1970 Buick Skylark
I bought the Buick in 2010 from a friend who had had the car since 1990. He bought it as a restored car but he hadn't been kind to it over the following 20 years of ownership. I got the car because he was tired of dealing with a beat up old car with a leaky roof. I've since replaced all the suspension bushings, brakes, rebuilt engine, interior carpeting, upholstery, and top. Bodywork is next.
22 Oct 2010
Repairing and rebuilding front suspension.
04 Jan 2011
I was driving down PCH 1 on a beautiful Thanksgiving day and the car dies a horrible knocking, cantankerous death. It turns out the temp warning light isn't functioning so I've fried the engine.
I order up a rebuilt engine, it's close to being cheaper than rebuilding myself plus the heads are probably cracked anyhow. The engine arrived late December.
My apologies for the pictures, my camera was dying and I didn't know it...seems to be a trend. ;-)
14 Sept 2015
I took the Buick on the 2015 Melee this year because the Alfa wasn't ready. The Buick was running lean the whole trip and on the first day I blew out both mufflers due to excessive backfiring, but other than that and losing a front hubcap it ran with no real problems.
01 Oct 2015
After running the 2015 California Melee in the Buick I decided that I'd had enough trying to get the carburetor to function properly...not run lean, erratic idle, backfiring, and so on, I decided to install a Megasquirt system. I resisted for so long because I wanted to keep the car stock but at this point I've replaced the engine, the carburator, and much more, to the point where there is no reason to suffer through the foibles and short comings of a 45 year old carburation system.
I bought an Air Sensors 750 cfm 4 barrel throttle body, the same one used on the Alfa, also the same one used in the Accel 77135 kit which is no longer made. I had Bruce, from Auto-nomics.com, machine it up to accept a throttle position sensor and an IAC valve. I had to make the fuel rails and plumbing.
drilling and tapping the fuel rails...
with the hard lines between the fuel rails fabricated and installed
and fitted on the new/old 4 barrel Buick manifold
17 Sept 2017
I finally got around to installing the Air Sensors 750 cfm 4 barrel throttle body. I was trying to get the Skylark ready for the 2017 California Melee but couldn't get the EFI tuned in time. I took the Locost instead.
08 Sept 2018
Once again trying to get the Skylark ready for the Melee. While tuning the EFI I noticed a knocking sound coming from the engine...sounds like a rod knock. I pulled the engine and sure enough cylinders 7 and 8 had spun a bearing.
Pulling the engine
Yup...spun bearings!
While the engine is apart I decided to do a little clean up of casting flashing on the block and con rods as well as cleaning up the cylinder head port bowls.
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