Buford the Buick

[flyingn]

looks good!!!!

Thank you!

Over the weekend, I'll dig up some more pix and post them.

Season's Best folks!

Wayne Scraba

[markjohnson]

Yeah.....that is some very nice work there. I really like the gusset work on the lower control arm frame brackets. Those two very important points, often overlooked, are actually the two points where the rear axle pushes against and propels the car forward. Yeah, like I said.......pretty important! Those 1978-1988 "G"-bodies really do make good race cars. They were stamped out of such thin sheetmetal (even aluminum in places) for light weight and gas mileage, raked back windshields, rear bumpers sealed to the body to eliminate the "parachute" effect, etc. Like you mentioned Wayne, they may be full-framed, but it really is flimsy "C" channel construction! My '79 Malibu had a 540 CID with 14:1 compression, Moser 9-inch, dog-dish hubcaps, etc. It was a Suzuki Hayabusa killer that got me kicked out from the drag strip for lack of safety equipment that would have killed its' sleeper look. But anyway, it was showing a LOT of stress cracks around the body by the time I was done messing around with it.

Hey Mark!

Those are pretty much dead-on observations on these cars. As you know, they were basically unit-bodies with a sheet metal "frame" underneath. Even the glass is thin. This example has aluminum bumper beams. Some even had aluminum rad supports. I had an El Camino ('78, which I bought new) that had an aluminum hood. It was because of that flexi-flier syndrome that I spent the time bracing everything. The bars that tie the forward trailing arm mounts together are a pain to install (and you can pre-load them..which is the case here), but they certainly work. Before I started (when the car was more or less stock), I could jack the car up and watch the door gaps change! Today, nothing moves or droops. I like going to car shows and taking a close look at Grand Nationals. You can easily spot the ones with extra heat under the hood and little or no chassis bracing (tweaked quarters, cracked windshields, cracked t-tops, "B" posts that are cracking, etc.)<g>. Of course, light also equates to quick for most cars!

And speaking of that, do you have any pix of your '79? I'd like to see some. Sounds like a real bad boy! I like the part about getting kicked off the drag strip I can relate...



Take care man...
Wayne Scraba

Here are some details on pieces I used in the rear suspension on Buford. I think you can also get some useful rear suspension tuning info from the following as well:
I used upper and lower trailing arms from TRZ Race Cars (I have parts from both AutoFab and TRZ – both companies have really, really nicely finished hardware). This first photo shows the rear end setup before the gas tank was installed and before the brakes and other pieces were completed. I spent a lot of time concerning myself with the suspension geometry on the car, and as I probably mentioned previously, I’m not big on altering the instant center by a huge amount. I’ve seen so called “lift bars” actually oval the holes in suspension mount points. Folks in the know figure this is because the lift bars are actually attempting to rip the rear end out of the car.



This photo shows upper trailing arms from both TRZ and AutoFab (I picked up a set of uppers and lowers from both companies). TRZ pieces (the ones I installed in the car) are at the top. These components are very nicely welded, have great machining and are finely finished. Both companies also have outstanding reputations within the stock suspension “fast street car” drag race crowd too. In this case, I decided to stick with one manufacturer for rear suspension hardware instead of mixing and matching.



What’s appealing with these pieces is the fact they’re easily adjustable. Some people figure you can adjust the factory four link by way of preload (like folks do with a drag race four link – on those setups, you can shorten the upper right bar to increase the pre-load on the right rear tire; If you lengthen the same bar, then more load is placed on the left rear tire.). That isn’t really correct with a stock style suspension system since the factory four link is triangulated, not parallel. In my case (stock style GM triangulated suspension), the upper bars are used to center the rear end housing from side to side (by adjusting one upper). The upper bars also used to set the pinion angle (by adjusting both uppers the same direction and same amount). The adjuster for the top trailing arm bars is shown in this photo (the build quality here on the TRZ pieces is fabulous by the way):



I removed the top bushings and bushing sleeves from the rear end housing and installed a set of spherical bearings from TRZ Race Cars. Actually, I used the billet bearing retainers from TRZ and swapped out the spherical bearings (exchanging the supplied bearings which I believe are from QA1) for pieces from Aurora Bearing. I’ve always had good success with hardware from Aurora. Their good bearings are manufactured in the USA, and they don’t cheap out by injecting plastic into the piece as a bearing surface (more common on Chinese made bearings than you might think). It’s for this reason that Pro Stock chassis builders such as my old acquaintance, Jerry Bickel use Aurora hardware. The good quality Aurora rod ends are definitely pricey, but I figured I could justify it on this build. By the way, pretty much everywhere you see a spherical bearing or non-solid rod end (there are two solid rod ends used for lower shock mounts), on this car the bearing came from Aurora. And there are a lot of rod ends and bearings in use on this car!





The lower trailing arms I used on the Buick are also from TRZ. In this photo, you can see both the TRZ and the AutoFab pieces. TRZ bars are on the top. The big difference is the Delrin (very hard plastic) bushing on the frame side and an adjuster on the rear end side. The Delrin-equipped bar is more street friendly than one with rod ends on either end (less harsh and less noise). Delrin material doesn’t deflect like poly. That means, for a street driven car, it’s a far superior material. In truth, poly bushings cause “stiction” (where the bushing momentarily seizes) and that causes all sorts of traction tuning issues. The lower bar adjustment is to set the wheelbase on the car (and obviously attempt to simultaneously center the wheels in the wheel well). FYI, this setup allows for minute wheelbase changes. And like their top bars, the TRZ lowers have a fabulous build quality.




When it came to the setup, I didn’t use lift bars. I didn’t use air bags. I didn’t use trick springs (the stock six cylinder springs are in the car). And as you’ve probably gathered, I didn’t use revised suspension geometry either. So how do you make these things hook? The key is in the anti-roll bar along with the shock absorbers. To pre-load the suspension in an A or G-Body, a sway bar (anti-roll bar or “ARB”) is most often used. When the car is driving straight down the road, an anti-roll bar is effectively in a “neutral” position. That means it has no effect upon the way the car feels or works (drives, rides, handles). It also has no effect upon ride height. Get on the throttle though, and the anti-roll bar counteracts torque rotation. Increasing the diameter of a stock rear bar or using a weld-in anti-roll bar (like the really cool TRZ piece I used), allows you to tune the amount of torque rotation the car has. The beauty of the weld-in ARB is that you can physically climb under the car and adjust the links that locate the bar to the rear axle housing. That means you can add or subtract pre-load at will. And it’s pretty easy to disconnect or disable should it be desired.



The other key at the rear of the car is the shock absorber arrangement. I wanted a high quality double adjustable shock here. It just so happened that Strange Engineering is now building high quality aluminum body shocks in the USA. They’ve been a Koni distributor for a long time, and it was only natural for them to branch out into shock absorbers. Both adjusters (rebound and compression) for each of the back shocks are located at the base (because of the adjuster size and location, I had to rotate the shock at the lower mount).



In the Buick adjustment is super easy to set. I set the rebound first. For a baseline, I set the rebound adjuster to the hardest (full clockwise) position. This means the shock will be hard to extend. Basically, this means the body will not be separating easily. It’s essentially a very conservative starting point.



Next, I set the compression adjuster to full soft (full counterclockwise) position. This means the shock will be easy to compress. The car will droop at the back (again, a very conservative setting to get started). At this point, I can tune the car for various drag strip conditions. When the car is set up for street use, then its easy to turn both adjusters (rebound and compression) to four or five clicks back from full hard). If there’s a need to firm up the handling for some reason, then it’s easy to simply turn both of the adjuster knobs clockwise. As you can imagine, these shocks from Strange are super nice pieces. It's not necessary to remove the shocks from the car for adjustment either. You simply crawl underneath and twist knobs (no tools are required either).



That’s it for now, but I’ve found a couple of pix of the front end pieces, and I’ll see if I can find a few more. When I do that and find some time to add some captions, I’ll post them here. Til next time!


Wayne Scraba

[markjohnson]

Neat stuff, Wayne. I ran my "G" body Drag Radial car initially with an un-adjustable Hotchkiss rear suspension, air bags, and 200 LBS of sandbags in the trunk! First few passes with the "big" motor required holding the steering wheel quite crooked, just to make the car go straight and to keep it off the guardrail! Really made for some scary passes. I installed an adjustable Metco rear suspension (I really like their stuff), QA1 adjustable rear shocks, and a stock F41 rear sway bar from the local junkyard. After setting the correct pinion angle with only the upper left arm installed, I'd re-install the upper right arm and then shorten it a full turn. This actually made the car sit a little higher in the right rear at static rest but would level out beautifully at the launch. I also stiffened up the right rear shock with the dial, totally de-flated the air bags, and was able to get rid of that 200 LBS of sand in the trunk! It took a long time to get all this sorted out and once done, these little things really worked out great for me and the car would launch and track straight. It became very easy to drive.....straight like a missle, compared to how terrible it first was. Mind you, this was all on a BF Goodrich 275-60 Drag Radial back when they were the only manufacturer of Drag Radials. These days, I hear the Mickey Thompson Drag Radial is far superior and quite an incredible tire for getting power to the ground.