Our chrome shop is getting a 58 Buick Limited!

dig the doillie cover on the spare tire

 

i was just teasing about the not having enough engine to get down the road.. such a cool car, they must of had a hell of a deal on chrome plating that year. how much would one of these cost new? also the air condition sticker was neat. talk about rubbing it in to your fellow patrons on the road.
chris.

 

Now THATS a score.
I had the equivelent back in te early 70's. I mowed a guy's lawn all summer for it.
Never drove it though, I was 14 and Dad was pissed!
I sold it for $500.00 and a 6 pack of Pepsi.
Dad liked Pepsi.

 

The guy in the Cowboys shirt is the previous owner. Us guys would of been wearing Colts or Lions. I'm the tall young handsome guy in the brown T-shirt sticking my head under the front of the car hooking up the winch.

According to Wikipedia:

"Available only as a four-door hardtop, two-door hardtop coupe or convertible, the Limited rode Buick's 127" wheelbase, with its body stretched 227.1", just shy of nineteen feet in length. Inside, buyers were treated to high quality fabrics in sedans and coupes, full leather in convertibles.
However Buick sold only 7,438 Limiteds, due in part to their price. The Limited's four-door hardtop sedan started at a base price of $5,112, which was $221 higher than Cadillac's extended deck Series Sixty-two four-door hardtop sedan ($4,891) of which Cadillac sold 13,335 units."

According to Buicks.net:

241,908 total Buicks sold for model year 1958
of those, 7508 were Limiteds
of those, 5,571 were 4 drs.


I'm glad its not missing parts, because the Limited-specific ones will be hard to find and expensive.

After looking at engine pics of restored cars, I'm pretty sure this one never had the air ride suspension. I kinda like that.


Question:
The paint is actually in a lot worse shape than the pics reveal. Who knows what to use to remove surface rust coming through the remaining paint? I'd like to get it removed and wax it heavily to keep the old paint looking as nice as possible. we are not painters, repainting scares me. The chrome is actually worse in real life too, but it doesn't matter really.


Ideally, I'd like to document all of the rechroming work and make an itemized price list as if we were doing it for a customer. I will post this list, and hopefully it helps show what it costs to restore different types of brightwork of different starting conditions. I plan on starting with the rear of the car because that is where it is the worst, especially the 2 little lower horizontal bumper sections, both of which are rusted through. What do you think? Thanks again for the kind responses.

 

this is the one car that over powers my 58 Olds in chrome, and boy does it! what a great find. have fun!

 

Yea recall the first day they were unveiled, sorry but after the clean lines of the 57 Buicks, I had to just turn around and walk away. What were they thinking?

 

Hey hey hey.... Make sure MY Buick chrome is done before you start pullin the stuff off yers for re-chrome!!! LOL NICE SCORE!!!!

 

LOL, don't worry, our own stuff is last in line. It took over a year just to get the 2 grilles, 2 headlight bezels, and 1 front bumper done for our panel truck. I imagine we will have to wait until Christmas time before being slow enough to get anything substantial rechromed on the 58.

 

Perfect car for a chrome shop!

 

I love it! Great find and a great price.

 

The chrome and paint look good in the photos, at least.

There was a discussion thread here a while back on using CLR rust remover to clean up a car with surface rust (it's sold at hardware stores for cleaning bathroom fixtures.) It appeared to work pretty well: http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=520460

 

Awesome Car,

I just got a 1958 Buick Special myself. I look forward to seeing how the chrome turns out on your car.

 

a really rare car 5571 produced
five grand original price

mouse free cuz of the cat i hope?


i had a two door ltd and sale of it made me enuf for two hot rods
you could put a short box slide in camper in the trunk ez...

 

I bet a camper would fit. The tail end of these cars would make awesome car sofas. The limiteds are long enough to be a car bed.

I found a small stash of mouse turds inside the kleenex box in the tissue dispenser under the dash. Thats it so far. No mouse smell, just a faint musty smell. I imagine the mice didn't stay long. There were at least 3 cats roaming the property. I was genuinely happy to see them when we first showed up to see the car.
We have cats here at the shop to continue to keep the mice away.
I'd rather have paw prints on the hood than turds in the upholstery.

 

Words to live by, right there... and the possible basis for an interesting country song. Anybody know Robbie Fulks cell number?

 

must be a real nice friend that would turn over such a find. lol

 

Wow the condition appears amazing. my parent's had a new '58 olds. had to rebuild generator about every three months as back bearing would go! always thought this year gm products were the absolute ugliest of all time. not sure if it is my age and failing eyesight but they like the women around me seem much more attractive!!! nice find, many of us are envious!

 

x2..

 

Well, not much to update, as last week was way too busy to do anything to the Buick.

The engine has refused to turn over at all. When we were looking at it before buying it, it turned over like new with nothing more than a fresh battery, so its a bit puzzling. Today, we had a guy pull the plugs for a few hours...well try to anyways. The many options under the hood make it a bit of a squeeze to get to the plugs, and he works at a slower pace than most humans. It looks like the generator will have to come out.

 

Here's a quick photo of a car I was involved in cutting up a while ago. Customer had a collection of really nice 58 Buicks and wanted something more unique than the two loaded Cabalerro wagons he had. This was a really good low mileage more door with original black paint. We chopped the roof out of a proper two door convertible, used the top mechanism, windshield header and the upper portion of the convertible deck lid and package tray as well. Matched the colors to his equally nice two door convertible too. Car was recently sold from the estate, I was saddened to see this collection taken apart as they were a very nice lot to see together.





Close up of interior etc..

 

This was my grandfather's car it was 1 of many 58 bucks he had it was chopped to match his 2 door convertable and he added the contanental kit for the tire on the back the 1 door was exactly the same twins cant believe it came up in a Google search so cool to see rip Douglas Watkins rip!!! He'd love this

 

That 58 Buick ought to keep a chrome shop busy for a while. Those tail light always reminded me of the movie Man In The Iron Mask.

Gary