Buford T Justice -- the full tour

[silver_bullet]

sweet.... That looks baddass!!

[Caveman Tony]

Brian, a buddy of mine in AZ made a driveshaft out of some cut off yolks and some schedule 80 pipe.

It was a mother, but he said it balanced up realllll nice.


I'd be real picky about any junkyard steel shafts in New England, unless they're fairly newer.

Rust will f things up good. Weakens it, and also will throw balance off if the pitting is bad enough.

[andy30thz]

AWESOME!! Although....with the temps being what they are...I'm surprised you got that much smoke!!!
You're really getting this thing straight! Must feel great when all the work you've done has a direct impact on drive feel!
Just please never make it too nice....this machine was made to be USED!!

Can't wait for the up coming dyno tests!! The mods you've done are about as budget style as you can get!

If you think of it, I always get busy and forget, grab a compression reading from one hole before and after the cam swap. I'm really curious what kind of cylinder pressure changes you'll see. Or maybe Comp minimized the loss by closing the intake valve sooner?
Vacuum readings before and after would be interesting as well!

[Dan Barlow]

with the last burnout the black marks on the road make it look like you were in reverse!

[Leadsledcaprice]

Kick ass pictures!

[Brian Lohnes]

One of the pulls I made today at Travis's shop. That's Ben at the helm on the rollers. I was behind a blast shield.

Today we made a few pulls and I wanted to see how much power we could get out of it with jetting and timing changes before the cam swap, which I am doing there on Wed. I'm saving the numbers for the story, but safe it to say, you can bolt on all the good parts you want but sooner or later you are going to hit a wall where the dinky stock cam just isn't going to give you any more. That was today. Hey, at least it sounds good through the Purple Hornies! Can't wait to get the thing some "lump" on Wed and also to see just how much power the cam is going to make, (Chad, Travis, and I are all thinking it is going to be a decent jump when looking at today's graphs).

This pull was to 5K and you can hear the rev limiter at work. It was making all it was going to make by 4200. Interestingly it held flat after that and didn't fall off like before (new valve springs?) but the peak gains were very minimal as to what I thought they would be.

[TheSilverBuick]

Excellent! I look forward to the review and how smoothly the cam swap goes.

[Ron Ward]

Sounds like it's time to install one of those "six foot lift / 8 days duration 3/4 race cams"




Ron

[andy30thz]

Sounds GREAT!! It seems like it pulls pretty hard?
Interesting you didn't see too much change from the head/header work.... I guess the additional flow isn't necessary if the cam won't let it get in there on the front end.
Do you know what the stock cam specs should be? I guess all bets are off since its a rebuild.

Also, I'm curious how you're dynoing this thing. How do you "lock" it in third gear and keep it from doing a passing gear kick down to second?

Wednesday is gonna be a fun day!! At this point if you haven't already started, its gonna take you three days just to write up the story!!

[Brian Lohnes]

Andy, the TCI trans will stay in whatever gear you tell it to, or you can put 'er in D or OD and let it shift. We just put it in third, let it shift into the gear, bring the revs up to about 2,000 and let'er EAT!

[Leadsledcaprice]

Brian, at the time I put my car together, I was working at a truck parts remanufacturing company. They had a driveshaft shop, and I had them whip me up a drive shaft. It was balanced, but after about 4 months of beating the ever living wee out of it from pure enjoyment, I heard the weight fly off and hit the bottom of the car. I haven't had any problems (yet). Was about $150 if I remember correctly. I'd go that route. It will hold up. Haven't had a problem yet.

[BOOOGHAR]

sounds like a pure stock at the local dirt track, NICE !

[silver_bullet]

i'm likin' it!!

[RaysnCayne]

I know you're not going for a show boat. And I'm totally down with that. But BTJ would look 10x better if you hit the 'yard and got a front filler panel.

[milner351]

Sweet mother of acceleration - don't fail us now!

I'm looking forward to the whole enchilada on the write up - who's taking bets on the cam increase in HP/TQ?

I'll be conservative and say an absolute minimum of 20/20