74sprint

Since we’re on the topic of BBO X-bodies I thought I would throw mine in. It’s a 74 Ventura Sprint and it’s a great bracket basher. The car is very consistent usually within .001-.003 on the dial-in, too bad the driver isn’t as good. I have the car setup to run 12.79@111 but it has gone 12.37@114 with mybuddies Torker intake which I just bought from him, 36 degrees timing, and a 800 DP, anything quicker and it starts to spin the slicks. Best time on a cold day was 11.98@118with the Torker, 36 degrees, and a 1050 Holley. I believe this is the best I’m going to get with unported ‘G’ heads, we were at -1000 ft that day. I paid $250 for the 112,000 mile engine & tranny from the wrecker.



Anyway here are the numbers:
Stock 1970 Hi-compression 455 with:
Stock nodular iron crank (Polished only)
Stock 10.25:1 pistons
Stock rods with APR bolts
New bearings, rings, oil pump & CroMoly pump drive, Mondelo mains oil restrictors.
Stock unported ‘G’ heads with 2.0” Int. &1.62” Ex.
Stock rockers, upgraded springs, and used AMC in-line 6cyl pushrods, .060 longer for the small base circle cam. The pushrods have thicker walls and are oil restricted.
Engle hydraulic cam: 2728H, Valve Lift IN. .555" EX. .555", Advertised Duration I-292° E-300°, Duration at .050” I-248° E-256°, Lobe Center 108°.
Turbo 400 (No rebuild) with B&M shift improver kit (stage 2) and a 3400 stall torque convertor.
Hurst Quarter Stick
10 bolt rear-end with 4:11gears and a used ‘S’ spring style posi (needs rebuilding), also stock 28 spline axles. Changed leaf springs from mono to 5 leaf.
29x12x15 Goodyear slicks

I made my own traction bars and solid motor mounts. I was dimpling the hood with the air cleaner center bolt when I had the stock rubber mounts. My friend made a cable holddown on the drivers side by using 3/8” aircraft steel but, after 2 passes it was stretched out and the carb center bolt started hitting again. I don’t know the strength of the cable but I know it’s a lot. The Engle cam is a good racing cam for a small blocks and a wicked high torque street cam for 455’s. The cam is ok for drag racing but makes a ton of torque from 3500 to 4500 rpm, I’ll be retarding the cam to try and move the torque higher in the rpm band this year, it’s a bit weak at 5500-6000 rpm. I normally run 10 psi in the tires and unless the track is very sticky I will spin the tires for the first 100ft, almost kissed the guard rail once. I took a bunch of timing out and it’s ok now, slower but consistent.Normally I do the 1-2 shift at 6,500 and the 2-3 shift at 6,000 rpm. The car revs up so quickly that it is just to difficult to get the 1-2 at 6,000 rpm.Usually by time I look at the tach it’s going past 6,000. On a good traction day I can get light under the front tires and yes I said I have 10 bolt 8.5" rear-end. These are a lot tougher than people realize, mind you I'm sure I have twisted the axles some.

My nephew has been bugging me to get the car going again and to teach him some more racing stuff so I would like to go all out, I was going to wait 1-2 more years. Future mods call for a 6-71, 8-71 blower or even a 6 or 8V92, gives more clearance. I‘ve been thinking of doing a 511CID with .125 over 8.5 or 9.0:1 pistons, 4.5”stroker crank with H-beam chevy rods, Wenzler heads, custom intake, mechanical roller cam and roller rockers, I have the springs and I bought an electric water pump drive. Use a MegaSquirt EFI with staged injectors and make it look like old school. Add an external oil cooler, full halo/gridle on the mains, and a water-water-air after-cooler. Rebuild and upgrade the tranny to full manual with trans-brake and get anti-ballooning plates put on the converter,stall will stay the same. I have a 31 spline Ford 9” for the car which will go good with a 4-link and a back-half job. If I do all this and I most likely will, I’ll start a thread so others can follow along.


Cheers

Ray

Here some old pictures. The car is in all primer right now from body work and those stupid flares are gone.

The_Jeremiah

beautiful 74sprint!

sorry I haven't been on guys, life has been busy, i have been making progress though, the fenders are almost done ( patching rust) I also had to take a break fix up a car trailer and bring it home, my dad gave it to me but he is 5 hours away haha.

my goal is to have it running and driving after winter. ill will post some more pictures soon!

The_Jeremiah

Guys, I promise I will post pictures soon! We suffered a death in the family a few weeks ago, kinda messed up my schedule, I am ok, but have been very busy! If everything goes as planned we will have paint this winter. still doing the metal work, I have 1 fender done I need to do the other. cheers gentlemen!

The_Jeremiah

Here is the driver fender I am about done with, i forgot to take a picture of the patching, but basically i cut out 2 squares out from the bottom of the fender, and carefully patched it, ground all the welds down and it actually turned out really good. the body filler at its thickest point might be 1/8 of an inch. very happy

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The_Jeremiah

other fender, work in progress hope to have this fender mostly done before Christmas!
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nonhog

Progress! Way to go!

The_Jeremiah

I am in no way a body man, dont have the patience for it, I am doing my own body work for 2 reasons, 1 I am broke, 2 Its my car, and I feel I am going to spend more time on it than Joe Blow down the street trying to make a buck. I have painted cars in the past, not something I love though. Here is the fender prepped for some plastic, I dont think its that bad!

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The_Jeremiah

Got to finish this at work yesterday, trying to get this thing done!

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The_Jeremiah

I had the opportunity to take my car to work for the weekend, going to try and get this back passenger side done!

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Here is the metal i removed, and plan to replace tomorrow

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nonhog

Got a pic from further back?
Lucky you can use your work like that.

The_Jeremiah

made some great progress today, all sheet metal work

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The_Jeremiah

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this one is from the inside of the fender
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The_Jeremiah

almost done with this side of the car

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Eddie Hansen

Metal work looks great, itsva lot of work welding..... great job

The_Jeremiah

thank you, its been a lot of work!

The_Jeremiah

Got some more done today, here is a bracket I made to mount the slave cylinder
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here is the bracket and slave cylinder mounted on the motor
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I haven't decided if I want to re-engineer this or not. I am very limited on room, I can't use a pull style, I would prefer to stay away from a concentric style release bearing. I have a slight misalignment in the fork/slave. I might try just a stock style fork, the HD one I got accepts a heim joint, but it seems a bit short.

The_Jeremiah

Here is the car as of last weekend, got a lot done! had to remove motor/trans, install proper bellhousing bolts, make a few mods to trans, fill with fluid, installed heater (converted to BB heater). Went and found a perfect driveshaft for the car from the boneyard, got a conversion u-joint to hook it up to the ford rear axle. Got my hydraulic clutch all sorted out, working on putting battery in the trunk and getting the car to run under its own power to go to a big car meet locally on the 7th of next month. Cheers guys!

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nonhog

That looks tough right there!
Not sure of my schedule but might give you a call next weekend.
Going to Suncadia weekend of 27th. You around?
Love to see my old car.

The_Jeremiah

I have to run over to Spokane briefly on the 28th. I imagine I will be back by like 4 or 5 in the evening. That leaves saturday evening / sunday. I would love it if you can find the time. You are only about 30 minutes away from me in suncadia I believe. One of these days if I ever get it done Ill bring it over to that side of the mountain for some sort of event ha-ha!

young olds

you gotta bring it to pacific raceway or somthing over here, i wanna see it. i think we are 2 of 3 that have a t56 bolted to an olds.

The_Jeremiah

You mean we are 2 of the 3 that are stubborn enough to tackle such a job ha-ha. Yea for sure, the best part of the oldsmobile world is the people, its really nice to still be friends with the person I bought the car from, not something that happens everyday. I also like to hit some of the swap meets on that side so that would be another opportunity

oldcutlass

Looking great, what did you do for the clutch fork fix?

TripDeuces

"The car is very consistent usually within .001-.003 on the dial-in"

I'm crying BS on that. Maybe .1-.3 but not thousandths. My last race in my 70 Cutlass I dialed in a 8.00. I went through the lights standing on the brake pedal all tires smoking because I knew I was flying and caught the sand bagger in the other lane. I lost by .003 of a second because he was quicker on the brake. Consistent by a tenth is believable but not by thousandths.

TripDeuces

Damn nice work Jeremiah. As constant as the Northern Star.

young olds

im thinking of going to the monroe swap meet, maybe others. let me know which ones you decide to go to.

wr1970

I don't care what anyone says that car is looking real good! Nice to see someone with skills.

young olds

still waiting for your contribution to the t56 behind an olds thread... i dont want to be the only one especially since you've gone about it pretty much every different way from the possible

botmbulb

I can't answer for the other gentleman, but I can assure you it is possible to make a car run within a few thousandths.
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The_Jeremiah

The clutch fork is just a hair too short, but since I am using a hydraulic slave with a pushrod, im not too concerned about it. We will see if it works soon.

Thank you very much sir!

I will keep you in the loop! I always try to hit up the monroe swap meet, there is a guy named Gary that deals in only oldsmobile stuff every year!

Thank you! buying the house really slowed it down, but I am getting past some huge milestones lately!

I apologize, I haven't been on, I will make a post in a bit!

Those are some very impressive passes!


I made some progress, working on getting battery relocated and power steering hooked up, Radiator core support has been sent out to get powder coated. Cal-Trac bars are on the way!!!!!!! Those guys have the best customer service of any business I have ever dealt with.

The_Jeremiah

Here is the rod end pushrod on the slave
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battery relocated
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trying to show the steering lines for the rack, I used a 74 nova power steering pump reservoir, has a better return line angle for the rack
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The_Jeremiah

So we had a car meet this weekend, which was the driving force for getting a lot of this work done, i am happy to say the car runs and drives! I was able to drive it on and off a trailer no problem at all! When you consider the clutch is a combination of parts i put together on a whim, i cant believe it works ha-ha! So i think its safe to say we have accomplished 2 things: thing 1, the big block swap is accomplished, thing 2, this is 1 way you can put a t56 behind an olds. Here are some pictures from the weekend!

here is the pushrod on the slave

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young olds

looking good, juat got my tranny all buttoned up to the engine and hydraulics finished recently. the pedal feel is good and pedal throw as well. hopefully will be able to drive it by the end of the month.

74sprint

Thanks Botmbulb you saved me from having to dig through a bunch of boxes to find my old time-slips.
Ray

The_Jeremiah

I had to re-do all my plumbing and shower so i haven't touched the car, hoping to get back to it

The_Jeremiah

got this done before the weekend, hoping to continue doing the body work maybe get some paint on it while its still warm out.

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The_Jeremiah

As far as I can tell, this car has never been repainted, so someone please tell me why the color code is A51, which shows Omega Maize or "light yellow" However the car clearly looks like color 50 which is Beige. I looked up a color chip for 50 and its looks perfect for the car in its current state. Any thoughts?

83-425

If i leave my power steering box in the car and buy the 69 cutlass headers,do you think i can motify the header ,maby heat and bend 1 or 2 of the tubes to fit ??

83-425

do you know the part # and brand for the headers??

The_Jeremiah

Is yours a 73 or 74 with the steering box behind the control arms? If so, I tried that exact thing, I can promise you it wont. I almost flattened the 2 center tubes to clear a manual steering box which was smaller than a power, and I was still was rubbing.

My headers are from mondello, I only bought them because they were used for a good price, aside from being stainless, they are identical to the hooker 3902HKR on summit racing

nonhog

Bump!