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Archive for May, 2009

Brian Sobczyk’s 10 second pump gas Buick street car

Sunday, May 31st, 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!

Sheldon Brewer’s pump gas 496 Powered Dart

Friday, May 29th, 2009

Sheldon Brewer’s Dart has it all. Literally! That’s why it weighs in at a hefty 3705 lbs with him in it. Things like the full exhaust with power cutouts, cd player, and other creature comforts add considerably to the Dart’s race weight.  That’s a lot more than most race cars.

But with it’s pump gas 496, it runs consistantly in the 10.40’s. That’s pretty quick for a street car! And the engine isn’t some tricked out tempramental race piece either. Sheldon’s 496 is just a well put together pump gas combo. The 496 has a 4.150 stroke 4340 Crank, 6.760 4340 H-beam rods, and a custom Ross Piston that calculates out to 10.7 to 1. Cylinder heads are ported Edelbrocks with the springs, locks and retainers swapped out to accomodate the custom flat tappet cam. The cam is 263/273 @ .050, and has pretty good street manners.  An Edelbrock Victor manifold and a Quick Fuel 1050 (4150 based) carb round out the top end. This engine dyno’d at 654HP and 653lb/ft of torque. Dyno Results here.

A quick online trip to Wallace Racing’s HP/ET calculator, show’s that Sheldon’s car should run in the high 10.38 @ 129, which is pretty close to what it actually runs, so it looks like the HP numbers from the dyno and the real world all work out.  (So much for those that say we test on a happy dyno.)

The rest of Sheldon’s driveline consists of a 9.5″ PTC converter spec’d out to match the custom camshaft, and  4.10 gears drive the Mickey Thompson DragRadials.

Dyno Test – Mike’s Pump Gas 496 HEMI

Tuesday, May 5th, 2009

Basic Parts List: