All my experiences with the odd fire V-6 have been in mid 70's Century's and Regals and I hated them with a passion. Rough, underpowered and just really unpleasant in 4000 lb passenger car.. But I had an eye opening experience last summer when I went Jeeping with my buddy's posse in the Rockies. I borrowed his 66 CJ-6 with a 225, and that motor was absolutely perfect for off roading.. I drove a bunch of CJ-3s with flathead and OHV 4's, and CJ-5's with the 258 all back to back, and hands down the Buick was the best motor of the bunch, once I figured that out they couldnt pry me out of it.. It had the torque to turn the wheels on a grade without downshifting and losing momentum, the HP to make it the fastest of the bunch on level ground and the best exhaust note of all... It was a stock .030 rebuild 2 bbl motor, with no tricks or modding. It's all about finding the right application I guess, and Jeep mad a terrific decision when they bought the tooling...I have newfound respect for that motor.
Back in the seventies one of my Jeeping buddies had a '67 CJ-5 with the 225 V6. On the road it was a rocket ship compared to our four cylinder Jeeps. And it never lacked for power off road.
Nice! What transmission was it running? I think a SBB Jeep with a manual trans and 300 transfer case would be too much fun and is on the bucket list.
I had a 64 Special that I put a 225 1 barrel in during the gas crisis in the 70s with a 4 speed, 2.78 rear and dual exhaust. I ran great and got 26 MPG on the interstate.
It was a standard Jeep non synchro 3 speed. And yeah Mike B - it ran circles around the CJ-3's and 3B's,. in those, I found I had to downshift at the worst possible times. It was pretty funny, we were up running around Mt Princeton and the Mary Murphy mine area and we'd run across convoys of these heavily modified, lifted LED'd beadlocked Jeeps who would look at us in amazement that THATs what we bounced up the trail in! A simple military tire'd CJ with no rollbar and the windshield folded . I even let my 13 y/o daughter drive it, she seemed to enjoy it.
The Buick V6 is a torquey little beast. Like you said they saddled them with 2 tons to move around, with a 2.41 rear gear, and a torque convertor that stalls at 800 rpm
You still got the 225? Got one in a 70 that I am restoring. Drove it a little in the neighborhood, was fun. Just trying to get it done, project creep.
If you don't get everything you need, or just want a second 225 from a jeep, I'll be pulling the one out of the Porsche 914 conversion I bought, to replace it with an engine better suited to autocross. I need to keep the special flywheel, but the rest of the long-block will be free. I will likely keep the distributor and carburetor, and pulleys. I'm in central Illinois.