Here's the '54 in my shop...it's a double wide, insulated garage with gas heat plus 110 and 220 power. Lots of room to work and stays nice and warm when it's -30 to -35 Celsius outside.

Spent the day today cleaning out all the junk piled into the back and vacuuming up all the rat poop and nesting material. Fortunately the rats in this part of the country are pack rats and not the long tailed variety common down south...still kinda gross though...

Tomorrow I'll start the tear down...pull the hood off first but will have to make some type of spring tool to remove the hood springs. Have an idea for one that I saw on Chevy Talk but will have to adapt it for this car.

Can't wait to get into it...what a great way to spend a quiet Sunday hanging out in the man cave...

G.

It is indeed an automatic and I'm going to keep it an automatic, but it's a rare bird anyways because Pontiac only produced 1407 sedan deliveries in 1954 and they were all sold in Canada.

Got up early this morning and began the deconstruction by taking the Hood off. First had to build a tool to get the spring off.

When the hood is fully open the spring is compressed and when the hood closes the spring is stretched so I measured the distance from the bottom spring hook to the top hook for both conditions and cut a piece of steel rod to a length in between these two conditions...turned out to be 15.5 inches. On the end that would sit against the bottom spring hook I cut out a notch and on the end that the upper spring would sit against I drilled a hole/channel that the end of the spring could fit into and not allow the spring to slip in any direction.

Opened the hood all the way, inserted the rod, made sure the notch was sitting against the bottom end of the hook, and closed the hood to a point where the top of the rod was just able to slide under the end of the spring hook, then opened the hood all the way causing the spring to remain stretched on the tool and it popped off of the hinge arm.

When I put the spring back on the process will be reversed.

Next used my c-clip removal tool to pop off the window cranks and door handles on the inside of the doors. Popped the clips off of the door panels and lifted them off. Removed the upper door hinge cover plate, put stands under the bottom edge of the doors, undid the bolts and lifted the doors off. Also removed the back door and the spare tire well. Then shifted to removing the seat. Removed the side shells first to have easier access to the floor bolts and pulled out the seat.

I spent the rest of the day removing the hood latch and taking all the chrome off of the hood and doors. True to form this took a little longer than I would have liked because of frozen screws and nuts but eventually if heat and WD40 didn't loosen them off then a combination of drilling and chiseling solved the problem.

Feel like I accomplished a lot today but it feels even better to finally have the project underway.

G.

I tried reducing the picture size with photo editor...let's see what happens...

...well that seemed to work...from now on I guess I'm editing the pics before uploading.

G.

-- Edited by 54sedandelivery on Sunday 14th of February 2016 11:34:16 PM

Timbuk...If you look at the picture showing the inside of the back you'll see the head sitting on floor...when I cleared everything out of the back I noticed it had a huge crack in it, no idea how it cracked but it was toast so I put it in the metal recycle bin at the landfill here.

Originally I was going to pull the engine and see if it was worth rebuilding but after seeing the cracked head in the back of the truck and the massive amount of rust on and in the block I didn't have much hope in salvaging the engine. I soaked the piston's in kerosene for about two months but was unsuccessful in getting anything freed up. Here's a pic of the engine before I moved the car...

If you know anybody who wants what's left of the block, carburetor, manifolds, transmission, starter or generator (the latter two look rebuildable) they are welcome to them.

I hate throwing anything usable out so they can have them for the price of shipping. It won't be cheap shipping them from up here in the Great White North though...

50sedandelivery...It's a Canadian tag and I'll take a pic of it this evening and post it in the next couple of days.

54sedandelivery wrote:

---

 If you know anybody who wants what's left of the block, carburetor, manifolds, transmission, starter or generator (the latter two look rebuildable) they are welcome to them.

I hate throwing anything usable out so they can have them for the price of shipping. It won't be cheap shipping them from up here in the Great White North though...

---

 Some good stuff there.

Hey Murray...I'm on the Alaska highway in northern BC and that bench seat is the original seat...all the mounting brackets fit perfectly and when

I removed it from the car it seemed obvious it had never been removed before. In addition, I was looking online at another 54 that was identical to mine

in color and interior material and it had the identical seat split bench. I'll have a chance tomorrow night to do the seat

measurements and take a couple of pictures for you. I'm looking for a front split bench for my '57 Chev and a buddy told me that the brackets are the

same and I should just use the one from the SD but I'd rather keep the original seat with the SD so that suggests to me that the one in California should

work for you.

I'll also take a look at the carb and figure out what it is...pretty sure it's the stock carb but I'm

not familiar with these old flat head 6's...seen lots but never worked on 'em. Cheapest shipping out of town is usually by Greyhound...

Murray...here's some pics of mounting brackets for the bench seat. The front brackets are affixed to the floor with another u-shaped bracket that goes over the front bracket "legs" and bolts into the holes.

The rear bracket is bolted directly to the floor. Measurements are:

Max. width at base of seat approx. = 20.5"; Max length at base of seat approx. = 54"; Max. width between front and rear brackets approx. = 16"; Max. length between front brackets

approx. = 50 1/4"; Max length between back brackets approx. = 53"; Distance between floor bolt holes center to center for both the front and rear brackets = 3 1/8"

Forgot to check out the carburetor but it is a single barrel and stock so it's probably the WA-1...I'll check it out tomorrow evening.