The str8 pistons listed on ebay under the seller Falcon? Any experience using these?
DUKE,
is your brother 'Cool Chuck? Glad you found us, we have a big following of straight 8 owners that are 'chompin on the bit ' for any kind of strt 8 info mild or wild. I am a novice at them, but i,m old have been around them for a long time. We had some pix here of your T dragster but they were deleted from the web and here, when the 'Colorado racing' site shut down. So looking forward to your input.
Dave
The str8 pistons listed on ebay under the seller Falcon? Any experience using these?
The efficiency of the head does have a TON to do with it. This is why Audi 4 and 5 valve heads can run 22-30 PSI without breaking a sweat. My 94 S4 was a 2.2 20V 5 cylinder. Stock compression is 9.3:1 and even with that I ran 28PSI in fourth gear and the car just rocketed along. Making a crossflow, multivalve head for a str8 would be insane, but man, talk about benefits. I'd imagine at 12PSI one would turn 400lbs of torque at the rear wheels before 4000RPM...but maybe I'm wrong.
Duke, is that the Buick 8 that used to race the Goodguys Indy events? I ran a Willys A/GS coupe and remember a Buick 8 with homemade fuel injection using the old aluminum drinking cups from the 50's.
Let's assume that someone would be willing to craft a new Buick 8 head out of wax to use in a lost-wax casting. What would be required is someone with the ability to pour the melted aluminum and machine the casting, including making valvetrain parts. The question is, what head's design should be copied? How many guys would need a pushrod head" I know the Bonneville guys would need one. I would suggest using the Ardun/Chrysler Hemi design for this one.
If an OHC head design would work, which one would be best? Audi, Honda, Toyota, Saturn, or a motorcycle design? Let's make some suggestions here.
hey guys, i have 3 early buick turbo set-ups...why couldnt you suse one of these to turbo a straight 8? factory rated at 7psi, and with a cam overlap change to reduce lag, it be a sanitary set-up, and ALL BUICK!!!!
nailheads forever
Yes, my brother is "Cool Chuck". GH, yes, I did run at the GoodGuys in Indy. It did have the old drinking cups on it then. We replaced them with the brass ones later and put on the new paint job of blue with flames. What color was you A/GS coupe? About the overhead cam using two four cylinder heads. To my knowledge, the guy never has gotten it to work. He was trying to sell everything a few years back. The problem is...two four cylinder camshafts will not give you the correct valve timing for a straight eight engine. You would have to have a complete new camshaft manufactured in order to make it work. It would be expensive to do. Cylinder head. There is no good head available to recast for performance. Ours would probably be the best one, but it does not flow water through it. It was modified to flow as much air as possible with a cast iron head. If you look close, you will notice that the intake tubes are set at an angle in the head. We installed the biggest tubes that would fit between the head bolts and ran them at an angle. The best head would be to use a solid piece of good grade aluminum and machine a crossflow head. Using 8 intake ports and 8 exhaust ports. Bob Corbett has done this for his GMC six cylinders. It is expensive too. Unless a group of racers would go together and commission a machinist to do 6 or more at a time. Major part of it is the programming of the lathe to perform the work. Doing more at the same time would help cut down on the cost. I would down load more pictures..but this site limits the size. I had to keep downsizing in order to get the engine picture on. I would be happy to give out information for making a straight eight produce horsepower and stay together. We ran 6,500 rpm shift points on ours and never blew up any parts. The weakest point is the rod at the wrist pin. You have to modify the rods and then they will stand up to 13.5 compression and high rpms. I would not recommend destroking. The straight eights torque and power comes from the long rods and stroke. If you want to correspond, I can be reached at
grhamann@yahoo.com.
If someone can tell me how to get more pictures (complete that is) to download on here, I will do it.
It is great to find straight eight racers here.
Gnoub; It all comes down to your skill level and budget. If you don't have a big budget or a lot of fabrication skills I would suggest that you go to a place like Howells Engine Development or affordable-fuel-injection.com and buy one of their throttle body injection kits. This would be much simpler and easier than trying to fabricate a multi port system. These kits use all GM style systems and components. The system that Howells sells for the 4.2 liter Jeep 6 cyl. is probably a copy of the 4.3 chevy v-6 system from the late 80's. I think one of these systems would be directly adaptable to the small Buick straight eight using the stock intake and exhaust manifolds. This system along with an electronic converted distributor would make a very reliable street set up. All the instructions and tech advice you need is available from them if you buy their product. You might be able to save some bucks if you go to your local U-pull-it type salvage yard and get part or all of the system from a late 80's S-10 truck with a 4.3 in it. Almost anything you might want to know on this topic is available by going to your favorite search engine and typing in chevy electronic fuel injection. Let us know how it goes.
BigRivy: Thanks for that info. I'll check it out. I do see why there are so many SBC's out there. I mean the cost is much more to deal with this 248 than one of the cliche engines. I'm at the point now where I can't drive my '50 anymore. It leaks way too much. So, the crossroads is at hand. I'll let you know how I make out.
Thanks!
Gary
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