Today was a great Buick day! I took the GS400 to work, then went to Walmart in Largo, then met some of the local Buick homies at Cracker Barrel in south Clearwater, then home. All together put about 100-miles on it today. It did great! I need to work out the really rich idle situation. That's starting to bother me a bit. I may also have to revisit the alignment. Seems to get a bit sketchy around 70-75 mph. Here it is at Walmart...
Well this morning, the GS400 was officially registered in the State of Florida. Everything went smoothly transferring the Montana title/tag over to Florida. It now has a shiny new blue Antique plate! I had to drive it up there so they could do the required VIN verification. Ran great, too!
It's been a hot minute since I've update this. I've been posting most of what I've been doing to the car in the "What Did You Do To Your Buick Today" thread. Up until a couple of weeks ago, I hadn't done much to it, except drive it when I can. I started to notice that it seemed to be having some vacuum issues at idle. It was idling excessively rich, and at times the power brakes didn't want to hold the car at a stop for very long. The idle was really not great, and there was very little vacuum at the manifold port on the carb. I had a brand new Performer manifold that I ordered in 2021 and got a year later. The one I put on the car a couple years ago had a notch cut between the right and left sides of the carb pad, on the secondary portion. My theory was that this was causing the problem. I ordered a new intake gasket, carb to manifold gasket, and thermostat gasket and tore it apart. When I pulled the old Edelbrock manifold, I found the issue. You could see on the intake gasket where it did not seal really well and was sucking oil into the ports from the valley. This time I put High Tack gasket sealer around the ports on the gasket, before I put it on. Of course, that combined with the big bead of Ultra Black RTV on top of the China walls. Also, since the manifold was brand new with no coating on it, I went ahead and busted out the red Duplicolor engine paint and painted it. I also threw a new fuel filter, a new set of NGK plugs and an oil change at it. When I buttoned it all up last night, it ran great for a while, with awesome manifold vacuum and a much cleaner and smoother idle. On the test drive I had an issue with the 400-430 carb, where it it acts like the needle is stuck wide open from the seat and flooding the motor with fuel. I barely made it home and into the garage (between stalls and flooded type restarts, about 3 to 4 of them). Tonight I got the eBay 350 carb out and tossed it on there and retorqued the manifold bolts. After some operator induced error, and a very brief tuning session, I'm happy to say it idles, runs, and drives great! No new fluid leaks either! Start with carb off: Done:
