Sound Your Horn

Adding ‘oomph’ to ’80s GM products

Bob Tomaine’s article on the 1986 Oldsmobile 442 brought back a memory of my days at a Buick dealership. The Olds 442 and Hurst/Olds was the only other General Motors G-body car to use the upper-series, corporate 8.5-inch-diameter ring gear, other than the Buick Grand National. It was also the only one to use the 3.73:1 ratio, and during these times that was a very low ratio. I did swap out one stock 3.42:1 from a Grand National thinking it might do better at the drags, but it did not. It did, however, work great in the full-size Buick Estate Wagon when pulling a trailer. The wagon came with the 307-cid Olds V-8 engine and a 2.73:1 axle ratio that would barely climb a steep hill. I did several conversions on Estate Wagons all the way to 1990, the end of production, and had a lot of very happy customers.

Phil Aubrey,