Dear Steve and mid-60s Buick fans of having things both ways!
The LeSabre's got a 3.08, and it seems just fine,
What tires do you have on the LeSabre? You might be close to the same final drive speed as my wagon, because she still have very small tires. I'm trying to figure out what is an appropriate rear end ratio through these trials before upgrading to bigger tires. When I do, I think I'll be looking at something 3.08:1
although I muse about going to a different transmission, and read all the postings about 200's and 700's. My daily driver's got a modern clutchless 6L80e, which has a 4.06 first gear! Day dreaming about that.
There is only so much you can do to get the modern pleasures in a 50 year old car, but I really like how the 200-4R has make my trusty wagon more pleasant to drive. It is a bit rough in shifting from 1 to 2 because it needs to avoid having 500 foot•pounds of torque hit it were it can't move the torque somewhere else. However, if you apply the throttle carefully you can minimize it. In return the car is so much more quiet even with headers.
I had a pleasant surprise on Tuesday when I made a point of driving in 3 gear instead of overdrive on the freeway to bring up the RPMs on the engine to give it some more break-in exercise. It was substantially louder than in overdrive (of course,) but the big-block Buick engine with all the modern parts was still substantially quieter than the old 300 cid V-8 was on the freeway. I never thought that a big-block with modern components could be quieter than smaller engine with 1965 components.
Still lots of things to
love about our classics if you look!
Cheers, Edouard
