1972 Buick Turbo LS Pro Touring - Garage Made

[lwilliams]

also when looking at the cross over pipe i did end up getting rid of the flex pipe there. buddy of mine whose built lots of these cars said that they can fail and then wipe out the turbo. i may put another one in but it will be the accordion style exhaust bellows instead of the one in the picture.

for the brakes i have that CPP hydro boost system. this works really nice and is a great balance of brake pedal feel, firm enough for a spirited drive but not so hard your leg gets cramped in traffic. really happy with it.

was a pretty easy install overall and i used NiCop lines for the brake lines. SOOOOOO nice. bend them by hand and they also flare really nice. ill get some pics of this when i can, ill also get some more just general under car pics when i have the car up on the lift and installing the ebrake handle that i bought.

some shots of the CPP system, again, highly recommend it to anyone thinking of doing it. Install was not difficult, probably one of the easier things i have done.

lots of hosing going every which direction, but to keep it simple any rubber hose you see is a return line either to the steering box or steering pump itself. Any braided looking line is a pressure lines to the steering box or to the hydroboost. This Brings us to the first issue i discovered on the autocross track. The pulley i have on the steering pump is about 3/4-1" smaller than the original one. When i was at the track it was spraying fluid every where. basically i mash the gas and it is getting spun to high hell, or i am steering hard in a corner or hard on the brakes. Either way it never gets a brake on the track. So i have ordered a an ICT billet bracket that will move the pump inward about an each and then i can run the stock pulley sizer and it will hopefully correct the issue. Next race day is August 16th so i will be able to tell then.










the steering pump cooler is the black one below. Either this summer or in the winter i am going to replace the inside headlights with funnels and one on side i will remount a different cooler. it will be out of the way of the rad and then take fresh air from behind the funnel, i can likely use a bigger cooler this way and also wire in a separate fan.

[lwilliams]

so then on to the next issue i had. this was to do with fueling took a while to figure it out and like i said about 650$ in oil filters and changes before i got it squared away. I think it was a multitude of problems. the first and biggest was the stock fuel pressure regulator was bad which i didn't know at first. i am thinking that the seals basically dried up from the engine just sitting around for a while.

symptoms of this going bad were a lot of cranking on start up and often enough when the car did start it was kind of stumbly, spraying black wet carbon out of the exhaust pipe from unburnt fuel, fuel in the oil and my garage and the car just wreaking like gas. I found a way to test this was to just start the car and then pull the vacuum line off the regulator. if fuel comes out she's toast, which is exactly what mine did. so that was problem #1 solved with just a new regulator. this did make a good difference but the oil was still smelling like gas just less of it.

Solved problem #2. took the injectors out of the car and took them to a buddy to clean them. he said they weren't really clean but weren't really dirty either. one of them as he was testing it also had a bad spray pattern and then all of a sudden something just shot right out of the injector. he cleaned them three times and now they are all within 1-2% of each other. so that helped the issue too but was still getting some gassy oil.

Solved problem #3,started playing with the cranking and after start enrichment on the tune and finally got it sorted out properly as well. i was cranking like close to 50% more fuel than it needed on start up, and then the after start was not nearly enough and so i think the holley was compensating and dumping fuel into it. once i got that squared away their is no more gassy oil smell.

[lwilliams]

on to more exciting things i picked up this thing on the way to work one day. Damn golfers and their greens tools!



this wasn;t all bad to be honest, when i actually looked at the tires i had they were made in 2010! dried out for sure.

so it prompted me to get tires on all four corners. Went with 315/30/18's in the rear and 275/35-17 in the front. looking forward to getting them scrubbed in and working on the street and the track. to fit the 315's i just had to trim the fender lip on the rear quarters. i already notice just how much nicer these tires drive down the road and absorb the bumps compared to the last one.


rears are falken Azenis RT660 and the fronts are nankang CRS. literally impossible to find tires in those sizes right now. called 4 different shops and 5 website before i found a place i can order 4 tires from.








passenger side is pretty rotted out, so that will need replacing at some point.

[lwilliams]

a little look of the tires on the car! no rubbing issues what so ever in the rear. you can also see the ducting for the trans cooler.




little interior shot.



Also going to be cutting some vents into the hood. when the car is moving more or less at any speed cold, warm, hot day it is good. But it does start getting heat soaked at the autocross track and when it is sitting.

just a pic of mapping our some different size vents. looking at race louvers and track spec. i think i'm going to go with the bigger is better mentality. hopefully have these put on for the next track day.





made a youtube channel just to post up some videos of the car. have a bunch of dyno videos and a few other videos of the car that i will post and then provide the link.

[lwilliams]

forgot that i also set up a harness that is easy to clip in and out of the car when i want to. i have angle brackets where the seat belt goes on each side and the some eyebolts bolted through the top of the body brace behind the seat. i don't think i would trust the eyebolts out on the street incase i got in a crash, the metal is pretty thin where the eyebolts are bolted too. but for just going around the track and needing the harness to keep me planted int the seat they work great.



the seat belt cover hides the bracket too which is nice.



pic of me with the harness on at the track!

[lwilliams]

a few better pictures on how those harness clip into the brackets and eyebolts.

[lwilliams]

found the picture i was looking for that was an indication my fuel pressure regulator was bad.

this is what my garage floor looked like every time i cold started the car. it would become less and less as the car warmed up, but every cold start was like this. I also had a bunch of black carbon on the rear quarter where the exhaust exited.