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Project Buford T Justice Hits the Strip with Some Pretty Shocking Results!

May 01, 2012Buford - 9C1 Caprice, Project Cars29

Project Buford T Justice Hits the Strip with Some Pretty Shocking Results!


(Photos by Dave Nutting/Words by Brian Lohnes) – When we asked BangShift nation to guess the ET that our 1987 Caprice 9C1 called Buford T Justice would run in the quarter mile, the guesses were all over the board. From guys who thought the thing would blow up before the finish line to those who thought it would run into the low 15-second range, everyone had an opinion. Us? We thought that the guys who suggested that the car would blow up were jerks and those that thought it would go 15s were sniffing glue. Well, as you will read below, the joke was on us and we’re sure glad that we didn’t run our gums at anyone for making their best guess at the performance of the car.

To review, Buford T Justice is a 1987 Caprice 9C1 ex-cop car. It has a stock 350ci engine and 700R4 transmission that have been flogged for 186,000 miles. The car has a 3.08 geared 8.5-inch 10-bolt rear end with a fully functioning posi-traction unit. The interior consists of a cop car split bench seat and rubber floor mat. Shipping weight on “normal” caprices of the day was 3670lbs. With the rubber floor mat and complete lack of options otherwise, we’re guessing that our car comes in at 3600lbs or perhaps a touch under.

Photographer Dave Nutting and I drove the car to the strip with our tools and some emergency supplies in the trunk, in case we needed them. It is about an 80 mile ride from BS eastern world HQ to the drag strip and the car did a fine job getting us there. The fact that we replaced an upper ball joint that was literally about to fall apart the night before made the driving experience that much better because the car actually turned in the direction that the steering wheel was pointed.

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At the track –

We ran Buford at on open test-n-tune day at New England Dragway. There was a wide variety of machinery there ranging from dragsters to hot street cars, to small tire dedicated drag cars. There were scant few old Caprices, though. We paid our entry fee and went to a spot in the pits to unload the hundreds of pounds of stuff we had lugged with us in the copious trunk of the Caprice. A tip we would give people is to pit where others are pitting and you have a lot less of a chance getting your stuff jacked around with. Safety in numbers!

Having worked as a tech inspector for years at New England Dragway, I knew what the guys would be looking for in a barge of a car like Buford and it was the bare bones basics. The night before I came to the track I made sure the car had all the lug nuts, that the battery was properly secured and that the seatbelts functioned. The guys at NED are sticklers for neutral safety switches working so I tested and verified that it did in the driveway after the ball joint was replaced.

I had also gone to the junkyard the day before and bought a pair of tires for $40 to replace the fronts on the car as well as a battery tray from a Caprice because the one in Buford had evaporated.

After getting some cross-eyed looks and seeing more than a couple people openly laughing at the car, we had our numbers on the window and the green light from tech to hit the strip, so we did.

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On the strip

Racing an old, slow car is damned fun. It is fun because you can do a bunch of small, free stuff to try and get it to go quicker and quicker. This was the case with Buford. Knowing that the rear tires would be one of the most major obstacles or shortcomings of the car, the first couple of laps were really used to figure out how to launch it without lighting them up to eternity. The rear meats are old Pep Boys specials that are about as grippy as the tires on your kid’s Power Wheels toy. I did not to a single burnout all day because I figured that they would turn to grease as soon as they got hot.

On the first run, we staged the car, stood on the brakes and brought the motor up on the converter pretty hard. This netted us instant wheel spin and  not much more. Pedaling the car to get it to hook up and then standing on the gas from about 100′ on netted us a 18.000/81.99 run. Believe it or not, we weren’t ashamed by those numbers, especially the MPH side of the time slip. If the car would run over 80mph (which we didn’t think it would at all) it would ET a lot better than the 18/17 second predictors thought.

On the next run, we brought the revs up just enough that we could feel the converter getting ready to stall and then walked the car out of the hole before really mashing the gas. This more conservative technique dropped the 60′ time more than half a second and the scoreboard flashed up a 16.66 elapsed time at 83.22 MPH. Now we were cooking with gas and we hadn’t even touched the car yet!

Still with the car exactly as we drove in with it, I circled around for another lap, the third within about a 20 minute span, we were hot lapping! Since the engine was not pinging and the oil pressure stayed great all the way down the track, we weren’t worried about the thing hurting itself. Also, there is no tach in the car, so instead of trying to manually shift it on the column, we were just jamming it in OD and letting the 700R4 shift at WOT on the way down the track.

On this lap, I dropped the launch RPM some (by ear) and stood on the gas earlier than I had before. It was pedal to the metal by 60′ and the results of this technique netted us a 16.38/83.39MPH run. Nutting and I were grinning like total idiots because if this thing could go 16.38 without us laying a hand on it, we would figure a way to get it into the 15-second zone before we left the track. We were officially on a misson!

Our following lap was much the same as the one before. I used the same technique and got the car out of the hole with minimal tire spin. We ran a 16.47 at 82.68MPH, basically backing up the previous pass and verifying our thoughts that we had reached the edge of the performance envelope with respect to running the car with zero alterations of tweaks. At this point we felt like we were playing with house money because the car was already way quicker than we thought it would be and we were not the slowest junk at the facility. There were some late model pickup trucks and SUVs slower than us. HAPPY DAY!

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Back to the lab –

After hot lapping the car all morning, we decided to let it cool down and consider our next move. Because we wanted to do things in steps, we didn’t just go willy nilly around the car changing stuff. Remember, our best lap at this point was a 16.36 with the car in “untouched” condition. I was interested in testing one of the great high performance modifications of the high school parking lot…the air cleaner lid flip.

The results of this move didn’t show themselves on the first pass, at least in a favorable way. The car was much more responsive and instead of hooking up while using my previous launch technique, it went into immediate tire spin and we ran an 18.40/82-mph lap. Remember, we were not doing a burnout or anything on the starting line because the tires are total junk. I was doing a dry hop or two to “feel” how the car was  working.

Heading immediately back into the staging lanes, we waited for our turn and then pulled a couple of dry hops to see how much we could get away with before spinning the tires on the starting line. I dropped the launch RPM a couple hundred (by ear as we have no tach yet) and the thing stuck like glue to the track. I knew immediately that this would be the best run yet and I let out a good WHOOP! in the car as the 16.118/84mph time flashed up on the scoreboard! Our lid flip was worth one MPH and more than 2-tenths of a second! But, that was one run. Would it repeat?

Hell yes it repeated. The car went down the quarter mile in 16.17 seconds at 84.05 MPH, backing up our earlier pass and verifying (in our eyes only) that the lid flip is actually worth something. It ain’t worth much, but it is worth something and with the lid flipped over the famous Quadrajet moan/scream/dying cow noise is way louder and racy sounding.

Knowing that the afternoon was going to be busier and that we would not be able to hot lap the car as we did in the morning, we went back to the pits and decided on our next move. Originally we were going to throw some timing at it, but we went a different direction and removed the front sway bar from the car. Yes, you can get away with simply disconnecting the end links but in our case, the bar was flopping down and had the potential to interfere with the outer tie rod ends. We didn’t want to take any chances, so we winged the bar right off. Nutting was serving as lead crew man as you will see below.

At this point, I was texting Chad on our results at the track and he was having a good laugh over it. When we ran the 16.36 and I told him that we were going to get the big white Caprice into the 15s he didn’t think we had a shot. Making up that much time, even at our slow ET level is a pretty tall order with nothing but basic tuning tricks. Undaunted, we moved on.

With the front sway bar removed, I could tell, even a slow speeds that the car drove differently. During my dry hops on the starting line the car had way more “English” to it in the form of a little twist when the tires planted. Not much, but enough for me to feel. I decided to use my same low RPM launch technique on this pass and the car literally dead hooked and even bogged a little. We were stoked to see a 16.09/83.87MPH number flash up on the boards! It was at this point that I knew we would go into the 15s because I had launched the car so easily that it was definitely capable of running more than a tenth quicker just through the first sixty feet alone.

On the next pass, we got far more aggressive on the launch RPM and really got after it on the starting line. The car ahead of me had been wearing massive slicks and did a huge burnout so we had a great launching surface. The car went to sixty feet a tenth quicker than the previous lap and that carried all the way through.  The clocks stopped at 15.992/83.65 MPH! It had actually run in the 15s!  But we weren’t done yet.

We made one more lap with the car setup as it was for the 15.992 second blast which was sway bar removed, air cleaner lid flipped, untouched everything else. I got greedy on the starting line and had some tire spin so we fell back to a 16.07 elapsed time with a MPH of 84.24. Being that time was running short and we had to get out of Dodge, our plan was to make one last ditch effort to get deeper into the 15 second zone.

We knocked 5psi out of both rear tires, chopped the belt off of the smog pump, and contemplated throwing some timing at the engine. We didn’t have time to accurately screw with the timing so we left it with just the air pressure drop and the removal of the belt from the smog pump. Again, neanderthal man basic things.

As we were next to run, the car ahead of us which was an Acura Integra that was burning more oil than a container ship exploded in the lights and we had to wait for the cleanup. We talked strategy with New England Dragway starter John.

After the blowed up Acura was removed from the course, it was Buford’s time to shine and with our corrected air pressure and lack of a front swap bar, we were hoping that it would hook and go. Well, it did! We ran the best 60′ of the day and could tell right off the bat that that car was on the best pass we had run by a bunch. We were totally ecstatic when the score board showed 15.867/85.40 mph! We had gone decently deep into the 15s and cracked 85mph in the quarter mile! Who saw that coming? NOT US! Both Nutting and I were the happiest 15-second car guys in the place.

Here’s the time slip from the last run:

R/T — .052

60′  —  2.382

330′ –  6.604

1/8  –  10.146

MPH – 69.27

1000 – 13.235

1/4  —  15.867

MPH – 85.40

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So that was that! We put the bar back on the car, loaded all of our crap into the trunk and drove home, happy as a couple of clams. A few things helped us at NED. The first was a Density Altitude of about 1,000 ft BELOW sea level. It was some insane cool, dry air that certainly helped our tired old motor make a few more ponies than we expected. The other thing was the great track surface at NED. Yes, it seems weird to talk about tire spin on an under powered junk pile like Buford currently is, but with a suspension that is all wrong, tires that are only good at being black and round, and a converter that seems to stall at about 15oo RPM, a sticky track helps a lot!

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So what do we do next?

That is an interesting question. Chad wants me to plumb a nitrous nozzle into the top of the air cleaner lid and see what we can do with some spray. I want to borrow a pair of DOT slicks for the day and see just how hard the car would run if it was able to launch and stick while really up on the converter. In my crazy mind, I think the car would pick up at least 3-4 tenths with sticky tires on it and an aggressive launch. Also, pulling one of the steel plate equipped front seats, removing the AC system and other assorted crap would help, too. Granted, this thing is getting a big block and a nice suspension system that we’ll be telling you about soon, but there is still some HUGE fun in flogging it in stock form just to see how far we can push it before it starts pushing back!

Congrats George Lavoie! Your guess was the earliest one that comes the closest to our ET/MPH! Please email me to [email protected] with your information for shipping and shirt size!

Chad! Dude, this thing just ran 15.86. YES, SERIOUSLY!


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Caption this Photo: Ummmmmm.....What's Going on Here Gentlemen?

29 thoughts on “Project Buford T Justice Hits the Strip with Some Pretty Shocking Results!”

  1. Davey

    That air cleaner lid swap is so old I had completely forgotten about it. Now that I recall I’m sure that was the 1st thing I did on my first 3 cars.

    I love these road trip / thrash stories. They’re real, raunchy and back to basics. I’m so tired of talking to younger racers these days. They all feel that they need a 9 second turbo car to be accepted. I’m thinking that we have all forgotten that at one time a 15 second car was considered fast.

    Thanks guys

  2. Beagle

    BUAHAHAHHAHAHAA… my revised guess was not too far off. My first one was close to your first time though. Hehe.

    Nitrous!

  4. Grippo

    YES! I say toss on Drag Radials, a good air filter and get your BoSox luv’in ass back to NED…..

  5. nxpress62

    Get it weighed. Small block chevelles weigh 3600 lbs, surely your Caprice can’t be that light?

    1. ratty

      my last car, a hot rodded first year, ’77 Caprice 4-dr, weighed 3714 lbs. (weighed at my local garbage dump scale), with stock interior, no AC, GM crate HO 350 and a TCI Streetfighter TH350, and Hotchkis boxed trailing arms… Pretty close to stock weight i would guess. Yeah, i would doubt the ’87 was almost a 100 lbs. lighter, but it’s pretty close… Those years B-Body’s were pretty ‘light’ by full-size sedan standards… and though we’re talking drag racing here, mine was setup for the twisties, and it would hold its own with pretty much anything, lateral grip was amazing… even with 4 doors

      1. Doc

        Nothing wrong with having fun with 4-doors in the twisties……my F-85 crew cab handles better than any family car should.

        I am going out to flip my lid right now….lol.

        Keep up the good work on the 9C1!!!

    2. Mater

      my 97 police spec grand marquis weighs about that. cop cars dod not have alot of the interior sound deadner the civies have

  6. crazyhorse

    before you do anything else to it, change the oil and add a can of “restore” ™
    and see if it helps, in the real world..

    1. Birdman

      Good suggestion on the Restore. I’ve used it nearly all of my vehicles having more than 120,000 miles with great results. You’ll be amazed at the increase in performance and drop in fuel consumption. Party on Wayne!

  8. Gene Gerry

    Brian,
    I have a pair of Mickey Thompson 275X60R15 mounted on slotted steel wheels. They have tubes in them. I think the backspacing is 5.25. They’re old but they hold air and could help Buford out of the hole.

    Gene Gerry

  9. jason lewis

    Great adventure, really cool to read a back to the basics style challenge that we ALL can relate to!

  10. Swede

    Ice Pick the Hell out of the mufflers and put Cadillac air in the tires – should be good for 2 tenths. Oh, wait; it’s not 1957 is it? Forget it, just spray it.

    Love the write-up, thanks for all your “work”.

    Hardy Handshakes, Swede

    .

  12. C1BAD66

    Thanks for the play-by-play report.

    Before you swap in the BBC, get in touch with Mr. Dirt for any tips and go some rounds in competition! Maybe you could accept Gene’s offer of tires to better handle launches.

    Do they have powder puff racing at NED? Have your wife drive Buford. Drop it in OD, leave off idle; what could go wrong? ‘Bottom line in bracket racing is all in the correct application of shoe polish. Whatta family outing!

  14. BackwoodsBrilliant

    Don’t know ’bout all the additives, but I would try full synthetic on an oil change. Heard too many Pros have good things to say on the subject. But yeah, traction would definitely be my first area of concern. Seen guys build stout engines, only to run out of cash before they got to the chassis set-up. We all know what happened next, right?

  15. nxpress62

    find shorter tires, 25″ or 26″ mickeys will help those 3.08 gears out a bit

  16. ls7gto

    I offered you the 275/60 drag radials that were under the deck, still here if you want them . I may have another set of police spec wheels too.

  17. Wheels

    Very cool !!!
    So who won the merchandise?!?!?!

    I was almost dead nuts….until you guys had to go and mess with it. LOLOL

  18. 87mike

    I’m surprised along with the A?C lid flip you didn’t try adding 10 lbs. of air to the fronts.
    That’s usually good for .05 hundy.
    I see lots of potential for improvements with this car.
    Brings back the fun in racing!!!

  19. CdmBill

    Great job guys and a classic revist to the good old days. short drag radials are the beter choice for sticky tires, start at 25 lbs. of air. Don’t laugh I have mine at 20. Then old fashioned wieght reduction, not Caddy Hack just seats, and other extraneous weight.

  20. Speedy

    I say add weight . . . in the form of an eBay turbo . . . .

    BTW, I can’t think the actual air density under the hood was sea level – 1000 ft, considering that it was heated up by the radiator and radiant engine heat.

  21. nxpress62

    I’m picturing the poor man’s version of Amir’s CTS-V Wagon… keep taking out weight and see how fast it’ll go.

  22. huskinhano

    I think a deck lid wing, a fart can and some decals will solidly get you into the 12’s.

    Great article, Freiburger would be proud!

  23. Boots

    Since this whole rig is destined for a big block swap, and the small block is expendable I see no harm in tempting spontaneous disassembly and pour the NOS to it and flog it till something turns inside out.

    And hell, you’re within 100 miles. Slap your AAA sticker on it, and if everything goes sideways you can still get a free ride home!

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