TheSilverBuick's 1977 Skylark

Good find!

 

Waaaaay over due. I was looking at the e-mail to see what the seat spring pressure was set to, and it was 135 psi, but it was checked in 2013 not 2015! Ooof.

I wouldn't call this Moroso tool a high precision tool, but certainly a decent relative tool and likely +/- 5 psi when used appropriately. It seems most of the springs are in the ~115 psi range and found one around 95 psi. There were a few I didn't test because I was too lazy to rotate the engine around.


Since I already have a set of springs on hand and a kit to connect the air compressor to the cylinder I've started on making a spring compressor. I cut up two stamped rocker arms and I think if I weld this thing together it'll get the job done. I need to take a few angle measurements but I think I should be able to make the arm the proper angle to clear the AC housing and brake booster. Will dust off the welder this weekend.

 

Got my valve spring compressor tool welded together and it worked pretty well. Compressing springs on #6, 7 and 8 was easy though the retrieving and setting the keepers on #6 and #8 was a bit challenging around the evap box.

I wanted to keep the piston at TDC in case the air seal got broken some how the valve wouldn't drop too far (in theory...) so I took paired cylinders and would air up one sending it to BDC, put the car in 5th gear (and parking brake on, wheels chocked), then change the springs on the cylinders at TDC with air applied to the cylinder I was working on. Putting an opposing cylinder to BDC with air was a quick way to be sure the cylinder I was working on was at TDC.


Testing the tool I made on a spare head.



After doing a few springs I modified the tool a bit, shortening the allen wrench to clear the fuel rail let me slide it off/on the retainer when the keepers were out and the inside needed some clearance to reliably clear the retainer. I'd put a box end of a wrench on the short side of the allen to put a little compression on the spring to remove or install the socket/extension handle (to clear the fuel rail).


All done.






Now I'm thinking of installing the cast aluminum valve covers now, but need to sort the coil mounting to do that.

 

Cleaned up the head surface and took a look at fitting the cast valve covers. I was a tad concerned about the evaporator box, but it clears fine. I will need to make new coil brackets. I'm contemplating painting the valve covers red, leaving the "Buick" and fins bare. But for now, I think I'll paint the coil brackets red like my Firebird's and and see how that red accents on top.

 

Up and running and sounding good! I still need to take it for a test drive on the street, but it just sounds right so I'm optimistic.

I had to make new brackets to hold the coils. I had bought some universal brackets but they required drilling holes in the valve covers and bolting them on and I wasn't ready to do that. So the idea I came up with is a length of box tube to weld coil stands onto, then bolt it down with one of the valve cover bolts. When I go to re-wire the car I may move the coils to the inner fender wheels, but for now I'm good with it. I plan on getting some end caps for the box tube.

Not sure if this video link will work or not but its a short clip of it running.

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=1237619627382875

Now with the bare aluminum covers I'm feeling a lack of "Buick" red in the engine bay. I already added the red spark plug wires and coil brackets, but still too black and white (grey) for me.

So I decided to play around with this air cleaner housing I had sitting around, and I'm not 100% sure its what I want. I am thinking of re-painting the lid in gloss and putting a "455-4" decal on it, but also possibly going from an all red base to maybe just a ~1"-1.5" wide red stripe on it.

I had to put a 1" spacer under the lid to clear the coils. I may replace the plastic spacer with an aluminum one under the throttle body. I would like to see if I can get ducting set up to the fender so I'm not pulling post-radiator hot air anymore. At least for daily driving it should work pretty well. I can flip the lid or put the open element back on for on the track.





On my phone I doodled some black onto the base and I think its the right direction to take some of the overbearingness of the red base. I'm unsure if I should or shouldn't paint the snorkels black.

 

Washed it up and been driving it through the weekend and brought it to work. Running well and I think I'll take it for its annual smog check after work today.






A guy on Facebook very kindly sent me the air inlet piece that bolts to the fender.


Aiming for that hole on the fender over there. I'm going to look at making a splitter to connect two ~2.5" tubes to the single 3" opening, but I may pick up a more generic filter housing and cut a larger hole to pull air from. Rough math, the throttle body is approximately 9.6 sq. inches of throttle blade, the 3" fender piece is only ~7 sq. inches, and interestingly enough the dual snorkel area is ~9.8 sq inches. For daily driving, giving up a bit of top end power is fine. Technically the 3"/~7 sqin area should more than support my current HP output. Or maybe I'll be able to 3D print a new part with more cross sectional area patterned after the OE part.


This is what got me thinking of putting a full air filter housing on in the name of cooler air. The dual snorkel was only down a bunch, but the dual snorkel housing they used had much smaller openings than the one I currently have on the car. In either case, it showed the flipped air lid should easily support the air flow for the HP my engine makes, so I can just flip it at the track if need be.

 

The ol' Skylark passed its annual smog test! As far as I know, the State of Nevada doesn't worry about visual on 1968-1981 vehicles, so long as its not smoking out of the breather or tail pipes, and passes the sniffer at idle and ~2200 rpm. Its passed first time every time so far, but makes me nervous knowing I've double the engine size, added about 2.5 of compression, no EGR, no smog pump, no catalytic converter, etc.




The air lid decal showed up in the mail. I haven't stuck it on yet because I want to paint the air lid gloss black first.


On the fender air inlet, unfortunately I found that the one I got is a passenger side one and points the wrong way on the driver's side. I've put the word out seeing if I can come up with a passenger side one, but I may either attempt to modify this one (bigger opening in the process) or use it to pattern to have a 3D printed one made with a bigger single or dual outlets.

 

I finally put gloss paint on the air lid and stuck the sticker on. I'm still working on adding cold air hoses to the fender. Here you can see the hose connected to the "cold" water passage under the intake manifold.


For the air lid snorkels to clear the ignition coils I needed to raise it up 1". I happen to have an air filter housing spacer on hand so used it, but didn't really like it. So I got a 1" carb/throttlebody spacer and put it on. More plenum volume doesn't hurt.




I finished installing the intake manifold cooling loop. Preliminary test shows only a 10ºF manifold temp drop at the base, but I haven't done a real heat soaked long drive test.

Here is the heater core out front. I can feel the fan pulling air through it at idle, so its good for air flow.


I have a basic water reservoir out of PVC pipe. Keeps the prius water pump primed and easy to fill the system as a high point. If inclined, I could swap in a much larger reservoir for ice, etc, but this works to at least satisfy my curiosity. I don't expect the temp to hit coolant mix boiling point, but I drilled a small hole in the cap to keep it from pressurizing.




I have the coolant flow from back to front since the front is physically attached to the thermostat passage and hot coolant, so coldest water the furthest point from the thermostat hot water. Out the front of the intake and into the heater core then returned to the reservoir. With the pump off, I let the engine idle until the thermostat cycled open twice and had a steady 178ºF coolant temp. The manifold base was around 111ºF, I kicked the pump on and a handful of minutes later seemed to knock about 10ºF off and the circulating coolant went up ~20ºF over ambient. This is all sitting still. I need to re-wire the pump because I found my power source was always powered and not key ON like I thought.

 

This thread is continuing education for anyone who already feels like they have a PhD in Buick tech. Keep it up and thank you ...

 

I won't claim to be an expert, but I'd definitely say I poke at the fringes and try a handful of out of the box stuff Lots of "Just because you can" and not necessarily "should"

 

I've had a hell of a time getting my 3D air duct design into a 3D printer file. Its wild to me I have a legitimate copy of AutoDesk AutoCAD 2025, and can see the file in full 3D, I've tried 3 different 3D printer CAD programs and cannot for the life of me get my design into any of them! I haven't quite given up, but I've put it on the back burner and took some scrap 3" exhaust tubing and hammered and welded something together. The next hang up was getting 3" ducting to clip to the air filter housing because the flange lip. 3D printed adapter to slip onto the housing would be great, but again, I'm not there (yet?), so just put some slip in pieces that I need to find a way to retain them.

All in the name of restricting air flow! lol

Just some thin tin. Still working out how to positively retain them in place. I've got a few ideas, the worse is a tiny hole and retention screw on the bottom side.


Here it is with the ducting. Interestingly enough the two holes for retaining bolts on the fender adapter are two different sizes, d'oh! So I need to get some self tapers to run through there.


One of the challenges is the oval shapes and round hose. I can flatten the hose to a certain extent, but it trying to go back to round makes it want to pop off. I've been looking for some kind of metal spring clamp or removable plastic clamps to retain them.

 

Maybe black zip strips?
Cheap enough. Cut them off if disassembly is needed.

 

Zip ties are on the table, I just don't want to have to cut and replace every time I want to remove the air lid so looking for possible alternatives for now.

I have a set of 3" double loop wire clamps on order, but the spec's say they have an effective range of 3.1" - 3.5", so will be close on the small side.