X2. Rarely does anything of mine go together smoothly. There is always one or two annoyances and occasionally something that needs immediate attention. Get it sorted out over the next couple months and a year from now you'll not even remember the troubles :TU:
My mom is 93 and she loves to go to the local car show in my 70. Now this car has headers, solid lifer cam, 3 inch exhaust, a couple of cans with baffles for mufflers and a D-1 supercharger. She does ask me if these old cars had mufflers :laugh: but still loves to go for a ride.
Unfamiliar territory. (Re: Trusty "billy-goat" Wagon!) Dear Alan, Randall, Doug, and followers of the trusty wagon soap-opera, Yes indeed I expected a lengthy shakedown period. However, I have problem that's a little harder to deal with: "what's normal for this car?" I don't know what this engine should sound like for example. So I can't tell if the engine noise I'm hearing is what it should be and I'll just have to live with it or is the engine straining unnecessarily. With two more days of driving though, I'm suspicious that the engine isn't doing all that well and that the EZ-EFI system is to blame. After 2-days of what appeared to be good fuel economy I had a shock when I had to fill up the car about 100 miles sooner than I expected. Instead of 20-ish MPG I was hoping for the car only covered 205 miles before needing 17.3 gallons. That works out to only 11.8 MPG - Oops!! ou: I've gotten the comment from a number of people that the exhaust smells rich. I think the EZ-EFI system is out of whack somehow. I can't check on this today, but I'll try to get the programming computer out and see if I an spot something out of whack in the settings tomorrow. Well, even Mom can tell when a car is not performing well and after all it is her baby too in a way. Biquette is clearly straining and doing so in odd situations. The gas gauge seems to be working fine, so the car really was getting something like 20 MPG when it was mostly freeway driving and the engine was fully warmed up. The following 2 days the car was doing mostly city driving and was making many more stops when the engine could cool down. Assuming I used 5 gallons for the first 100 miles, that would leave the gas mileage for the city streets portion of the run at less than 10 MPG. That leads me to wonder if part of the problem is that the 2.73 rear end ratio is indeed too tall and the engine is hogging a bit. Even Mom didn't like to the see the car struggling like she was over modest hills. So all this has to be looked into. On the bright side. I had the carpets cleaned up on Friday to get rid of the grease stains that invariably were left after all those months of work. The crew at the detail place got a real kick out of Biquette. There was a young woman who especially liked Biquette's Sea Foam green color. A fellow off about the same age had a different comment: Normally I don't go for wagons - but this one is kewl!! Oh well, get your compliments anyway you can I suppose!! Cheers, Edouard :beer P.S. Unfortunately, I didn't realize that I wouldn't be able to do anything with the car while the carpets were drying, so I couldn't make another check on the oil leaks. I'll do that on Monday.
>>Even passing on the freeway, the car stays in overdrive and the RPM goes no higher than the 2500 RPM. Typically on the freeway the engine RPM is between 1500 and 2000.<< I wonder if the engine is running too slowly. Have you tried turning off the overdrive and / or shifting it manually, as a test, to see if the responsiveness improves at, say, 2500 RPM or higher?
The shakedown "issuez" continue (Re: Trusty "billy-goat" Wagon!) Dear Frank and fans of Billy-goat station wagons, As promised, I headed over to Orinda Motors yesterday to get the car up on the lift and look over the leak situation. The only change is unfortunately potentially another can of worms. It appears that the water pump has started to leak even under normal driving conditions. It had appeared to leak once before but that was explained by a over-zealous testing procedure. T/A-Performance will repair the pump, but of course while the pump is out of the car, it cannot move under her own power. I forgot to check on the leak at the rear main bearing of the engine. Alas, the transmission speedometer assembly is leaking once more and that distracted me. Adding to the shakedown woes the air conditioner is definitely not working. Also, I had misunderstood the problem with the Detroit Speed Selecta-speed wiper motor. It was returned to Detroit Speed to be checked out but they didn't find anything wrong with it. According to Greg, the wipers will creep up the windshield even if the wipers haven't been used at all. I thought it was a problem of the wipers not returning to their park position after use. That is why I thought the problem could have been excessive friction on the windshield. The wiper motor will return from Detroit Speed tomorrow, and I'll bring Biquette back to have Orinda Motors look into the air conditioner and wiper situation. At that point the leak inventory can be repeated with a little more care. I did manage to snap another photo of Biquette with a suitable background of fall-foliage: I did downshift the car into 3rd on city streets to see what effect this has. Indeed, Biquette performs much better in third gear when traveling at around 35 mph. So indeed the rear end ratio may need to be increased from the sedan factory ratio of 2.73:1. Something else to figure out. That's the news . . . . Cheers, Edouard :beer
Your running a 2:73 rear with a lock up 200-4r? Not a good combination. You going to Bonneville? :idea2: I know you have a good torque curve but it's not a diesel. With your tires I think a 3:42 would be a good gear. I think that is what is in our GN. When you got your torque converter did you tell them that you were going to use that gear? They should have said something. Any way get the gear changed so you can enjoy that motor.
I ran 2.73's behind a 700-r4 for a couple years, and while not ideal for drag racing it wasn't that bad for day to day driving.
I calculate that at 65 mph, locked up in OD, the motor is turning around 1500 rpm. Don't see how that will be able to pull a heavy station wagon up a hill and feel anything but bad. Kick it out of lock up and gain 300 or more rpm and a large percentage of slip. Most of us running a 200-4r run 3.73's and love it. don't think Edouard spent this much money for "wasn't that bad" performance. Here is a nice calculator for speed/rpm http://www.crawlpedia.com/rpm_gear_calculator.htm Good highway cruising rpm's are 2000 to 2300 depending on motor.
My tip for driving with the overdrive trans and highway gear in the back is this: When you go to drive away from a stop put the gear selector in Drive instead of Overdrive and then only shift to Overdrive if going over 75 MPH... Also keep the toggle switch for the lockup converter switched off unless you are at full speed.... I never use the lockup under 65 MPH even with a 3.73 gear in my truck.
Going all the way back to another thread where he was asking what gear he should go with, my advice then, and still is today, drive it with the existing gear, get a feel for the engine and how it likes to drive. Cruise in 3rd gear some to get a feel of where the engine feels like it's comfortable going down the highway, and spend the money once to re-gear the car then. Rather than crap shoot a set of gears in there, spend the money and perhaps not be happy and have to spend the money to change gears again. You can get a baseline feel for free. Plus I bet that wagon doesn't weigh as much as one would think. It's not exactly a '70 Estate Wagon, but I did say he'll want better gears for when he starts towing with it. Also evaluate exactly how fast are you realistically going to drive at highway speeds. Being from southern California, the highways are pretty much either 35mph traffic or 85mph flying. Those gears are just fine for 70-85mph in overdrive, and there is nothing wrong with downshifting to 3rd while climbing a hill. It should do it automatically, it's what automatics are supposed to do. With 2.73's that engine will pull any hill like a runaway freight train in 3rd gear and not even come close to over revving the engine.
I agree, no need to get excited over a rear end swap... If he stays under 70 MPH then he can just leave it in drive and it will never lug... With the low RPM torque and EFI I see no reason why the engine would not be happy chugging along at 1800 RPM on the highway... My 307 powered 88 Caddy has a 2.41 rear end gear and a 2004R... Until I added the nitrous it was a dog on the highway unless I kept it in 3rd which was not a problem... I shifted to overdrive at about 100 MPH and from there it was smooth sailing and good MPG considering I was going 130 MPH or more LOL... I am not saying it is ideal to have the highway gear in the back, but for fuel mileage it cannot be beat!
I'm going to guess the wagon is between 4200 and 4500 pounds - My Sporty weighs 4450. The 68/69 Sporty's have the fully boxed frame (like a convert) and longer rear doors plus all that glass which is much heavier than a steel piece would be. Then there's tailgates, with a power window They're prolly close to 150#. If he has power windows and seat .. you can easily add a couple hundred more #'s. 3rd row seat ? ... one of the build priorities from the start was high mileage per gallon but that certainly shouldn't affect drivability in any way
Sounds about right to me. Considering my Skylark weighs 3,600lbs and my Centurion weighs a shade over 5,000lbs.
... I meant to add that I wasn't sure If Ed's year wagon has the fully boxed frame or longer "Sporty" doors.
68/69 there were (2) A-body wagons - the Special Deluxe without the roof glass was built on the 4-door sedan chasis, and the SportWagon which was built on its own (boxed) chasis stretched an additional 5 inches ... which was all in the rear door area.
Same scenario for the 65- Special Wagon is a sedan non boxed frame, the SportWagon is a longer boxed frame. Mine with iron 455 is 3700#...
Need a mix of theory and practice. (Re: Trusty "billy-goat" Wagon!) Dear Doug, Sean, Randall, Alan, Ted and V-8 Buick rear-end ratio experts, Golly, everybody has popped out of the woodwork all of a sudden! Okay a few details: I think Ted Nagel has Biquette's weight about correct. The factory specs are in that ballpark even if you add another 200 lbs for the big-block. The lock-up torque converter isn't hooked up to any controller yet. Coming up with a scheme for the controller fell by the wayside about September or so. So right now Biquette's 200-4R is in the "Art Carr" style of such trannies - no lock-up at all. In my experiments of city driving. Keeping the transmission in drive instead of overdrive seems to make the car perform better and even keeps the overall noise level down some. However, getting the car moving from a stop is still unpleasant. I think I'm going to need some armchair theorizing along with some actual driving experience to figure out a reasonable rear-end ratio to try. Larry (Larry70GS) was reporting some fairly gas mileage with his car and the engine Jim built for him is at the very least a close-cousin to the engine in Biquette. I don't know what rear-end ratio Larry has in his car, but it way "shorter" (larger ratio) to the 2.73:1 that's in Biquette right now. Randall's (TheSilverBuick) experiences with a production car using a 2.73:1 ratio may be off the mark because of all the performance parts on Biquette's engine that weren't standard in production cars. Another possibility is that the EZ-EFI system isn't doing a good job of providing fuel for the car to actually operate at essentially idle engine RPMs when the car is rolling along at 35 mph. That probably wasn't a concern for the engineers at F.A.S.T. for any of their EFI system. The two modern cars in the house deal with this situation just fine, but it is perhaps too much to ask of the EZ-EFI systems. The usual problem is to try to keep the engine revolutions as little as possible to save gas, but still get reasonable performance. So I would like to try to make a better "guesstimate" for a ballpark rear end ratio for Biquette. However, it seems prudent not do actually change anything until the head gaskets are replaced and all other leaks are resolved one way or another. Thanks for all the feedback guys!! Cheers, Edouard :beer
Re: Need a mix of theory and practice. (Re: Trusty "billy-goat" Wagon!) A rule of thumb for running an overdrive trans is using the 9.5:1 first gear multiplication ratio theory. Using this method you take your first gear ratio and multiply it by your rear end gear to try to get as close to 9.5 as possible with the gear ratios available. So with the first gear of 2.74:1 of a 200R4 X 3.42 would give you a 9.37:1,and would allow your overdrive be more RPM friendly for your engine when cruising on the street with a final drive gear ratio of 2.291:1. Right now with your .67:1 overdrive gear and 2.73 rear gear your final drive ratio is only 1.829:1 in overdrive,if you do the math,I'm sure the RPM of the engine would be way to low to engage overdrive below 60 mph(guessing). Going up to a 3.42:1 gear(what Grand Nationals have from the factory) would allow your trans to shift into OD around 45 mph without lugging the engine.(lugging=making the engine want to run lower than idle rpm). If you had a 700R4,you could get away with a 3.08:1 rear end gear ratio; 3.06:1 first gear X 3.08 rear gear = 9.42:1 first gear ratio,and with the .70:1 overdrive X 3.08:1 rear gear = 2.156 final drive ratio that would allow OD to engage around 45 mph without lugging the engine. I hope this helps,goodluck,love your car!! Derek
