went to the track sat. nite made 2 passes car is a turtle! 78 malibu 11.1 455 ported iron heads sp1 intake 950 hp carb. th 350 3500 conv. 4.10,29.5/10.5 mt slicks. mallory 250 fuel pump,half inch line to and from pump BG 3 port regulator,8 lbs. pressure. cam is poston 107, 050. 244 int. 264 ex. 107 center. 473 lift. car wieghs 2980 with driver. 1.59 60ft. 11.67 @ 113 mph. timing @ 34. i shift at 5800, goes through @5700 rpm. thinking about removing mufflers, changing cam, and conv. (4000 stall) maybe even jetting the carb. first pass on 92 octane, 110 mph. next pass on 110 race gas 113 mph. no other changes done to car. really need some serious help! by the way car launches with left front wheel about 3 ft. in air, right one about 1 ft.
no, i dont think it is a head problem, same heads in a heavier car went about 4 tenths faster. i want to believe maybe cam, conv. or fuel.
Cam and Chassis I think you are right about the cam. Just not much there to work with. Next you need to get the chassis squared away. I know the typical A & G body twist. You are going to have to use air bags and different springs in the rear or go with an anti-roll bar (the right way) for the rear. Of course a good convertor is always important. I doubt the heads are the really problem unless they were screwed up porting them. I had a similar engine in a 81 Regal and it went 11.40's with about the same cam as yours, (a Crane). My car weighted 3370 and had the same left wheel up 2 feet problem. I put the same engine in my 67 and it went 11.06 weighing 3270. I then changed the came to a KB Maxi 4 and it went 10.70's @ 123mph. This engine had unported Stage 1 heads. Hope you get it going. Those are neat race cars. Jim N.
First thing I see is that you are over kill on the fuel pump. The large pump may be causing you to run to rich. Check you spark plugs after your next run. I think the fuel pump to big for your setup. maybe some like a 140 or 150 GPH would be more than enough.
Who knows The fuel pump is not a problem thats why you have a reg. Is the cam deegree'd correctly? balancer spun? Bad converter or trans? ring seal or valve job? My old pump gas stove was 10.7:1, TA intake, 950 holley, holley 110 fuel pump, 1 7/8 TA headers, mildly ported iron heads, 9105 cam, TA roller rockers, th400 with 5000 stall 8 inch converter and 4.10 gears, 3300lbs, 10.57 @ 124mph. Maybe its rejecting the trans plant :laugh: ou: OK I'm sorry, fellow buick guy is down and out I shouldn't be cracking jokes..........Chris
i dont care if you crack jokes , as long as you can help me. the car may not want it , but hell it dont have no feelings. can somebody help. buickstage1, what kind of cam you said that was.
i ran the same kb maxi 4 cam in my 82 regal 455 with stage 1 heads and around 9.5 comp, edelbrock performer/q-jet carb ,92 octane ran 12.50s at 106 with a 4000 stall. should gain alot with the sp1, 1050 dominator and the new mallory fuelpump i had 4.10s with south side lift bars and it launched pretty even with the spool and antiroll bar i should still launch evenly you should stiffen up the body some.you are wasting hp lifting the wheels in the air
Lola455 This car should flat haul @2980lbs. it should be in the very low 11's high 10' with the right combo. I can tell you my Regal does not like your timing settings. It likes between 30 and 32 deg anything more and you throw the anchor out and lose 2 tenths and 2 or 3 MPH. Last time out at the GM Event the car went best of 11.66 @ 116MPH with a 3:70 gear, th400 / 850Holley/edlbrock b4b/ TA 107 cam 4.75 lift same duration as yours, it is degreed strait up (no advance) / 1.6 roller rockers. 10:1 compression on 50/50 - 93oct / 110oct/ vehicle weight 3770lbs locked and loads and ready to rock. You didn't say what intake manifold you have but here is what I think you need to look at. My B4B falls flat on it face after 5400rpm, but it runs very well to that point. I shift at 5400 and go through at traps at 5400. It is my opinion that you may have to much gear, this thing should rip your neck off from 0 mph with a 3:50 gear at that vehicle weight. Yeah, Yeah everyone needs a big gear, but if your intake or heads can't flow at the higher rpms your wasting your ET because your engine is never in it's power curve with a big gear. I know, I tried a 4:10 gear and went slower because the B4B doesn't do well upstairs. These big blocks love you to lean on their low end torque curve. It's as simple as that. Jim Poston told me when I built mine that it would run best with a 3:50 gear and I foo, foo'd him, but ya know, I think I could run 118 with a 3:50 because I'm out of power before I get to the MPH lights with a 3:70 gear. It took me 3 years just to consider the possibility that he was right, that was about $8000 worth of engine rebuilds trying to spin them @ 6500 RPMS Food for thought! By the way, I took first place at the GM Event with the old slug I call the Iron Regal. 60" times 1.56sec, now thats torque!!! Good Luck, Weekender :3gears:
Body flex Not related to et, but some chassis stiffening is in order to run a g-body hard. Mine developed nasty cracks at the roofline just behind the doors. Twist the car like that a bunch of times you'll find it'll screw up body fitment and cause problems. Plus, that energy will then be transferred into forard motion instead. Also, I agree on less gear, unless you can get a Gear Vendors overdrive. Those are the cat's a__.
I bet this will fix it. I'll see one soon. :Brow: HR and parts Rear Sway Bar New Rear Swaybar / Anti-roll bar We have designed a new kit for many different vehicles with stock-type suspension that will keep the car from twisting off the line and losing traction. This is somewhat of a hybrid design, between the stock rear swaybar and the newer "anti-roll" swaybar setups currently available. As with our other great products, we took the best features from each design, and eliminated the negative characteristics from both designs as well. To better understand what happens when a car launches at the drag strip, let's take a look at what is happening there. When the front rises or does a "wheelie," most of the time the drivers side is much higher than the passenger side front. This also means the drivers side rear is much higher than the passenger side rear. Most people add air bags to the rear and pump the passenger side way up to keep the passenger side rear from coming down as far. Here is a different way to look at what is really happening there. Because of the rotation of the engine and the massive amount of torque it is producing, those forces are transmitted through the driveline to the rearend. What is actually happening back there is that the passenger rear tire is actually trying to LIFT off the ground. The tire is going up into the car, NOT the car coming down on the tire. The passenger side air bag applies additional weight (down-force) onto the rearend (tire), attempting to equalize the weight on each rear tire. Our new swaybar / Anti-roll system transfers the force from one side to the other, doing a much more efficient job of equalizing the weight to each rear tire. This in effect almost doubles the traction of a fast car with no air bags, because the passenger tire would have had very little weight on it. With the added traction and the car being much closer to level, the car can now launch harder and straighter. This reduces the chance of wandering out of the "groove" and further losing traction, while making it much safer to drive. Not having to worry about the rear slicks getting cut or damaged from excessive body roll is an added bonus. The first available kits will be for '68-'72 GM A-body and '78-'87 GM G-body vehicles. Features with the new HR Swaybar / Anti-roll system include: No welding necessary, easily bolts in place in under 2 hrs, Mounts similar to stock swaybar, stealth appearance, Fits 10 and 12 bolt GM, and 9" Ford rearends, Clears most standard single and dual exhaust systems, Lower center of gravity compared to other "race only" anti-roll kits, MUCH more effective than stock-type swaybars, Designed to be used on daily driven vehicles AND race cars, Reduces or eliminates tire rubbing around corners, Quiet smooth operation with Polyurethane mounts, Does NOT bind or restrict suspension movement, Launch level and straight, safer and more consistent, Allows much more power to be applied at launch, Designed to last longer and be easily rebuilt, Light weight, high strength 4130 Chromoly seamless tubing, Grade 8 hardware or better throughout, Only the best components available were used, Smooth exterior with gloss black powdercoating. EARLY PROTOTYPE TEST RESULTS 04-06-03: We have made up a couple prototype swaybars from 4130 chromoly steel, and bolted one on a test car this past weekend (04-06-03). The test car is a '87 Buick Grand National (G-body), with a turbo V-6 capable of mid-upper 11's in the 1/4 mile. This is also a daily driven car that looks almost stock. The stock front swaybar is on it & was left on it for testing purposes. The test car also had 12.5 x 28 E.T. Street tires (basically slicks with 3 grooves) on the rear, and filled with race gas and running well. The tires were pumped up over the "normal" race pressure to approx. 27 psi. This greatly reduced the rolling effect generated by the rear tires. The car also had air bags, but to get the full effect of the swaybars, we let all of the air out of the airbags. The goal was to see what differences could be found in body roll, body/frame twist, and general street characteristics. We did several testing methods, with no swaybar, the stock swaybar, and our new HR swaybar with 1/4" wall 1.25" O.D. 4130 chromoly seamless tubing.
Heres my 2 cents` It seems lik to me that your on tha rite track. What kind of mufflers are you runnin had a car once wit flowmasters on changed to the dynomax bullets and it picked up 3tenths if your runnin sum restrictive mufflers you will be killing the motor. Second wit tha weight of that car it should 60 alot harder you might want to think of changing converters all converters are not made tha same and sometimes buick need diff one. I have a trans specialties that i took from behind a BBC car wouldonly 60 a 1.59 sent it back they re-did now ita a 1.45 and of course the car went faster due to that. So try getting a cutom conv. If you can get it to 60 you can prob pick up maybe another 2tenths. Also did you try bumpn up tha timing another 2 degrees may help all cars are diff. Was the cam degreed in when it was put in if not you could be losing sum HP there. :Smarty: Like i said jus my 2 cents to stuff i had wrong wit a couple of cars!!! As far a to much gear i wouldt say that if tha car is going thru at 5700 that pretty good cause you have that tall tire on.
