• Introducing Project Buford T Justice – Our 1987 9C1 Chevy Caprice – The Adventure Begins!
• Project Buford T Justice: Our Cop Car Cruises Home and Then We Beat on It!
• Driveway Tech: Bodywork on Buford T Justice – We Close Our Roof Hole For Fun and (NO) Profit!
• Project Buford T Justice Hits the Strip with Some Pretty Shocking Results!
• Project Buford T Justice Hits the Dyno and Goes KABLOOEY! CARNAGE VIDEO INSIDE!
• Project Buford T Justice Will Be Saved For About A 100 Bucks With a 15 Year Old Transmission
• Project Buford T Justice Update: The Trans Thrash is ON!
• Buford T Justice Update: It Lives Again Thanks to a Down and Dirty Driveway Thrash and Junkyard Parts
• Buford T Justice, Our 1987 9C1 Chevy Caprice Goes Through Final Testing Before the Upgrades Begin!
• Buford T Justice 9C1 Update: The Parts From Hotchkis, Cragar, AFCO, and Mickey Thompson
• Update: Hotchkis Suspension & AFCO Bushings Transform Our 9C1 Caprice
• Buford Update: Our 9C1 Caprice Gets Real With Mickey Thompson Tires and Cragar Wheels
• Driveway Tech: How To Swap A Jeep Steering Shaft Into Your GM B-Body or G-Body Car With A Trashed Rag Joint
• Buford Update: We Flog The Suspension, Unveil a Mountain of Speed Parts, Spill Our Wild Drag Strip Plan
• Project Buford T Justice Update: Drag Strip Thrash Squashed By Ma Nature – We Learn Stuff – Plan B!
• Project Buford T Justice Quick Update: Where The Hell Has Our 9C1 Caprice Been?!
• Project Buford T Justice: We Go On Hot Pursuit Of Horsepower-Our 9C1 Caprice’s 350 Gets A Slap!
• Buford T Justice 9C1 Caprice Update: Metal Fab,Head Work, A Good Surprise, An Awful One
• Buford T Justice Update: Headers, Cheap LS Technology, New Valvetrain Parts, More Compression, Fun!
• Buford T Justice Update: A TCI 700R4 And Breakaway Torque Converter Get Our 9C1 Caprice Shifty!
• Buford T Justice Update: A Very Frustrating Day On The Dyno And How We’re Planning To Fix It
• Project Buford T Justice Update: Where Has Our 9C1 Caprice Been Hiding?
• Buford T Justice Update: We Install A First Gen Chevelle Flowmaster Kit On Our 9C1 Caprice!
• Project Buford T Justice: Our Caprice 9C1 Gets The Shaft! A Dynotech Drive Shaft That Is!
• Project Buford T Justice Our 1987 9C1 Caprice Hits The SCCA Autocross – Photos And Video!
• Project Buford T Justice Update: We Finally Give Our 1987 9C1 Caprice A Cheapo Nose Job!
• Project Buford T Justice Update: We Hit The Strip Again With More Power! (W/Video)
• Buford T Justice Update: We Bolt On Power From Trick Flow And Snappy Looks From Trans Dapt!
• Project Buford T Justice Update: Where The Heck It’s Been And Where The Hell It is Going –
• Place Your Bets For A BangShift Shirt! Buford T Justice Is Hitting The Dyno With This Engine One Last Time – Guess The Power And Win
• Project Buford T Justice: The Long Arm Of The Law Gets Longer With A Stroker Build – 388ci Of Budget Fun

We had the parts, the car, the tools, and the rough plan. Mother Nature had the upper hand. A couple of Sundays back we left well before daylight broke with Buford T Justice on the trailer, heading for New England Dragway in Epping, NH for our parts install drag strip flog-a-palooza. We got the strip, laid down a couple of laps to establish a baseline and then began to modify the car. Halfway through that first round of modifications, the skies opened up. Luckily we were working under the car anyway, so we finished what we were doing just in time for track officials to cancel the day, end their season, and send us packing. The bleeding edge of Hurricane Sandy had screwed our plan and would later wreak havoc on the NY and NJ areas, both of which are still digging and pumping out. Thankfully, we had a contingency plan in the event that our day at the strip got squashed. There will still be a thrash, still the chance for big carnage, and still a 100% chance of fun. Read on to find out what we learned during our shortened day at the strip and what our new plan is to wake Buford’s tired old small block up from its slumber!

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Less gears is less good with a tired engine –

This isn’t exactly ground breaking stuff, but we found out that the car slowed way down with the loss of the 700R4 and addition of the TH350 that currently lives in the transmission tunnel. Going a little bit beyond that, let’s look at the time slips from our best run ever with the 700R4 next to our best run with the TH350. Obviously several factors combine to get a car to run a certain number on the strip and the addition of the improved suspension, higher stall torque converter, and wider, stickier rear tries all had some factor in the numbers you’ll see on the TH350 pass below. That being said, let’s look at the slips!

700R4                                                                        TH350

60′ –                    2.382                                               2.254

330′ –                 6.604                                               6.601

1/8-mile –        10.146                                             10.288

MPH –                69.27                                                65.65

1000′ –              13.235                                             13.563

1/4- mile –        15.867                                            16.358

MPH –                 85.40                                                80.59

As you can see, the car was significantly quicker to 60′ and as we mentioned above, adding the stickier tires, better working suspension, and higher stall converter, that makes some sense. A TH350 has a 2.52 first gear where the 700R4 has a steeper 3.06. That taller first gear may have taken some of the tire spin propensity that the car had with the 700R4 away. Things quickly went south as you can see. The slightly taller second gear in the TH350 slowed the car and by 330′ we had given virtually all of our tenth and change from 60′ back. By the eighth-mile the car was in third gear and basically on its face.

With the 700R4, Buford would shift into OD at about 1,000ft and the car would pull through the traps. Without that OD gear, the thing was out of breath and power by 1,000ft and it wasn’t hardly pulling at all. The 5mph drop off is indicative of that as well as the half second growth of the ET. Again, we weren’t surprised by the fact that the car slowed down and it was kind of an interesting comparison to run the same car with the same engine and rear with the two transmissions to see exactly what the performance loss/gain would be.

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Our hack skills confirmed –

That’s hack-saw you jerks! Basically, after establishing the baseline of what the car was capable of with the current setup we put our plan into action by attacking the used and abused exhaust system with a hack saw. Because installing headers is part of the program, it was going to have to go at some point anyway, and we thought it would be an interesting way to start. We planned on running the car with the exhaust off, stock air cleaner in place, but we never got that far. As you can see by the moisture on the ground in these photos, we were dead in the water.

 

 

 

 

 

In this photo you can see the MSD 6AL-2 peeking out from under the hood. In an effort to get the most done at the track as humanly possible, we installed and partially wired the box so it was basically in “plug and play” mode when we were ready to do the ignition install. That would have allowed us to stab in the distributor, plug it into the box and attach the leads from the box to the coil and then hit the strip. It was such a great plan! FU Sandy!

 

 

 

 

 

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So what do we do now?

Simple! We’re going back to the scene of the crime where we originally blew this thing up in the first place, Performance Auto and Dyno in Plymouth, Massachusetts. Shop owner Travis Johnson has given us the green light to come and annoy him for a day and use his dyno to test our parts. We’re going to follow the same order we were at the drags and do the installs in a systematic way that will show what the gains are at each step. In theory, we should be better able to dial in the tuning on the dyno. We say “in theory” because the car exploded the last time it was on the dyno, that may happen again, but Travis said that he has gassed up the ramp truck if we need a ride home.

Stay tuned…this is going to be interesting!

HERE’S A CONTEST – WE’RE STARTING WITH 174HP AT THE REAR WHEELS ACCORDING TO OUR LAST PULLS ON TRAVIS’S DYNO, SO WE WANT YOUR BEST GUESS AS TO WHAT WE’LL HAVE AFTER ALL IS SAID AND DONE WITH THE NEW CARB, CAM KIT, HEADERS, INTAKE, AIR CLEANER, AND IGNTION! CLOSEST GUESS TO OUR FINAL POWER NUMBER GETS A T-SHIRT —- TIE BREAKER WILL BE TORQUE – WE’RE STARTING WITH 252LB/FT.