Hello Just found out about your board through one of your very helpful members. It looks to be a great board. My present project is a 1967 GS340 (silver, red stripes, black interior) with a 455. I found the car in a slavage yard with a buddy of mine years ago and after his purchas and neglect of the car i wound up with it. It is a very clean body (a few small patchable spots). It looks like whomever had the car before my friend (the car came in as a sheriff's auction after it was found abandoned) put an entire 1970 A-body drive train in it as the 455, th400, and 12 bolt rear all seem to have close build dates (at least the tranny and rear do, have't checked the engine but it doesn't look liek it was ever seperated from the tranny). A friend of mine told me it was a stage 1 block but was missing the heads. I have a good reason to doubt this as the car has all the 1970 brackets for air conditioning but I have no experence with how to tell. Anyway, that's my story...I'll probably be making some progress on this car as soon as the snow stops and I am able to dig myself out (probably spring). This place looks to be a good resource, and I look foward to learning a lot. Cheers. Kerry P.S. If someone is willing to host, I will post pictures
Alot of the Stage 1's had a/c and the casting numbers on the heads are the same as regular small valve heads. They did the conversion to the Stage 1's after casting the numbers in. I'm unsure what the casting numbers on the block are, but there are also specific numbers for the distributor and carburetor. If you do a search on here you'll be able to find the numbers needed. If the 12 bolt came from the same car, that's rare too. I believe alot of the Canadian cars came with 12 bolt rears. Also, I think the tranny will have a "BB" code if it was from a GS.
If the rear end came out a 70 car, it would be wider than the 67 rear that came with the car by an inch or two. I had a 67 with a 70 rear end, and you could not fit much a tire in there. If it seems like you have a small tire, and it is a tight fit, that is probably the case.
Hey The rims are the 5 spoke chrome rallys you typically see on the later buicks. The tires are pretty thin, they are old thin stripe white walls from uniroyal and aren't much good. I don;t remember if there is a BB code on the trans or not but it has been at least a year since i have been under the car. I remember that i checked the build dates , because at the time I was rebuilding my GTO's rear and trans and was checking the numbers and i figured that while I had the book out I would just slide under the car and have a look. I forgot to mention that the previous owner also put installed the 1970 front buckets and center console (but not the shifter). Since there is mucho snow between me and the car right now, I doubt i'll be able to get another look for quite some time. Thanks
If you take a head off you can tell if its a stage one because there is only about 1/8 in between the valves. I saw a pic. of it on another fourm.
Hey I'll have to get out there and check, and if I have time pull the head, i'll probably have to do it anyway as i doubt the gaskets are not any good. It seems to me that whoever had the car just lifted the motor right out of one car and put it in this onw because they didn't bother to remove the ac bracket (although they removed the compressor), and the engine still had the original intake and quadrajet on it. It was, however converted to an hei distributor, so checking the dist, numbers are out. They did manage to give it a spray can rebuild and the red overspray is everywhere it shouldn't be. I am kinda worried about low compression in this engine as i have not started but about a week ago i went out to see if it was locked up and i could turn the engine over by hand, basically grabbing the crank pulley and with all my might turning it one rotation. I am, however, 6 foot 4 inches, and weigh 280 (and bench about 220) so it is not uncommon for me to turn motors by hand, but i was expecting more of a fight from an engine that's been sitting that long. Which brings me to my next question, does anybody know what the compression, per cylinder, in psi, is supposed to be for a 1970 455. Would it be different for later years and models (since a 1970 455 gs skylark would have a different compression ratio than a 1973 455 gs riveria). Is there a resource on the net that woudl give basic tune up info for the 455 (i.e. plugs to use, part number for the points, oil weight and # of quarts, etc)
Kerry, Glad you made it over here, there have been quite a few Kawasaki triples guys that are also into Buick big blocks as well, must be that need to be different and that freakish speed and horsepower thing!
