1970 Buick Street/Strip Skylark Build

Not much new with the Buick, but I have been busy buying and selling vehicles, and collecting stuff...I normally would never buy a Ford but this one was a super deal so I grabbed it:

1991 Ford F-350 with 460, 5 speed overdrive manual, 4x4, 4.10 gears, 10 foot tilt flat deck, 25,000 pound PTO winch. It even has an engine hoist setup that mounts into the flat deck.











ell I have been up to my old tricks... Got some more Buick 350 engines for pretty much free:





My new enclosed trailer, dirty, but darn nice unit. That is my friends truck he loaned to me but it pulls well.





A friends Vette that just got painted:





Most of the snow melted it has been WARM:








 
Last edited:
Getting ready to assemble a good engine with Herche rods and Diamond Pistons, just waiting for a custom Scotty Brown cam... And I have to clear out some chevy and ford engines!!









Got my cool old chevy truck outfitted, body work will be done this summer:



And got a spare 460 for my tow truck:

 
And here is my original car that I sold to my now friend Blake Thresher who also lives around Edmonton... Overdrive, nice interior, all steel, running great!





And here is the plan for the tow truck to car hauler conversion, paying a pro to weld it up for me:








 
Hey.....you are a day late !! TURBO TUESDAY was yesterday...........:)

Good work....
 
Hey , just thinking out loud......does anybody cross bolt the mains on those Buicks? Looks like a handy guy like you might be able to pull it off.
 
Jethro said:
Hey , just thinking out loud......does anybody cross bolt the mains on those Buicks? Looks like a handy guy like you might be able to pull it off.
Click to expand...

Hi Jethro,

We looked into cross bolting the mains but there was not enough material to keep things secure. Without a block girdle these engines are not having an issue in the 600-800 HP range, so we figure adding this puts us in good shape at the 900 HP area:



Not sure if you guys have seen the car in action:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWi0qnwFxfI
 
Jethro said:
Did you make up the girdle? It looks real beefy!
Click to expand...

I had a guy named Gary Paine out of Ohio work with a machinist to create the girdle, it was a lot of time and money invested into this piece and I also decided to step up to a custom billet crankshaft and rods to keep from the "weak link" scenario. Gary has been building Buick racing engines for longer than I have been alive so I was happy to work with him on this. What I have now is a short block that should be able to handle about 1200 HP even though I only plan for 900.
 
Dragged home another cool chevy truck... 383 stroker, 5 speed, swapped the starter out and now it runs great!







Much lower than my daily driver truck:





Pulled my friends vette out of my trailer so I can put my stepside in there...






 
Got my tires mounted and balanced, these are for dyno use only so I don't trash my drag tires on the rollers:

15X12 Steel rim with 295/50R15 BFG Notice how I used a nice wide rim to make a really wide flat contact patch... Put these on some 15X8 rims and you get far less contact patch:





 
Well, just an update... My girdled short block is at Chris Skaling's shop, he will do the alum head porting final assembly and dyno NA then ship it to me.

The car hauler project is coming along! I will use this to carry light vehicles around when I don't want to hook up the big enclosed trailer. Next thing to do is headers and new exhaust off the 460, and then air bags in the rear to help level it out under load.





 
Looks like that deck alone will be pushing the GVW of that truck. I drove wreckers for years, there is a good reason the decks are made of Aluminium....just saying.
 
Well things are coming together with the car hauler project it is 95% done I just need to finish up a few details like fine tuning the ramps, and then adding some air bags to help carry the load when hauling. There are spare ramps secured at the rear of the deck as well to help with low cars.









 
Midlife C said:
Looks like that deck alone will be pushing the GVW of that truck. I drove wreckers for years, there is a good reason the decks are made of Aluminium....just saying.
Click to expand...

Well I hate to admit it but my car hauler project hit a dead end. The truck was not powerful enough to drive well and the wheelbase was too short....

I removed the deck and tilt mechanism and have a buyer for the truck to use on a farm as a bail truck...

I realize now that my plan was flawed:

1. I need more than a 1 ton truck to make a safe car hauler
2. I need a longer wheelbase for that deck
3. I do not need 4x4 this is for street use only and mainly in the summer hauling vehicles around
4. A diesel engine with a turbo would be much more efficient than the 460 gas

So I removed the deck and the tilt mechanism, have a buyer for the truck, and bought this truck! 2000 E-450 with a 16 foot cube.... Removing the cube and making it an engine shed in my yard and putting my nice deck on there. I ended up money ahead on this so all is well! Much higher GVW and perfect wheelbase!

 
Got to meet not one but TWO Canadian Hot Rod Forum members yesterday! Bill Ryder from Alberta and Kieth from BC!

I sold Kieth a transmission and it was great to chat with cool car guys!

This is me doing my delivery of a 4L80E trans from a 1 ton GM truck.



 
Well today I picked up a cool car! I am going to put a Buick 350 with forged pistons and a single turbo kit in there and back it up with the CK Performance 200r4 trans and make it a street/strip car. I am planning to paint it all black myself and have fun with it and not worry about scratches or rock chips. The rear end is a fully built and spooled 10 bolt with 4.88 gears. With the gears and overdrive trans I will be able to launch it like a bastard and still drive the highway. I could not resist it and the price was right! I have been around this car for years, it was last running 10.35 in the quarter with a 6.0 LS engine and it hooks and goes straight so it should be a lot of fun!











 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom