIN and other stampings are still present on the block: I also had the exhaust manifolds ceramic coated. No pictures yet but they look great and the coating should outlast the paint I put on a few years ago.
