Archive Feature Car Staley Buick

The story of this 1939 Buick restoration project began over fifteen years ago. I joined the Okanagan Chapter of the Vintage Car Club of Canada in 1988 in anticipation of restoring a car. In late 1989, my wife visited the local Buick dealership to view their vehicles and discovered a 1939 Buick in the showroom. The car had been taken in trade on a new Buick and they thought it was so unusual that they had placed it alongside the current models. She really liked the look of the car and suggested that I check it out. To my untrained eye, the vehicle appeared to be in good condition, so I bought the car and decided to immediately begin a full body-off frame restoration.

While the car was originally from the United States , it had been in Penticton for many years. In fact, the car was used in the movie, My American Cousin, a film shot in the South Okanagan in 1985.

As I began to disassemble the car, my learning curve in restoration was very steep. I discovered the first major problem when I realized that the rear fenders had been attached with fiberglass. As the filler was ground out, it became obvious that the sheet metal repair would be very extensive. Both the fender edges and the body steel were completely rusted away. Due to the complicated curves in the rusted out section, welding in patches would be difficult and very time-consuming, so a parts car with a sound rear section was sought. A suitable car was obtained from an Auto Wrecker, about 280 miles away in Williams Lake .

Once the parts car was in the shop, I decided that the best approach would be to cut both cars in two and join the rear section of the donor car to the front of my vehicle. To enable accurate rejoining of the sections, plywood blanks for both rear quarter windows and the back window were made and many accurate measurements were taken. The cars were then cut apart using a panel cutter.

The front section of the original car and the rear section of the “parts” car were precisely aligned using the plywood inserts as guides and then clamped in place. As this was my first experience using a mig welder, the task seemed daunting. Welding the car together involved considerable time because it was necessary to make hundreds of very short welds to avoid distorting the metal with excess heat. There were also several other areas of major rust, including the rocker panels, driver-side floor, the lower sides of the cowl and the sheet metal below the trunk lid that all required new steel. The original front fenders were in reasonable shape. They only needed to have some cracks welded and a few minor dings worked out. The donor car provided a pair of good rear fenders.

The frame of the car is a massive steel structure with a major “X” beam in the center. Probably due to years of being driven on pot-hole-filled Prairie gravel roads, the frame had 13 cracks that also required welding.

The big straight eight engine was taken to a local machine shop for rebuilding. During the rebuild, hardened valve seats were installed to accommodate unleaded fuel and the connecting rods were ground out to permit the use of shell bearings in place of the original poured Babbitt bearings.

The front wheel and rear axle bearings were replaced, as well as all of the steel brake fluid lines and wheel cylinders. One of the most difficult replacement parts to locate was the universal joint. The “U” joint fitted to this car was unique and only used on 1939 Buick automobiles, so the supply of replacement parts is quite limited. I advertised in the magazine, Cars and Parts, and was able to locate two U joints in New Hampshire . Another hard-to-find accessory on 1939 Buicks were the parking lights. While they were standard equipment on all 1938 and 1940 Buicks, they were $5.00 extra in 1939. Few original owners purchased this “expensive” option so they seldom find their way to swap meets. After two years of searching, a pair was purchased for $250.00 and they were used as masters from which a number of replica sets were cast. With front parking lights, it is simple to install double filament bulbs and have front turn signals.

The dash and window moldings were wood-grained by a local painter. Most of the chrome was replated and the stainless polished. The original wiring was badly deteriorated, so a new wiring harness manufactured from original style fabric-covered wire in the correct color codes for 1939 was purchased from a supplier in California . I was fortunate to be able to locate a pair of NOS running boards in Ontario . After two years and about 2000 hours of work, the car was just about ready for the paint shop.

As it was September, my wife and I joined many members of the Okanagan Chapter at our annual Labor Day campout in Christina Lake . This is a super event sponsored by the Columbia Chapter. At the time, I had no way of knowing that this event would have a tremendous impact on my car-restoration life. I attended the weekend wearing a custom “T” shirt with a picture of my Buick on the front. It is common for vintage car enthusiasts from Washington State to take part in this event. As luck would have it, one of the Americans looked at the shirt and said he knew where there was a 1939 Buick phaeton body for sale. Now, a phaeton, or four-door convertible, is a rare car and would make an excellent project. I immediately obtained the particulars about the car’s location and its owner. A couple of weeks later my wife and I travelled to Omak , Washington to view the “car”. It was far beyond what we would call a “basket case”. There was no chassis whatsoever and the body shell was in two pieces with the front doors attached to the firewall and the rear doors attached to the back section. The car body had been burned out so there was no upholstery and most of the wood was charred. The paint was mostly burned off and much of the metal was warped by the heat. The one redeeming fact was that most of the top mechanism was there. The farmer who owned the car body had placed it beside his apple orchard where it was regularly sprinkled by irrigation water for 12 years resulting in major deep body rust. To my wife’s surprise, I bought the “car”. I then decided to use the chassis and mechanical components from the Buick sedan for the phaeton restoration. The sedan body had involved so much work that it was left intact and was placed into a corner of the shop and work began on the phaeton. Another 1939 Buick sedan was purchased from Vancouver Island to provide the body for the phaeton restoration project. The phaeton restoration took three more years of steady work to complete.

After finishing the Buick phaeton, I took a break from Buicks and decided to look into restoring a 1948 Dodge, the car my wife and I owned when we were married. I could not locate a Dodge, but I did discover that “Trader Bob” Shillam in Vernon had a 1947 DeSoto coupe for sale. I purchased the car and began a full body-off frame restoration of this vehicle. The DeSoto took about two years to complete. It seemed like such an easy task after the phaeton.

The next restoration project was a small Boler trailer to use on Car Club campouts. It was a great success and the little trailer was very comfortable. The major drawback with this trailer was that it had a porta-potti rather than a proper flush toilet. I then decided to use all of the knowledge acquired during the first Boler restoration to do a second trailer. The second Boler incorporated many extra improvements including a flush toilet with a holding tank. The trailer was painted to match the DeSoto and they make a fine pair.

Now back to the original Buick sedan purchased in 1989 and virtually completed in 1991. After a 10 year hiatus during which two cars and two trailers were restored, I resumed work on this project.

While the car body had been basically restored prior to being pushed into a corner, it was far from complete. The restored chassis, engine and most of the mechanical components had been incorporated into the Buick phaeton, so it was necessary to rebuild the engine and chassis of the car from Vancouver Island . As with the original car, virtually all of the mechanical components were either replaced or restored. The original style wiring harness had been installed into the Phaeton, so, on this project, I decided to make my own wiring harness using modern style wire. Having duplicated the wiring harness for the 1947 DeSoto, I was no longer intimidated by this task. The entire car was converted to 12 volts and the generator was replaced with an alternator. The points and condenser were replaced with an optical electronic ignition system and an auxiliary 12 volt fan was placed in front of the radiator to help combat the tendency of the straight eight engine to overheat. The radiator core was replaced with a high-efficiency unit and fitted with a pressure cap.

The wood-graining on the dash and window moldings that had been done about ten years earlier was not very professional looking, so I sand-blasted all of the unacceptable paint off the interior trim and found another painter to redo the wood graining. The work he did is outstanding and is one of the best features of the completed car.

The upholstery and carpeting was beautifully replaced by Cathy and Bruce Fosbery, members of the Okanagan Chapter.

In 1990, when first working on the sedan, we intended to paint the car black so the firewall and door jambs, etc. had been painted black. We painted the phaeton an original 1939 Buick colour called Sequoia Cream and it looked beautiful. Sequoia Cream was one of the standard colours used on 1939 Buick convertibles and phaetons, and while it was not a dealer option on steel-topped cars, it could be obtained as a special order. When I resumed work on the sedan after the ten year interruption, I was not really sure that I still wanted to paint the car black. After looking at calendar pictures of various cars and giving the matter much thought, my wife suggested that we paint the sedan Sequoia Cream because it looked good on the phaeton. As I have since sold the phaeton and it is no longer in Kelowna , I did not feel any hesitation in using this exceptional colour on the sedan. It was easy to change the colour on the firewall and door jambs prior to placing the body onto the chassis.

(One of the interesting side items about the Buick is that it, and our two other vintage cars, had to be evacuated during the firestorm that swept around the Kelowna area in 2003. A Club member, Butch Chouinard, kindly offered storage space at his home in the center of the city so the cars were safe when we had to evacuate twice.)

Now, fitted with new wide whitewall tires, the car looks great. The vacuum windshield wiper motor had the annoying tendency of stopping during acceleration, so I recently installed an electric wiper motor and it works well. Finally, after almost four years of work spread over a 16 year period, the Buick is complete and ready to travel. Although it was insured for the road in 2004, it saw only limited use and test driving. Starting with the Kelowna Regatta this year, the car has been in a number of parades and car shows and receives a warm reception from the public.