Skylark with a V6 4bbl?

[Z28SSMAN]

A kid I went to HS with had a V6 with a 4bbl. I think it was a '64 and for sure had a 3 on the tree and burned a lot of rubber. Sounded weird though.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buick_Skylark

I also remember seeing a 215 with a 4bbl on it. Wonder why such a small cube?

[Fast One]

I remember the odd-fire Fireball V6 w/4-bbl carb. I don't think they came stock with the 4-bbl, however. The later version that Jeep made did come with a 4-bbl, though. They sounded strange because six jugs with a 120-degree crank in a 90-degree V-block doesn't come out even. #1 jug fires, then #6 fires 150 degrees later, then #5 fires 90 degrees later, then #4 fires 150 degrees later, then #3 fires 90 degrees later, then #2 fires 150 degrees later. They sound even stranger with dual exhausts. I remember hearing some of 'em with duals at dirt tracks when I was a kid. That'll definitely turn your head when you hear it! You can see the odd firing order by looking at the distributor cam lobes. Buick fixed that in '77 with an offset-pin crank & offset rods, which turned it into the first even-fire 90-degree production V6 in the world.




The Buick 215 aluminum V8 is a very interesting engine with an even more interesting history. It was developed way back in the late 40s, and was used in Buick's 1951 LeSabre concept car. (Harley Earl had a thing about his concept cars - they had to be street-legal daily-drivers.) The car was wildly revolutionary! The body was aluminum, magnesium, and fiberglass. It was powered by a blown & injected version of the 215 aluminum V8. It was also a dual-fuel car that could run on gasoline or methanol! It had a rear-mounted automatic trans, a 12V electrical system, heated seats, electrically-operated hideaway headlights, a water-sensing power top, and integrated electric jacks at all 4 corners for changing tires. (Decades later, F1 cars copied the integrated jacks, and a version of the engine even won the '66 & '67 F1 world championships!)

It was Harley Earl's daily-driver until '59. He put over 60,000 miles on it. The car still runs today!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0W30ZZHZprc

The Buick 215 made it to production in 1961, as the standard engine in the Buick Special. At just 318 lb, it was the lightest mass-production V8 in the world. It also had hemi heads & domed pistons. External dimensions were the same as the SBC. Up to that point, the nailhead was the only V8 platform Buick had - and the 364, 401, and 425 nailheads all used the same block. It was too big & heavy for the Buick Special's new unibody Y platform. They already had the groundwork done for the 215 aluminum V8, and it made about the same power as Chevy's 283 at the time. I'm pretty sure that's why Buick chose to develop the 215 for their first small-block V8 instead of starting from scratch with a larger engine.

Pontiac also used the Buick 215 in the Tempest & LeMans. Olds had their own version with different heads that was used in the F-85, Cutlass, and Jetfire. The Olds version had cylinder heads and angled valve covers designed by Olds engineers to look like a traditional Olds V8. It was produced on a separate assembly line. The major design differences were in the cylinder heads: Buick used a 5-bolt pattern around each cylinder where Olds used a 6-bolt pattern. The 6th bolt was added to the intake manifold side of the head, one extra bolt for each cylinder, meant to alleviate a head-warping problem on high-compression versions. So Olds heads fit on Buick blocks, but not vice versa. Changing the compression ratio on the Olds 215 required changing the heads, but only the pistons needed to be changed on the Buick 215.

Buick upped the compression on the 4-bbl version to 11:1 in '63, which resulted in 200 HP @ 5000 RPM & 240 lb-ft @ 3200 RPM. In '62 & '63, Olds made a crazy water/alcohol-injected turbocharged version with 10.25:1 compression that put out 215 HP @ 4600 RPM & 300 lb-ft @ 3200 RPM on 5 pounds of boost. The water/alcohol injection system had a means of cutting the boost if the injection tank ran dry.

Unfortunately, the engine's high production cost led to its cancellation after the '63 model year. It had a very high scrap ratio, due to hidden block porosity problems that caused serious oil leaks. Another problem was clogged radiators from antifreeze mixtures that were incompatible with aluminum. It was said that one of the major issues was that the factory had to make extensive use of air-gauging to check for casting leaks during the manufacturing process, but was unable to detect leaks on blocks that were as much as 95% complete. This raised the cost of complete engines to more than that of a comparable all cast-iron engine. Casting-sealing technology was not advanced enough at that time to prevent the high scrap rates.

The Buick 215's very high power-to-weight ratio made it immediately interesting for automotive and marine racing. Mickey Thompson entered a stock-block Buick 215-powered car in the 1962 Indy 500. From 1946-1962, there had not been a single stock-block car in this race series. In 1962, the Buick 215 was the only non-Offy powered entry in the field of 33 cars. Rookie driver Dan Gurney qualified 8th and raced well for 92 laps before blowing the transmission.

Surplus engine blocks of the Olds 215 formed the basis of the Australian F1 Repco V8, which was used by Brabham to win the F1 world championship in '66 & '67. No other American stock-block engine has ever won an F1 championship.

The basic Buick 215 went on to become the well known Rover V8, which still remains in limited production. The Range Rover V8 utilized the Buick-style pistons, heads, and valve train gear. The engine was also used in the Morgan +8.

In the mid-'80s, hot-rodders discovered that the 215 could be stretched to as much as 305 cid by using the crank from the Buick 300, new cylinder sleeves, and some aftermarket parts. It could also be fitted with high-compression heads from the Morgan +8. Using Rover's 5-liter block & crank, 318 cid is theoretically possible.

The engine was so advanced for its time that the basic design was eventually scaled-up to become the Buick SB 350 and BB 400/430/455.

Joel

[Fast Eddy]

The alum v8 was sold to Rover and is still in production today as a crate engine!
http://ateupwithmotor.com/model-hist...00-v6-history/

[Z28SSMAN]

Good info Joel. Interesting article Eddy. I never knew the origin of the 3800.

[Fast One]

Yeah, Eddy - thanks for posting that article! Definitely ties things together.

My first experience with the 215 was back in the mid 70s, when my best friend Al (RIP) & fellow hot-rodder was looking for a cheap wagon to use as a dd. We were trying out some used iron at a dealer in the next town, but the cars were painfully slow & boring. Then we saw this maroon '63 F-85 wagon. We popped the hood, and to our surprise we saw a V8 with a 4-bbl perched on top! We couldn't figure out what the hell it was (the dealer had no clue either). At first, we thought it was an Olds 330, but it didn't look big enough. A bit of rubbing revealed an aluminum intake! A bit more rubbing revealed aluminum heads! Now we were totally baffled.

Of course, we took it for a test-drive. When we were out of earshot of the dealership, Al punched it from a dead stop. It set us back in our seats pretty good for a wagon, and the rear tires went up in smoke! We looked at each other simultaneously with a WTF?? look on our faces that turned into big grins. We drove back to the dealer & Al bought the car on the spot!

When we got back to his place, we looked the engine over more closely, and discovered an aluminum block! That was a real head-scratcher. We did some digging in his Chilton's manual & found the strange 215 V8! His had factory 12.5:1 compression, which explained why it was so much quicker than we had expected.

After giving it a thorough going-over, we took it out for a speed run, mentally counting the gears as it up-shifted. First, then second, and awhile later, third. But then something strange happened when it hit around 70 MPH. Fourth! OK, now that was just plain strange. Al stopped the car & we counted the gears again. Sure enough, the goofy automatic seemed to shift three times, although the column shifter only showed three forward gears!

Back to the books, we learned about the oddball automatic. It was one strange tranny. A full mush-a-matic in first, but then it felt like a straight-stick in second, back to mush-a-matic mode in third, and back to feeling like a straight-stick in high. What the hell??? Digging deeper into the books, we learned that it emptied the fluid-coupling torus in second & locked-up solid with a clutch like a modern car with a locking converter, then refilled the torus in third, then emptied it again & locked-up solid for direct-drive in high gear. I think it only had 3 actual gears, but it locked-up the 1st & 2nd planetaries to get the extra shift into 1:1. At least, that's how I remember it from reading the book nearly 35 years ago.

That odd little wagon could easily bury the needle on a top-end run! Using the mile-markers & a stopwatch, we clocked it at nearly 130 MPH on a cool day with a tank of Clark Super 100!

We soon discovered the problem with the crazy compression ratio. Despite the aluminum heads, it was not drivable on anything but the highest-octane gas you could find. It loved Clark Super 100, as well as 100/105 AvGas. But it hated anything else! Then we discovered the electrolysis issue. The owner's manual recommended pure antifreeze, but that doesn't work in a northern MN winter as it tends to gel-up. So he used a standard mix. After awhile, the engine developed an overheating problem. We popped the radiator cap & found a bunch of white stuff stuck to the cores. It wouldn't come off. I figured it must be aluminum that was electroplated onto the brass. Sure enough, some more digging proved my hunch to be true.

We went hunting for a replacement radiator in the boneyards, only to find that most had the same problem. So he ended up swapping to a radiator from a Buick Special that had the cast-iron V6. Of course, that radiator eventually ended up in the same state. He ended up warping a head because of it. We also looked for more 215s in the boneyard, but the ones we found all showed signs of overheating damage. That was the end of our 215 V8 escapades.

It wasn't until years later that we learned about the crank-swaps & hop-ups for the 215. But by then, Al had moved on to monster engines such as the Olds 425 Super Rocket that we dropped into his '66 Chevelle 2-door hardtop. Then I introduced him to the 67 Buick 400 GS engine from my totaled '67 GS 400 4-speed ragtop. We dropped it into the Chevelle, which turned him into an instant Buick power convert! (Later, we learned that only only 422 GS 400 4-speed ragtops were made & that the car was worth big bucks even in basket-case condition. But when we went back to his dad's land to resurrect the car, we discovered that his dad had sent all of the old cars to the crusher. Sadly, the mighty GS 400 was gone.)

Joel

[Guest]

62 F85 215