The Silver Buick's well Silver Buick!

[Scott Liggett]

Great read, Randal! Thanks for sharing.

Does Galina want to go again?

[eligould]

vacations don't get much better than that in my book!

[DanStokes]

EXCELLENT!! What a great way to show The Bride this strange and interesting nation.

Dan

[TheSilverBuick]

Thanks and thanks! She may not so willingly volunteer to go again, but it certainly was a good experience.

I just remembered something else in regard to the engine performance. I think my throttle body may be too small or the throttle isn't opening all the way. Since the TPS sensor wasn't working I was relying on vacuum readings to determine where the throttle was and noticed that even at WOT the engine was pulling a fair amount of manifold vacuum. The MAP and baro sensors were reading identically when the engine was off (key on), but going down the track the MAP was 6-9 kPa less than the barometer. Removing the air filter did not change it either. Its supposed to be a 1,000cfm, but it is also the cheapest one I could find in 2008 when I bought it. May be time to upgrade, but a bigger one would probably require the intake manifold to be cut on to a dominator size flange, so hopefully its just a throttle cable adjustment.

[SuperBuickGuy]

eek, you're having trouble at half the hp that mine will have with the turbos.... sounds like I'm going to have to be creative.

[mike343sharpstick]

Thanks for the write-up, what an adventure! Wow.
Keeping these cars on the road is never ending, UGH.

It’s interesting how most of us pretty much build our cars by ourselves in our garages, then strike out into the wild and hope for the best. At least when you build everything yourself you usually know what’s broken when things get weird.

My wife use to travel with me all around the Midwest when I was racing (Before the Children) and while it wasn’t always fun and games, we had some great adventures that we look back on and have lots of laughs now. Down the road you and your new bride will surely have lots of adventures to reminisce about.
In my book, it’s about satisfaction more than fun.

Once again I didn’t make it to watch the drag week fun when it was near by because real life got in the way :/

[squirrel]

heh...Drag Week is about as "real life" as it gets!

[74NovaMan]

Congrats on the successful trip and thanks for sharing!

[wrp]

Fascinating road trip. I saw the orange GTO you were sitting next to in one of the shots. I think he is from our neck of the woods and James Karger is his tuner. James was there with a white mustang sporting twin turbos as well.

[mrocketscience]

Looks like fun, I hope to make the trip one day. It's on the list of things to do along with Power Tour.

[TheSilverBuick]

I found a video HotRod posted of every launch during Sunday's test n' tune. Clearly see me hit my 4500rpm limit and the engine cut off, lol.

I turned the speed down to 1/4 speed in the video settings

https://youtu.be/qUmQN4IRBLQ?t=4m7s

[oletrux4evr]

You guys are still my idols, great report about a great adventure!

[TheSilverBuick]

Watching the re-runs here is my car on Day 1. A lot to be desired on my gear shifting abilities, my slowest run of the week Awesome Brian commentary though!

https://youtu.be/0uLf0Cbx4Zw?t=4h3m7s

[Stewzer55]

"Do you know where Ely is? Neither does Randal."

Biggest thing I noticed is Holy Reaction time Randal! Were you having traction problems?

[TheSilverBuick]

Nope, 1.1+ second reaction times were the norm because the Pro-Tree time. Because I didn't have the two-step set up I wanted to make sure I was at 3,000rpm for launching, not under or not much over, and by the time I brought the rpms up, was satisfied it was stable and let the clutch out, 1.5+ seconds had elapsed.