As a re-cap, in my Buick, I've ran 3.08, 3.23, 3.42, 3.70 and 3.89 gears in it all with an overdrive and 26" tall tire at around 3,900-4,000lbs operating weight. I've towed a camp and utility trailers with all those gears except the 3.23's. The 3.42 was a solid all around gear choice and ran it the longest amount of time by far. I only pulled them for the 3.89's to go all out on my 1/4 mile time. I got my best fuel mileage with 3.23's but also had the lowest performing/HP 455 in it too. With the EFI and 3.08, 3.42, 3.70, and 3.89 gears my mpg's ranged from 16.5-19.5mpg at 75-80mph cruising speeds. I currently was averaging right at 18mpg with the 3.89 gears, but do not have a substantial amount of time/distance on them. That is a ~2,500-2,600rpm cruise speed. The EZ-EFI should not have any trouble running any RPM at any load. If the engine can physically run at the rpm and load, the EZ-EFI should be able to deliver smooth and consistent power. It may simply need more learning time, or perhaps the throttle linkage makes it difficult to control finer throttle movements on a very responsive engine? The tall gears with the torque would make it more apparent because a smaller rpm changes result in larger speed changes. Usually these throttle bodies do well bolted to GM chassis though, but it may be worth looking into.
More good news bad news . . . . (Re: Trusty "billy-goat" Wagon!) Dear V-8 Buick followers of da' trusty wagon soap opera . . . . . . Are you ready for the latest installment? . . . . . . . cuz I wasn't I asked Orinda Motors to check on why the Vintage Air A/C system had stopped working. There is good news and bad news: The good news is - air conditioner not working was caused by a loose electrical connector. That's okay now. The bad news is - the brand new alternator that Jim had installed just before shipping the engine just failed. And I quote . . . . . . . AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!! Worse still, Greg is fearful that he didn't catch the problem in time to save the self-tuning data on the EZ-EFI system, so it is back to square-one as far as tuning the engine.ou: I have sent Jim an email, I hope there is an easy way to have the alternator replaced under warranty. So in the meantime: . . . . . Exactly which rear end ratio works best for a car in which - you can't even start the engine!?! Stay tune for the next episode - assuming I don't go stark raving crazy before then!! Edouard
It is always darkest before the dawn... I believe you are oh so close to having the coolest car in Orinda. Stay positive!
Surprising.. That was a Tuff Stuff Chrome 1 wire alternator.. Good USA made stuff. They have a pretty good rep, we will find out tomorrow.. 1 year warrantee, but this thing has 300 miles on it.. 'Course it was bought over a year ago. We will see how committed to customer service they are, when I call them tomorrow.. JW
Edouard, I don't even post up even close to half my troubles and tribulations with my cars. Keep at it, it's all worth it once it's dialed in.
Time for another kind of "expert"!?!?! (Re: Trusty "billy-goat" Wagon!) Dear Frank, Doug, Jim, Randall, and V-8 Buick fans of automotive soap operas . . . . . . . Thanks for all the sympathy everybody . . . . . :TU: Certainly should have been a safe choice. It is one of the brands Jim and I agreed upon way back when. . . . . Okay, so now you are talking!! So tell me, have you found the services of a qualified exorcist that you can really trust!?!?? . *Heavy sigh* . . . . . Cheers, Edouard :beer
Sometimes I just stare under the hood and drink. I can usually get help doing this. Especially if I supply the beer.
For those interested.. I made a call to Tuff Stuff Products this morning on Ed's behalf.. No problem at all with a warrantee on this unit, even though it is technically out of the warrantee period. I spoke with operations manager Bud, and he was pleasant to deal with, did not hesitate to take care of it, and promised 1 day turn around once they get it. So far so good. You have an e- mail Edouard, with the details. JW
Re: Time for another kind of "expert"!?!?! (Re: Trusty "billy-goat" Wagon!) I'm part priest too, lol (j/k)
Duty done - back to "lubrication?" (Re: Trusty "billy-goat" Wagon!) Dear Doug, Jim, Randall, and practitioners of "da' Car Crazy" faith . . . . . :grin: Okay first things first, da' serious stuff . . . Thanks Jim for all the extra legwork!! Jim also suggested that I bite the bullet and have the gang at T/A-Performance take a peek at the water pump since it is definitely dripping. So I called over there and got the required RGA number. Orinda Motors had a back-log of "Prissies", "Beemers", and "Mersy-dotes" (Prius, BMW, and Mercedes for the uninitiated,) but they hoped to get the parts out of Biquette and ship them tonight. If not, I'll check on Mondaya and ship them myself as was the original plan. Either way, my trusty wagon is marooned back at Orinda Motors until these parts come back, but at least the process is underway. However, that means a lull in this soap-opera, you guys will have to amuse yourself some other way until the next installment!! :grin: . . . . Yeah, but are you a Catholic priest? This is very important cuz they use wine . . . . :grin: If insufficient wine is applied to the patient, . . . . . . . it can lead to da' other kind of whining!! :rant:. . . . . . . . :laugh: Wine, beer, it is all the same . . . . . . :grin: In some cases it requires even - stronger - medicine . . . . . . . My Dad was fond of an occasional glass of a good guality French cognac! Oh well, definitely time to call it a Friday night! Thanks for your support everybody!! Cheers, Edouard :beer
At last - some GOOD news!! (Re: Trusty "billy-goat" Wagon!) Dear followers of the trusty billy-goat wagon soap-opera, Yesterday morning I prepared to "play Santa" at Orinda Motors with my annual offering of holiday cookies. I wasn't expecting any real progress on my trusty wagon. Was I in for a surprise! First, a bit of a recap. Biquette was back in the shop because the water pump and alternator needed repairs. Both had come back in early December. However, what I had not noticed is that T/A-Performance had included a note with the water-pump expressing some concerns about the alignment of the main pulley. This necessitated getting a slim kit from T/A-Performance and that delayed matters another week or so. Finally, Greg was able to get the pulley's lined up, so the engine could actually be started once more. At this point, he could then look over the list of suggested causes for why Biquette's "assertive" JW masterpiece engine was so rough. And the winner with the best hunch is - none other than Jim himself. Greg found the distributor retarded to 9-10 degrees instead of the 18˚ that Jim intended. Rotate the distributor and . . . . Oooh! Things were sounding and running much better. In addition there was a mix-up that led to no vacuum advance, so Greg restored that. The EZ-EFI system needs to tune itself - "yet one more time" and there are a few other potential tweaks, but all of a sudden this engine is living up to its potential. Hurray!! Greg is taking two weeks of vacation starting on Monday. So there was no point is leaving Biquette at Orinda Motors. So quite unexpectedly, I was able to bring Biquette home for Christmas after all. After almost 9 months of almost continuous "hospitalization," Biquette is back in her own digs once more: Driving her home was a pleasure compared to previous drives. I still need to get used to feel of the accelerator petal, but now the car is responsive and easy to control. The sound level is much more reasonable and the car is behaving as I expected with the rear-end ratio that already there. I'm confident now that I can keep the engine revolutions low enough to get decent fuel-economy even with this unlikely drive-train combination. Biquette will probably lay-low through Christmas. I need to repair the windshield wiper switch so that the original Buick knobs work once more. Also, you may remember that Biquette was in an accident on the day before Thanksgiving 2010 which was the beginning of this nightmare for me. So, I'd rather avoid the crowds at this point. Once the danger period has passed, I'll get back out on the freeway and report on how she behaves now that the engine is the way - it was supposed'ta be all along!! Thanks for your support!! Cheers, Edouard
Great news Edouard! Hope everything settles in and turns into the dream you started out with. :TU: Wasn't there something else with a leak besides coolant? Did you get that figured out as well? Hope you get to take her out for some classic car therapy soon! Keep us posted. Happy Holidays!
Definitely not out of the woods yet. (Re: Trusty "billy-goat" Wagon!) Dear Peter, Michael, and V-8 Buick "soap opera" fans, Unfortunately the only leak that should have been fixed is the water-pump leak. The head gaskets will need to be replaced and there are other leaks which need to be checked. However, there was little point in looking into the leaks until I could get a handle on why the engine was behaving so differently from what I was expecting. Until now, the whole project was in severe jeopardy and I had no idea what I was going to have to do to make this car meet my performance objectives. I sure hope so. Still feeling plenty shaken. There has been plenty of second guessing these past few months. If I had simply had a modern crate engine put in the car I would have saved myself a ton of money and probably at least a year of downtime. I expected this would be harder, but I had no idea how hard it has turned out to be. Being a pioneer is never easy, but there is a thin line between coming up with something innovative and creating an albatross. Sure hope I'm still on the right side of that line. Edouard
Hurray!! Happy wagon!! (Re: Trusty "billy-goat" Wagon!) Dear V-8 Buick followers of da' trusty wagon soap opera, California continues to suffer from a drought that is leaving us with amazingly warm springlike conditions. December 26 is still a risky day to be on the road with now the post-Christmas shopping lunacy. Nonetheless, I decided to make a quick test drive on the freeway now that the retarded timing problem has been solved. Yippie!! Finally, I'm getting to understand why everybody else was so excited by this engine! (and subsequent copies . . . ) Once more Biquette was able to cruise around at surface street speeds without as nearly as much struggle. However, at 35 mph the engine can get a bit loud for some reason when climbing modest obstacles. I may need to downshift from time to time. Another experiment to investigate. However, I got at the bottom of the freeway on-ramp and wondered what was going to happen. The Orinda on-ramp to Eastboard highway-24 is particularly challenging because it is a somewhat steep hill without any approach to build up speed. This darn on-ramp was nightmare with the retarded timing. Today - whoosh!! :3gears: Biquette just climbed that on-ramp like it was a mole-hill! Just as important to me was how nicely the engine can be controlled. As Jim promised, the response on the throttle is wonderful. You really feel like you have very precise control over this engine. I accelerated the car just as I wanted to - and no more. GREAT!! I did a quick loop just to get a sense of how the car feels on the freeway - WOW, what a difference!! Now the car is amazingly quiet. It is to the point that some door weatherstripping noise easily drowns out the engine. The engine sticks in between 1500-2000 RPM most of the time. Only when you really need to accelerate does the RPM nudge toward the 2500 range. I opened the throttle once to pass a long-jam of cars and Biquette accelerated smoothly into the 80 mph range - still plenty quiet. However, I'm going to be very careful about excessive speed right now. The speedometer isn't calibrated yet. The last thing I want to have to do is try to explain to a cop why I was going too fast when I cannot even know how fast I am going. The only problem I ran into is a little difficulty getting the engine started. I had to crank the engine over two times before Biquette would start this morning. However, this might have had something to do with my fiddling with the Detroit Speed Selecta-Speed wipers. Biquette stalled as I tried to pull out of a parking stall after picking up a prescription. Greg was aware of this problem and has a scheme to fix it based on his carburetor experience. However, I would like to allow the EZ-EFI system a chance to self-tune once more and see if can improve warm starts by itself. If that doesn't work, I think I should post a question on the EZ-EFI forum and see if anybody has a clever idea on improving warm starting reliability. The final pleasure is perhaps an unexpected one: parking the car in the garage. Biquette has been parked in the garage backwards since we first moved here in 1980, and shoehorning her into her corner isn't that easy. Having now warmed up the engine, I was amazed as how smoothly this engine performs when trying to move the car just inches. The old 300 V-8 never was this nice at least after the first rebuild when I started driving Biquette. This JW masterpiece engine is definitely no beast, instead it is a very obedient Saint Bernard! Anyway, definitely a promising drive! Nice to have my trusty wagon feeling better once more!! Cheers, Edouard :beer
The final injury and insult of 2013 . . . .(Re: Trusty "billy-goat" Wagon!) Dear followers of da' trusty wagon soap opera . . . . Well, I have good news and bad news. The good news is that I got Biquette out this morning for an extended freeway run which ultimately put about 60 miles on the car. It appears that the EZ-EFI self-tuning had improved the engine performance. In particular the noise level was noticeably reduced and the car was even more responsive. My only complaint on the freeway portion of the drive was the discovery that the Vintage Air heater is a bit anemic. I'll have to look into this some, but I suspect part of the problem is that the heater vent is completely on the passenger side. I suppose that's good since the ladies normally are in the passenger seat and they need more heat than us fellows. After the freeway run, I stopped by at a local drug store to pick-up a few items. When I walked out of the store, I was greeted by the bad news: Yup, somebody had slammed their door into Biquette and damaged the paint. The damage is big enough to be noticeable from a distance: Sufferin' succotash, . . . . I have less than 400 miles on the new engine and probably less than 1000 miles since the new paint job and . . . . whack! I had parked a reasonable distance away from the store and left a empty space on each side of the car. When I returned to the car, there no sign of the perpetrator. That person must have come and gone in a hurry. Looks to me like more than what a touch-up with a paintbrush can hope to restore. So Biquette will have to endure another visit to the body shop for a professional touch-up. But wait, there's more! ou: I was going a little work on the car when I stepped over to my work bench. While at the bench, I heard some funny tapping sounds next to Biquette. When I came back to the car, I had to chase away a stupid bird! It must have been male and saw it's reflection in the bumper chrome. So it was pecking the bumper trying to repel the "phantom intruder!!" So there you have it, the final injury and insult of 2013. Man, oh man, am I glad this year is finally coming to end!! :rant: Grumble, grumble, grumble. . . . . Edouard
