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BangShift Project Files: TheSilverBuick’s Pontiac OHC Six – Can You Say “Turbocharger”?


BangShift Project Files: TheSilverBuick’s Pontiac OHC Six – Can You Say “Turbocharger”?

One of our more prolific residents of the BangShift Forums is Randall Burns, better known as TheSilverBuick. How to best describe Randal…hmm. Well, he’s got a level of genius that my brain can’t touch, but at the same time this is a guy who woke me up before dawn on a winter morning as I couch-surfed at his place so that we could go watch a hillside get blown into a pile of rubble. He’s got his toys…among the fleet is a Ford Thunderbird and a Buick Centurion drop-top, but his two front-and-center projects are the car that is the source of his handle, a 455/six-speed X-body Skylark and a 1969 Pontiac Firebird that is powered by one of the more unique engine builds in the Project Forums: a Pontiac overhead cam inline six cylinder engine. Why that combination? During his college days, he had a 1969 Firebird that got totaled out by a red-light runner back in 2002. That car was powered by a 400ci Pontiac mill…but with three other big-block cars in the yard, he wanted to do something a little bit different and that came about in 2010 in the form of the 250ci six. It was a given that EFI was going to make it onto the OHC six…Randal’s a big fan of MegaSquirt EFI…and a turbocharger was a possibility as well.

Well, we are happy to report that progress on this build has taken a turn for the busier. Randal is also a Drag Week veteran and is in for the race again this year. And that’s given him a shot in the arm to get the six finished up and bolted back into the Firebird so that testing can commence in full before the time comes to make the trip out to Atlanta for the start of the fun. In the meantime there is work to do…heads being ported, EFI being fine-tuned, a cooling issue to take care of and so on and so forth. If you’re into engineering, give this project a look-over. You won’t be disappointed.

BangShift Project Files: TheSilverBuick’s OHC Six Firebird project


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2 thoughts on “BangShift Project Files: TheSilverBuick’s Pontiac OHC Six – Can You Say “Turbocharger”?

  1. chevy hatin' mad geordie

    This is what original thought entails – no LS and a clever use of a neglected and forgotten motor. If only the poor driver in Duel had this in his car that truck would never have caught up with him!

  2. 75Duster

    I like the idea of TheSilverBuick putting together this turbo Pontiac Sprint six together, as I always thought these Pontiac engines were cool.
    My former XO on the USS Nimitz had a restored ’68 Firebird convertible with a Sprint six in it, he was a down to earth Navy officer and as a senior enlisted, we often would talk cars.

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