The Silver Buick's well Silver Buick!

[TheSilverBuick]

Yeah, currently a 5"x5 bolt circle and 1/2" studs. I've got it in the back of my mind of possibly down sizing the bolt pattern so my Firebird and Skylark rims/tires can be swapped. I have some OE 14" rims for the Firebird that I'd like to install, and that would leave it's current lighter weight 15" rims available to use on the Skylark, if the Skylark had a 4.75" bolt circle.

[Scott Liggett]

my M/Ts work better than the old worn out set of BFGs I had.

BFG's tend to age from sitting. Especially in hot dry conditions.

[TheSilverBuick]

Did a few minor things yesterday. I replaced the broken/sun cooked vacuum/boost gauge mounted to the A-pillar with a new one and plumb'd it in to the crankcase to better watch the crankcase vacuum or pressure. I've yet to see pressure on it, but I haven't watched it much near WOT either. Now I will. I tried looking for a crankcase vacuum leak, but wasn't successful in finding one. I did see the driver's side valve cover is still leaking oil at the rear, so I will find some time to pull the valve covers and RTV them on the head side of the gasket too.

Did some WOT tuning from 2,000 to 3,500rpm. It started at going right to 10.5 AFR and now have it at 12.5 AFR and it sounds much happier there too. From there I've extrapolated and pulled a bunch of fuel out from the rest of the table and will run a few more tests today or tomorrow. Just inching my way leaner. I'm leaving the ignition timing at 32º at WOT unless I get some track or dyno time to say otherwise. The folks dyno'ing aluminum headed 455's say on average the engine makes peak power between 32º and 34º, and usually minimal gain in that range.

I plugged the electric cut outs in long enough to open them all the way up so I could clean them. There was a fair amount of exhaust crud built up around the seals so with a bit of gentle scraping with a screw driver and green scotch brite, the seal surface and the butterfly cleaned up nicely. I may re-install them after work today.

[TheSilverBuick]

Yesterday I decided to finally tackle the wobbly steering column issue many GM's get when four mounting bolts in the tilt column come loose, and while I was in there figured I'd change the lock cylinder as well since I could remove the key when it was on. I did this same task on the Centurion about a year ago and going from a wobbly steering wheel to a solid one is pretty nice (duh!).

It took longer than I wanted it to because a few differences in setup from the Centurion's column had me scratching my head some, and I must of re-pulled it apart six times thinking there was a problem with the install of the sector gear before I figured out the column shifter had moved causing the sector gear not to rotate back to locked. Lesson learned.



And my handy dandy pin pulling tool. I had used one like this on the Centurion, but the bolt snapped when I tried to use it this time. So I went to the hardware store and bought some stainless steel hardware and remembered to grease the threads before starting again.

[Scott Liggett]

The key that is removable while the engine running is a nice feature. My old 73 Impala did that. Made it very convenient for delivering pizza as I never had to fumble about for keys with my arms full of pizzas. The tabs on the ignition switch made it easy to start and as long as I didn't turn it all the way back to lock when I shut it off, I never needed to start it. I drove it like that for years. I could also get into the trunk without having to shut the car off and pulling keys from ignition.

[1badmonkey]

there is a simpler way to tighten that up..., but your taking it all the way apart is more correct. I miss that little side biz I had tightening up columns... most of the cars those are in are rusted away here in iowa.

[TheSilverBuick]

Took the car out for a nice trip to the Lehman caves, about 65 miles from here. No hiccups and smooth sailing.

About 40 miles each way lacked cellphone service so it's a good thing it didn't have any issues

Oh yeah, and the new seals for the exhaust cuts showed up today!

[langleylad]

I see you hit rush hour traffic !

[TheSilverBuick]

Ha!

I forgot the picture at the destination

[TheSilverBuick]

Got some things done today. Spent part of the morning going over the firewall looking for places hot air has been getting through in an effort to cool down the inside of the car some. Used some duct tape liberally around some OE seals that are falling apart as well as duct taped down the shifter boot. I really should just screw it down.... but for now duct tape will keep the hot air from flowing in. A few places where I've got wires going through the firewall I gave a small squirt of Right Stuff to fill in the gaps between the wires. Even with the bit of reflective bubble insulation on the floors it still gets pretty warm though. I really need some carpet.

The new seals for the exhaust cutouts came in the mail a week ago. Out with the old and in with the new. I did not expect them to be cut to fit, but I managed and so far they are sealing up


Got the drag radials mounted up on some Buick rims, ready for Drag Week.


I replaced some o-rings and vacuumed down the A/C system today and put about 50psi of freon in the system and ran it a bit then let it sit for an hour and it was still holding so I finished charging the system. As tested it only got down to about 50ºF out the vent, but I had minimal air flow sitting in the barn, and the engine temp was holding steady at 199ºF. I'm leaving a thermometer in the vent for a while to see if it does better going down the road.


With the system running the low side was charged up to 28 psi and the high side up to 224 psi.


With the engine off the system equalized to just over 85psi, which should be fine. I'm not entirely sure how my elevation plays into the readings, as everything I read only brings up elevation when pulling the vacuum. The temperature was about right. Was maybe 85ºF out today, and in the barn was a bit cooler.

[TheSilverBuick]

What a difference a year makes

[TheSilverBuick]

Got some more small things done. Finally installed the seat covers I got a while ago. The seats are pretty beat, and the cloth material was getting tougher to clean. I wanted to get a light or medium blue cover, but grey was a close as I could find. Overall I'm pretty happy with how it came out. Might still adjust it a bit here or there but not bad.

I forgot to take a true before picture.


With some sun and heat they should smooth out some.


Some minor unseen things are some adjustments I made to the EFI tune. It wasn't starting reliably when I had the A/C turned on, so set the IAC valve to be a bit more open along with turning on the closed loop fueling control that I had disabled when I had to re-tune for the cam change. I didn't have an indicator light up on the dash when I was datalogging to an SD card in the megasquirt, so I corrected that situation so I know for sure it's logging. Then I made some minor changes to the daily driving dash cluster and some significant changes to the "race" cluster.

I moved the MPH readout to the left side and put the MPG read out in with the tach and AFR gauge. Moved the ignition timing readout to an easier spot to read and the blank area above it actually has hidden indicators, one of which is the datalogging indicator.


The camera kind of white-washes the white faced "race" cluster. I made changes to the colors things change when needed. I "had" a lot of reds pop up for things, but now I've narrowed red warnings to 6,000rpm or greater, engine sync failure, and injector duty cycle over 90%. Everything else essentially lights up green early on and if some thing is off, it'll dim out, but those things are non-critical things. Fortunately, if I find something "annoying" or need to make an adjustment, it's fairly simple and quick.



While poking around with the settings, I think I may hook the 2-step wire back up to the clutch pedal and try some 2-step and flat shift features in mega squirt again. I last tried it in 2011, but I just didn't have a great handle on the settings and would just light up the tires when I dumped the clutch. I don't plan on just dumping the clutch this year, but would probably allow for a more consistent launch from the rpm and throttle position side. Though with the digital cluster I'll be able to hit the exact same throttle position more reliably without the 2-step assistance. I also want to setup an external shift light as well just in case there is a hiccup with the screen mid-run I won't necessarily need to shift by sound or abort the run.

[TheSilverBuick]

Ran into a slight hiccup yesterday morning heading to work when I figured I'd drop a gear and run up some rpm when it suddenly the engine cut out like a rev limiter does and then came back on around 4,200rpm. All the gauges checked out as normal when I looked down at them, including oil pressure, so it had me scratching my head thinking "what rev limiting feature did I accidentally turn on?" but I did not have my lap top with me to really check out the settings until I'd get home from work. So on the way home from work I figured I'd try and repeat the problem, but this time I turned the SD card datalogging on and tried it in a lower gear so I wouldn't need to run up the mph and sure enough, just over 4,500rpm the tach dropped to almost zero and came back online around 4,000rpm. Successfully repeated and recorded.

Get home and review the log, shows right at 4,700rpm the megasquirt lost track of the crankshaft position (loss sync error: tooth count) so it killed spark and fuel, designated rpm at 200 until it figured out where the crankshaft was in its rotation, then at 4,200rpm, and resumed normal engine operation. So it wasn't a rev limiter setting... Went and checked under the hood and looked at the crank trigger, and sure enough, I had it adjusted almost a 1/4" from the trigger wheel, when it should be closer to a 1/16th of an inch!! Tightened up the clearance and this morning checked it two more times at highway speed and ran through the first three gears to just short of 6,000rpm nice and cleanly, so back to business as usual

**The reason the sensor was so far out is I've been chasing a small oil leak at the front of the engine, and as part of the checking I thought perhaps the source could be the timing cover seal, which may also solve why I'm unable to pull high crank case vacuum if it was damaged. So I pulled the balancer/crank pulley off to check it, which required removing the crank sensor. Sadly the area between the seal and where I'm seeing oil was quite clean and dry, so it wasn't the seal, and I recall re-installing the sensor and a tooth not being lined up with it so just set it conservatively wide, but didn't think I was as far off as I was. And sadly, my oil leak is either oil pan, oil pan bolt or most likely the oil pump itself =/

[BKBridges]

Had a similar thing happen. My car would die during a hard acceleration. I could cruise , but not get on it. It felt like a rev limiting thing as well, but it turned out to be the crank trigger connector that had fallen behind my AC compressor. Every time I got on it hard, the weight of the compressor would crush the connector a bit more until it shorted to the block. It was a PIA to fix on the side of the road as the connector had really wedged itself in behind the compressor. I added some additional mounts to the compressor to keep it from moving around as well once I got home...

[Scott Liggett]

Where did you find seat covers for a split bench seat? I have nevet been able to find any?