John Csordas Jr is a Buick guy through and through. Attend just about any Buick event and John and his family will be there with one of their several Buicks. Our favorite ride of theirs right now is the 71 Skylark street car.  Not your common street car, this 71 has a full 25.5 certified chassis from NRC motorsports and is set up to run a drag radial. The car sees some street duty, and is raced in full street trim.  One thing a lot of guys fail to realize is that most of these Buicks are heavy. Like really heavy.  Junior’s car makes the scales whimper, weighing in just a couple of doughnuts short of 4000 lbs.  To run bottom 9’s at 150mph like it does (yeah, you read that right) it has to be making somewhere over 1,000 HP, probably closer to 1100.

Power comes from a stock stroke 455 Buick built by Scotty’s Engine Technology in Florida. The internals are smart, but straightforward. Stock crank, R&R aluminum rods and Wiseco pistons round out the rotating assembly, which is held in check with a Rob Giroux (Precision Billet Designs) halo girdle. The short block is topped off with TA Stage 3 heads and intake. The custom flat tappet camshaft is from Scott Brown at Competition Components, and is around 260@ .050, with .600 lift.  A Procharger F1R making 12lbs of boost and blowing through a Quick Fuel 850, is what makes this combo really hum. All brackets for the Procharger were designed by Cliff Gilman, and fabricated by Precision Billet Design.  A custom 3500 Converter from Lenny at Ultimate converters transfers power to the Mark Deconti Turbo 400 that shifts on its own with the governor set at 6000RPM. So far, the ten bolt with 3.73 gears has managed to hold up under all that power and weight. So far, the car has run a best of 9.12 @ 150 with 12 psi of boost. Hopefully spring of 2010 will show us even more.

Junior  made sure to thank Scott Brown at Competition Components, Bobb and Geoff at Finishline, Precision Billet Design,  TA Performance, Scotty’s racing technology, Deconti Transmission, and Lenny at Ultimate Converters.

Here is a video of John running in the 9.70′s in 2009.

If you saw Brian Sobczykz’s Blue 72 Buick GS at Norwalk this past weekend, you probably thought it was a nice looking 12  second car. It can’t be much faster than that can it? Look at that. It has a stock radiator. Clutch fan and stock water pump. All those stock parts add up in weight. The 72 weighs in around 3900 lbs. The interior doesn’t give away the car’s performance either. Stock bucket seats and full interior. Is that a tilt steering column? Nice car, shame it’s not faster. But it is faster. A lot faster. Brian ran a string of passes between 10.62-10.65  all over 124 MPH. Wow, cool!  Rumor on the street is it’s a stroker motor with a roller cam. But it’s not. The engine is 464 CID  (4.350 bore x 3.90 stroke.) Stock cast crank. Stock rods with ARP bolts. Custom Ross Dished pistons. The heads are ported TA stage 1 units. The TA Single plane intake with a Dominator is one of the few things that give away the car’s potential. It doesn’t even sound radical. The custom 256 at .050 solid flat tappet has a little lope to it, but the X pipe and large case 3″ mufflers tone it down enough that the police barely give it a second look on the way to the local cruise night. The tailpipes running to the bumper complete the sleeper look.  A race converter from PTC custom matched to the cam and the rest of the combination, and transfers power through the TH400 Converter and 4.10 gears.

Update: All good things must come to an end. After 7 years of fun and abuse, Brian’s engine expired at Milan last night, 9/3/2009. Watch for a new combo appearing soon!