ok so my car is stock apart from new th350 transmission. Whilst trundling along at what appears to be a max speed of 70 miles an hour I wondered if there was anything relatively straightforward I could do to boost performance a little. Would putting in a bigger/better air filter, or new carb improve matters at all? I dont really have the facilities to take out the engine and work on that too mouch and dont want to get it rebuilt or anything right now. Everything is running fine but I just wanted to pep it up a little.. I have twin exhausts already
new air cleaner K&N , bigger exhaust, better spark,new bigger carb change the rear gears better fuel pump...mike
Gabriel- What has been done to the engine? Has it ever been apart? If not, a new balancer and timing chain might produce noticeable results
thanks for the suggestions... I guess the inevitable million dollar question after that is... what kind/brand etc. of course I could stick a bunch edelbrock stuf in there and it would be nice and shiny and all.. is that a reasonable solution so for the airfilter. I wonder if its a little cheesy to have one of this big chrome edelbrock airl filters if the rest of your engine is still an oily piece of much.. well not that oily but still. You see people with crappy old engines who stick a chrome air filter on top and to my mind it looks a little silly.. but I guess if it helps performance then it doesnt really matter... I am not intending to turn this into a major project, the car is in excellent stock condition already
Why is your ride only going 70?!? Is that really it's limit; i.e., does it run out of steam at 70, does it seem to be running at high RPM's (could be a good thing, might mean high ratio posi rear end) or are you just cruisin' at that speed? My limited experience with Buicks ('65 300 c.i. Skylark convertible, '65 Skylark GS) is that the typical stock Buick should have no problems at highway speed, in fact they're usually just getting their legs under them! My GS has the stock 2speed tranny and I have no problems above and beyond legal highway speeds (even up to 120mph). If you don't have a posi rear, then something definetly isn't right! Either something is keeping your car from it's full potential, or your foot just isn't heavy enough! If you want a big chrome open element air cleaner, I'll be happy to trade mine for a "star wars" air cleaner if your '67 is so equipped!
Cheap power Search this board for tuning your distributor. There are some great articles on how to set the timing that takes very little money and produces big results. If you invests in a simple vacuum gauge you can do some preliminary carb tuning that can also give great results. The best part of doing the adjustments is you can repeat the procedures once you add headers, intake, cam etc. A common mistake is to through parts at an engine without taking the time to re-tune the engine to take advantage of them. A second common mistake is taking the engine to someone who isn't familiar with Buicks. Buick engines have their own quirks and taking a Buick engine to a Chevy specialist rarely produces good results.
Like Jim said, your best bet is tuning- by a long shot. Ask the guys at the track who go fastest, they will tell you about their tuning before they tell you about the modifications. After that, I would buy things in the following order: - 4-barrel intake - headers/dual exhaust - Better ignition - Rearend ratio - Cam etc.
wow thanks for all the replies very useful info. I already have the dual exhaust.. havent measured it but I am pretty sure its 2 1/2"... tuning definately seems to be the way to go. With my foot to the floor I can just about eek out 75-80 but going up hill I am looking at around 65mph on the freeway. I replaced 2 speed with a th350 and it doesnt seem to be running at overly high revs at 70mph.... One thing I noticed was that when I had the tranny put in (at a local garage), the guy wasnt able to fit the kick down cable initially. I took it away for a couple of days without that and noticed that the car seemed much more lively, the accelerator seemed much more sensitive. I returned the car so he could fit the kick down cable. After that It seemed more sluggish ort much less sensitive. I had to floor it and then some to get it to really move. Is it possible that there is some kind of adjustment I can make to the accelerator pedal link or something (sorry still learning all the technical terms). IS it possible that the tension of the kickdown cable needs adjusting perhaps?
Check to see if the kickdown is restricting the movement of your throttle linkage. The cable might not allow the throttle linkage to move through it's full range of motion. If possible, try moving the linkage by hand without the car running and try it again with the kickdown cable/assembly disconnected. Then compare! It could be as simple as that. If your not sure what the linkage should look like, do a simple search on this website for "1967 throttle linkage" or "1967 kickdown" I had the opposite problem after having work done on my ride. I had an 800 cfm quadra jet carb installed and when I got the car back, the kickdown switch was just far enough out of adjustment to keep the carb from going all of the way back to idle. It would idle at 1,100-1,200 rpm and diesel sometimes when shutting it down. With manual brakes, the car was incredibly hard to keep stopped. 75-80 is not the top end of performance for your car by any means!
