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This customised 1953 Buick Special came into as it wasn't always starting, was running rough when hot, and poor braking performance along with other issues:

















The first thing we did was investigate the non starting problem, this was a simple adjustment of the ignition switch. With the car running we could investigate the rough running issue, we traced the fault down a vacuum leak on the intake manifold caused by a broken breather fitting



Also the rubber bung on the vacuum port on the rear of the carb was split open



We installed a new vacuum fitting on the intake manifold and a new blanking plug on the rear port of the carb



Whilst working in this area we noticed one of the ignition leads was not on the distributor cap properly and if pushed on it just popped again, we pulled the lead of completly to find the terminal on the cap completly rusted up:



We decided an overhaul of the ignition components would be a good idea as they were clearly quite old, we fitted a new distributor cap and coil:



Along with a new rotor arm:



And finished off with a new set of ignition leads:



Next we took a look at the throttle linkage, someone had converted the original linkage to a cable set up but had done a bad job of it resulting in excess slack in the cable and a sloppy pedal feel:



We removed the throttle pedal linkage from the car:



And welded up the original hole in it, ground the weld down so it was flat:



Then drilled a hole of the correct size needed for the cable then re-installed the linkage back on the car. We also moved the throttle return spring further away from the throttle linkage so that it completly pulls the throttle shut back down to idle:



With the engine now running correctly we moved onto the brakes, all 3 brake hoses we perished and badly split and the brake fluid was old and needed changing, this was the rear brake hose:



With the brakes sorted we had to address an issue with the front anti-roll bar. The threaded holes in the chassis that secure the bar to the car on the passenger side had been stripped out the chassis so the bar couldn't be secured properly:



We were able to carefully feed in a new nut from a larger hole further up in the chassis and use a magnet to pull it into the correct place then weld it into place to hold it still:



Then we bolted the front anti-roll bar up properly and securly:



The last thing we had to was replaced the worn and split engine mounts:



We supplied uprated polyurthane mounts which should outlast the rest of the vehicle:



And fitted them into place:



We also replaced the transmission mount with a mount that matched the engine: