Buford the Buick

Here’s some photos of the rear axle housing (I mentioned earlier). I picked up a new 9-inch Ford housing from Mark Williams. For this application, it actually began life as a Currie piece, less the housing ends (Mark Williams usually installs his own on these housings). Going in, the plan was to narrow the housing a bit. The rationale was pretty simple: I wanted to use the smallest backspace wheel possible. Why? When I had drag cars, it was something we always did, because it provided you with the lightest wheel of the bunch (a ten-inch wide wheel with a 3.5-inch backspace is lighter than a ten-inch wide wheel with a 5.5-inch backspace), plus it makes removing the wheel a bit easier if you use drive studs (which I do use, even on this car). And one more thing: I think the deeper dish of the small backspace wheel looks better!

Sounded simple enough. So I had M-W drop ship the housing to my old racing pal, Mike Pustelny (MPR in Almont, Michigan). Little did anyone know that my request for a slightly narrowed housing would morph into such a major job. Here’s the housing as it came from Mark Williams:



It became pretty obvious that in order to narrow the housing, add Mark Williams’ big housing ends and use the stock mounting points, some major surgery would be needed. Mike sliced the lower mount like so:



Next, he installed his narrowing fixture and added the M-W housing end:



He had to piece it all together before finally welding the housing end onto the axle tubes. This wasn’t easy since the lower suspension and shock mount actually overlaps the new (huge) housing end.



Here’s how Mike welded up the housing end. I you’re a welder or even a guy who appreciates good workmanship, then I think you’ll like this photo:



Next up is a photo of how Mike finished the lower suspension and shock mount. As you can see, there was considerable work to make this whole thing work with the stock suspension mounting points and the large M-W housing end.



Another thing I wanted was a back brace on the housing. Mike and I talked about this quite a bit. He suggested instead of using a box style brace that it might be cleaner and easier on this application to use a tubular brace. The reason for bracing a Ford housing is because they tend to want to move fore and aft (flex on the ends) with big power. Here’s a couple of photos of Pustelny’s solution:





As you can see, Mike’s handiwork is exceptional. What else is neat about the bracing job is the fact he never really bitched about all of the trouble. The job took a lot (a Lot) longer than anyone ever imagined, and I suspect he could have been well on his way to fabricating a complete Super Stock housing in the amount of time he spent fidgeting with this piece.







In addition to these mods, the housing also received a large inspection/filler bung over the ring gear “hump” along with a magnetic drain plug on the bottom. Once all of those things were done (and after the anti-roll bar was installed out here on the west coast), the housing was powder coated black and assembled with one of Mark Williams’ Pro Street center sections and a 35-spline Pro Street axles. I used one of the billet steel Lockers inside the aluminum through bolt 9-inch along with 3.89:1 gears. M-W set it up and it too is a really, really nice piece. He even goes as far as safety wiring the ring gear bolts on. Whew. Sometimes I think building a dedicated race car would have have been a whole bunch easier. And cheaper <g>.


Wayne Scraba

[kwhizz]

Wayne.......Your Attention to detail is second to none.....All I can say is WOW!!!!

Ken

[thumper83]

Thats just bitchin !!!!!!!!

Wow. Thanks guys. And hey Ken... your comment is one of the highest compliments anyone can get, considering the absolutely stunning level you build your cars to! Yeow!

Again, thanks. If I don't step on any toes, maybe I'll post some more on Buford. I have some "before" engine compartment shots. It's amazing how much stuff GM packed into those things. The production line (factory) wiring harness alone has to rival Rubik's cube <g>

Right now I'm working on the instrument cluster. It's pretty cool.

Wayne Scraba

In my last post, I said I'd get some "before" pix posted. In hindsight, I should have done this earlier. Anyway, the first photo is of Buford the Buick sitting at the boat launch in Cowichan Bay, BC. I live on Vancouver Island on the far (far) west end of Canada. "Cow Bay" is a quaint little fishing/tourist village on the south east coast of the island. I lived in the area (Cobble Hill) for a few years before moving to the real backwoods <g>. Where I live now supposedly has more black bears than anywhere else in North America. They're not kidding. And all of 'em must live in my backyard! Back to the Buick:




That same day, I pressure washed the engine compartment as much as I could stand, and then ran the car into my old shop. This is a photo I took after an hour or two of peeling stuff out. It's pretty clear here and in several of the following photos that I didn't pressure wash the thing nearly enough!



At this point, I had the engine and turbo 200 out of the car. Take a look at the crossmember. There was no chance this thing would ever, ever rust <g>. Aside from the oil and grease, the original owner had the car undercoated with that wax-oil stuff. It was wicked to clean with a capital "W". I don't have a photo of the trans tunnel, but that was the worst part. Message to self: You love laying under the car with the pressure washer set on "high". In the process of cleaning up the grease, I literally wore out a dozen brushes of all sorts. Walmart and made-in-China brushes wanted to be my friends.



In the process, I tackled the AC/heater box removal. That thing is the size of a house. Or maybe a Smart Car. I eventually decided that the inner skirts had to come out in order to clean up the mess. I should have removed them before I pulled out the AC/heater box. It would have been a whole bunch simpler. Hindsight is a wonderful teacher ain’t it?





Here's a photo of the car after the scrubbing and pressure washing was more or less complete. You can see how the paint came right off the frame. I used a considerable amount of spray on engine degreaser. For the tough stuff, I'd resort to brake cleaner and hot water hooked directly to the pressure washer. I don't have a lift, so the underneath part of the equation was miserable.



Once that was done (and I'll be the first to admit the cleaning process took weeks of my spare time instead of days), I stripped out almost everything from the engine compartment and masked/taped what little remained. Then I sprayed it with semi-gloss black. I found a near match to the Buick offset too: It's paint for a John Deere tractor. They have two different glosses (one is called "Blitz Black"). One matches the firewall perfectly and the other seems right for the frame. I can't take credit for finding Blitz Black (rattle cans or bulk). The street rodders discovered it long before me. The parts guy at the John Deere dealership I bought it from told me he can't believe how much of the stuff he sells. He didn't know why. I didn't tell him <g>. Oh. See the Moroso frame mounts? I didn't miss a bolt. That's how they're installed. One mount fits both sides of the car and that's where the extra unused hole comes from.






So that's how the project actually began. While this was going on, Mike Pustelny was busy making sparks fly on the rear end housing. Meanwhile, I was melting my credit card ordering parts <g>. Down the road, I'll round up some photos of how the frame was notched. That too turned into a great fab job – this time by an outfit that specializes in some (super) nicely turned out sprint cars here on the Island. I definitely would have used MPR's services for this job too, but his shop and mine are 2597.33 miles (and one ferry ride) apart.

I hope you folks find this a wee bit interesting.

Wayne Scraba