Speed: The one that got away until it didn’t

Nearly 30 years after that night, I decided it was time for me to get a Grand National of my own. I looked all over the place but the cars on offer were either too expensive or needed too much work to be reliably driven. I toyed with the idea of getting a GNX but those were orders of magnitude too pricey so I kept checking auction sites and dealer sites to see what I could find.

Finally in 2018, an honest 22k-mile Grand National popped up on Bring a Trailer. I decided to try and win the auction, but the final bid exceeded my budget and the search continued. However, in March 2020 the same car popped up again. It had been sorted out a bit and looked really beautiful. I told myself there was no way in hell I would lose the car again and ended up as the top bidder as the clock closed out the auction. Unfortunately, the reserve wasn’t met but post-auction I got in touch with the seller and we made a good deal for both of us. As a bonus, the seller was a racecar driver who I had admired for years and he made the transaction and transportation impossible easy. Thanks Paul!

Speed: New friends

After the auction ended, I was able to chat with the original owner of the car who owned it until it sold in 2018. He told me the history of the car and also that it was named “Speed” for some pretty obvious reasons. He had really loved the car and just put it away for special occasions which explained the crazy low miles and pristine condition that Speed was in. He told me how a few little dings had happened and walked me through the paperwork that came with Speed and told the story of the last 33 years. We rang off and I went out just to sit in Speed and soak up all that history.

Speed came with her original rims and tires from 1987 and a spare set of rims and tires the original owner bought in 2018 so that he could drive Speed around before he sold her. The original Goodyears were hard as rocks and super sketchy anywhere over 40 MPH so I swapped the tires on the spare rims on to the original rims and got to work learning how to drive Speed.

While Speed is not fast in today’s measures, the run to 60 MPH is thrilling and the turbo V6 has power all over the map. Speed is great fun to drive and draws a crowd at every stop light, gas station, or parking lot. It’s hard not to spin the tires in first gear when you accelerate and the transmission shifts hard enough into second to bark the tires nearly every time. Great fun for sure!

Speed: Them’s the brakes

After a few weeks of driving around, I noticed that the Brake warning light would come on when I backed out of the garage. Pretty soon the light would come on every time I hit the brakes and the pedal felt really soft.

Turbo Buicks from this era used a brake system that was called the “Power Master”. Since there is not a great deal of vacuum to be had with a turbo engine, GM designed a system that would generate and then store vacuum for power assisted braking. The main components of the system are the vacuum pump and then the “accumulator ball” which is a globe shaped reservoir that bolts to the master cylinder. The ball is filled with pressurized gas which pushes against a rubber membrane inside the ball. When the pump first turns on, the ball is filled with pressurized brake fluid which then can be pushed back into the system to provide assistance in pressing brake pads and shoes towards the brake friction surfaces of the rotors and drums.

After doing some diagnostic tests, I figured out Speed’s ball had failed over time which was not an unreasonable failure as the original ball was still in place. I ordered up a new ball from Kirban Performance and the installation was as simple as draining off some brake fluid, swapping the balls, and then refilling the system with fresh fluid. The brakes were now much firmer and I could stop Speed with much more confidence than before. Job done!

Speed: Bumped off

Many GM cars in the ‘70’s and ‘80’s used flexible urethane “fillers” in between the bumper and the body of the car in order to allow the bumpers to move in and out without damaging the body when the bumper took a hit. These fillers worked great when they were new but over time they tend to oxidize and then crumble into dust. When Speed arrived, the previous owner had replaced the left front filler panel but the right front and rear panels were still in place and looking pretty sad.

So, to replace the fillers there are two options. One option is to buy reproduction flexible panels and then get them painted. The other option comes from a company called Spoolfool Productions and is a set of fiberglass panels that are gel coated in a color that is super close to the original black paint so there is not really a need to paint them unless you want to have a perfect match. This solution also replaces the two-piece seamed panel in the rear with one smooth continuous panel. After talking to the owner of Spoolfool I chose that route and bought the fillers from Classic Industries down in Orange County.

Getting the old fillers out is a bit of work but if you are diligent about soaking the fasteners beforehand in penetrating oil it’s not too ugly of a job. For the front, I had to remove the headlight bezels and move some wiring around but the filler came out pretty easily and then literally disintegrated as soon as I sat it on the floor. The rear was a bit tougher and required some assistance from my son as we had to take the super heavy bumper off in order to fit the rear panel. I went ahead and cleaned and repainted some bits that had corrosion on them while everything was apart and then installation was the reverse of removal with plenty of blue painters tape in place to prevent scratches. I did have to expand a few holes in the new panels for a perfect fit but they went in easily and looked the business. The panels made a huge difference in the car’s overall appearance so it was a really nice upgrade.

Speed: Radiohead

Speed’s interior is one of the nicest parts of the car as it looks and smells like a new car would. However, the radio sounded pretty bad and the right channel was not working at all. I also didn’t notice it but the clock was remaining on all the time without the key turned. This never ran the battery down when I was driving Speed once or twice a week but a stay at a local repair shop for fluid changes and sorting resulted in the battery going completely flat to the point that it could not be recharged. The 400 or so mA drain resulted from a blown capacitor in the radio’s guts that would stay open instead of shutting off when the ignition was off.

After trying to find a good local shop to fix the old radio, I decided to check and see if there were any stock appearing units on the market. This lead me to Retro Sound which is a company that packs modern electronics into head units that look just like the original radios in vintage cars. Their New York faceplate was a perfect match and I paired it with the Motor 4 main unit to get Bluetooth connectivity, plenty of power to run the stock speakers, a built-in microphone for phone calls, and a ton of additional hookups like USB ports, 3.5mm jacks, subwoofer output, and amplifier plugs.

The first step to remove the radio was to pop off the panel that surrounded the climate and radio controls. It came off easily without any cracks or damage and I don’t think that the panel had ever been removed since the car was built. The radio was held in by 4 7mm screws which also came out easily. After fighting with the wiring plugs for a bit and shifting the car into Drive for clearance, the radio was out.

The Retro Sound kit to install the radio is incredibly well thought out and easy to put together. The kit has all the correct plugs and wires to hook up to the factory harness. After some time with the heat gun and some shrink wrap the harness was ready to go.

As the manual says, installation was the reverse of removal. I reused the mounts off the old radio and everything slid into place. I suspected the right side speakers may have been blown but they fired right up and sounds pretty nice without any fooling with the settings in the head unit. I was able to set the lighting to match the factory lighting colors and the unit was very easy to program and use. The battery stopped discharging and as a bonus I now have a radio that has all the modern features with the vintage look. Well done Retro Sound!

Speed: The birth of an obsession

When I was a kid, I somehow managed to talk my parents into buying me a brand new 5.0 Ford Mustang LX. While it was a dream come true, it really was not a great idea for me to own a muscle car and before long I wadded that poor car into a shiny grey metallic ball while I was doing something dumb.

Before the LX became spare parts, I ran into a car one night on Foothill Boulevard that made quite a mark on me. I was headed out to meet some friends for pizza when I rolled up to the stop sign at Foothill and Crown Avenue right next to my high school. There was another car at the light that looked to be an early ‘80’s Buick Regal that had seen some tough miles. The dude behind the wheel had a pretty impressive comb-over and a black metallic Members Only jacket so I revved my engine a bit just to show him who was the boss in this neighborhood. It should be noted that this stoplight was about a mile from the Jet Propulsion Labs which will become relevant in a moment.

To my surprise, the Regal pilot revved back and pointed down Foothill with a pretty sizable smirk on his face. I was having none of that action so I pulled my parking brake with my finger on the button to approximate a line lock and readied the Mustang for a wicked launch. Just as the light across from us went yellow I heard a weird whooshing sound and some vapor shot out from near the Regal’s wiper cowl.

The light went green and the Regal took off with the front wheels slightly off the ground with the body torqued over to the right in the air. I stalled the Mustang and then furiously restarted and rushed to the next light. The Regal driver was laughing now so I tried to tree him again and he waxed me like an aesthetist at a beauty salon. His right-hand turn signal lit up just as we passed Foothill VW/Pontiac so I followed him into the parking lot to try and see what had just turned my world upside down.

The driver was waiting for me and if I remember right his name was Steve. He was still laughing and told me not to feel too bad as he popped the hood and motioned me over. Turns out Steve was literally a rocket scientist and his Regal was very far from stock. The car had started like as a Grandma-spec V6 but he had found the powertrain out of a wrecked Buick GNX and stuffed it in there along with some seriously trick parts like nitrous oxide injection, a snorty torque converter, and suspension goodies that helped the car launch like a Saturn V. After some good natured chat, we said goodbye and he headed into the store to buy some groceries and I headed off to meet my friends at a local pizza joint. No one believed that I got my ass handed to me by a Buick but I learned not to mess with them on the street from then on.

After that night, I saw many of the Turbo Buicks on the street and at the strip. They were always wonderfully menacing and the memory of that night stuck in my head.

Speed: Shocking news

When you first start to drive a new addition to the fleet, there’s a steep curve learning which things are just quirks and which things are the harbingers of a failed or failing part. Speed had a super comfortable couch-like ride but I began to notice that the car smashed down pretty hard over speedbumps and there were also a number of creaks and groans coming from the suspension on slow turns. I also began to notice that the car was sitting a bit unevenly at times with the right side being ever so slightly lower than the left side. When I had spoken to the original owner he had mentioned that he had changed the rear shocks a few times but that he couldn’t remember exactly when that happened.

After getting Speed up on the Quick Jack lift, I could see that the shocks were the “Big A” brand that were sold by an auto parts chain that has been defunct since 1998 so they were definitely vintage units. I could also see that someone had run the top bolts on the front shocks down with a big ol’ Ugga-Dugga gun as the nuts looked beat to hell and the threads looked like they had been stripped a bit. The lower shock bolts also were super tight and one of the factory mounting tabs broke off as I was trying to remove the bolt from the control arm. It turned out all the front mounting points were massively cross threaded primarily due to a mismatch between SAE and metric fasteners being combined. I soundly cursed the Mr. Badwrench that decided just to send it with an impact gun rather than getting matching fasteners. The front right shock was also completely shot and puked out all of its fluid when I tried to compress it to see how bad it was which would explain the uneven ride height. I tried to use the factory approach by fitting new mounting tabs to the control arms but after fiddling with getting everything to line up correctly for far too long I decided to ditch the tabs and just use Grade 8 bolts and lock nuts to get everything snugged down.

With the front shocks sorted, it was time to get after the rear shocks.  As with the front everything was over-torqued and the mounting bolts were nearly impossible to get off as the nuts fitted to the bolts are buried under the body which requires some serious yoga moves and luck to get to them. After many attempts I finally managed to get all four bolts off and removed the shocks.  I sourced a clever replacement bolt system from KDS Performance that uses a U-shaped bolt to eliminate the hidden nuts in case I ever have to take off the rear shocks in the future.

Now that everything was in place Speed was sitting level and a quick test drive confirmed that upgrading to the Bilstein B6 units was the right call. I did note some fluid leaks and other issues while I was crawling around under the car so Speed’s next trip was to Center City Automotive.Type your paragraph here.