Da' further adventures of da' trusty billy-goat wagon!

[Rollaround]

Excellent news.
Turn into the skid and add power!

[TrunkMonkey]

I hope this was "turn 4" final lap and you take the checkered flag!

[elagache]

Thanks Kevin and Michael!

In the meantime I've just got to maintain the wound care regime and give the nose time to heal!

Edouard

[elagache]

Dear 65GS.com community,

The stitches from the August 9th surgery on my nose came out a week ago Wednesday.  The doctor was very pleased at how the surgery turned out.  The skin finally looks healthy everywhere and the scabbing from the suture lines are coming off as they should.  What's ahead is a long period of healing and watching.  At the moment, the nose still looks like a cross between Pinocchio and Rudolf the red nosed reindeer.  The only difference is that Rudolf apparently forgot to pay his electric bill.  Instead of being red, my nose has taken back a normal flesh color.  However according to the doctor,  it takes months for the skin to slim down after the fat has been removed.  He doesn't even want to see me for 3-4 months!

He is the expert, so I'll follow the program.  I'm continuing to baby the skin in the hope that will expedite the healing process.  In the meantime, I'm back to the "regularly scheduled" Mohs surgeries to remove the leftover basal cell tumors that have cropped up while the nose was being reconstructed.  However compared to reconstruction surgeries, this is small potatoes.  It is time to try to get back to a more normal life - just in time for the California wildfire season!

Always something isn't there!

Thanks for your support!
Edouard

[Loren At 65GS]

Always something isn't there!

 Certainly, seems so. Best wishes and prayers for your continued recovery.

  Loren

[cwmcobra]

Sounds like good progress Edouard!  Despite the additional Mohs surgery required.  Praying for a time when you are fully healed, cancer-free and enjoying life.  Especially behind the wheel of Biquette!

Enjoy a blessed weekend!

Chuck

[elagache]

Dear 65GS.com community,

Sorry for not keeping everyone up to date on my situation, but I have been in something of a limbo health-wise until enough time had passed since the surgery of early August.  It hasn't been an easy time.  I just cannot get enough air through my nose at this point and have to constantly irrigate it with saline throughout the day.  I finally met with the plastic/reconstructive surgeon to review the healing since August.  I was very afraid that he would propose that there was nothing more he could do.  Thankfully, he was just the opposite and agreed with me that something needs to be done to further thin the skin graft so I can breathe better.

Adding to my misery is some substantial scar tissue in the undamaged nostril.  Between the two, I have very little airflow.  I had tentatively scheduled an independent operation to remove that scar tissue.  However, the plastic/reconstructive surgeon thinks he can work on both nostrils in one operation to spare me a second surgery.

It will be something of a race to complete this operation before Christmas, but the surgery is now scheduled for the afternoon of Friday, December 16th.  It will be clearly a tough time to be healing from another operation, but it will be better than struggling to breath all the time.

Thanks for all your support!  As you can see the process is continuing to unfold!

Edouard

[cwmcobra]

Edouard,

Good to hear you are making progress, although slower than you'd like.  Prayers for success of this surgery and may it be the last one needed!

Cheers!

Chuck

[GS66]

Hope the surgery works and you do not have to go through any more!

[elagache]

Dear Chuck, Jim, and mid-60s Buick caregivers,

Thanks for your prayers and hopeful thoughts!

I finally have some news about my trusty wagon.  I normally take her in to Orinda Classic Car Center over the summer so that they can give her the once over.  With all the troubles I've been having that didn't happen until early November.  Here is a photo of her headed to the service bay:



She got a lube and I have switched her to PennGrade semi-synthetic oil:

https://penngrade1.com/products/high-performance-oils/penngrade-1-partial-synthetic-high-performance-oil-sae-10w-30/

Aside from the usual quirks of a classic car, she checked fine - but . . . . . . . . . .

We had a threat of rain for the day she was supposed to head over so I did my duty to winterize the wipers - Oops!  No wipers - absolutely dead.  Fortunately, I was able to dodge the drops and since she was over there I asked the crew at Orinda Classic Car if the could investigate.  Back in 2013, I had upgraded Biquette to an interval wiper system sold by Detroit Speed.  I thought there was little choice but to replace this system but the plot soon thickened.

The mechanics immediately recognized the wiper motor to be similar to one used on GM trucks in the 1980s.  As it turns out, those motors have a logic circuit that were notorious for failing even immediately after the factory.  Give the gang credit, they hunted around and narrowed it down to the exact model of wiper motor.  They were able to then purchase a replacement locally.

Since they had confirmed that the motor itself was working fine, they tried to simply swap the logic board.  Well that - sort of - worked.  All the functionality was back.  However, instead of parking the wipers against the cowling, the wipers are being parked on the left-hand side.  This was even more mysterious since back in 2013 there was a similar problem when the motor was initially installed and we had to send it back to Detroit Speed.  A little more detective work revealed the problem.  It turns out that Detroit Speed had made a few modifications to the stock circuit board.  Those tweaks to the electronics appear to have changed the parking position.

There weren't any easy choices so I took Biquette home with her wipers parked on the left:



I contacted Detroit Speed to see if they might have some old motors laying around, but after 10 years the answer was no.  So I'm going to have to bite the bullet and upgrade to the latest version of the Detroit Speed after-market wiper system:

https://www.detroitspeed.com/products/electrical/selecta-speed_wiper_kits/parts/121601

I had been planning to do this for a long time actually.  This newer model adds a built-in wiper which obviously is a real plus.  I have already incorporated the washer bottle and have remaining 1965 specific hardware add the washer feature.  Better still, the new Detroit Speed switch would work with the existing 1-speed wiper knob as you can see in this video:

https://youtu.be/_3BX8QH8CZY

The trouble is that I will have to once more create the customizing adapter so that the Detroit Speed switch fits into the 1965 Buick A-Body dash.  This was a real pain back in 2013.  So much so that I had forgotten how I did it!  I had to look up my posting on that "forum down the hall" to recall what I had done:

https://www.v8buick.com/index.php?threads/modifications-to-a-detroit-speed-selecta-speed-interval-wiper-system-for-a-65-special.270488/

Obviously i can't take on this project for a while, but when I do, I'll be definitely in search of some good advice to pull off this rather tricky "mod."

Thanks again for all your support!

Edouard

[Jim]

Hi can you just rotate the arm on the motor to get them back in the park position. Jim

[elagache]

Hi Jim and mid-60s Buick caregivers,

Hi can you just rotate the arm on the motor to get them back in the park position. Jim

But wouldn't that make it impossible to use the wipers?  It doesn't rain much in California, but just in case, it seemed better to leave the wipers like that just in case I get caught in a surprise rainstorm.  After winter passes then I could put the wipers into a display position.

I'm going to keep an eye to see if Detroit Speed has any Black Friday specials.  If they do, I might buy the wiper kit then.  It is quite expensive.

Thanks for thinking about me!

Edouard

[schlepcar]

Hey Edouard,

  You got me asking if they pulled the motor arm off when working on it. This sounds like a 180 degree linkage issue. Most wiper motors have a built in PARK position that stops the motor in that spot whenever power is switched off. If that arm will go on two ways it is possible that is an issue. If they never removed the motor it likely has other problems. If everything is functioning other than the stop position I would ask them about it. Unless your on the way to the doctor you have no excuse for driving that in the rain anyway. Hopefully things go a little smoother for you this year, Dan

[elagache]

Hi Dan and mid-60s Buick caregivers that don't sing and dance in the rain with their classics,

You got me asking if they pulled the motor arm off when working on it. This sounds like a 180 degree linkage issue.

No they didn't remove the wiper motor at all.  They didn't have to.  All they did was swap the logic board that controls the motor with still in place.

Most wiper motors have a built in PARK position that stops the motor in that spot whenever power is switched off.

That is correct and with the old logic board the wipers parked in the correct position.  What is definitely puzzling is why Detroit Speed decided to use this particular motor considering it had a reputation for not being particularly reliable and needed this puzzling tweak to the logic board.  Perhaps they got an amazingly good close-out price of some sort.  If they did, I suspect they soon regretted the choice because of all the complaints from customers.

Unless your on the way to the doctor you have no excuse for driving that in the rain anyway. Hopefully things go a little smoother for you this year.

Agreed, it would be really silly to have 58 year old car caught in the rain.  On the other hand, I can drive the car as is with no more harm than the embarrassment of having the wipers in the wrong position.  Since I won't drive her a lot anyway at this time of year, it seemed easier to leave things as they are and instead get started on the wiper upgrade.

Indeed 2022 has been a whopper year of misery for me.  We shall see that the future shall bring.

Thanks for your support!

Edouard

[Jim]

Hi, if the arms stop in the same spot all the time You should be able to just lift the arms off and rotate them to the park position and put them back on.jim