- Joined
- May 27, 2001
I remember when I started hanging out with Buick folks back in the early / mid 90's. I got my subscription to the GSCA and went to local chapter meets. Back then I had my '68 GS 400 and most of the crowd were turbo Buick people. They spoke greek to me at the time. Always going on about BLM, TPS, MAF, boost, o2, haha. Anyway, I remember hearing about drama and politics surrounding the nats and those involved. Everyone seemed to be a sheep and follow whatever the newsletter said. When I went to have my big block built ('69 430), I went to a guy that had no ties to the Buick community. That was kind of frowned on, but this guy had built a lot of nice motors, had a Masters degree in engineering, and knew the do's and don't of Buick motors off the top of his head. I was given the 3rd degree by a few after they found out that I was not going to go with the standard "club cam" and that my builder had a custom ground Lunati that came from Torque Tech (or Dork Tech as they called it back then). A couple years later that cam profile popped up all over the place (116 lsa, 235 / 245 duration, .495 / .505 lift I think). I was told it wouldn't work out. With that cam and all the port work done to my '68 heads, my GS was stupid fast. The best part was that I kept a stock intake and exhaust manifolds (match ported) on it and it surprised the hell out of everyone. It was fun to pull away from someone with a 455 that had the 118 cam, Edelbrock or TA intake, headers and pop the hood afterwards. I miss that motor.
I actually came up with Torque Tech's profiles.... for all 3 of their cams. we ran great times with them during testing. I worked with Lunati for quite a while on those before everyone figured out Lunati's Buick cams suck.. not from a performance standpoint but from a "going flat" standpoint.
Ive done a lot more for these cars than I think most people realize.