Knucklebuster's Garage Web
First, let me say I'm a gearhead, a knucklebuster, a shade tree mechanic or whatever you call a guy that can't stand to leave an internal combustion engine alone. If it has a sparkplug, I'm going to try to make it faster!
I come by it honestly, my dad was a drag racer as early as I can remember. We used to go to Beech Bend Raceway back in the mid '60s when Dad did battle with a '66 Buick Gran Sport. He was also a Buick dealer for 22 years. His father was a Buick dealer before him and I was a salesman for a time. I guess that makes me a genetic car salesman.
The first engine I had was a Cox glowplug engine on an airplane. I got the bright idea that mixing gasoline with the glow fuel would make it faster. Bad idea, it blew a rod.
The next engine I had a chance to fool with was the 2 cycle on my Lawnboy mower. It lost power and needed an overhaul. After pulling the jug off, it looked like it needed a port job so Dad helped me enlarge the ports, polish up the carb and use sealer instead of a gasket on the base of the jug to give it more compression. Boy, did it cut grass!
From there it progressed to a 125 Suzuki motorcycle. I discovered the size of the sprockets made it behave differently. So, with the idea of having the fastest bike in the neighborhood, I put the biggest rear gear I could get on it. It did have a lot of low end but it rolled about 6 feet before I had to hit 2nd gear, top end, 45mph!
By this time I'd reached 16 years of age and started working Summer's for my dad. I fell in love with a beat up old '71 Buick Gran Sport with a 350 engine. I put every penny I had for 3 years into that car and sold it to a friend, who promptly crashed it. He was sober but it was still mangled beyond repair.
By this time I had acquired the current '70 Buick Gran Sport Stage 1 you can see in the pictures on other pages here. I owned that car for 4 years before I sold it to my brother and he took it to Florida where he was stationed in the Navy. A year later, he had married and moved to Tennessee. I traded him this ugly '75 Buick Skylark with a 455 I'd put in it because the V6 died. The ugly Skylark ran 8.20 in the 1/8 mile with 3.08:1 gears. That little Skylark scared me! I put a roll bar in it before I traded it to my brother.
When I got the red '70 back, it had been in several little parking lot exchanges and the hooker headers had been mercilessly bashed on speed bumps. After a strip and repaint, motor transplant, fresh headers and a pot full of money, the car was better than I remembered.
Now the '70 GS sports a '71 455 with '70 10.5:1 pistons, a mild 268 Competition Cam, Edlebrock B4B manifold, Quadrajet and a fully studded lower end and beefed up oil pump. It all flows to a switch-pitched Turbo 400 transmission, 3.73 12-bolt, headers, 3" exhaust, Dynomax mufflers. Cosmetically, it has all of the factory sheet metal and GSX spoilers were added in '82. It is the original color although the top was stripped off and never replaced in '85.
Since about '86 it has spent much of the time in my garage. Lately, it sits next to a '92 Honda Nighthawk. It gets driven on nice days and during GS Nationals week in Bowling Green (1st week of May). I race it from time to time at Beech Bend but less now than I once did. I now have too little time, too many computers and a family. <sigh>
Update April 28, 1998
My brother is working on a set of heads (I know but I don't have time to do it myself) for the Buick. He is taking a standard set of Buick 455 heads and cutting them out for Stage 1 valves and then putting hardened seats in them so they can run unleaded with no problem. Topped off with Stage 1 valve springs and port matched to my intake and header gaskets, they should be good for a few extra horses and who needs torque with a Buick? ;)
Update October 02, 1998
I got tired of looking over the hood of my old truck, the one with hail damage and started looking for another truck in early July. Everything was high as a cat's back and I kept looking. Stumbled onto a nice '96 Chevy extended cab, bright red, while my dad and I were motorcycling in the sticks. It was a V8-5spd. Not bad but I really was tired of the shifting thing for traffic. I finally came upon a GMC, extend cab with the 3rd door, tinted windows and only 8,000 miles on it. What a find! They wanted too much for it, of course, but that was negotiable.
I didn't buy after the first visit, it took me 2 more trips and 10 days before we negotiated a final deal. I kept my wheels and tires parked this new toy in my driveway.
It is a 5.7 (350 for us non-metric types) Vortec that pings on the best gas I can buy. I'm reluctant to take it to the dealer because I don't think they can help it. So far I have put a bed liner in, added a rear sway bar, urethane bushings all around and driven about a 1,200 miles. She gets about 15mpg city and maybe 20mpg hiway if I'd keep it under 75. ;) If I had a complaint it would have to be the lack of positraction differential. But then again, I'd trade the CD player for one in a heartbeat!
Not much has changed in the last year. My brother is supposed to be working on a set of Stage 1 heads for me but he's always working on something else. My wife worked at the Corvette Plant for a few months as a teacher. She got to drive a new convertible but I couldn't get one through the company discount plan!
