Good talking to you.. Yes 20 initial plus 12 mechanical.. It's all in at about 2200 or so. Long before the convertor stalls.. I'm running 8lbs of boost so I'm pulling 4*.. I might try it without pulling any timing next time at at the strip.. I'm spraying a good gulp of methanol too. Comes on at 4lbs..
Dear Brennan, CONGRATULATIONS to you on building an excellent GS my friend, amazing. Tell us how you learned to do body and paint work so well -- many folks out here find it very challenging to even think about removing an emblem, a fender, or a door -- let alone taking all of the body panels off, welding shut the holes, and of course applying a professional paint job. Outstanding! How is the car running now, I hope that all is well. Thank you for blessing us with the story of your build.
I have been meaning to put up some updates, so now is as good as time as ever. Car has been running well since I put in the new cam. Tuning has been a bit slow with a large learning curve. I have never tuned a carb before so I was a bit slow learning. I have been following the tuning thread and have it pretty close. Part throttle punch and power valve adjustments are still a bit off. The car also had an overheating issue so I put in a new radiator and electric fans. After the electric fans went in, I had an issue with charging. Took me a bit to realize what was going on. I would tune the car at night and the part throttle stabs would stall the car and then not enough juice to re-start the car. It got a little old having to walk home to grab another car to jump it. I finally realized it was an alternator issue and put in an internally regulated 140 amp alternator and it took care of the charging issues. Pic of engine with new radiator. Tuning at night made me realize the headlights are horrible. I also got around to fitting in the new BMW 5 series headlights I had bought for the car. I can actually see the road now. I have been debating on getting rid of the high beams and using the opening for air inlet for the turbos. I do have matching high beam housings from the BMW that I could also put in to match the low beams. The car started leaving tranny puddles where ever it went so I decided to pul the tranny last week and am replacing all the external seals on it. So currently the tranny is sitting next to the driver rear tire. My daily driver has some bad bushings in the lower control arms that will put it out of commission for a little bit while I wait on replacements. I'll have to get the tranny back int he car this weekend to make it the DD for awhile. Might be a good time to get a vid of running up here.
Missed this post. Thanks for the compliments. The body work and paint came from trial and error. This was my first car when I turned 16 and I wanted to do all the work on it myself. It is not perfect, but it was a good accomplishment for me. Filling the trim holes with the welder was not too bad, but trying to weld the larger holes shut and patch panels with tough. I knew almsot nothing about welding when I started, but a lot of youtube videos and burning through the sheet metal teaches you a lot. Here is a pic of the drier side handles which was the first welding I did...pretty ugly... By the end of the work I was good enough at welding to weld up the down pipes with no leaks and nice welds.... The body work was a lot of sanding and filler, blocking and guide coat. By far the worst part of the whole job, that I it was July/August in Texas in my garage. Hot and nasty work. As far as the painting went..... I put down four layers of primer which was what I was using to teach myself how to paint the car. The primer went down easy. It actually took me about 9-10 attempts before I got the paint how I wanted. Between each paint attempt was about 30 hours of sanding. It took me about 5 months to get the paint down because of this. I came real close to throwing in the towel. Once again a lot of youtube videos and multiple attempts that turned into practice. Sometimes I would spray the hood and resand to practice. Cost an extra $800 in paint for the issues, but I chalked it up to a learning experience. The first 4 attempts were in Flat Black. The first coat I touched the side of the car with the paint hose. Second attampt I decided the flat black I got was too glossy and went with a different paint for 3rd and 4th attempts. Gun was spurting during attemps and left very uneven finish. Looks a lot better in the pic then it was in person.... Decided that flat black was not for me and went with the Tunnel Ram Gray from Eastwood. Attempts 5-6 using the new coating kept coming up extremely textured like it was under coating.... I bought a new $30 paint gun from Harbor Frieght that fixed the texture issue. I later found out it was a bad o-ring on the needle of the orginal gun, but the cheap $30 gun sprayed so nice, I continued to use it. Attempts 7-9 kept coming out tiger stripped. The base coat would look fine, but then after about 30 minutes of the clear coat, it would tiger stripe. I later found out it was from applying the clear coat to soon after the metallic base coat and the solvent in the clear coat was reflowing the base coat to tiger stripe it. I was waiting an hour between coats and it was not enough. This was in Jan-Feb so temps were in upper 50s to low 60s when spraying. The 10th attempt was finally the charm. I waited 18 hours between basecoat and clear coat that finally gave me this finish..... I still have yet to reinstall the window trim because I am not sure how I want it. I think I am going to paint it matte black. It looks better than the chrome. Eventually I would like to do a brake upgrade to it which will require a larger rim, but that is the future like to have list.
As you are starting to figure out you can't get a good tune without the electric system being perfect. I was really surprised how much the new MSD 6AL2 Programmable improved the performance of my car. Boost makes it even more important. Love how clean your engine compartment looks.
Thanks for the update, the engine bay looks great! The Burton kit fits very well without a doubt! I am sorry to hear about the daily driver issues, however the fact that your Twin Turbo Skylark will be a daily driver is awesome! I am guessing your MPG will be about 10 MPG with a heavy foot and 20 MPG with a light foot on the highway!
Thanks for e-mailing me about this thread!! This is my old car!! I've been in contact with Mike about this car over the years since I stumbled across a video of it on Youtube and recognized it as my old car. I still miss her, SUPER clean body and undercarriage. Mind if I post up some pics of it from when I owned it in your thread? She sure has come a long ways. -Steve
Good place to post the pics. A lot of history with a 45 year old car. I have owned it for 15 years now. I have always liked hearing the stories and pics from the first 30 years of her life.
SWEET car!! Nice work! Do you have any track times with your turbo car? Anyway, I noticed that you're thinking about upgrading your brakes, that can get expensive! There is a company that makes and sells ceramic drum brake shoes front and back that they claim to be 38% more braking with their ceramic shoes; http://musclecarbrakes.com/ Should save lots of $$ until you can afford disc if you even think you need to if the ceramic shoes work out for you. I found this company for another v8 member(Mart)he may be trying those soon, maybe he can chime in if he sees this post.(I'll PM him a link to this thread) GL Derek
Thanks, I'll get some of the pics scanned and I'll post them up along with the details I have about the cars life before you had her.
Here we go, the history of this car as I know it. The car started life as a '69 Skylark Custom, I bought the car in the late 80s from a guy that had found it in Georgia with a blown up 350 in it, he swapped in a stock 430 and TH400 and drove it to Minnesota where the 430 promptly seized up and the car got pushed into his garage, it had 142000 miles on it at this time. Due to it's early life in Georgia the car was amazingly rust free, Cleanest car of it's age that I've ever seen. I yanked the 430 and swapped in the modded 455 and TH-400 I had in my ratty Minnesota '69 Skylark and it progressed from there. This was a manual brake car and it had been pretty well stripped of all goodies before I got it such as heater, A/C etc. Engine mods, all engine machine work was done by Tesar Engineering and it was assembled by me in my fathers garage. '71 455 block and rotating assembly '70 Riv heads Poston 113 cam 284/304-490 T/A steel rockers and shafts T/A sp1 intake Kenne Belle oil pump kit Poston headers Holly 800 double pumper During my ownership I also installed a 12 bolt posi with 3.36 gears, the floor shifter, gauges and I also installed all the GS emblems including marker lights, door trim panel emblems , decklid emblem and the grille emblem which was the only used emblem on the car which came off a wrecked '72. The car as found, It had mismatched fenders when I found it, a '68 on the left and a '69 on the right. Always drove me nuts. The bad 430, The 455 a few hours after that pic of the 430 was taken, The car as I first drove it with Pontiac wheels and yes that is a black painted GS hood, It went with the car when I sold it but disappeared before Mike bought it. The 455 as it looked just before I sold the car, The interior, And this is how she looked just before I sold/swapped the big block drivetrain for a stock '71 GS350 drivetrain. The dents the Mike fixed are clearly visible in these pictures which is how it was so easy for me to identify this as my old car when I saw it. Everything from the radiator to the rear axles were swapped between my car and the GS350, the guy I sold it to still owns his and the engine is still running strong today. The guy I sold the car to was actually too scared to floor it with the 350 in it during the test drive and I'm not sure why but he sold it shortly after buying it to the kid that had it painted gray and I believe that's who you bought it from. I miss this car to this day, nothing better than leaving a stop light from an idle and filling the entire intersection with rubber smoke so thick you couldn't see through it, At WOT from a dead stop it wouldn't hook until well into 2nd gear. I'm really happy this car found a good home and that it's still being kept alive and that it actually gets used, what you've done with it is simply amazing! Thanks for continuing to update me on the car, it is greatly appreciated. -Steve .
Not sure about 60 mph, but I was surprised when I broke them loose at 45 mph yesterday. Was driving to work and a buddy was next to me so I decided to punch it and the car started skipping around.
Car has been sleeping under a cover in the garage past couple of months. Weather hasn't been that great and the tranny likes to leave large puddles even after I have replaced all the external seals on it. Picked up a 200-4R tranny today from a local guy that already had it rebuilt to take some power. Stay tuned for installing that and I will get some smoky tire vids at that point. I'll try and have it all going by the end of the month.
