Just had to vent how happy I am to continue working out age old bugs on my 69 Sport Wagon 400 (455). I've had this car since 2001, when it was given to me by my older brother with years of neglect and a rod knocking engine. I found a junkyard 430 for a hundred and rebuilt it very well, bored it out .120" using forged 455 pistons and have been driving it ever since, every now and then finding wagon specific parts, or other upgrades along the way trying to fix it up more. Mechanically it's all been rebuilt or replaced, so next would be the body and interior that need redoing. This car has driven from Texas to Ohio and Little Rock a couple times and never skips a beat. I own 5 other cars and alll but one took a dump on me recently except my 240SX and the Buick. We ended up having to drive the Buick on vacation up to Ohio and she loved it besides the 10 mpgs. Recently we put airbags in the springs to help towing out a little more and that's worked nicely. Today I installed some new tubular upper control arms and ball joints and then new front wheel bearings/races/seals. One of the old races was actually cracked and pretty hard to get out. The car drives like a dream even more now. I actually just ordered a wideband oxygen sensor so I can finally nail down the carb tuning cause I know it's running rich but I don't want to lean it out too much. The car has had a historic case of dogging out off the line and then once it gets going it kicks in pretty good, so I want to work on that next. It's got a mechanical secondary 870cfm BG Speed Demon on it so it's fairly tuneable, should pick up some more mpgs along the way. Maybe get it back up to 11 mpgs on the highway like it used to, or maybe better. Trust me going from 10 to 11 is a big deal! Anyways, just wanted to share, I love the wagon even though all these years I wanted a 70-72 Skylark convertible instead...the plan was always to swap all the moving parts over once I got one, but after almost 10 years it's finally growing on me pretty good, and my wife even more. Hope this breathes some life into the Wagon section....pretty quiet in here...
Good story. I am lucky enough to be the official caretaker of the fine sporty that serves as my avatar. It belongs to my father in law who bought it brand new. He is in his eighties now and drives it very little if at all, he is real partial to his Jaguars. Recently, he has been making noises about installing a gm crate 502 v8 and overdrive transmission to "give it some zip." Me, I like it just the way it is. It drives and rides just fine and brings a smile to my face each time I cruise the beaches of sunny SOCAL.
GM crate motor sounds like GM talking. It seems like every GM muscle car need to have a Chevy crate motor in it no matter what make it is. BS. If he wants more zip put in a built 455 Stage motor. Tim
I agree. What I would like him to do is to just freshen up the original 400 cu. in. engine which has 271,000 miles on it now and has never been out of the car. Even now it has plenty of power to move this 42 year old car just fine. I would rebuild the transmission and leave it alone. A good down to the metal paint job and new chrome and it would be a stunner. But not my car and not my money, I will just have to wait and see what happens.
Thanks, this thing has really been our go-to-car during all this moving we've been doing. Just when I thought I couldn't get it running any better I started messing with it some more. I thought I had it pretty good, but with the arrival and install of the wideband I've been pretty preoccupied trying to absolutely maximize it. It's got a second-hand BG Speed Demon 850 with mechanical secondaries and manual choke so it's been fun. Ended up having to tear the carb off to reset it to a proper baseline, I recently added the manual choke so I had to replace the secondary idle speed screw with a shorter one otherwise they interfered. I swapped some jets around and squirters until I finally settled with 76 in front, 85 in back with the pink accel pump cam, #40 squirters front and rear, and a 6.5" power valve. It runs even better than before now. Idles right around 950 rpm and 15:1 A/F ratio, cruise is high 13 to mid 14 AFR, and full throttle is 13.0-13.5. I had been trying to eliminate the partial throttle lean spot it had and it looks like the squirter size has helped out a lot, but I'd have to go track down a few bigger ones to see if I can totally eliminate the small lean spot. Seems to hit that lean spot just after it shifts up a gear at WOT and again at partial throttle tip-in. As it is, it runs amazing...feels like I gained 20-30 hp now and just purrs down the road. I've also just blown out the most expensive TA Performance header gaskets as well :af: so now I've got to re-do those again. I just did them only 2 months ago and they've already blown out. Was nice and quiet and felt so non-beaterish while it lasted. I'm going to try some stock style Felpro and see if I have better luck. You guys sure have some great looking wagons. I hope after I build my shop this fall I can start digging into mine and get it looking better. Figure a panel a month and I should have it painted up in a year or so. The leaking windows have done their damage though...
