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Project Buford T Justice Quick Update: Where The Hell Has Our 9C1 Caprice Been?!

Dec 10, 2012Buford - 9C1 Caprice8

Project Buford T Justice Quick Update: Where The Hell Has Our 9C1 Caprice Been?!

We know that you’ve been wondering what the hell happened to Buford T Justice since our last proclamation about heading to the dyno to pile parts onto the old ol’ 350 under the hood and crank things up in the steam department. We know that you’ve been thinking we slipped on a banana peel, blew the car up, sold it for scrap, and bought a Honda. You’d be mostly wrong on all of that. Technically nothing “blew up” on the dyno, we haven’t hit the scrap yard in a while, and we’d rather walk than drive a Honda. Fact is, we’ve had some interesting developments, a setback or two, and we wanted to get everyone up to speed on exactly what the heck is going on with the car.

Firstly, we did go to the dyno and we did thrash our asses off for the day, making nearly 10 pulls. Our plan was to get the ignition, carb, intake, cam, and headers all done and tested in one long day at Performance Auto and Dyno in Plymouth, Massachusetts. After some drama that included the damned driveshaft coming out again, a million runs to the parts store for little junk, and just our hamfisted wrenching speed, we managed to get the intake, carb, air cleaner, and ignition system pulls made. We drove the thing to and from the dyno about 30 miles each way with open exhaust. No tickets. Whew. Did we make more power? You bet we did! Are we going to spill the beans on that yet? Hell no we’re  not because the story isn’t “done” until we get the headers swapped and the new cam in the car.

Long story short, when we got home from the dyno we found a big leak at the rear of the intake. We pulled it and decided to pull the exhaust manifolds to do the header install in the driveway. Well, since they were both off and we wanted to swap the valve springs and stuff anyway in prep for the cam change, we yanked the heads. Custom Auto Machine in Weymouth, Massachusetts said that they would tank the heads for us because we wanted to clean them up. Those crazy bastards proceeded to port the heads, whack about twelve thousandths off of  the bottom, slap them in the SERDI 60 machine for a valve job and then back cut all the valves for us…yeah, and they popped the springs in too!

With all that good stuff going on we started thinking about how to get more compression out of the engine and decided to measure the depth of the pistons in the hole to see if a .015-thickness steel shim gasket would work. While measuring the piston depth we saw a curious 40 stamped into the top of a piston….and in the rest of the pistons. Hey, this engine was rebuilt and bored 40 over! That starts to explain the better than stock hp numbers and freakish first drag strip performance a little. We also added a little LS technology to the engine when reassembling the top end. We slapped a pair of Chevy Performance parts LS lifter guides in the valley of our roller 350 along with the brand new COMP cams roller lifters because those will allow us to swap the cam without pulling the intake when we hit the dyno again (in the next two weeks!).

Throw in some travel to PRI and a little escape with our better half and bada bing…time has flown! Yeah, we’re teasing the hell out of you with this and we’re going to do a knock down, drag out, make your eyes bleed with photos and info recap of everything that has happened when we finish up on the dyno with the new cam install being the grand finale. We’re awaiting the arrival of a couple more parts in the mail and the rumble will begin again and Buford will regain his perch of chief annoyance in the BS eastern world HQ ‘hood!

Scroll down for teaser photos and captions from our adventures with Buford over the last several weeks! STAY TUNED FOR THE FULL STORY!

This was early in the day. By the end of the exercise, Buford's tongue was hanging all the way out!

When the second pull resulted in another driveshaft on the floor we almost cried...ok we did a little, but they were man tears.

The single biggest jump we saw in peak HP came from the addition of the MSD distributor, coil, and 6AL-2 box. We've got the dyno sheets to prove it in our upcoming stories on the testing.

These are the LS lifter guides that will allow us to swap the cam without pulling the intake. They are trick and can be had for like $30 (for the pair) from your local GM dealer.

Dana Hard and Jon Wall worked all day on our heads, fixing up the bowls and the turn at the bottom of the intake ports. They also did a valve job on 'em, back cut the intake and exhaust valves, and replaced two cracked seats.

All of a sudden our grungy junk wasn't much of either any more!

With our COMP Magnum rockers, pushrods, and new roller tip lifters we're ready and rip roaring to get back to the dyno!

We think you are going to dig the old school hot roddy stuff involving the cylinder heads. Sure, there are lots of cheap aluminum options out there but this type of stuff is way more fun! Dig the freshly ground valve on the right. Yummy!

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8 thoughts on “Project Buford T Justice Quick Update: Where The Hell Has Our 9C1 Caprice Been?!”

  2. TheSilverBuick

    ” After some drama that included the damned driveshaft coming out again ”

    ^^^ This is all I needed to read =D

  3. Andy

    “but they were man tears” hehehehe…thats awesome!
    Can’t wait to see what the rollers spit out and your driving impressions!

  4. Ghost85

    It’s funny as I was looking at Cragar Soft 8’s in 17″ on Google and Buford came up in the image search. Glad it’s been moving along. That’s cool that it was bored .40, wonder what the original owner was doing.

  5. tigeraid

    The single biggest jump we saw in peak HP came from the addition of the MSD distributor, coil, and 6AL-2 box. We’ve got the dyno sheets to prove it in our upcoming stories on the testing…

    I’ll call BBBBBBBBBBBBSSSS. Unless your old distributor was BUSTED. Which it probably was. 😛

  6. dudefromthenorth

    Gonna have to explain it to me real slow how those ls lifter guides are going to keep the lifters out of the way when you pull the camshaft.

  7. Brian Lohnes Post author

    You back the rocker arms off and turn the motor over two revolutions. As the lifters come up out of the bore the guides have enough tension that they are held up, off the cam. They work well as I had to push the loose rockers down as I was setting the lash last week.

  8. Scott Liggett

    Hey Brian, I seem to remember someone showing on a dyno how recurving a stock distributor resulted in nearly 30 hp increase. Hmmmmmmmm…….

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