Apr 28, 2003
NEWSLETTER SPRING EDITION Our meeting of 3/08/03 was again well attended- had 19 show their lovely faces - ahh- Mike and Darryl, Im being VERY lenient here !! We had two NEW members attend-Nick Leonardis came with his Dad (Ettore) and Jeff Hall. Nick had purchased an 87' GN and with the help of his Dad they reconditioned it and brought a series of photos-- looked very nice. Jeff has a Hot Air GN and expressed his interest in meeting others in our group who have similar engines. It was nice meeting these three- thanks for coming guys. There was an interest expressed to rent the New York International Track at Leichester as we did a year and a half ago. . I have called there three times looking for open dates- no response as yet. I also have an E-mail out to the track. The raffle went well- raised a few bucks for our upcoming family outing . Ron Turch donated a couple magnetic burnout protection pads. Those were won by Derek Ostrom. Derek PROMISED to tear up some pavement at the Track this season with one of his many GN's . Right Derek ? You Can Do It!!! We've been having difficulty selling out club hats. Don Foss suggested we raffle one off at each meeting-- Great Idea! We did that and Nick Leonardis won the 1st one. That was fitting-- (very little pun there). Hellooo--Kevin T.-- did you get that?? We have quit a large group going to Norwalk, Ist week of May--12 or more. That?s going to be a great time. Any others interested- you still have time to hook up with us. We will finalize our plans at our next meeting. At our 3/8 meeting there was a concern of continuing this news letter because of the cost. all expressed they have enjoyed reading the letter and actually having a HARD copy vs just posting it on our web site.. We agreed to continue the letter until next fall and re access it then. Club T-shirts- Ron Turch began taking prepaid orders at the 3/8 meeting- he'll continue at our next meeting. We discussed bringing in new members- Joe Doino has posted an invitation on both TB.Com and GNTTYPE.org. Hopefully a few in the WNY area with take notice. Darrly and Lisa offered to donate the next raffle item. I am looking forward to see what that might be!! WHY?? They have just become engaged-- YEAHHHHH-- congratulations..And you GOTTA see that ROCK!! Im talking SOFTBALL size!!! If that reflects at all the donation for the raffle-- IM there!! Darrly- YA Dah Man! The date, time and place for our family outing has been secured by Don and Jill Foss. It will be 7/19/03 at shelter # 14 at the Akron Park, Akron NY. This is the same park we held our outing one and a half years ago. Actually, only a couple hundred yards from the prior shelter. Thanks Don and Jill for your efforts. Subsequent to the 3/8 meeting, I made a trip out to T/A performance in Arizona. The owner, Mike Tomazewski spent a couple hours with me.I have a few stories and photos I can share at our next meeting. Our next meeting is set for Sat. 4/19/03, 6 pm, at the Athens Rest.,Cheektowaga. Make a note of it.. I now present to you - None other than our own Jerry Thompson for and his comment on Tech talk! Thanks in advance Jerry. Hope to see all of you at our next meeting. Larry NEWSLETTER MARCH SPRING EDITION Our meeting of 3/08/03 was again well attended- had 19 show their lovely faces - ahh- Mike and Darryl, Im being VERY lenient here !! We had two NEW members attend-Nick Leonardis came with his Dad (Ettore) and Jeff Hall. Nick had purchased an 87' GN and with the help of his Dad they reconditioned it and brought a series of photos-- looked very nice. Jeff has a Hot Air GN and expressed his interest in meeting others in our group who have similar engines. It was nice meeting these three- thanks for coming guys. There was an interest expressed to rent the New York International Track at Leichester as we did a year and a half ago. . I have called there three times looking for open dates- no response as yet. I also have an E-mail out to the track. The raffle went well- raised a few bucks for our upcoming family outing . Ron Turch donated a couple magnetic burnout protection pads. Those were won by Derek Ostrom. Derek PROMISED to tear up some pavement at the Track this season with one of his many GN's . Right Derek club hats. Don Foss suggested we raffle one off at each meeting-- Great Idea! We did that and Nick Leonardis won the 1st one. That was fitting-- (very little pun there). Hellooo--Kevin T.-- did you get that?? We have quit a large group going to Norwalk, Ist week of May--12 or more. That?s going to be a great time. Any others interested- you still have time to hook up with us. We will finalize our plans at our next meeting. At our 3/8 meeting there was a concern of continuing this news letter because of the cost. all expressed they have enjoyed reading the letter and actually having a HARD copy vs just posting it on our web site.. We agreed to continue the letter until next fall and re access it then. Club T-shirts- Ron Turch began taking prepaid orders at the 3/8 meeting- he'll continue at our next meeting. We discussed bringing in new members- Joe Doino has posted an invitation on both TB.Com and GNTTYPE.org. Hopefully a few in the WNY area with take notice. Darrly and Lisa offered to donate the next raffle item. I am looking forward to see what that might be!! WHY?? They have just become engaged-- YEAHHHHH-- congratulations..And you GOTTA see that ROCK!! Im talking SOFTBALL size!!! If that reflects at all the donation for the raffle-- IM there!! Darrly- YA Dah Man! The date, time and place for our family outing has been secured by Don and Jill Foss. It will be 7/19/03 at shelter # 14 at the Akron Park, Akron NY. This is the same park we held our outing one and a half years ago. Actually, only a couple hundred yards from the prior shelter. Thanks Don and Jill for your efforts. Subsequent to the 3/8 meeting, I made a trip out to T/A performance in Arizona. The owner, Mike Tomazewski spent a couple hours with me.I have a few stories and photos I can share at our next meeting. Our next meeting is set for Sat. 4/19/03, 6 pm, at the Athens Rest.,Cheektowaga. Make a note of it.. I now present to you - None other than our own Jerry Thompson for and his comment on Tech talk! Thanks in advance Jerry. Hope to see all of you at our next meeting. Larry
Supplement here-you gotta put this in Just before Jerrys artical. Right after I mention the next meeting. "There is one more thing I'd like to bring to your attention. We all know John Macpherson "says little and goes fast with his Silver Bullet". Well- the cats out of the bag. He runs an illegal fuel additive! Here's how I found out. He was pressure testing the cylinders with compressed air. Because he was prepairing to pull the engine- he had the headers off. He fills a cylinder with air and as he's hanging over the fender - he's got his ear down there and can hear air rushing out an exhaust valve. He thinks- the valve isn't seated - so he gets the old rubber malet out and proceeds to get alittle violant and wacks the top of the valve stem. That pushes the valve down and now there's this RUSH of air and M and M's coming at him like they were just shot out of a gun! WAIT---- M and M's??? Yeah- they were all over him in multipal colors ! In amazement, he just stood there, said nothing - as he looked to the floor and watched the M and M's roll around till they stopped. This is a TRUE story and I still can't stop laughing. He SAYS he can't explain how they got in there!! I don't believe him- He's running some illegal mixture of C-16 and chocolate--I just know it! " Ask him about it at the next meeting!! Its hilarious!
Let me start out by dedicating this article in memory of my wife "Ann". We had our Turbo Buick experience start in the fall of '89. Bought the car used with 10k miles. Drove it till the weather took charge. During the bad weather months I read articles on the car in different magazines. One in particular, the GS Nationals, where Lawrence Conley kicked butt with 11.90's. I thought that was incredible. A long the way we bought some mods to go a little quicker ourselves. In the spring while driving in the city I saw a GN at a tire store and stopped. Asked who owed it and talked with the guy. He asked me if I was going to Bowling Green for the Nationals in two weeks. Said I didn't know what that was. Got hooked up with the dates and called for a hotel room. It was a challenge being so late or close to the meet. Finally had success and landed a place. Off to Bowling Green it was. Drove the car down and you know what Bowling Green is like if you've even gone to the Nationals. We fell in love with the place. Got all kinds of info and goodies. From then on we were Turbo Junkies. Went to Englishtown for the Buick/Mustang shootouts and Kirban's gigs in Philly. Did that for years. While at Englishtown and B-G you always talk shop. Ann often said we got a dog. I thought I bought the right stuff and did as a whole. The Armstrong crew kind of "walked me out of the woods". They asked what was in the car and gave me some figures. I swapped head gaskets and went with two steel shim gaskets. The car kind of stayed at 12.40's I was just about ready to swap to a TH 350 Tranny but thought I'd check the waste gate. Bigger than bear SH-T, it was not seating. One of my kids' friends took it to work and machined it and put in s/s seats. Put the waste gate back on and right out of the box it ran 11.90's. Now were talking. Could not believe it .5 sec like that. The next thing I did for Hells-Bells was change from Reds 108 Chip to Reds 100. Guess What??!! Dropped .2 sec. It pays to play around sometimes. At last years Nats (02) a friend of ours who lives in B-G asked what chip I ran. Asked if they could try it. "Sure no problem". The car picked up 3 mph with it. They had Caspers make a duplicate. At Norwalk last year I had problems w/ the waste gate (plug out). Took 4 passes to find problem, but- guess what? My short times were better. So I hooked up a time delay to vent off the loading line. It works!! I'd like to see the club get back to the stature we had 2 years ago. We had the damn best times. B-G, Norwalk, Picnic and Bristol not to mention the nights and cruises. We'll do again. Now for some Turbo tech 101. The car ran 11.30's solid as B-G last year (02). Ran 11.30's at Leichester after B-G and then kind of fell off. I had problems with the waste gate and changed to a turbonetics. Not much change in performance. I limped through the rest of season. I normally do a leak down check once a year to check the sealing of the cylinders. About 6 weeks ago I did just that. #1+6 were in the 60's and the rest 98-100. 98-100 is excellent. "60's not so good". There was definatly something bad. Was it the rings, valves or head gaskets? As you might guess I got a brainstorm. I made up a dummy head. Not a dumb-head (me) but a piece of one and one half inch plate drilled and ground flat to seal the block or heads. Had a tap in the center for leak down check. So, off I go to pull engine to perform head removal and what ever else. The first thing I removed was the turbo inlet piping. I had to do a double take. Seems like the compression wheel had a little skirmish with something. The fins were beat and little pieces missing. Not a good way to start out. There was no doubt the engine was going to get torn down. Pulled the engine with the aid of the I.H.S. lifting plate. Yanked the intake off and then the heads. The big man must have been watching over me. The cylinder walls and pistons were perfect. A-Men. Along with all this work and worry it's my turn in the barrel. To do the newsletter article. I said let me get this work done. First, then the newsletter. Good move. Clean up the block and heads. Test #1. Dummy head on block w/ new gasket. Leak down readings- #1 Cyl. 95, #3- 100, #5 100. Test # 2 Dummy head w/ old gaskets. Cyl.#1-88 #3-90 #5-100. You could feel the air blowing out the #3 air fitting when testing. #1 results- Blown gasket between #1-3. Test #3 Dummy head w/ new gasket. Cyl. #4- 100, #6-88, #2-100. I did not bother w/ old gaskets because at #88 the rings were shot. So, hot to trot I pulled #6 piston to check the #2 compression ring has a 2 piece design. Anyway the rail was out of round. Why? Get on the phone and called for parts- turbo, rings, gaskets, and seals. Test #4 right hand head and me, Dummy. Leak down #6-91 exh. Val. Leaking, #4-96 intake valve leaking, #2-99 exh. Leaking. Result- Valve job. Test #5- Right hand head and Dummy. Cyl. #1-95 intake leaking. #3-100, #5-100. Valve job covers both heads. Now, looking at my data and head gaskets, why are the opposing cylinders blowing the gasket in the same location? Could it be the Torque sequence? I researched that in two books. There are two methods. The one used for performance is the one I've used. Next question. After looking at the block and head- after removing valves, I think I'm getting somewhere. Cylinders 1+5 and 2+6 have the exhaust valves on the outside edge of the head and water jackets surrounding them. Cylinders 2+3 have no large water jacket around exhaust parts. The jury is still out on this. I am going to do some flow testing to see if I can cool head in this area. Gaskets get too hot I believe. Say good night and clean them turbo cars cause the weather is breakin' and we'll be braken'. See ya at the next meeting- Jerry
UPDATE: researched GM Performance and Buick power source books. Both books recommend steam holes be drilled between cylinder bores. Had a stage II gasket at my disposal for a template and went the full route on drilling block and heads. This should vent or displace any hot spots making steam from lack of flow. I'll have to use stage block gaskets now. It will be interesting to see how things work out. Got the Gs extra yesterday and they were discussing head gasket problems with the turbo cars. Again I'll say goodbye. Half Doz -Jerry