Buick Resto
When Gerry couldn’t buy the parts he needed for his Buick Roadmaster, he decided to just make them himself.
For Gerry White the call he’d just received was a bit of a mixed blessing. Diagnosed with kidney cancer a year before, he had now just received the all clear. His joy was slightly tinged by the fact that, thinking the worst, he’d sold off most of the tools and equipment he’d previously used to restore a vast number of cars for himself and close friends.
Already over a year into its rebuild, this 1951 Buick Roadmaster would be his penultimate car restoration. ‘I’ve spent most of my life in the garage,’ admits Gerry, ‘I made the decision recently to come back in and spend time with my wife Monica.’ The Buick was a complete nut-and-bolt strip down that would ultimately occupy him for three years. ‘I bought it sight unseen from America; it had been described as a good and complete car that could be on the road in six weeks. When it arrived, I could have cried. It sat at the docks on flat tyres with rust all around the bottom, a smashed screen and half the parts missing – I’d paid £16,000 and I was heartbroken. The only good thing was that it was a genuine Roadmaster convertible.’
Someone else’s mess
Gerry suspects the Buick came from a restorer who had begun stripping it down, then abandoned the car outside. ‘The bumpers were good but much of the chrome was missing, there was no back seat and the floors had rotted out.’ Lending assistance was close
friend Howard Wilton, whose 1947 Nash Ambassador the pair had previously restored together.
The first job was constructing a frame to take the Buick’s body once it was off the chassis. Says Gerry, ‘I made one out of steel then fitted wheelie bin wheels. They take a lot of weight and have good brakes.’ Happily, the engine turned out to be in great condition and even came with a new carburettor so, other than drilling out the temperature gauge sender that had snapped off in the block, it only required some tuning and a repaint in the correct shade of green. Friend Mike ‘Hooky’ John sourced a period paint chart in America, before the Fireball decals were applied and lacquered.
Following an acid dip the chassis revealed odd welding along the bottom edge which Gerry was ready to grind away, ‘it looked really amateur but Hooky pointed out it was triangular metal bracing added at the factory to strengthen the convertible models.’ Gerry was also kept busy on the outriggers. ‘Some had been replaced but none of those extended out far enough to support the sills,’ remembers Howard. Each was remade before Gerry applied two-pack shiny black. New suspension was fitted along with the rebuilt back axle, ‘it was full of oily water that came out looking like milk.’
Before the engine could go back in, Gerry rebuilt the complicated Dynaflow automatic gearbox three times before he was satisfied it was perfect. He also made an exhaust from the manifold back using mild steel pipe and joining two modern silencers together to make the correct Buick-sized one. When the silencer turned out to be slightly too tall he simply sliced the top inch off, repacked the steel wool inside and re-welded it. ‘I don’t buy anything if I can make it myself,’ explains Gerry. The exhaust was sprayed by a specialist in molten aluminium to prevent corrosion. The rear axle was lifted back under the chassis using tie down strops since, as Howard recalls, ‘Gerry wouldn’t use a trolley jack in case it
scratched his new paint!’
New metal
Previous owners hadn’t been so careful and knocking the various dents out of the bulkhead took three weeks. ‘I replaced the bottom six inches of all the wings
and doors with 18-gauge steel and made up new sills,’ remembers Gerry. ‘The floor repairs alone took almost eight weeks. I wore out a welding machine doing this car.’
For body prep, Gerry prefers using aluminium oxide pads in a hand-held DA since it ‘gets the paint off and shines up the metal.’ Fortunately all four wings unbolt, so once the bodyshell was painted and back on the chassis (Gerry hand cut new rubber mounts for it), all the external panels were offered up and fettled to ensure a perfect fit before they were painted. ‘I always sand panels down then use P38 Easy Sand filler for small imperfections,’ explains Gerry. ‘Then it’s ten coats of two-pack primer, sand with 800- then 400-grit, then ten coats of colour. Flat that with 1200-grit, mop it then polish using Farecla G6 Compound with a polisher and finish by hand. I made a rotisserie for the panels so I could turn them as I painted.’
Half the hydraulic parts that control the convertible roof and windows were missing. Gerry was able to make new ones based on what he had, and drawings in a workshop manual Howard had found. It also came in handy for constructing the also-absent mounting parts of the footbrake mechanism, but when it came to the roof the guys were on their own. ‘We had that frame every possible way,’ laughs Gerry. ‘It would look great then we’d find the roof wouldn’t go down. Each piece bolts together using a tapered bolt in a tapered hole held in place with a grub screw. I made new screws and handformed each timber bow onto which the roof material tacks. I go the hard way about things sometimes…’
There were some great pieces of luck too; the windows are controlled by hydraulic fluid pushed down against the weight of a spring and Gerry was quoted £400 for new springs. Then Hooky remembered seeing some at an American company he’d visited back in the Seventies. ‘He phoned this chap and although he’d retired 16 years earlier he was able to remember
which box they were in,’ says Gerry, ‘so then Hooky phoned the company and they found them – total cost $25!’
Howard managed to find two pieces of rear side trim for the Buick and although they turned out to be for a different model, Gerry was able to cut them down to length. New stainless steel sill trim was made in Gerry’s four-foot long table folder and the swage line carefully pressed in a bit at a time. When it came to the front grille, the missing curved parts around the edges proved impossible to find so Gerry took two pieces of MDF, carved them to the exact shapes and had them cast in brass, then had them chromed with all the rest of the trim. The sidelight inner surrounds were also AWOL but Gerry made replacements on his lathe.
The supposedly brand-new front seat sourced from America needed completely rebuilding before it could be re-upholstered. The missing and impossible to replace rear seat was a problem until Howard came up with a clever solution. ‘None of us can walk past a skip without having a look,’ laughs Howard, ‘and I spotted one of those big swinging garden chairs someone had dumped. Gerry was doubtful at first but once cut down to length and welded, it fitted the Buick perfectly.’ The guys put springs from the chair’s back into its lower half to provide more support, then had it all upholstered with a leather kit from Bridge of Weir. Gerry also constructed the missing interior panels and doorcards from an
aluminium shop sign Howard found, ‘I spotted an unrestored 1951 Buick for sale online and printed out 50 photos so we could precisely copy the interior.’
‘It was a really trying restoration,’ admits Gerry. ‘I never gave up, but there were certainly times I walked away for an hour. Every nut and bolt was replaced or plated to look like new, and I cut replacement gaskets from solid rubber. Howard was very helpful because he would come up with solutions to making things when I couldn’t.
‘I did it for me, I saw it as me versus the car and I was always going to win.’ Their efforts were recognised when the Buick won the 2017 Rally of the Giants show days after being completed. ‘It was certainly all worth it,’ says Gerry. ‘The Buick has been good to me – we’ve done over 600 miles now and it’s been totally reliable.’