The Resurrection of a 69' GS

Quick history, for those that haven't see my past posts. This spring me and my dad who is a long time Buick fan will be pulling his strong running 350 out of his 69' GS and putting it in my 67' Skylark and I will be taking it bracket racing and sometime in the future be doing a turbo setup for it. When I was younger my Dad also had a 69' Skylark he raced with a 462 in it and had it running in the 11.20's and would drive it to and from the track almost every week(about a half hour drive each way on the highway, 45 minutes going the back roads). He got rid of the car in 03' or 04' if I remember right but kept the engine. The engine had begun to get warn out after a lot of street miles(was his daily driver before building it for racing), late night street racing(was big around here for a long time), and lots of passes at the track so it was retired to the engine stand due to life getting busier and me and my sibling getting older and taking up more time. We always talked about redoing the 462 and putting it in the GS with the built transmission and rear-end and having fun with it again but we were never really sure when. So, here is where the Resurrection part of the story starts, earlier tonight we got on the phone with TA and ordered a set of their forged rods, notched forged pistons, sfi balancer, sfi flexplate, and a girdle for the block. The plan is almost as soon as the parts arrive stripping the block down and taking it to the local machine shop we trust and having the engine rebuilt and heads refreshed, giving it a new life. We are going for 10:1-10.25:1 as the motor was 10:1 in the past and will be going with the 210S-HL cam which he had great luck with. The car will still be driven to and from the track every time. This time around though since we know the block and internals will be strong, we will start the season getting everything dialed in again and then later on in the season spray some nitrous to push it into the 10's and fingers crossed possibly the 9's. We also have a set of stage 2 SE heads that are destined to be sent to Scott Brown for his CNC porting and then get bolted on to the motor with new headers to squeeze out even more power from the engine. This year will be my first year down the track in my Buick and his first time down the track with a big block again since he got rid of the car. After the car was gone he only went down the track in the GS one or two times, so I am extremely excited to see him racing again and to see his big grin after his first run with the Resurrected 462.

 

Update: Most of the parts arrived today with the flexplate following suit and should be here Friday. Then hopefully Saturday or early next week everything will be off to the machine shop to get it all put back together again with the new parts.

 

PICS!!!

 

Love to read stories like this!

 

Pics please

 

I will try to put up some pics later tonight

 

Decided to wait until the flexplate came in to take the pictures and upload them. Needless to say we are both looking forward to the motor getting rebuilt even more so now. We didn't get to take it to the machine shop today but we are going to try to this upcoming week sometime.

 

Just realized I haven't added a picture of my Dad's car on this thread yet, so here is a picture of it

 

Keep the pics coming

 

Well unfortunately with everything going on with the virus and not knowing if the machine shop we plan on using is going to be closed for a little while like a lot of local businesses. We have decided to hold off on having the work on the engine done in order to avoid the potential risk of the shop closing with the parts and motor inside and being at risk of anyone being stupid and going in to loot or vandalize the place. Highly unlikely but as we all know our Buick parts aren't cheap and we would like to air on the side of caution.

 

I was looking back through old pictures today and found one of my dad's 69' Skylark that was his previous race car, figured since I don't have any updates on the project right now due to the virus and the stay at home orders I would at least update this thread with this picture. We'll see if we can get the GS to hang the front tires higher and make it get down the track even quicker with the refreshed engine, when that time comes it should make for a good picture to have side by side with this one

 

I thought this was an Easter post when I saw the title...... lol

 

That last picture looks like BG. I'd say it is! Can't wait to hear the rest of the story!!!

 

You are correct that was down in BG he and my uncle went every year and raced most of the years for a long time. They both have always been big Buick fans, which I inherited my love for the Buicks seeing what their cars could do. It's been quite a long while since we have got to go though, we were planning on going this year and seeing if we could bring at least one of our cars down, but with it being canceled and moved to next year hopefully we will be able to get both down there and it will be my first behind the wheel of my own Buick

 

Well Saturday morning we will be loading all the parts up and taking the engine to the machine shop to get the work done. We also ordered the complete fuel system tonight, we went with one of Aeromotive's stealth 340lph fuel tanks that can support up to 1000hp in carb applications as we are hoping/thinking the engine will stay under the GS hood and decided going with this fuel tank would help with a sleeper look. The lines will be black as well as the fittings so the only thing that might stick out when looking under the car is the red post filter but we might be able to hide that as well. We also talked about the fact that we still have a full set of Buick rallye wheels that might be fun to mount a pair of slicks on the Rallyes then drive out to the track and spray it into the mid to low 10s with it looking completely stock and only the sound of it when it is running giving a hint to it's power. It still seems pretty surreal and I don't think it will really set in for either of us until we are picking the engine back up from the machine shop. The fuel system will be overkill for now but leaves room to grow without having to buy a whole new fuel system in case there is ever a forced induction setup that finds it's way onto the car.

 

Dropped everything off at the machine shop today,we've got a few more little things to order around Wednesday once they have the chance to check everything out and let me know if all the valvetrain is still in good shape and doesn't need replaced. We found the cam card and I had been remembering wrong it has the TA210s not the 210s-HL. We also took the Stage 2 heads with us to have everything moved over and have the Stage 2s matched to the intake. The iron heads flowed close to 290 on their own but hoping with matching the intake since the Aluminum ones flow that out of the box that we might get some more cfm, either way that is still a good amount of weight savings and if we are redoing the motor we might as well use them now. Maybe later on down the line we will take them off and get them CNC ported.

 

Went out to the machine shop today at lunch to drop a few things off and got this picture a little earlier tonight, they said they should be able to start getting everything cleaned up tomorrow. Some of the lifters were done for which played a part in it slowing down before it was pulled. So we will be ordering some new parts tomorrow or Wednesday. Mainly the dual groove cam bearings, TA's timing cover, and a new cam kit, we were talking with the engine builders and are considering going to a bigger cam to pick up some more power even if we stick with the same one we will probably replace everything but the valves since they were in great shape so that all the internals are new, fresh and live for a long time hopefully.

 

Block is cleaned and I believe the machining started today or will be started tomorrow morning. Told my dad it was weird for me to see the block like that, for as long as I can remember the block has always been together and been Buick red so seeing it apart and with no paint on it is very new to me. We spoke with the engine builder yesterday and he is going to give TA a call and find out some more on the Stage 2 SE heads, we also spoke about potentially going up to 11:1 compression and running either the TA 294-98F cam or the 308s cam. There are still a few things we are waiting for more information on before making the decision on whether to go to the higher comp and different cam or if we will stay with the 10:1 and the 210 cam.

 

What's your dads name?? Car looks familiar......

 

My dad's name is Jeff Luthman, he raced the GS for a couple years at the Nats' in the late 90s and had it entered it in the car show down there a couple years as well and raced his Skylark as well in the late 90s/early 2000s. A friend of ours named Shayne Dillinger also has a 69' GS that is the same color and black vinyl roof as well and would race at the Nats' too.