Mopar meets a Stage One

I have been watching this tread since the beginning. Early on I posted what I thought was going to happen. No big surprise here. When Mopar beats Buick its the same answer, that is what the "Magazine said would happen". When Buick beats Mopar its the same old song and dance. It always starts with "there must me something wrong with the driver or the car" and ends with "because the magazine said that mopars are faster than buicks."

I have told this story here before and I will tell it again. I have a 72 GS 455 non stage car. It has 8.5:1 compression. I run 87 octane with 38* total timing. It has a B4B intake with a demon 750 on it. Cam is a small lunati cam with rpm range up to 5000rpm. The exhaust is 1 7/8 primary into 3 1/2 collector header no H or X pipe just strait pipe through mufflers. The trans is a th400 with a 2400 stall that I can only get about 1500 rpm at launch. I run 3.55 gear with 26" slick tire. Race weight is 3800 lbs. My best run to date is 8.32(1/8) or 12.79(1/4). This is my bracket car.

Buddy of mine has a 69 Super Bee 440 six pack. We tore it down this winter and it had 11:1 compression. He had to run Race gas mix because it would ping. Stock intake with new carbs. He tried after market intake and carb and the car slowed down so he switched back. His cam is a little bigger than mine it will pull good until 5500 RPM. He has similar headers to mine just a little shorter. He has an X pipe out to mufflers. The trans is 720 with 3500 stall he says he can get about 3000 off the line. Out back he has 4.10 gear with 30" slick. Race weight is 3600 lbs. His best run to date is 8.47 (1/8). This is his bracket car as well.

Another buddy of mine runs a 440 69 charger it runs 9.20's (1/8) on slicks
Another lady at the track runs a 440 69 GTX that ran 8.90's (1/8) on slicks


Back to the 440 six pack. Our race track has an over abundance of Mopars. You should see these guys, for three years now they have been down in my buddies pit trying to figure out "Whats wrong with the Super Bee" because there is no way a low compression Buick with Headers and an Intake is faster than the mighty 440 six pack. They figured the solution is that this winter they will go with a set of ported aluminum heads and bump the compression up a little and run race gas. The funniest part of the whole conversation was when my buddy say "You won't be faster anymore and my 440 will still be basically stock." Of course I started to laugh and said there is no one on the planet that would consider it basically stock.

The thing that probably bothers the Mopar guys the most is that my car looks like this.



And his looks like this

<a href="http://s280.photobucket.com/albums/kk178/Turbo455/?action=view&current=100_2337.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i280.photobucket.com/albums/kk178/Turbo455/100_2337.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket"></a>

 

YESSSSS THATS WHAT I WANTED TO HEAR!!!!:beers2:Cheers buddy!:gp:

 

I support and own the Buick because it is the underappreciated underdog. But I can tell you the MOPAR owners have their own stories and experiences about kicking some other brand's buttocks.

 

My friend and I race Buicks and Mopars. He is mainly Buick and I am mainly Mopar. With very similar builds his Buicks always ran about 2/10's faster in the quarter mile than my 440's. The main difference is we could fill a truck bed with the blown up 455's. The 440 carnage was two cracked cylinder heads from over porting.

The reality is the 455 and the 440 are very similar engines.

I really like the Buick heads. They have a max wedge port size and a great spark plug location. The only draw back is the 10 head bolts. The ported Buick Edelbrock heads I have on the way out flow my ported Brodix (Koffels Place) heads by a bunch between .300 to .500 lift. The foundation of a Buick engine, the block, is just terrible. Light is about the only good thing you can say about it.

On the other hand Mopars have crap for heads, small ports and very prone to cracking. The max wedge heads are nice but all wedge head development stopped in 64 when the Hemi hit the scene. The 440 block though is a great piece. You can get away with 700 HP with two modifications. An $80 Melling HV pump and drill the main bearing feed hole bigger up to the lifter gallery. The cam gear is huge and you can dial up any oil pressure you want. To get over 700 HP you put on aluminum main caps or go buy a Koleno or World block.

 

But with the new TA block the playing field is a little more equal when it comes to carnage above 700 hp. The World block is 5349 at summit and the TA block is 5900. I agree with the head design when we are talking less than 700 hp. But if I understand it correctly us Buick fans are at a disadvantage when it comes to high horsepower heads. This is probably because we have never really had a block that could handle high hp reliably to merit an all out head design. But I guess now we are getting a little off the topic.

 

Here is the listing with 440 six pack Super Stock magazine 12.91 second at 111.80 mph record stock 4 seater muscle car era 1/4 mile run. It outran the Hemis, LS6 454, ZL1 427 Chevy and Buick Stage 1 in this survey of tests. (Hemi was #2, Buick was #9)

http://www.musclecarclub.com/musclecars/general/musclecars-50fast.shtml


BJ Lot #1262

http://www.barrett-jackson.com/application/onlinesubmission/lotdetails.aspx?ln=1262&aid=304&pop=0


I recall the Road Runner A12 optioned car was driven by Sox. It is the red RR (Lot # 1262) car just sold at BJ.


Here is the pics and the original Super Stock magazine article.http://inventory.bestofshowautomotive.com/CarDetails.asp?VIN=131477

 

Not totally level yet. Summit isn't a real World distributor. The iron blocks can be bought for less than 3K and the aluminum for less than 4K. Ray Barton had the aluminum blocks on sale for $$3300 before Xmas and I waffled too long. By the time I called they all were sold. The TA block fixes the strength problem but still has the some of the same 700+ problems IMHO. Yes Buicks are still at a high end head disadvantage. I had a set of B1 heads that flowed 400 cfm out of the box. There are 3 or 4 places that have some great CNC porting programs for just about every Mopar head (even stock cast iron) and they all cost $1100 no matter what the head. All this came about because of the really low cost to build a 572 short block when 4.5" bore blocks came out.

 

of course nothing is going to "level" the playing field. Buicks and Pontiacs will never catch the Mopar and Chevy and Ford guys as far as aftermarket parts.

 

Nope we will not have as much aftermarket parts.

But who needs a lot of parts, when you have A LOT of Buick friends helping you dialing in your car! :Brow:

I see alot of aftermarket parts being bought and discarded again goes it was the wrong part for his chevy combo.
There are to much parts, and everybody thinks you can use them all without thinking about if it will work.o No:

 

Didn't see any mopars at the track the night I took my Buick 455 to the track for the first time this summer.........but did find a Chevelle 396 that was wanting to run alot of people..........I'd never been to this track before and the Chevelle guy told me "Nice Pretty car....I'd like to run that grociery getter". I met up with him out on the track a few minutes later...........I didn't show him how to "get grocieries"......but I did show him how to "haul the mail". :bglasses:



After one pass down the track..........alot of guys took their street cars out to take a shot at me..........this guy in his goofy gasser got the closest.......



Buicks = Good times...............no matter what you're racing. :beers2:

 

Nice! Tell us about your combo.

Devon

 

Lol, whered that chevelle go?

 

yeah, what's your combo and what ET do you run? Nice car!

 

Mild Build by De-Habey Racing out of Fort Wayne, Indiana.........

Buick 455 bored .20 over
Dominator 1050
Out of the Box Edelbrock Aluminum Heads
Headers
X-pipe
3 inch full exhaust
Dynomax Bullet Mufflers
Solid lifter cam
H&R PartsnStuff Rear Sway bar
3:73 Posi/GM 12 bolt rear
Pump gas......Sunoco 93 octane
624 HP on the Dyno (at the crank) before engine was placed in the car
90/10 Drag shocks for weight transfer
4,050 pounds/full interior with me in it at the track.......
Runs very low 11's with the 3.73's
Solid high 10's car with 4.56's and Race Fuel with bumped up timing........

She's a sweetheart on the street..........at least until provoked. :beers2:

 

Nice! :TU:

 

You have to give Buick a lot of credit for the performance that they got out of their engines,especially when you consider Chrysler has spent a lot more time and money developing their engines for years,than Buick has.

Slowly but surely,the Buick performance world is getting faster and faster,that's because there are more performance parts available now more than ever. My hat's off to Buick and to all the Buick performance companies.:beer

 

Damn that's a bad ass Buick!

 

I'm a newbie to Buick and just bought a stage 1 clone with a built 455.

Some history easily available through goggle.

Motor Trend declared Buick as the fastest muscle car of the 1970 year based on their 1/4 mile tests. See youtube search enter "My Classic Buick" and check out the 4min plus from the TV program My Classic Car with Gage. A bone stock 70 stage with gears and front wheel lock turning 12.5s with a passenger!

Hot Rod magazine took all the 70 magazines 1/4 tests and declared Buick 3rd but Hemi 5th! Over the years there have been 3 challange races between Buick and Hemi. Buick won the first and lost 2nd and 3rd. As the years rolled by the cars got further and further from stock. There's several pictures back there showing Buicks with one or both front wheels in the air at launch. Wow --happy to be a new Buick owner!

 

Doesn't surprise me at all that a stock 70 Buick stage 1 could stomp a hemi car.

I want see a bone stock stage 1 4 speed run against a bone stock 70 chevelle ss 4 speed and then run it against a ram air gto 4 speed.

 

13.38 quarter mile on the time for the Buick used in the 1984 Car Review ranking.

4 races total for the Hemi/ Stage 1 series as I recall and they are 2 to 2. You are not counting the Canadian race.