Frosty

If I think about it, timing at both 12s won’t matter that much since the crank spins twice for every cam revolution. So making sure you are at top dead center when you set up your distributor is the key take away here.

Don’t panic. A couple of quick things to check. Pull your drivers side valve cover off. Rotate the engine to top dead center. Now pull you distributor cap. It should be firing on the number one cylinder. If it’s not, then the distributor is probably 180 degrees out. Next thing to look at is your firing order. Is it in the proper 1-8-4-3-6-5-7-2 order. Now remember that Pontiac distributors rotate counter clockwise! Chevys, Olds, and Buick’s rotate clockwise! So if your wiring is setup for a clockwise firing order, that’s your problem. Lastly double check your timing gear marks. I suspect they are suppose to be at 12 and 6 o’clock. I will have to check the manual on that.

Why not? The first recorded Utopian proposal is called Plato's Republic. Also, if the US is not a utopia, the why do so many people want to either come here and escape from their own wretched countries or blow us off the face of the earth? I will grant you that we are nowhere near perfect or ideal by any stretch of the imagination either. I also don't think a perfect utopia/eutopia exists.

Thank you gentlemen! It was quite a nice and sunny day for a birthday. It was nice to be out with the wife.

I know about the Buick thing - there is a thread about it in the Auto News section already.

So nature abhors a utopia? Or a utopia simply isn't sustainable?

I guess I will have to write an OHC 6 piece next for you and add what Mac Mckellar told me personally about the OHC6 program. DeLorean asked Mac to do a lot with next to nothing budget wise on the Trophy 4 program. I learned more from Sawruk on it.

Thank you Last Indian, thank you Ringo ! It's good to get presents !!! We celebrated my birthday early yesterday with Jacob and my in-laws since the kid was still home on spring break. He had to leave shortly after dinner to head back to college. So I've got a new GMC and a new Pontiac baseball hat A new black Pontiac T-shirt and a very cool red Pontiac sweatshirt. I also got the book GMC The First 100 Years by John Gunnell. I also got some wireless headphones and a HALO Bolt AC/DC Portable Charger & Car Jumper - its a multi-purpose battery pack/charger. I can charge a laptop, tablets, cell phones, or even jump start my car with it. I also got a couple of music CDs I wanted from Styx and Mike Love (of the Beach Boys). http://www.qvc.com/HALO-Bolt-ACDC-PortableCharger-%26-Car-Jumper-with-AC-Outlet-%26-Car-Charger.product.E230549.html?sc=NAVLIST Tonight the wife and I are going out to Red Robin for dinner - free birthday dinner, you know. I love the Royal Red Robin burger! This weekend, my wife is heading out of town for a long weekend of scrap booking with her sister, so my dad and I will got out for a steak dinner.

Awesome looking Sunbird. "Arrest Me" Red never fails to get people's attention. Do you have any plans for it?

I found this article particular observant in today's modern, post-banruptcy GM LLC world. http://www.autonews.com/article/20180226/OEM/180229884/gms-dangerous-game-of-jenga What's truly sad for me is: A. A number of the North American divisions listed in the article were either headquartered or had assembly plants in my home town of Flint Michigan at one time, and they are all but gone now. B. I worked at or supported a number of these divisions through out my 28 years working in the auto industry.

Thanks. DeLorean was a maverick by GM standards of the day, so he ruffled a lot of feathers. So a lot of things he did have gone under appreciated.

I do. You are just the designated mechanic, tool boy! Me too. At least I have her phone number.

No more room for groceries though. Or it becomes a one-seater.

Thanks stratman. A few years before John Sawruk passed away, the Michigan Widetrackers asked him to select a car for "Best Engineered" car at their annual Spring Dustoff car show,. Ater all John was a certified professional engineer (P.E.). John picked a red '63 Tempest convertible with the Indy 4 and the original rope driveshaft. John said he selected it because it was the only car at the show with this unique drivertrain combination. No other Pontiac ever had something like this - before or since.

I found this rather scathing rebuke of Buick taking its name of its cars - from Forbes. The author makes some interesting points. https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidkiley5/2018/03/13/is-gm-mapping-the-end-of-buick-in-america/#5e55483a2e84

A truck full of water plus a 150-shot of nitrous.

What is/was the cost of the upgrade when you did it? These are straight replacement (modern - not NOS) T3 bulbs, not halogen or xenon, correct? I just got the new 2018 National Parts Depot GTO/Tempest/Lemans catalog at the Detroit Autorama a couple of weeks ago. It's their first new GTO catalog in 3 years. On page 172, they offer both a T3-style halogen and T3-style xenon replacement. However you have to purchase 4 new t3 bulb-shaped relfectors to go with the H4 style halogen or xenon bulbs. So these bulb reflectors run around $75-105 a piece. The high or low beam H4 buibs are extra a $6-8 each. A complete set of T3 replacement bulbs cost $170 for all 4 bulbs, 2 low beams and 2 high beams. NPD also offers a Halo LED head light set. What is not clear from the catalog is if this runs $195-250 per bulb (worst case pricing), a pair, or for all four. Of course this comes with a Xenon bulb and 21 LED halo ring that is color adjustable. I have not checked out Original Parts Group (OPGI), YearOne, or Performance Years either. However, you and I are both on the same page in regards to Superbad's question - yes there are options out there. Just not inexpensive ones.

The Trophy 4 engine (sometimes called the Indy 4 engine) is probably the most unique engine Pontiac every developed. Things started back in 1958 when GM was reacting to the rising popularity of imports and it was feeling the effects of the ’58 recession, GM started to develop its own version of a compact cars, starting with the Chevrolet Corvair, with its rear-engine air-cooled flat six engine. Buick, Olds, and Pontiac could have replicated the Corvair but instead chose to go their own way. The ’61 Buick Special and Olds F-85 got a new V6 (which would eventually evolve in the 3800) and a small 215 cu in aluminum V8 – both engines came from Buick. John DeLorean chose to take Pontiac in a different direction and build its own economic engine. The result was a revolutionary approach: a transaxle--adapted from the Corvair--mounted at the rear for good weight distribution, connected to a four-cylinder engine through a flexible steel driveshaft (often called the “rope driveshaft”). DeLorean wanted an inline four for the ‘61 Tempest. The only problem was that Pontiac did not have a 4-cylinder engine in its inventory, and not enough money in the budget to develop a new one from scratch. But it did have its celebrated, 389-cu.in. V-8. Could it be split to make a workable four? In 1959, Pontiac had increased it’s V8’s stroke to 3.75 in, thus raising engine displacement to 388.9 cu in. This was the beginning of factory supplied performance items such as 4 bolt main bearings and windage trays to reduce friction from crankcase oil. The 389 would remain the standard Pontiac V8 engine through 1966. The 389 came in a wide variety of configurations that ranged from 215 to 368 horsepower. The 389 was the standard engine for the Pontiac GTO from 1964 to 1966. Beginning in 1961 the Pontiac V8 389 (and 421) was dubbed the Trophy V8, due to its many victories in racing after just two years. Since the 389 was called the Trophy V8, the new 4-cylinder engine was called the Trophy 4 by extension. In some racing corners, it was called the Indy 4. The Trophy 4 was a 45-degree inclined 194.4 cu inline 4-cylinder engine created from the right bank of the 389. With an identical bore and stroke of 4 1⁄16 in and 3 3⁄4 in, it was precisely half the displacement of the 389. Initial tests were encouraging. A Pontiac V8 with one bank of cylinders disabled was found to be capable of pushing a full-sized Pontiac over 90 miles per hour, with acceptable fuel economy for the day. By using the 389 as the basis for the 4-cylinder, the costs of preparing the four cylinder engine for production were significantly smaller--it shared its pistons, rings, connecting rods and more with the 389, and it even used the same tooling for its cast-iron block, thanks to shared dimensions. The crankshaft, camshaft, oil pan, intake, and other parts were unique to the four cylinder. The engine was offered in three horsepower ratings: 115hp, with 8.6:1 compression and a two-barrel carburetor 140hp, with 10.25:1 compression and a two-barrel 166hp, with 10.25:1 compression and a four-barrel The Trophy 4 was not an ideal compromise or design, by any stretch of the imagination. It retained about two-thirds of the mass of the 389, tipping the scales at a quoted 557 pounds, or 200 pounds more than the optional Buick 215-cu.in. aluminum V8. And its large displacement—194.4 cubic inches, made it prone to significant vibration. There was little the engineers could do about the weight and only so much they could do about the shaking. A downside of the engine’s design and configuration was engine vibration. An inline four-cylinder engine suffers from inherent secondary imbalance resulting from its 180-degree crankshaft. In its design, the two outside cylinders move together simultaneously, as do the two inside cylinders. Due to geometry and the ignition cycle, a piston descending from top dead center will always move quicker through the first 30 degrees of crankshaft travel than a piston moving upward from bottom dead center, meaning that more mass is moving downward than is moving upward, causing a shaking in the vertical plane. Today, engineers consider the installation of twin counter-rotating balance shafts a necessity for engines larger than 122 cu in (2.0 L). The V8-based design of the Trophy 4 lacked balance shafts due to cost (note - balance shafts didn't get popular at GM until the late 1980s/early 1990s). It was instead cushioned by a flexible rubber engine mounts designed to isolate the engine from the rest of the car, and its forces were further dampened by the Tempest's unusual drivetrain (which distributed forces by the engine being bolted directly to a rear-mounted transaxle via the solid outer tube of its driveshaft. The timing chain in the Trophy 4 was originally the same as the 389’s but was prone to stretching and breaking from the inherent engine vibration; therefore a special high-strength version was developed as a replacement. What killed the Trophy 4 was not its tendency to shake, or its habit of snapping timing chains, instead it was Pontiac's decision to move away from the transaxle design when the Tempest was re-designed from a compact to an intermediate for 1964. The slant-four was dropped as the base engine, replaced by the 215-cu.in. straight-six overhead valve engine from Chevrolet (this Chevy straight six lead directly to the development of Pontiac's OHC 6 engine in 1967). Today, the Trophy 4 can be made to produce 300hp in normally aspirated form, and more than 500hp with either a turbocharger or supercharger, if balanced and built with modern parts and techniques. These motors are much smoother than new too. They are very strong engines that weigh about the same as a small block Chevy",according to Ken Freeman, owner of East West Auto Parts in Tulsa, Oklahoma. https://books.google.com/books?id=0tsDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA4&lpg=PA4&dq=pontiac+"trophy+4"&source=bl&ots=in8hgEZRl9&sig=Ya4PU_4exyy5QmhqctXM3-qnf4o&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjC-aat95vZAhUJbK0KHXYzAHY4FBDoAQguMAI#v=onepage&q=pontiac "trophy 4"&f=false http://autoweek.com/article/car-life/cut-down-engine-week-pontiac-trophy-4 \ Cut Away of the 194 The 194 in a stock Tempest Blown Trophy 4 4-barrel intake manifold

Last Indian, I will be happy to talk about the Trophy 4 motor. I will start a new thread on it.

I can deal with this pop up ad.

webob77's 1985 Trans Am

Always happy to help somebody out. JUSTA, you need to show me this the next time I am with you and the Goat. This is a new one on me. I've heard of Corvette and Chevy guys painting their ram's horn exhaust manifolds Testors model paint gold so when it gets hot, it changes to the correct shade.

Give that man a cigar. The first Pontiac V8 automobile was built in 1932, running the Oakland V8. The Oakland V8 debuted in 1930 and ran for two years until Oakland was discontinued in 1931. The Oakland engine lasted one more year under Pontiac before it was discontinued completely. https://www.pontiacoaklandmuseum.org/sites/default/files/storypdf/The-Oakland-V-Eight.pdf

I still want to know why separate bath tubs are required if you are a Cialis user? Aren't you suppose to give the United Way?

Too Borg collective! I know, I know...resistance is futile!