I'm aware of that thread, but it's been a while since I looked at it. I think I've read almost every page of it. I'm registered with that forum (same screen name), but I'm not a club member yet. I haven't made a post there. I'll let you know when I catch up. I really try to keep from posting what I plan to do with my stuff, because I don't want to be one of the guys with the big plans, but never seem to deliver. When I hit a milestone, I'll start a thread, and everyone here can tell me how bad I messed up. I will say that I've spent the last hour reading the Holly retrofit EFI instruction manual. http://documents.holley.com/199r10510.pdf and playing with a copy of the Holley EFI desktop software. :Brow: Right now, my 350 block has been completely disassembled, baked and blasted, and now sits on a small pallet. The heads have received the same, and have also had all the parting lines cleaned up by grinding. I did spend extra time machining the horrendous casting flash above the spark plug holes, and then smoothing all that out. My 14 year old son has taken over the 350 project, but he is leaving all the research to me. So I am trying to do that, and at the same time I am going to be working on a 455 for me.
http://www.v8buick.com/showthread.php?174973-how-much-HP-can-be-gotten-out-of-the-350-SBB/page2 post #38 Sean, what changed? I hope you do what you've told others to do, when your local track opens.
I also saw that quote. Sean could be quoted now as saying "Do what I say, not what I do." Jay, you've got one major leg up on Sean. You've actually taken your car to the track and worked out the bugs and got it to run respectable. At least you can speculate on what your car can run from your personal experience. Of course from your own experience you also found that sometimes things don't work the way they should. BPG Nats @Columbus? Chevy rockers? Somebody had to blaze a trail and you did. You can speculate how fast Sean's car can go but did yours run its best ET the first day you ran it? Do you think Sean's will? Mark Burton certainly blazed a trail in building the kits but he sure as heck didn't blaze a trail as far getting it to work right. He took the car Sean eventually bought to the track exactly ONCE IIRC and he ran a blazing 13.6 or something like that. A while later with no more trying to get it to go faster he sells it to somebody else. That guy has it for a while and he's claiming it makes 650 HP and could run 10's. Next thing you know Sean is buying the car and claiming it runs 10.15@130 mph. Not just once but multiple times in different threads. First of all who was this mystery Buick/Turbo tuner that nobody has ever heard of? Has anybody ever seen it at a track running anything close? No videos? Not even a lone timeslip? If anybody buys that I've got a bridge to sell. Maybe the guy will get on and explain everything. Maybe I'm wrong? Initially I gave Sean the benefit of the doubt because I figured he lived in some remote spot of Canada and was hundreds of miles from a dragstrip. Well according to the internet there is one in his hometown Edmonton! Back in 1982 a crew from Canada came down to Bowling Green for the second GS Nats. Now those guys were serious Buick people. Of course I only drove 750 miles. Lets face it sometimes you don't have time or you have other responsibilities so that is a plausible excuse. It would be if it hasn't been 11 years since he joined and has been talking up what he's doing. Somewhere in there had to be a few spare hours to drive across town. When I was younger and even not so young I raced everything Buick I could get my hands on. 350 cars that I raced: '69 Skylark 350 2bbl, 17.1; '72 Skylark 350, 17.3; '69 Skylark Convertible 350 2bbl, 16.1; '75 Skylark SR with transplanted 350, 14.3; '81 Regal with transplanted 350, 13.3. I did it for the love of Buicks and racing. It didn't matter what they ran as long as they didn't run badly for what they were. The point I'm making here is that maybe Sean could regalia us with his best ET's in a 350 powered Buick, or any Buick, or maybe any vehicle that he's hit the strip with. That would add to his cred. Over all those years and with all the Buick 350 equipment he has collected he could have even had made a mean machine out of the '75(?) Regal smoke machine in his avatar even if he only did one thing to it every year. Let's not forget he had Sonny Seal's heads for a time. Instead what do we get? He gets a new car that is ready to go and the first thing he says is he can't take it racing because he has to put a new engine in it so it can go faster that it does now (10.15) but he doesn't want it to go faster than 10.0.uzzled: Turn the boost down and run an 11.50 with what you've got. I'd tip my hat to that. Unfortunately I've seen that symptom on this site way too much. "I can't run my car because it doesn't have the top notch XYZ part." Talk is cheap. Down my way guys that have cars all hot rodded up yet don't race them are called "Posers." Sometimes they actually make it to the strip, open the hood, and then polish the chrome and make excuses why they can't run. Don't get me wrong. On the whole I believe Sean has been a positive addition to the Buick community. He has given plenty of good thoughtful information and help to other people as I'm sure many will attest. Maybe when the book comes out even more people will be helped. There seems to plenty of them waiting for it. Of course if the turbo car needs to be finished and some performance data gathered on it for the book then the wait could be very long indeed. However, IMO he does the Buick community a disservice by claiming unsubstantiated performance out of a fairly unknown package thereby diminishing the real achievements of people that have actually raced their cars, turboed or not. Hopefully the guy who bought Sean's car will finish it and hit the strip. Otherwise there will be two matching Posers up in the Great White North.
Another premature rant! His local track won't be opened for a couple more months! Why are you guys giving him crap before the track is even opened!?!? Kind of makes you guys sound like jerks giving him crap for not racing his car without having access to a track. These rants against Sean would make a little more sense if this was the month of September and still no track time but its only MARCH! Come on give the guy some time for his local track to at least be open. The concerns that Sean mentioned sounds like he can take care of those before his local track closes this year he may even be able to have them done before sans new engine. Not sure how fast a car can be before the driver has to be certified to drive it at his track so he might even need a driver if its to fast or go through certification? Turning the boost down after the new axles are in would be cool to see some time slips from before the new engine is ready, hell turn the boost off with the original engine in the car and run it for a nice before without boost run. Hopefully Sean can get away from work long enough to even get to the track, the guy is at work 12 hours a day 7 days a week kind of makes it hard to even get out to the track. Has anyone worked those kind of hours before? Well I have and you don't have enough time to do squat when doing those kind of hours. 12hours + 1/2 hour lunch + 1/2 hour drive each way= 13.5 hour day(more if his drive is longer). If he gets 8 hours of sleep like human beings are supposed to get that leaves him with 2.5 hours of time to be awake away from work. If he cheats himself of a couple hours of sleep that's only 4.5 hours to do stuff which still isn't much because working 12 hours can be very tiring no matter what the job is. Sean, do what you can and don't worry about the peanut gallery.GL Derek
So now we are the peanut gallery? Let me tell you that car has been in existence for the past 5 years and no one has dynoed it and it never really hit the track at any time that is the problem. What he is really doing is a disservice to the 350 community because of this delaying. He is not going to take this to the track, He made this very clear to me when I told him about taking a car to the track BEFORE he even had that turbo car. I do not dislike him at all and I like him to come back and tell us he is going to take care of business as soon as the track opens. But this track has been open for years and he has been on here for 10 years now and over 5000 posts and none of his cars or motors have ever hit the track. I have been in here for 10 years myself and I know who has done what on here. Jay is the only one that gave the turbo car a chance and it is too bad he got rid of it. I don't care if the car runs 12 seconds take it there and start tuning it and give feed back. How stupid can we be here. Why do you think those turbo kits were not sold. No one would dyno it or take it to the track. I got in this same argument with Burton when he first built the car. If it was not for that stroke he had he probably would have taken the car to a dyno or to a track somewhere and I am sure he would have perfected the turbo kits. I will tell you how long this has been exactly. Sean made the offer back in the summer of 2009 for me to take the first intake Burton made because he knew I had a fairly hot 350 and he wanted to see how this Hand built SP intake was. Then I can pay for it. Well, I had just lost my job and I could not find one. I have not been to the track since then because of this. I declined to take the intake. Someone else ended up with the intake and he had some troubles with it and eventually took it off and sold it. Now we have a person with a turbo car and the first thing he says is the motor is coming out to put the good one in? He has great information and I know he is smart and the book is going to help a lot of people but if you are going to do this you had better make some dyno runs or some track runs. If you are scared to drive the car get someone else to do it. Do you see TA Performance making a intake and just throwing it out to you and telling you to buy it because it is good since he says so? No, what he is doing is testing this thing and perfecting it before he sells it. That is how you sell parts. you have 1600 post in 3 years lots of talk for someone that works a lot What does Sean have in posts in that time, Lots of post for someone that works 12' 7 days a week. Hell, with all that money it should have been done a long time ago. it took me 11 years to hit 1300 posts. Now what say you.
I'm on the side 'the proof is in the pudding'. there are a few of us that have been racing buicks for a long time and its not bench racing. I have over $15k in my engine over the past years and it's been in 4 different cars. it gets beaten. it's proof we race the 350 ON THE TRACK, not on the lip. maybe we need 2 lists so we can sort out all the info; bench racers and track racers.
Here's a timeslip from Lapeer in 2007. 350 with hypers, 750 Holley vac secondaries, hookers, unported heads with stock valves, 390 gear, street tires, and the 350 turbo trans was slipping out of gear when I hit 3rd. Had to let off and nail it again to get 3rd to hold. So much for a real good time, but I did manage a 14.10 @ 98 with 2.02 60 ft. Here is the Crane cam card that was in it. Small cam. I wanna be on the track list.:laugh::laugh:
My best time, with 3.73s, headers and an 800cfm qjet. Everything else was stock. Stock fuel system, ignition, heads, cam. All stock.
My problem for BPG was that I swapped in the "good engine" with the forged pistons new style rods and ARP fasteners right before. Nothing was wrong with the engine in it with the hyper pistons and old style rods and stock fasteners.. It had only a few miles on it. It was fast. In the "good engine" I had installed 6 of the 8 rods backwards. Still ran a 13 flat, but it was in serious self destruct mode. My 1/8th time at BPG was more than my 1/8th NA at my track. It was f'd up to say the least.
Sean, I hope that you don't quit the forum, your comments are interesting and informative. I think that some of the fustration with you is that you have yet to finish any project. If you are constantly waiting for the next newest, "bestest", improved speed part that is rumored to be produced shortly you never will finish anything. That goes for life as well as building cars. As for your book, the same applies, there will always be "one better build" that you will want to include, so publish it now then do an update. You've done lots for the sbb comunity, please don't go off in a huff because people dissagree with you.
I have been having a blast with it so far! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuvsS2VqvY0 Yes the Tubs and Twins car is here in my garage and running very strong. I have had the engine apart a few times lately and I think I have most of the bugs worked out. The car gets a lot of complements, MANY people are surprised by how quite it is! It idles like a stock NA T212 cam 350 till the boost comes on and it is just plain scary fast with the current 20 PSI setting. My little man Shane Buick Gaskin loves the car! He grins ear to ear when I start it up and he claps and cheers! Look daddy there is a Chevy in the rear view! And my old car now Owned By Blake at Roadrunner Towing, now a friend of mine lives just down the road!
Glad to see you made the car your own with the charcoal grey metallic you had planed for the other one, I like the black vinyl top as well! Good job! I wasn't a big fan of the flat black, I like what you've done with it. So what is it you've done with the engine? What issues were you having? Derek
Over 6000 I had valve float so I got some better valve springs in there. Revs to 7000 fine now... Had a head gasket leak at 23 psi, got that fixed by adding arp studs and MLS gaskets. Lowered boost to 20 psi. Had an electrical issue on the dyno got that sorted out but ran out of dyno time that day... It is coming along.
SWEET! Dyno you say? So what kind of numbers did you get at the rear wheels with 20 PSI and 7,000 RPM? Awesome by the way! Derek
Have not got a clean run on the dyno yet, but it is frying the tires at 60 MPH. Working 13 hours night shifts right now but taking the car back to the dyno a week today.
Cool man, good to see you back! Are you saying you're frying the tires when you nail it when you're driving it 60mph? Or frying the tires on the dyno at 60 mph? What are the dirty numbers so far? Even for unclean numbers they have to be over the 500 HP mark to the rear wheels or at least close to it? Anyway good job on the car, maybe you can convince the wife to buy back the white one for her? Derek
Marks old ride is looking good these days Sean, loving the new paint! Looking forward to hearing some numbers, that was always a question mark with this car and the curiosity always drove me nuts!
No I am okay with the one car, the other one is in good hands. Blake is building a girdled engine for the alum heads, he is copying my build with the billet crank etc. No we did not get any dyno numbers because of a bad connection at the distributor that we did not track down till it was too late to run it again. It smokes the big meats even at 60 MPH in second gear when you cruise and then ease into the throttle it gets insane when the boost hits, although the street is not good for traction anyway. It does hook up well on clean road, almost breaks your neck when it shifts under full throttle... But you can cruise it around at light throttle and it just drives like a low comp 350. Thanks, and yes I am going to find out what it is making before I pull the engine to get ready for the alum head, girdled engine.
Car is looking real good! Glad to see your back & posting again. Can't wait to see what dyno numbers you post.
