*This might take a few days, but I'll try to recap progress over the past few years, up until where I'm at now*PICTURES:
http://stoddard.smugmug.com/BuildingTheBeastI’ve been hesitant to make a build thread, but I figure it’s somewhat relevant. haha. I only found this forum earlier this year. Mainly I’m hoping it’ll help me get some ideas/help as things progress. And, maybe some would find this somewhat interesting. I’m just a guy with more time than money that wants to go fast.
1976 Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham - AA/BFCC
*Note: from what I’ve been able to find, this is the longest non-“limo” post WW2 Cadillac made. It was the last year of the big land yachts with big engines (500cid v8 stock) before the EPA down-sizing in 77’. I measured it 19’8” long with a 133” wheelbase. The last time I weighed it before disassembly, it was 5860lbs. The car had almost every option available from the factory (electric windows/seats, AC, couches for seats, etc.) so it’s quite a beast.
Quick history rundown-
Grandfather bought it in 1978. Before that it was a chief of police car for some city in Michigan, iirc. (I have the original papers for it somewhere). It sat in the garage in Florida until he died in the and gave it to my dad. It was finally brought up from Florida to my parent’s house in 2004, then I ended up taking it as my daily driver while in school. When I acquired it, it had about 60k miles and it appeared to be in great condition. Thanks to Virginia’s abundant use of salt on the roads, that didn’t last long. I still drove the car daily until late 2007 when gas was between $4-$5 a gallon, and I realized I spent was spending upwards of a grand in gas a month. 32 gallon tank and I was averaging about 5-6mpg on a good day. Then it was relegated to weekend warrior. Even then, thanks to a failing transmission, it wasn’t getting much use.
Around 2008 I decided to rebuild it. At first it would be a mild rebuild of the motor (500hp/600ftlbs with rebuild) and be a weekend show cruiser. Then I got hooked up with a set of heavily ported heads (porter’s mistake when all I wanted was a mild cleanup) …then decided I wanted turbos…new pistons, roller cams, a few intake changes, etc. Slowly but surely it went way overboard and I had to admit it would inevitable be a “track only” car. Needless to say my parents (still technically “theirs” since I never switched over the title) were none too pleased.
The car circa 2004/5. Before the salt got to it.
Then in 2006 the vinyl top had to go. It was cracking and I didn’t want the metal underneath to rust. This started the downward spiral of madness
The reason I ended up blowing the transmission. It got a laugh. Apparently a loose column shifter linkage promotes going from second to neutral with angry noises resulting. I have a video of the run somewhere on youtube that i'll have to find
Which brings us to the actual build. First and foremost, as a lot of you have experienced, no parts are available other than junky oem replacements, and the relevant information about making a nearly 6000lb car handle is little to nill. Luckily at least, over the past few years there has been an increase in aftermarket support for the motor, so I was able to make sure I built that right. However, the rest was left up to me to figure out on my own.
DISCLAIMER: Pretty much everything you see, I’m learning and coming up with as I go. If it looks like junk (aka my fuel tank as you’ll later see), I mainly build them as a “version #1” to at least get this on the road and see what the car actually needs, or what works best. Also, I’m making this thread as I look through the pictures I took in chronological order. I feel it helps you see how the process works, how much I jump around, and that something as simple as welding a tab on can take me months, since I will get angry and not want to mess with it until I forget why I was mad in the first place.
When you look at the photo albums, older pictures are at the back, and newest are at the front. Essentially work backwards.
General motor build specs:
-Original 1976 block bored .050” over (512”cid) 4.350” bore x 4.304” stroke
-oem nodular iron crank (from a 1970 Eldorado)
-oem small chamber iron heads (from 70’ Eldorado) ported way too much with oversized valves
-Hyd roller cam, roller rockers
-one-off main cap girdle with steel center mains.
-one-off Diamond pistons giving roughly 8.5:1 compression. Coated with ceramic/teflon.
-Block is filled with fancy reinforced grout (embeco 885) to 3.5” from the deck
-Homemade Dry sump oiling system/ belt drive fuel pump
-Homemade reverse flow cooling system
-Fuel injection (160lb x 8 injectors) and spark (ls2 coils) controlled by Megasquirt 3x.
-Way-too-big intake manifold with equally way too big throttle body (105mm)
-Two Precision Turbo pt-76 turbos, dual 60mm tial WG’s and 50mm bov’s.
-A/W intercooler with huge ice tank (22 gallon for now-most likely bigger later) in the trunk
-Running on e85
For LSR I'm planning on running the AA/BFCC class as i figure if i'm trying to go faster than i ever should be allowed, i might as well modify the car to the extreme. Plus I like to punish myself and over complicate anything I do. And the fact I’ve never seen anything like this done before is pretty entertaining in itself (to me, at least).
Hopefully I can sum up the work in a way to see how things evolved/how I jumped around quite a bit.