1995 Olds Achieva-the quest continues

[Robert Swartz]

Been my usual kind of year. Try to get some car work done and life continues to get in the way. My wife decided to semi-retire this year. Racing has taken a back burner, I have been working on my other cars.

That brings us back to the Achieva. I really thought as of April of this year, the car was going to be siezed by the Feds and sold at auction. It was my step sons car. He's now residing as a Federal guest in the state of Arkansas. Now that the car is officially mine, I've begun it's (hopefully) next phase of life.

I put the tach and temperature gage back into it. Cleaned up some of the wiring. Next thing we did, remove the AC compressor, condensor and some of the AC lines. Put back a new belt, new alternator and put an AC delete bracket on it. I want to eventually eliminate that altogether. I'll have study that a bit more, find some way to mount an adjustable bracket for the alternator onto the front of the engine. Then find a shorter belt.

I also eliminated the power steering pump. These engines run the PS off the intake cam. We had to make a plate to cover the hole where the pump once resided. Then I simply looped the lines of the PS. I could convert this car to a manual rack. There weren't a lot of cars made with manual steering, so finding a donor is the biggest problem. I'll just have to live with this for now. The way it steers now, reminds me of an old 65 F-100 truck I owned 30-35 years ago.

I have acquired a set of Moroso 7.10's and am waiting on a set of 15x3 Centerline wheels. When I get those put together, going to pull the rear hubs and redrill both them and the brake drums for a Chevy pattern, add long studs. I'll have a set of skinnys on the rear.

The crown jewel of all this. Hooked up with Ron Seibenek Saturday evening at ORP. He brought me down a header and a Flowmaster collector. We discussed both our cars and batted around a few ideas for future upgrades. He feels the combination has some potential but it also has some issues that will be difficult to overcome. The 95 computer being the "tweener", up to 94 the cars were OBD1, 96 and later were OBD2. The 95 is the b@$!ard, it's OBD1.5. That's a big limiting factor to this combo.

All that aside, it's what I have. Going to continue to tinker with it. In the end, I have removed another 25lbs from the car. I need to find another 25-30lbs to get this car near it's minimum for EF/SA,which is a 19lb break at 150hp, which is 3020lbs. Last year at an Indianapolis Raceway Park (yes, it will always be that to me) T&T, the car with me in it, and a half tank of gas, weighed 3080lbs. Removing another 25lbs puts me at, roughly 3055lbs. It still has a radio, heater core and the factory carpeting, so, still some easy weight to be found.

Another thing I need to do is plumb a fuel sample valve. Then start running some real racing gas thru the thing, get the system purged. Get all these changes done, I'm getting real curious to see what results I get. So far the best the car has done is 16.88 in the 1/4 and 10.69 in the 1/8. The EF/SA index(s) are 15.90/9.85. I'm a long ways off.

With the addition of the header, as well as removing some of the power robbing accessories. Also with a further reduction in the cars weight, just starting to get real curious as to what the potential gains may be.