Hi, just bid, and lost, on a June 1970 issue of Road Test on ebay with an article of a 1970 Buick GS 350. Does anyone have it, can you send me a copy? Jens
Hi Christian, thanks for your advice, nice book (so it seems), I`ll write it down on my christmas list.... Nice car you have up there, good luck with the resto! Jens
Wow. A 1970 GS350 should be alot faster than that. My 1970 Skylark was a 15 second car and that was with 100,000 miles on the odometer and a 2.73 rear gear.
They weren't very excited about the performance at all, and it is mentioned in the article that the car tested was a "project car" specially tuned by Bill Trevor of the GM training center in Los Angeles to run on regular gasoline... uzzled: It's not explained what actions the "tuning" included, sure did'nt improve performance.
What did he do?? Turn the timing back 20* and stuff a sock in the secondaries?? My E250XL van is faster than that..
I don`t believe the 17.4 sec run, my nearly untouched 71` GS ran a best of 15.4 in the 1/4 mile, no tunig whatsoever, just handshifted it. And there are interesting runs of a 71`GS at the PURE drag racing on youtube against a 66`442 going something like 14.49 sec. I know, probably not your unmoleted 350, but still strict rules... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-12saUDREg
I have that article in one of my Buick performance books. It actually a crappy story, they dont even know what they're testing really and dont have their facts correct. They mention about the ram air air cleaner being only available on the 455 cars, and the "car tester guru" modified it for testing the 350 on regular gas or something stupid like that. Im sure a stock 315 horse GS would run faster than 17 plus seconds in the quarter, that article kinda pissed me off.
My 70 ran a 15.2@91 in 2005 at Quaker City Raceway for the BPG nats. I used the dryrotted Sears Roadhandlers that were put on in 1974 (the car only has 54,900 miles on it). The only things I've done to it were the HEI and shift kit. It has a 3.23 posi and weighs 3700lbs. Here's a pic of it in the water box
I also agree the MPH is correct. That is really the only thing that matters in these old horse shyt tests. Who knows how much starting line experiance some "GURU" has ...and every car is different. But one thing hopefully thats the same is he has his foot to the floor through the traps. MPH is the number that can be used to judge horsepower in drag racing. That car even thou its ET was incorrect the MPH is pretty close. ET is all about set up and technique those guys could have posted a 12 sec pass ,would you believed them. This isnt my 1st time to the rodeo and high 80s to low 90s (with a tail wind) is all shes got.
Alot of those old car road tests quarter mile times were done with a 5th wheel and stop watch. Probably in some old industrial park aswell. Only rarely were they performed on prepared tracks even if at an actual strip.
