2 Fast 2 Furious in real life

[Peotr]

Since we're having a "2 Fast, 2 Furious" thread, I figured it would be fun to get some 'real' stories out there.

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My favorite car was, and still is, a 1969 Buick Riviera. The things are monsters. Not many people know about them, but they are beasts. Heavy, yes, but they came with the 430 (stock) or 455 (GS) engine, and depending on configuration came from the factory with 370-420 horsepower and was actually competitive with the best GM sports cars from that time. A few simple mods (like taking out the carboretor limiter) and the car is ready for stupid. Top speed stock is 140 MPH, and my friend Lester has the speeding ticket to prove it.

Nothing more satisfying than pulling up in a Grandpa car and eating some Firebird / Mustang's lunch. If it wasn't for the posi-track you could smoke the tires stock, thanks very much.

After finally junking my tri-color 1968 Riviera I found a beautiful 1969 GS that ran like shit. Interior was stellar, exterior was nice, biggest problem was the fuel system, which had been completely gummed. After doing all the 'Schucks' repairs that I could, I took it in to a specialist and told them to flush the gas tank and replace everything up to the manifold.

I was based at Fort Lewis at the time, and we were on maneuvers in Yakima Firing Center. We were due back late late Friday night, and since the shop wasn't open on Saturday I asked them to leave the car outside so that I could pick it up. The note from the mechanic talked about installing a $200 after-market headlight replacement system, which I'm glad he didn't do because $200 seemed like a lot of money for ... headlights. Started the car, she came up with a SWEET pur, idled almost silently, rev'd quickly and easily. I was deee-lighted.

Except the headlights didn't work - well, they worked, but I had to go out and manually turn them down. The '67-'69 Riviera had retractable headlights, and after $700 worth of fuel-line work mine wouldn't extend or retract any more.

It was late, so we drove back to base, and the next day I took out my Chiltons and tried to find out why the headlights wouldn't extend (or retract). Turns out the Riviera uses a pressure hose off of the carburetor to turn the headlights up and down (don't ask me why they don't use electric motors, I don't KNOW, I didn't design the car, I just bought it). Looking through the car I found the vacuum hoses that run from the headlights to the Rochester, and I figured out where they were supposed to plug into the carburetor (the ports were plugged with little plastic caps). 20 minutes later, FIXED, and my friends and I were ready for fun. That evening we were planning on cruising Seattle - Rex had a beautiful 1967 440 Coronet, and Thompson had a near-illegal 1967 Chevelle, and we were going to go howl it up on the waterfront before going drinking.

Lester, my co-pilot and beerman, was hopped up for the evenings fun, and about 8 of us clamored into the 3 cars to trek from Tacoma up to Seattle. It was getting close to sundown, and of course Thompson was trying to show what a badass he was by dusting us through the off / on ramps, and so Rex and I had to match his pace. We were dicking around on the freeway, running between 80 - 90 MPH, when the weather did one of those light Seattle-style drizzles that makes the pavement so slick. However, this was the freeway, and traction was still good, and we had the Tubes (Completion Backwards Principle) blasting on the stereo, beer between our legs, laughing it up, and Lester says:

"Hey, turn down those headlights!"

And I said, "Yeah! Headlights!" and I flicked them on.

[ PAUSE FOR TECHNICAL EXPLANATION ] The carburetor on the 1969 Buick Riviera is a specialized performance version of the Rochester Quadrajet. The Quadrajet is famous for having huge amounts of back pressure / vacuum, which it must regulate in order to continue feeding the engine without killing it. It does this through a series of one-way valves that keeps the back-pressure flowing in one direction; this prevents the engine from choking. In a performance carburetor, choking can include detonation coming back from pistons and stalling the car, while also starting a carburetor fire that sometimes blows the air cleaner right off the carburetor.

Incredibly, the 1967-1969 Riviera uses this backpressure to turn down the headlights. However, you must have a special Buick Rochester Quadrajet with another set of valves that allows the car to borrow the slaved vacuum without sucking all the pressure out of the carburetor, thereby choking the car and sending freshly-oxygenated fuel to .... your headlights (which are on, btw).

Furthermore: The 1969 Buick Riviera has power EVERYTHING. Power brakes. Power steering. Power fuel control (if you can believe that), and, lacking power, it has auto-neutral in the transmission, which prevents the engine from thrashing the drivetrain when hydraulic pressure is lost.
[ END OF PAUSE FOR TECHNICAL EXPLANATION ]

"Yeah! Headlights!" >BOOM<

So - imagine you're going through a shallow corner in the outside lane of a rainy western Washington highway (at about 90 MPH in an incredibly heavy 60s performance / luxury car), when there is a loud explosion from your engine, all lights and stereo die, the kick-back from the engine reverses the starter which then kicks back your ignition rod, which knocks your keys back to neutral and engages the cheesy anti-theft system that locks your steering wheel. You have NO BRAKES, or at least, you don't have any brakes that would be useable by anyone with less leg pressure than a gorilla, which I discovered I *do* have, thankyouverymuch, give the dork a banana. We start to sweep into a (controlled? uncontrolled, but graceful) slide through the outside lane of traffic (thank the dork gods there was no one in that lane), off the road, up the emankment, and through about a city-block's worth of shrubbery that the State of Washington had been planting alongside the highway to 'beautify' the Interstate.

Thanks, actually, to the rain and the grease-like action of dead virgin shrubbery, you come to a stop without rolling the car. Imagine that you and Lester immediately throw ALL BEERS as far from the car as you can, then whip out the Chiltons and try to figure out WHAT THE FUCK you did to the car. Using Duct Tape (YEAH! DUCK TAPE!) you rip off the hoses, seal the output-valves on the Rochester, duct tape the air filter back onto the carburetor and pray to god that a part of the air-fileter retaining bolt that you can't find didn't suck itself down into the manifold, and, to the smell of gasoline and shredded Washington Thymus Coniferus, you sneak back onto the highway, trying to act casual and hoping that no inqusitive fuck got your license plate number.

Rather than cruise the gut we went to a car wash and scrubbed every bit of shrubbery from the car, spent two hours taking the back-roads back to Fort Lewis, then we parked the car far, far away from the barracks and spent the night watching Public Television. We were so afraid the cops might show up that we didn't even have any beers.

-- El Mercado

P.S. I still love those cars. Rivieras through 1973 are amazing brutes. Not at all like the rice burners in 2 Fast 2 Furious, but if you've ever wanted to race someone while sitting in a sofa, this is the car for you.

[Eomer]

I dunno, 140mph is a pretty weak top speed I think. My Probe with it's rinky dinky 160hp 2.5L V-6 tops out at around that as well, and it's actually rev limited due to gearing. With a 6th it could top out higher yet (if it had a long enough straight). The fastest I personally took it was about 133mph (215km/h if I remember right), and it was at about 6200 rpm (redline at 7k). However, it takes a good long stretch to get there, and once past about 5000rpm (about 175km/h) it doesn't accelerate all that well.

The nice thing is that the car was rock solid at that speed, it felt great. It felt as solid and stable at 200kmh+ as my old '93 Sunbird did at like 90.

[Strahd]

Ask him how fast he gets to 140... thats the thing, his car has a shit ton of torque.. =D

[Loniel Bonewalker]

true not all bout top end in some cases more over how fast u get to ur top speed is key in which case more tourque = better