Buford the Buick

In the magazine biz, I’m a tech head, which in turn, means I write about things of a technical nature. No secret to this crowd, I’m sure. But what some of you don’t know is I live pretty much fifteen miles from nowhere on Vancouver Island. Black bears (a bunch of them) and cougars (the cat variety, not the other) are my close neighbors. In order to write about things and obviously, to make a living, I work on a project car. Bits and pieces of the build become magazine articles. My current project, which is drawing to an end, is a 1986 Buick T-Type. It’s a neat car and although not anywhere near a classic musclecar, I think it might interest a few of you.

What I started with is a really clean, 18,750-mile original paint car. It was a garage queen, living in a couple of collections, surviving (from what I’ve picked up) a divorce or two, and eventually ended up in the hands of a young guy in Florida. I bought it sight unseen (but I did have a good appraiser go through it with a fine tooth comb). From a geographic point of view, it was in the wrong end of the country. None-the-less, I had it shipped to Blaine, Washington where I picked it up and took it home.

Once I jumped through all of the hoops and had it licensed and registered in BC. My wife and I drove the car to a little place called Cowichan Bay, a few miles from our house, shot some photos and drove home. In the process, I melted a few hundred miles off the back tires (once it got on the boost, it actually did a decent burnout). Immediately after that I ran “Buford” into the garage, and began the disassembly process.

Today (and a chunk of magazine articles later), this is what the Buick looks like (less the engine and transmission):





Briefly, the car was stripped to a bare chassis (the body never came off). The undercarriage was scrubbed and detailed. The frame rails were notched at the seam at the rear end. A slightly narrowed, braced 9-inch Ford filled with Mark Williams best pieces brings up the rear with fully adjustable suspension bits from TRZ Motorsports. This a very nice setup that uses stock mounting points for all suspension hardware. All except two of the mounting points are on Aurora aircraft rod ends. I also included a very cool weld-in anti-roll bar from TRZ. The anti roll bar is really the key to making coil sprung GM cars hook without a ton of body roll. Like the other suspension components, it’s completely adjustable, and the tubular mount that welds between the frame rails doubles as a reinforcement for the notched frame. The frame notch and the narrowed Ford allowed me to fit 15X10 Billet Specialties wheels (3-1/2-inch backspace) on the rear, wrapped with P325-50R15 M&H Racemaster D.O.T. drag radials. This rolling stock fits within the OEM wheel wells (tubs). On the nose, the car has an equally adjustable front end, primarily filled with hardware from Auto Fab Race Cars. Shocks are adjustable jobs from Strange Engineering. Up front, the car wears 15X3.5 Billet Specialties wheels along with M&H radial front-runners.



The fuel delivery system is all from the folks at MagnaFuel – the pump is a flow-through model, with large pre and after filters. I reworked a new Turbo Buick replacement gas tank with a pair of welded bulkheads hidden at the leading edge of the tank. From these bulkheads, fuel is picked up inside the sump within the tank. A second bulkhead directs fuel that’s bypassed by the pump. The fuel line is inside the framerail channel and exits by way of another bulkhead fitting located on the right front inner fender (which is setup to lead to the fuel pressure regulator on the engine).



The finicky Buick hydro boost setup was swapped for a Lamb Components (modified) Mopar master cylinder installed by way of a billet adapter from the folks at TRZ. Under it is a Hurst roll control. I plumbed the entire brake system with hand formed 3/16-inch stainless steel hard-line and 37-degree AN fittings. This is a “fun” job. You should see my “mistake drawer”!



There’s all sorts of neat stuff included in the mix: A huge aluminum rad from Ron Davis Racing Radiators, a manual steering conversion from Borgensen, a Precision Performance Products shifter (the Competition Eliminator guys love ‘em and once you fondle it, you’ll know why), a glove box full of MSD digital ignition bits and so on.

Right now, I have the instrument cluster apart. I’m putting a GNX style cluster together using new Revolution gauges from a company called “Speed Hut”. Speed Hut is owned by a young fellow named Aaron Westberg. His grandfather started a little company called AutoMeter. You might have heard about it <g>. Anyway, the parts are awesome.

So what’s next? I’m going to sell the car as a roller and move on (I have a home built 572-inch big block Chevy in pieces that I planned to use, but I’m sure I’ll build it and sell it separately). The truth is I have a huge desire to begin an online magazine that focuses on little guy drag racing in the heyday of the musclecar. Day 2 cars and the technology that supported them is really my fervor. I’m in my late fifties, and in this stage of my life, I’m positive I should pursue my passions sooner than later. I’m sure many of you understand!

I hope you enjoyed looking at Buford the Buick. It’s a neat (albeit pricey) car. I have a ton of blood, sweat and dollars invested. And you know that old saying about no job is worth doing unless you do it twice? They must have been talking about me <g>. Thanks for indulging me!

Wayne Scraba

[300deluxeL79]

nice work wayne!
good luck with the magazine, it sounds interesting.

Thanks for the kudos man...

I'm looking forward to it. Right now, the plan is to start with a blog (when the guy building the site ever finishes it), then start filling it with basic tech...I think the kids today call it "old school" <g>.

It's funny though. A few years ago, I had a young guy in my garage and he spied my old Sun dwell tach on the workbench. Even though he was a car guy, he didn't have any idea of what dwell was. I guess that officially makes me "old school" too!

Wayne

[copo69]

Really neat car, Wayne. I've always enjoyed your magazine articles, particularly the copo Camaro clone buildup series a few years ago. Never did see it complete and always wondered what happened to it. Looking forward to your internet venture.

[markjohnson]

It is good to see you here Wayne! I've always enjoyed your writing also and hav your "How To Build A Chevrolet Street Machine" book. That's actually one of my favorite books to this day. Your old Black '69 Z/28 Camaro with the Orange Houndstooth is owned by a member of this site. It's been all restored back into a stock Z/28 but I always kinda like what you did with the car instead. The current owner has even posted pictures of it on here, but for the life of me, I can't remember his name. By the way, sharp Buick! I really like it. I've built up a couple of Drag Radial "G" Body Drag car myself and your really looks top notch.

Hey Guys ...thanks for the responses. My Buick has been a mix of ideas that I've had for years (OK - decades <g&gt. It's not a legal drag car -- no cage or roll bar. Instead, it was supposed to be a modern version (and my own interpretation with a GM bias) of Addison's Silver Bullet. That car influenced me greatly over the years. So basically, like Addison's Mopar, the Buick was put together with the best hardware I found that was somewhat streetable. It really is a cool car, and I suspect it will really rock and roll with just a simple 572 crate motor.

My old black 69 Camaro haunts me regularly. It's one of those cars I wish I never would have parted with (the other is a for real 1971 LS6 Corvette that I regrettably sold in 1974). The truth was, I had a big tax bill that had to be paid. I had a new EFI Firebird drag car in the shop (NHRA B/Stick Stocker that Tim Bishop now campaigns). The 'Bird was giving me the opportunity to make an income while the '69 was sitting still. So I pulled out the L88/Turbo 400 combination and sold the Camaro to a fellow back east. The L88 was sold to a guy in Oregon who passed away before he could use it. Kip Martin did the machining on the L88. It was a (really) nice piece -- it was more or less an NHRA stocker style engine. FYI, drag racer, Ken Reich was the original owner of the Camaro.

If you folks ever want to see more pix of the Buick, let me know. The suspension is really neat and so is the rear end assembly. My old racing partner, Mike Pustelny narrowed the housing, fought with the concept of fitting the stock mounts in place (with the narrowed width and the huge by large M-W housing ends) and back braced it. Mike does really, really nice work. You should have seen the raw TIG welds.

But I digress. Like I said before....you guys rock and thank you for letting me ramble about some of my old heaps.

Wayne Scraba

Here’s some photos of the rear axle housing (I mentioned earlier). I picked up a new 9-inch Ford housing from Mark Williams. For this application, it actually began life as a Currie piece, less the housing ends (Mark Williams usually installs his own on these housings). Going in, the plan was to narrow the housing a bit. The rationale was pretty simple: I wanted to use the smallest backspace wheel possible. Why? When I had drag cars, it was something we always did, because it provided you with the lightest wheel of the bunch (a ten-inch wide wheel with a 3.5-inch backspace is lighter than a ten-inch wide wheel with a 5.5-inch backspace), plus it makes removing the wheel a bit easier if you use drive studs (which I do use, even on this car). And one more thing: I think the deeper dish of the small backspace wheel looks better!

Sounded simple enough. So I had M-W drop ship the housing to my old racing pal, Mike Pustelny (MPR in Almont, Michigan). Little did anyone know that my request for a slightly narrowed housing would morph into such a major job. Here’s the housing as it came from Mark Williams:



It became pretty obvious that in order to narrow the housing, add Mark Williams’ big housing ends and use the stock mounting points, some major surgery would be needed. Mike sliced the lower mount like so:



Next, he installed his narrowing fixture and added the M-W housing end:



He had to piece it all together before finally welding the housing end onto the axle tubes. This wasn’t easy since the lower suspension and shock mount actually overlaps the new (huge) housing end.



Here’s how Mike welded up the housing end. I you’re a welder or even a guy who appreciates good workmanship, then I think you’ll like this photo:



Next up is a photo of how Mike finished the lower suspension and shock mount. As you can see, there was considerable work to make this whole thing work with the stock suspension mounting points and the large M-W housing end.



Another thing I wanted was a back brace on the housing. Mike and I talked about this quite a bit. He suggested instead of using a box style brace that it might be cleaner and easier on this application to use a tubular brace. The reason for bracing a Ford housing is because they tend to want to move fore and aft (flex on the ends) with big power. Here’s a couple of photos of Pustelny’s solution:





As you can see, Mike’s handiwork is exceptional. What else is neat about the bracing job is the fact he never really bitched about all of the trouble. The job took a lot (a Lot) longer than anyone ever imagined, and I suspect he could have been well on his way to fabricating a complete Super Stock housing in the amount of time he spent fidgeting with this piece.







In addition to these mods, the housing also received a large inspection/filler bung over the ring gear “hump” along with a magnetic drain plug on the bottom. Once all of those things were done (and after the anti-roll bar was installed out here on the west coast), the housing was powder coated black and assembled with one of Mark Williams’ Pro Street center sections and a 35-spline Pro Street axles. I used one of the billet steel Lockers inside the aluminum through bolt 9-inch along with 3.89:1 gears. M-W set it up and it too is a really, really nice piece. He even goes as far as safety wiring the ring gear bolts on. Whew. Sometimes I think building a dedicated race car would have have been a whole bunch easier. And cheaper <g>.


Wayne Scraba

[kwhizz]

Wayne.......Your Attention to detail is second to none.....All I can say is WOW!!!!

Ken

[thumper83]

Thats just bitchin !!!!!!!!

Wow. Thanks guys. And hey Ken... your comment is one of the highest compliments anyone can get, considering the absolutely stunning level you build your cars to! Yeow!

Again, thanks. If I don't step on any toes, maybe I'll post some more on Buford. I have some "before" engine compartment shots. It's amazing how much stuff GM packed into those things. The production line (factory) wiring harness alone has to rival Rubik's cube <g>

Right now I'm working on the instrument cluster. It's pretty cool.

Wayne Scraba