Long time customer and friend Rick, wanted something special for his Super Stock clone street car. This has been a great build, and has been the prototype builds for several customers since. The goal was a easily street driven pump gas combo with tire shredding power at any RPM. The 440 Block was bored to 4.375 bore, which is home to the custom Autotec pistons. Molnar 6.800 4340 H beam rods tie the slugs to the Molnar 4.250 Crank. Total Seal AP Steel rings seal the deal. The cylinder heads are CNC ported 440 Source units, with 2.140/1.81 valves, and Max wedge openings. This same CNC port is the one used in our 440 aluminum heads, as well as the Edelbrock RPM heads, so this performance is available to anyone with any of these style heads. The hardware in the heads is all matched to the custom hydraulic roller camshaft. Pac Springs, locks and retainers work great to keep control of the valves as the RPMs rise. The camshaft is only 243 @ .050 on the intake side, so this combo is pretty docile until the loud pedal is smashed. One particularly cool aspect of this build, is the dual plane Indy intake manifold with the Holley 950 Carb. The manifold is an absolutely huge dual plane that kind of looks like the old CH4B Edelbrock on steroids. Match this with a Max Wedge port window, and there is power available everywhere, as well as a subtle look. Rick’s is devoid of any logos, and is painted engine color for even further sneakiness. As far as power goes, this sneaky big block Made 682HP and 688lb/ft of torque on 91octane pump gas. According to Rick, the car is an absolute riot with it’s A833 4spd, Ram dual disk clutch and 3.73 gears.
Congrats to Donald McIntosh to his win in Super Modified 3/16/19 at Dixie Speedway!! This is the first of hopefully Many great performances by his Buick powered Super Modified. Proud to be a part of your program Donald!
Donald and his Dad, David McIntosh, have been working on this combination for over a year. You old time Buick fans may remember David from the 80’s at the GS nationals in Bowling Green Ky with his Bronze colored chassis car making some of the fastest Buick 1/4 mile passes of the time. Great people with a family tradition of great performance!
Steve Stankus is relatively new to the Buick performance world, having owned this beautiful 72 GS for only about 2.5 years. But he really hit a home run on his first effort. Steve purchased the Black GS from a GSCA Member in Ohio and started on his ideas for a street warrior. The engine is a mild combination that works extremely well together. The shortblock houses a stock crank, and resized stock rods with ARP bolts. Wiseco Pro-True pistons and rings round out the rotating assembly. The compression ratio is 10.25 to 1. The cam is custom hydraulic from Scott Brown at Competition Components, 226/239@ .050 with a shade over .510 lift when used with the1.6 ratio Comp Cams Ultra Pro Magnum Rockers. Machine work and assembly was done at Finishline Motorsports. Steve sent us the heads, for our full CNC porting treatment and blueprinted assembly. All of the standard Edelbrock Components were used. The Intake is an Edelbrock B4B, and both the heads and intake were painted Buick red to somewhat hide their origins. The Norm Dihle rebuilt Q-jet underneath a stock GS air cleaner rounds out the sleeper costume. The car currently has headers, but Steve plans on going to a set of ported stock exhaust manifolds. The Turbo 350 transmission was rebuilt by Joel’s on Joy, and uses a Kenne-Bell 10″ torque converter. The 10 bolt rear houses the original 3.42 gears. Mickey Thompson 275/60R15 Drag Radials try to get all that Buick torque to the ground. They have done a good job so far, with Steve recently laying down some passes in the 11.90’s at 112MPH on the first outing. Steve also wanted to thank good friend Rob Ross for lots of tech support. Great Job Steve, keep up the good work!!
Curt Connors and his family are well known around the Mid Michigan Motorplex. They are die- hard bracket racers that make the weekend a family event. Curt’s wife Melissa and his parents all spend the weekends at the track most of the summer.
Curt’s 84 Monte Carlo is back halved, with a Mild Steel Cage. The Dana 60 houses 4.56 gears spinning 14×32 Goodyears. The car is all steel except for the hood and decklid, with stock glass throughout, but Curt has managed to get the weight down around 2700lbs. Just right for the Transmission Specialties Powerglide and 8” race converter to do their jobs.
The engine combo is a straightforward setup. It is 403 CID, based on a 6.0L LS1 truck engine. The stroker kit consists of 4” stroke Callies Compstar crank and 6.125 rods, and Autotec flat top pistons. Final compression ratio is a hair over 13 to 1. The heads are CNC Ported RHS units from Competition Components, with 230CC Intake runners, 2.080/1.600 stainless valves, and optional solid roller springs. The cam is a custom solid roller, with 260ish duration, and .750 lift. Lunati roller lifters and Trend heavy wall 5/16 pushrods make sure all of the cam’s lift gets to the T&D 1.7 ratio rockers. The engine is topped off with a hand ported Edelbrock Super Victor intake and a Holley 950 gas carb. The stock LS coil packs are run by an MSD timing controller. Headers are modified Schoenfeld Circle track headers, that were coated at QC Coatings in Utica, MI.
Curt’s first time out with the new combo was at the final test and tune day in 2012. Baseline passes were in the 9.80’s @ almost 138MPH. There wasn’t any time for any real tuning, just a few shakedown runs. For those first few hits, Launch was 5200RPM, and shift points were 6700. For next season, Curt has a new converter from Lenny at Ultimate Converters in the works, as well as some other refinements in the works. We are as excited as Curt to really put this combo to the test during the 2013 season. Stay tuned for more results!
Competition Components friend and customer Bruce Kent got some well deserved ink for his latest engine build, a 540 CID Buick that belted out 950+ HP. Great Job Bruce! You can read the full article here:
Congrats to long time Friend and Customer Mike Leech on his recent updates to his race engine! Mike’s trip to Holbrook Racing’s Dyno yesterday netted a best pull of 971HP at 7400, and 760lb/ft at6100 on Q16 fuel. The Engine is a well thought out combination using a Moldex Crank, Custom GRP Rods, Custom Ross Pistons to add up to 496 cubic inches of Pontiac Power. A CNC Ported set of Wide Port Edelbrocks and matching intake developed by John Marcella round out the top end . The port work on these heads is top notch, and we finished them off with PAC 1300 series Springs, locks and retainers. (These heads are also available through Competition Components) The Cam is also a Custom unit from Competition as well. Great Job Mike!
Brian’s killer E85 Buick with Edelbrock heads kicks butt at the track and takes names at shows! As a testament to Brian’s hard work and pride in his 72 Buick GS, he won his class at the 2012 Detroit Autorama. The legit street car has run a best in the 10.30’s at nearly 130MPH. I got to spend some time with the gang at the show, and people just love the immaculate ’72, tons of compliments day and night. Congrats Brian!
Kudosto Mike Ricketts! Mopar Collectors Guide featured his Macomb Missle Pro Stock Aspen in their April 2012 issue! This is the last Pro Stocker built by Mopar racing legend Don Carlton. Mike has spent a ton of time and effort making this a top notch restoration and race car, and it shows. Mike has had several show stopping race cars in the past, and I’m proud to be involved. Check out the magazine, I’m sure you’ll be impressed. Thanks for the mention in the article Mike! http://www.moparcollectorsguide.com/
Joe Russo’s dad, Tony, tried to get him to build a late model Camaro or Mustang, just because it would be that much easier. Joe didn’t want to take the easy way out though, he had his mind set on a Mopar A-body. They picked up this low rust 76 Duster from California, and got to work. Over a year later, their hard work and late nights paid off. Joe now has a bad ass, pump gas small block car. The combo is pretty simple. They picked up complete 360 Magnum from a 98 Jeep, and made a couple of smart modifications. The stock beer barrel intake was replaced by an Edelbrock performer RPM and a 650 Holley Double pumper. While the intake was off, they decided to upgrade the camshaft. A custom cam that’s 226 @ .050 and a hair over .500 lift came from Scott Brown at Competition Components. Joe also needed to upgrade the springs, so the drop in high lift Magnum springs from Mopar Performance fit the bill. The stock hydraulic roller lifters and hold downs were cleaned and re-used. After the dressed up Magnum motor found it’s way between the framerails, a used set of headers found their way into the engine bay. Joe and Tony fabbed up an X pipe, and 3″ Hooker Aerochambers were used with turndowns at the axle. A new 10″ PTC Converter was slid into the rebuilt 904 transmission and bolted into place. An 8.8 ford 4.10 Rear end was picked up from an Explorer and modified to fit and a set of Cal Tracs and springs were bolted to it. All of the work on the car was performed by Joe and Tony, including all of the body work and paint. All of their hard work paid off right off the trailer, the Viper red Duster ran in the 12.40’s on the very first pass. With some tuning and TLC, the car has now run a best of 12.14 @ 111 mph. The first pass on nitrous has run a 7.24 in the 1/8th (mid 11.30’s in the 1/4), with some more suspension tuning needed to handle the additional power. Not bad for a teenager’s first car!
UPDATE 11/27/2011: Joe went a new personal best of 11.202 @ 119 on Nitrous over the holiday weekend. Congrats Joe!
