2012-05-15 56X Buick

56 X BUICK SESSION MAY 15 2012

Volunteers: Jim Baker, Al Batts, Bob Boorsma, Jerry Bush, Del Carpenter, Connie DeJong, Ryan DeVries, Ron Elzinga, Don Feutz, Don Mayton, Art Meidema, Dick Saddler, Chuck Snow,

There are a total of five work benches in the west work area, one work bench in the hoist room, and one work bench in the east work area. Each work bench has its own vice. Today we ran out of work benches and Chuck Snow had to use the tail gate of his truck for a work bench. You will see that in the photos that Al took.

#7 photo shows one of the rear corner lower bumper pieces being prepared for chrome plating.

#6 photo shows making studs for fastening on the previous corner piece. These will be brazed onto the ribbed trim piece for fastening to the bumper after both the bumper and the trim piece are chrome plated. Note; all these lower trim bumper pieces are cast brass one-of-a-kind parts.

#5 photo shows we start with a standard 10-32 brass machine screw and then flaten the head with the grinder so it can be brazed to the trim piece as shown in photo #7.

#4 photo shows the one-of-a-kind front door arm rest being prepared for the chrome plating. These pieces will come back with a chrome mat finish.

#3 photo shows the complete view of the arm rest with some of the just returned pieces above from the chrome plater.

#2 & #1 photos show the parts just returned from the chrome plater. The bars with the slight "S" shape are the four lower trim on the rear bumper. Again these are unique to the 56X. The balance of the pieces make up the parade boot latches. Although these parts were sourced by the GM Styling Studio from Caddilac's part bin, after looking for many, many, years at the AACA meet in Hershey and last year, 2011, stopping at every listed Cadillac vendor and never finding any with the one original we had I could never locate another one. I was told by Cadillac folks that this parade boot latch was on an Eldorado Cadillac. So with the one original part we made the other latch. Each latch contains 5 specific parts, two rivets, and five attaching screws.

Photos 13, 14, & 15. These photos probably look very strange for this restoration. The original photographs show the head rests at different heights. Upon interviewing the GM Styling Studio folks when I first purchased this car they told me that the this car, the Buick 56X, had powered head rests. In doing some further investigation the 1956 Buick Centurian shows on the console in the center of the bucket seats a rocker button that says head rest. Dean Tryon and I personally removed the driver's bucket seat and there is 'NO' power or motor for a powered head rest. Of course the 1956 Buick Centurian is a non running concept car and has a computer screen in the instrument panel that is suppose to be hooked to a rear TV camera that is also non functioning.

The listed photos is Jim Baker's engineering to take a look at powered head rests that actually exist on a foreign car and basically design the powered head rests for the 56X using all 1956 Buick or GM available components. So those three photographs of a functioning powered head rest. He had also designed what he thought the system would look like prior to him finding in the junk yard a car that actually had powered head rests.

Photo 12 shows the final hole in the side of the lower front left 1/4 panel where the side exhaust will exit. The right side now also has the same hole. Del, Ryan, Bob, and others worked on the the body. Final fitting of components will take place next week.

The balance of the photos show the precision work on the body panels. There have been a lot involved here including Connie, Art, Don F., and earlier Dick C.

Other work being done has been preparing more trim pieces to go to the chrome plater. That work was done my Don F., Don M., Connie doing brazing, Jerry doing machine work and making fasteners. It takes a long time repairing trim and in some cases making new trim.

Photo #8 is another photo of Chuck's bench as he had to modify the rear seat bulk-head for final fit.

All of the above pieces were prepared by the above volunteers.

Don