You never know what you might find when visiting your local junkyard. Last week we had this trio of GM strangeness. And this week we have another group of Things You Don’t See Much Anymore, courtesy of the General (as well as the general public’s general neglect for their vehicles).
Most of you will recognize this mill as being the oft-bemoaned TBI version of the venerable Iron Duke. When I was seeking one a few months ago (for swapping into a tractor – long story) there were none to be had. But now that I’ve committed to another engine, my first choice is showing up in abundance. Such is life.
The aforementioned lump was found under the hood of this Calais. The 2-door version is pretty rare around these parts… and though I’m aware of their many shortcomings, I can’t help but think this one deserved better than to be sacrificed to The Crusher.
The interior is as mint as you’re ever gonna see. I’d be tempted to pull those buckets if I thought I’d ever find a use for them.
No headliner sag! What’s going on here?
A mere 85K miles on the clock. This ain’t a car, man, it’s a time machine!
Four wheelcovers, no waiting.
On the other side of the aisle we have its Buick counterpart, looking a little wearier for the wear…
…but still sporting the same motor.
Not quite as spiffy on the inside, either.
90K miles. Seriously? This is truly a red letter day at the U-Pull.
Another trunk full of wheelcovers (well, three out of four anyways – as opposed to the typical zero out of four). I imagine it would be a good day to be an N-body owner around here.
They can’t all be cream puffs, though. Check out this mileage queen: a suspiciously straight-looking, late Ciera wagon…
…with nearly 325K miles…
and the super rare tri-color interior option! It also happened to reek of cat.
A bit of a CC Clue of sorts: can you guess what this back bumper is connected to? (They love the Boundary Waters Canoe Area, believe in cooking you some tasty food, and could have used someone who knows how to replace a wheel bearing – sounds like this one’s former owner and I would have gotten along just fine!)
That bumper’s connected to a Grand Prix, probably a 4 door.
You beat me to it.
yup, those are 4 door only GP tail lights, another inch or so up and we could see if it is a rare STE or not. If it isn’t than it is a 91-96.
Guess that was too easy. It is indeed a mid-90s four door Grand Prix.
I’ve seen many, many Pontiacs of that era, but I have yet to spot an STE of any flavor. (Did see one blown-up ASC turbo coupe a few years back, though.)
Never know when one might poke its head out…
where did you see the blown up coupe?
Some Minneapolis suburb, in a apartment parking lot. Guy on craigslist was trying to unload it for something like $1500. I wasn’t interested in it at that price (had no real need or use for it), but I did want to look it over and leave my number in case he’d get desperate later – seems he was getting ready to move or something.
Apparently someone else wanted it more than me, because the ad disappeared a few days later.
I had one that literally blew up. Thought it might have been my old one.
Nope, “blew up” as in ‘left little bits of connecting rod in the oil pan’.
An exploding TGP? That sounds rough.
Dealer did some work on the craptastic Teves ABS system, and stressed, cracked or didn’t reconnect the fuel line running between the hard line and fuel rail.
The line let go on the highway…ball of flames, exploding a/c system blew the hood open.
It was pretty cool to watch, other than the fact that it was my car.
Found this example from 1990 about 8 months ago in a self service yard in Omaha. Looks like it’s been sitting since Clinton was in the WH. And this isn’t the first one that I have found for parts.
I remember when an older cousin bought a 2 door Calais about 1985 or 86. It was then that I realized that I had crossed a major line in life where, instead of looking at it as the rational choice for people who liked GM cars, I got a ride and thought “how quaint.”
Don’t feel bad about finding these now that it is too late for your engine swap. Murphy’s law works in reverse too – had you waited to find that elusive Tech4, you would still be waiting and these cars would never have shown up. Who knows – perhaps you are personally responsible for these cars being junked? 🙂
Lo-Tech 4. I had the 1982 TBI Iron Duke in a Celebrity back before they invented the fancy name (but still had FUEL INJECTED badges on the fender to let everyone know how pimp your ride was.) 92 hp and 123 massive lb. ft of torque right off idle. In the rain braking the tires loose was no problem, once you hit 65 mph though it was almost completely out of breath. The speedometer happened to match the drag limited top speed of 85 mph. I don’t think anybody every buried the speedo on one of these unless they were coming down Raton Pass with no brakes.
Perfect tractor engine. I’d rather have this in an old 1930s to 50s small field tractor than those guys who do V8 swaps. At least you could still plow with it. 😛
Such power but my diesel Citroen wheelspins at 60 mph in 4th in the rain if you put your clog down
I completely disagree. In their day, we had fleet Celebrity’s with the Tech 4. In the drive to the customer’s plant, there was a perfect 6 mile straightaway with visibility all the way to the other side (in a bowl). Once I got on it, I really got it on. I routinely had them accelerating to the century mark and kept it there till I got to the other side. These were later edition 1989 models.
It was a torque maker, but as you say it would run out of torque and horsepower at speed. Good off the lights but not good at passing.
Never had any problems braking. Good tires fixes that, as always, and they change the car’s feel remarkably. The other thing that changes the car’s feel is they were equipped with heavy duty everything (HD brakes & HD suspension). Never had any problems with the TBI, either. A remarkably reliable injection and ignition system.
I think these mileage figures perfectly illustrate the difference between owning a N-body and owning an A-body.
And the difference between owning a Buick V6 and any other non-V8 GM engine of that time.
My 1985 Skylark had this motor, and to say it (the engine) was a pile is an understatement. The car itself (the last of the X-Bodies) was quite solid. My parents bought the car new, and at 14000 miles it blew a head gasket. After that it never ran right. We kept the car for eight and a half years and it had around 67000 miles when we sold it. I found it in a junk yard five years later, it managed to reach 102k.
That’s too bad about that Calais, as I’ve always liked them, especially in coupe form. I don’t have to be worried about being tempted to acquire one, as any that are in even half-way decent shape are non-existant here in Michigan it seems…
Never seen an Iron Duke and since none of these were ever .the subject of an export attempt I never will.
TBI – I always viewed this as Detroit’s excuse for not being able to put REAL fuel injection into production…
Detroit had real fuel injection in production in the 50’s and 60’s.
TBI was a cost effective way to get improvements over a carb setup.
who had “real” fuel injection when the iron duke had it in 82?
Yes there are certainly interpretations of what is considered “real” fuel injection. As you pointed out GM and Chrysler had port fuel injection in the 50’s and GM brought it back as an option on the Eldo in the 70’s and as standard on the Cosworth Vega.
Yes there were a number of euro cars that used Bosch mechanical injection before GM introduced TBI to the mainstream cars. However those early Bosch mechanical port FI and even the first Jetronic systems were pretty primitive compared to GM’s TBI.
Many of those Bosch systems of the era required periodic adjustment of the idle mixture and speed, or at least checking of the settings at tune up time, as they were manual adjustments, not controlled by the computer. Rather than letting the computer control warm up enrichment and fast idle speed through a continuous map based on the specific coolant temp of the engine they used an extra cold start injector that injected fuel into the intake manifold. To provide a fast idle speed many had just a solenoid that provided a vacuum leak which was driven by a coolant temp switch that opened it below a certain temp and then closed it off at a predetermined temp. Rather than each injection event being timed to the cylinder that was the next one to have an intake event the injection events were broken down into fractions of the required fuel that then sat pooled on top of the intake valve waiting for enough to accumulate and then be sucked in when the intake valve opened.
The early GM TBI systems on the other hand used a coolant temp sensor which added just enough extra fuel to achieve the desired warm up enrichment. The computer also controlled an idle speed control motor to ensure that the fast idle was only as fast as needed to maintain a proper idle during warm up based on readings from that coolant temp sensor. Once the engine was up to proper operating temp it still used that idle speed motor to control the curb idle speed continuously responding to whether or not the AC compressor was engaged, if the car was in neutral or a gear. They even have an over temp strategy that bumped up idle speed if the engine temp was too far over the desired operating temp. That would cause an engine driven fan or the alternator spin faster to reach a point where it was able to put out more amperage. Either way it increased the fan’s ability to move air through the radiator in an attempt to either stem the rising temp or get it under control. If things got too far out of hand it would also pull some timing advance out.
Each injection event of the single or pair of injectors was the complete amount of fuel for the next required injection event and that fuel didn’t have to wait around for the appropriate intake valve to open.
So laugh all you want about GM’s un-“real” TBI injection but it was more advanced than most injection systems available at the time even if it only had a single or pair of injectors. Unlike those other early systems GM’s early fuel injection systems provided easy access to trouble codes and with the proper tool (or knowing which buttons to push on the Digital FI Caddilacs) full access to all operating parameters. Many other manufactures didn’t provide access to live operating parameters until they were forced to by the implementation of OBD II regulations.
So I’d certainly call the TBI systems real modern fuel injection while everyone else was strapping on primitive fuel injection that were not significantly advanced over the system GM offered in the 50’s
Heck even Toyota didn’t incorporate idle speed control until long after they introduced real (port) EFI. They relied on a fast idle solenoid that was just a vacuum leak to provide a fixed fast idle and an adjustable idle air bleed for curb idle that required adjustment or at least checking of the idle speed during routine maintenance.
I had a ’75 Volvo 164E that was fuel injected, the less said about that car the better…
What’s clear, regardless of what Eric said, is that TBI did not offer competitive engine output, and that was one of the reasons it was eventually passed over. Starting early on with engines where performance was required for competitive reasons. Remember the wonderful Cross-Fire Corvette engine? That didn’t last long.
And Ford’s EEC-IV port injection that arrived in 1983 quickly showed the rest of Detroit how to do it properly. The advances that Eric alluded to could all have been incorporated into a port injection system as well, with better performance. That’s what the real issue is. And that’s what the original comment that started this was all about. Detroit took the cheap way.
It’s not that GM and the others didn’t incorporate some useful aspects into TBI; it’s that they could/should have incorporated those into port injection from the get-go. And as they inevitably ended up having to, for competitive reasons. Let’s face it; 88hp from 2.5 L was hardly competitive. VW was getting 78 hp from their base Rabbit engine in 1977, with all of 1.6 L. That’s the real issue, and that’s why the the original comment about “REAL” fuel injection.
Port fuel injection from the get-go offered performance (and efficiency) advantages; TBI with its constricted manifold didn’t.
right on.
Lets face it, the 2.5 was never sporty at any time in its history, and never asked to be more than a workhorse.. In that respect TBI was a pretty good solution because it was one way of making a inexpensive, simple and realiable fuel injection system. GM wasn’t alone in using it for quite a while, even some Europeeins and Japanese lo-po engines used it for a while.
I don’t think GM cared, they had the quad 4 in the works, and everything they made could fit the 2.8 which was a nicer all around powerplant and later given a multiport system.
This was certainly the dark ages of computer controlled fuel injection where huge leaps were made in only a few years by almost everyone.
+1, Phil.
The Iron Dukes definitely were workhorses. We had several in our family with no significant complaints. We never had any issues with the TBI itself. Two of them did blow head gaskets, but both were straightforward repairs and both engines accumulated lots of trouble-free mileage afterward.
The 2.5 in my wife’s ’86 Celebrity wagon was a particularly good runner. My oldest brother had an ’86 Grand Am which he claimed consistent 30 MPG highway. The tin worm is what killed both of these. (And I was sorry to see them go.)
On the other hand, I wouldn’t even consider an older Iron Duke that was carbureted.
the problem with TBI (and carbs) on 4-cylinders was one of fuel distribution. the center two cylinders had shorter runners on the intake and in many engines resulted in the inner two cylinders running a bit rich and the outer two running a bit lean. Port fuel injection alleviated this.
Who cares about competitive engine output when one can save say $10 per engine? It’s TEN dollars!!! Management’s happy, wall street’s happy. So what if the engine is heavy, rough, with below average output? Surely the marketing boys can fix that by giving engine a tough sounding name and some catchy slogan.
In 1982, practically everything from Europe had fuel injection, as did many of the upper level Japanese cars.
I’d rather wait and be late to the party than rush it into production and have it crap everywhere.
the TBI units from all manufacturers where pretty robust and reliable from what I understand. The nylon timing gears on the iron duke..eh..maybe not so much
They weren’t nylon on the ID/Tech4. Fiber to be exact. Yes crappy fiber made from recycled wood products(paper,cardboard?). Extremly robust IMHO. I don’t think the Skylark(SomerLark?) was parked because of gear failure. It looks like the last driver couldn’t stand to look at the rust from the looks of it.
Just for the heck of it here’s another one of my boneyard pics(picks) with the unloved IronDuke.
I stand corrected.
This wasn’t a problem for them? Seems like all the craigslist ads say timing jumped gears or something like that. I sometimes look at Fiero’s with the thought of buying one to jack up and put slightly larger offroad tires on to use as a winter beater. I have a picture of a 85 GT that this was done to for off road rally’s in the 80’s.
As noted above the TBI system was very advanced compared to many other systems of the day. I’d say it was a choice to provide the maximum benefit by incorporating full engine control rather than the marginal benefit of early batch fire port fuel injection systems. Why spend more for additional injectors when the money was better spent on computer controlled timing, idle speed and mixture which had greater overall benefits than the marginal increase provided by port EFI over TBI? GM made the right choice for the era.
I’m still pissed the Iron Duke was TBI in 1982 and the Olds 307 V8 NEVER FREAKING GOT TBI!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
(Whew) Glad I got that off my chest…
Did this or a development of the Iron Duke “power” the new for 82 F bodies? It looks familiar my ex bought an unfinished 2.5 Camaro with the engine taken out and put in the back seat.The original owner removed the 4 cylinder engine when it was smoking and was going to put a 350 auto in.
Just the very idea of a 4banger Camaro over here is unbelieveable even a 6 is beyond comprehension if it hasnt got a V8 why would you buy it.
much like the idea of a diesel Citroen…only difference is that we didn’t buy them and that’s why they don’t sell cars here anymore.
Yes but Fomoco is happy to have their logo on PSA diesel engines next to the Citroen chevrons and they sell worldwide you as usual dont know what yore missing.
He fancied having a go at drag racing and had a 350 he built lying around.
Good choice a mouse motor makes em go well.
IMO given the nature and location of the body rust on that Skylark, it looks like the owner(s) never washed the road salt from it. Given it only has 90,000 miles on it.
If the car was regularly washed, I don’t think you’d see rust like that,
even with the car’s age.
The headlight acrylic covers haven’t yellowed, and the body looks very good otherwise. You’d see that kind of body rot back in the 1970s, in areas where road salt was used regularly.
Here in Canada you’d see Fords especially, sometimes no more than 5 years old,
with rust like that.
I was thinking the same thing. Driven in the winter, garaged in a garage warm enough to melt all the snow and slush every time its parked, and then the cycle starts over the next day. Never washed until spring…if that.
I’ve seen first hand the difference between garaging a car in the winter and not garaging it.
If you really care about a car you don’t drive it in the winter…if you car about it but have to drive it in the winter you don’t garage it!
+1
Totally! You just don’t see rust that severe… at least since the early ’80s, unless the owner just didn’t care about salt.
Before then, sights like this used to be common in Central Canada.
As too cars with leopard print patterns of spray bombed red oxide primer.
The Headlights were glass and not plastic on that Skylark. GM while going cheap on loads of stuff on their cars actually spent money and made all the “Euro” lights in their 1980’s cars glass. Which is why you will see that the original lights on 1980’s Fords will yellow but GM’s lights look fresh in 2013
Thanks for that… I wondered why the covers looked so good on an otherwise neglected car! I found the Windstars especially bad for yellow/oxidized headlight covers.
Yes but do you want to spend $300 to replace one when that glass gets broken, or buy a pair of polycarbonate ones for $200 when they eventually yellow? Or of course just refinish the polycarb ones for $20 and a little elbow grease.
After spending $300 to replace a glass one on my 626 I invested $80 on some headlight covers which did end up preventing the replacement of another lamp while I owned the car and I owned it for less than 2 years.
Well at this time juncture(2013) anybody paying $300 for a replacement Buick Skylark headlight is nuts. Junkyards are still full of them(N bodies were big sellers in the 1980’s to 1990’s) and they cost under $50 for them($20+ tax at my local pick and pull)
The nice thing about the lights for the Skylark,Calais, Century,Cutlass Ciera,6000 and Celebrity is that the glass section of the light is the same. The mounting housings are different for each car but the glass is the same and you simply unsnap the glass section from the housing(it was ether C clips or something the like) and remount it on your housing.
the glass is not the same with regards to even the A-bodies.
I had an 86 6000-STE and its headlights were for sure not even close to the same for the Cutlass or Century, or even the Celebrity, I broke the headlight lens on mine, and spent many an hour in the yards looking at headlights trying to piece one together.
Here in the Cleveland area we’d see rust like that on N bodies by the car’s 6th birthday. Amongst ’80s cars (atleast around here) N bodies were some of the worst rusters.
Yes Gem,
This was the base engine in the F-body from 82 until 86. 4-speed, 5 speed and 4 speed automatic…and a super strong 88 hp. I’d like to have one just for the conversation factor at cruse night.
Ah the Slow- tech 4. What a noisy and harsh engine. A couple of things. The Cutlass Ciera is a 1993 model due to the intake plenum of a 3300 V6 peeking out and the inclusion of a drivers side airbag(this was the first year for this and it was a option(1994 they made the drivers airbag standard) ). The 3300 was known for high mileage durability. The 3 hubcaps in the trunk of the Skylark are from a 82-1996 Buick Century. As they are 14 inch hubcaps, they would fit on the Skylarks with 14 inch tires but the original Skylark caps looked somewhat like the Calais hubcaps except with a Buick trishield
The 3300 was great motor with gobs of low end torque. It worked great with the 4 speed automatic. The roughness was actually quite endearing.
I had a white Calais with the same red interior. The only difference was it had two more doors and a Quad 4. I sold it when the torque converter stopped locking up. I got used to feeling it do that at about 45 mph. Then it started to not do it unless I backed off and let it have enough vacum to engage. One day it wouldn’t do it at all. It was gone within a week.
LOL-
The two plastic tubes running off the cold air intake on the N-bodies were (probably) resonance chambers to help reduce induction noise.
I find it hard to believe that induction noise required such thorough engineering, given the overall coarseness of the Tech 4.
My 81 Scirocco has Bosch K Jetronic fuel injection and has been extremely reliable. It has DIS, Digital Idle stabilizer that bumps the idle if the car is under load i.e. A/C on. Not bad for 1981
Even with the electronic add-ons, the K-Jetronic system was really simple and worked really well. I read a manual on it and never had a single problem fixing one with just simple tools. The first 1.5 Rabbit with K-Jetronic I drove was revelation. The power delivery was completely linear, starts were easy and there was no bucking/surging like many cars of the day often had.
Since there’s discussion of Tech 4’s in A-bodies and 3.x V6’s in N-bodies, I consider myself an authority after owning both.
Never an engine nor fatal transmission problem (just unplugged TCC clutch solenoid) in my Tech 4 Celeb, with 215k miles. Still running strong when I took it to the orphanage (pull-a-part). It died from weather stripping failures.
The A-body died cause I inherited a freebie Olds Cutlass N-body with the 3.1 V6 and a bad LIM lower intake manifold gasket. Fixed that, now driving it 2 years later and with 227k miles. The N-body is a much nicer vehicle all around, but I still lust for a nice A-body wagon. The 3.1/3.3/3.4 V6 engines are OK but for their symptomatic LIM gasket problems.
I think despite being lo-po, and rough as an agricultural tractor motor, given good care and you got a good one, these tended to live long lives most likely.
That said, I can see this motor not being overly competitive for the reasons stated, compared to its competitors when at 2.5L, it only did 88hp, when an older 1.6 VW Rabbit 4 did almost that much a few years earlier. This was found especially a problem in the Fiero where it was also installed (via the Citation front suspension assembly, but in a mid engined placement) and people expecting a high revving motor, discovered. The motor had an overly long stroke, so good in the low ranges, but not so much when you tried to rev it into the higher ranges.
The rough idle is evident even in some 2.0L 4’s, as it’s been well known that the larger the 4 cylinder motor is, the rougher it tends to idle, and the more counterbalance shafts are needed to counteract the roughness.
Got to give it to GM. Back in the ’80s, when the rest of world was investing into light weight, high output, fuel efficient 4 cylinder engines. The mighty GM with its air of superiority presented an all iron, low output, half of ole Pontiac 301 V8 as the GM Corporate 4 cylinder. Obviously, real men wanted their engine to shake, vibrate and roughness builds character.
There is a fact to be face here and it is that at this time circa 1982, GM’s four-bangers, for lack of a better word, sucked. None of them were good. The Tech-4 was an embarrassment for a once great company. The Ford CVH was better, and that isn’t saying much. The Chrysler 2.2 was also a lot better, again not saying much. The real benchmark at this time was the Japanese, who were all coming out with lightweight all aluminum OHC fours, some with fuel injection, 16 valves and twin cams.
GM just didn’t take four-bangers seriously. Their V-6 motors of the era were fine engines, much nicer to drive than an Iron Duke. They are awful, they moan, vibrate and thrum as they belt out their 88 hp. I can hardly believe they looked at people with a straight face when they sold these things. Really, if anyone liked one its because they have never driven something better.
@Canucknucklehead
It all came down to being superior. GM was convinced that they were superior to those Japanese engineers.
Great engines……….for a forklift.
1) I admire GM for having the big brass ones to actually send this lump out on the market labeled “Tech 4.”
2) my favorites were the ones where the oil filter was a cartridge which plugged into the bottom of the oil pan with a large threaded cover. Turned a mundane oil change into a messy affair.