Unbelievable news. well today I took the buick to the "all buick show" in Puyallup Washington. I was pretty scared to drive such a long distance without doing the around town test drives, but damned the torpedoes and went full speed ahead. the car drove like a dream! I kept it at around 2,200 rpm which was right around 60 mph and it purred the whole way.... 110 miles! watching the atomic handheld like a hawk I noticed that fan #1 (oh I forgot to say that I hooked up my fans to the atomic so that IT can control when they come on) was coming on at cruising speed so I just raised the temperature that I wanted it to come on to 190 and it never came on during cruising at highway speeds (p.s I did that while driving). so anyway, the car did great, no major or minor glitches which is huge for my car because I always seem to have issues, but here is the big news, I tested the MPG and can't believe this.... round trip 220 miles, 9.5 gallons of gas equaling 23 miles per gallon! I cant believe this so I will test it more, but that is 90% highway cruising with the car in over drive, keeping the foot off of hard acceleration.
That is great! Your car is very inspiring! Gets me thinking of so many ideas for my car. What are the specs on the cam? Sounds like a big duration stick. Any issues with the atomic with a big cam? Congratulations on an amazing build!:TU:
Tanks Kevil, i'm running T.A performances "Gibson" cam . so far no issues. infact the EFI has really woken up this build it is an absolute beast on the bottom end now. here is the cam specs http://taperformance.com/proddetail.asp?prod=TA_296-08H10
Nice! I may have some catching up to do! The sticking around 60mph I'm sure helped a bunch, I have a hard time staying under 70mph. I've had a few tanks calculate over 20mpg, but I've never had two back to back calculate over 20 (except when I had my Centurion engine in the car). Don't you love the "on the fly" fix? How was the show? ---------- Post added at 08:48 AM ---------- Previous post was at 08:38 AM ---------- There are a couple good pictures of your car in red67wildcat's Puyallup thread.
the show was good, great weather, a lot of stuff to do with the fair and Saturday market in town. you should come up one year, since you do a ton of driving anyway!
I'm always busy, I need to find less things to do p I might be making a trip to the Washington coast the first weekend of August with my Skylark. I don't recall exactly where, but it's a family reunion of sorts. Grandma lives in Tacoma, Aunt and Uncle live in Portland and I have a variety of family around the NW US there. I'll let you know in case I'm passing through.
Love the build up! I've been very interested in a bolt on TBI system for driveability and MPG. I may have missed it but what was your mileage BEFORE the EFI? Do you have any MPG updates? Again, awesome job:TU:
Nice build!:TU: nice to see some more late model x body love in Washington, feels like i am the only one out here haha. Also have a question about your 455 i may of read past it, but how did you actually get that in? Seems like such a small area, but guess you proved that wrong!
hey skylark77, thanks for the kind words. there is actually a lot of room in the xbodies, the 455 is a natural fit, lotsa room to spare and plenty of room for headers. ps. there are 2 of us here in the NW, Aaron with his (79)? who is currently in the process of dropping in a 455. we both plan to be at the Puyallup show, you should meet us there. there's even another guy who has a beautiful stock 75 or 76 that sometimes shows up at Puyallup.
Im going to look for a 75 lark and put in a 455. how big of a tire can you run under the back of that car?
i ran a 28x11.5x15 it rubbed a little bit around hard corners but I ran them for 15 years and they lasted that long.
wow, almost 2 years since posting to my thread. I guess that's good as nothing has really gone wrong. I have burned through about 5 starters since then, but I think I got that issue figured out. classic industries finally finished tooling the interior plastic pieces, and now finally OEM interior plastic is available for our x-bodies. I picked up the rear sail panel and over door sets. still gotta paint them and install, ill keep you posted on how well (or poorly) they fit
Hello, I am new to the site and having a hard time on creating a new post to ask questions. Would mind giving me some direction on how to create a new post. Thanks in advance!
I think there is a sticky thread that explains this. I believe you need to make a minimum amount of posts before you can post
Took the skylark out for a drive in May, and when I went to start it up I broke yet another starter. that's about 8 in the last 3 years for those of you keeping track. this time when I took the starter out I noticed that I cracked the block in half at the starter bolt hole. this is the 2nd time this happened. so instead of hoping that I can find someone good enough to weld the iron block ive decided to use the spare 455 that I had sitting in my basement. I dropped it off to the machine shop in May and was told it would be ready in 3 weeks..... that was almost 3 months ago. finally got a call from the shop today and was told that the block and crank are already 0.040 over and are unusable. AWESOME! (sarcasm). found a local buick buddy hat says he has a spare block... so back to square one... hopefully my machine shop doesn't put me to the back of the line again.
Before you put the new block completely back together, verify the compression ratio, degree the cam (to make sure the intake valve is closing when expected) and recheck the balancer's timing mark while the head is off and match up against cylinder #1 TDC. Then of course triple check that the distributor is set up for reasonable ignition timing while cranking. Crossing my fingers for a good block/crank for you and success on re-assembly.
my compression ratio was good on the last block, and the cam was degreed in, but I think the balancer was off by a degree or 2, I will recheck it, thanks for the tips
added hydro boost to try to remedy my bad brake feel.... works amazing! brakes feel like a newer sports car! https://goo.gl/photos/WyGovMWecsDngzjD8 https://goo.gl/photos/331hXTqvv68Hft6b9
