1951 Buick Special Deluxe - 07


First week of October - Driver's side of Firewall

These pages may jump around in time some - I don't know. Trying to keep it in order, but in the end, it all needs to get done. Decided to pull off the panel on the driver's side of the firewall. Took a few photos up under the instrument panel.

Radiator frame

A seller on eBay who I'd bought a couple of items from also had the radiator frame that I needed. I had considered trying to work with DVAP in Casa Grande on this, but this eBay guy was willing to ship this big, hefty chunk of steel at his cost since I had helped lighten his collection before. He specialized in the Roadmaster, but I had info that this part was the same across all of them. It does appear to be the same.

10/7/13 trunk, etc.

Looked inside the trunk. Found what appear to be tire changing tools. As in, cut off and shaped pieces of leaf spring used to pry a tire off the rim. Jack appears to be all there. Spare tire retention parts are there as well. The original cardboard trunk liners are there. One of the Buick specialist vendors offers a reduced-price replacement set if you provide a pattern. They don't have anything for '51 yet, so maybe I'll go that route.

Pulled the trunk liner parts. Tried to flatten them out. Got the forward one (first picture here) to flatten out pretty good - got some good measurements off of it. Need to draw these up and put them somewhere that I won't lose them. The side panels have a lot of curves.

Yes, this first part is symmetrical, when it's flattened out. It has an almost wood-grain pattern that the 2 side parts don't have. Different suppliers?

The hole in this part is for the spare tire bracket.

Found a couple of home-made tools in the trunk. My guess is these are for pulling a tire off the rim.

Also found the complete jack and spare tire retaining nut. Sweet.

The right-side sun visor was in the trunk. Not a bad piece of home-workshop engineering here, as the metal hinge piece is gone. I tightened up the screws a little and put it back up front.

Making a note of a couple of other parts - missed out on the exact radiator on eBay. It had been pulled from a '50 for a hotrod conversion. This sold really quick. Quest for radiator continues.