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sgaines1: I can see why you're concerned about engine reliability. Olds had a 425 from '65 to '67 or so, Pontiac a 428 and Buick a 430, all related to their own later 455s and all good as far as I know. I think maintenance history is more important. Yours was thrashed. You're on to something with the AMC but don't stop with the Ambassador. Go all the way to a '74-78 Matador fastback coupe with designer interior. They're actually rather handsome cars, but very unusual, just the ticket if you want something that makes people stop and point. Engines were as good as any for street use: 304, 360 or 401. Don't have a link to a photo but maybe there's an AMC club web site.
Just realized you both have '78 Grand Marquis. Is this the Gen X collectible of choice ;-)?
As for the 78 Grand Marquis, I got mine from (big surprise here) my Grandmother. (She drove me home from the hospital in the thing when I was born!) The thing is massive, drinks gas by the gallon jug full, and rides like a Caddie or a Lincoln. Plus, I like the looks on my car-nut friends faces when I interrupt their bragging about their hopped up little 4-gerbil (er, I mean cylinder) engines, and tell them I have a 400 cubic inch V-8 hiding under the hood. (Most of them will never know the factory HP rating for that year on the 400M was 160;-)
I'm out of touch with the aftermarket--it's been more than ten years since I bought speed parts--and I'm not even sure about factory induction setups after about 1980. Back in the late '80s Edelbrock had a throttle-body FI setup. I'd order catalogs from the speed equipment outlets and Ford SVO, or go online, and see what they're offering. But I doubt there's aftermarket direct port FI for the 400 block, and even if there's something for the 351C, it'd probably be very expensive and have to be modified because the intake manifolds aren't interchangable. If the 400 or 351M was used recently in trucks, maybe there's a factory FI. Talk to a parts counterman at a dealership. Best bet would be to fine-tune a Holley (jetting, accelerator pump) and recurve the ignition advance, sort of like what a computer does continuously on a newer car. If that doesn't sharpen the throttle response, put a 4.56 in the rear end.
I've always had this perverse little fantasy. My grandmother gave me her '85 LeSabre with an Olds 307 about 2 years ago. The engine runs fine with about 154K miles on it, and the car is sturdy enough to go on for years. If I ever came into a lot of money, I always wanted to throw a bigger motor into it. I know an Olds 350 or 403 would bolt right in, but recently found out that even an Olds 455 is a direct drop-in!
I think the car weighs about 3700 lb or so, and has a 2.84 rear end ratio. If I ever go through with this fantasy, should I go all the way with a 455? Or would a 403 be enough for a car this size? I know these cars could be had with 403's from '77 to '79...anybody know the performance figures on them? I looked up an old Consumer Guide that tested a 1985 Olds Delta 88 307 0-60 in 12.0 seconds. Yawn.
Just curious...this is something I may never do, but hey, I may have more money than brains some day!!
On a side note...I once had a nice '82 Cutlass Supreme with a junk 231, and a junk '69 Bonneville with a nice 400. I always wondered what kind of monster I would have made with that 400-4bbl in the Cutlass...that would've been a REAL 4-4-2!!
-Andre
The 403 is a long-stroke Olds 350 and not known for its performance potential. At least it's lighter than the 455, which also has a long stroke but has a much better performance history.
I'm guessing the LeSabre is probably an Impala with more chrome, so the Chevy small block will bolt right in. One of the larger versions--a 383 stroker or 400--would move that car pretty well with a better axle ratio, say a 3.55. Might be a decent package with some stiffer springs. Flames would be essential.
The main reason this is on my mind is because I know somebody with a 1982 Olds 98 that had the engine swapped out for a 403, and he says he's going to drop a 455 in it when that goes. He said the 403 is pretty gutsy in his car.
You're right though...this is probably something I'll never do. It would be funny, though, if I did and then Grandma wanted her car back ;-)
-Andre
283
350
409
427
502
Ford:
351W
351C Great heads
427side oiler
427SOHC for it's innovation
429BOSS Ford's Hemi
460
Chrysler:
360
383
426 HEMI
440
Funny, I also inherited a Buick sedan from my grandparents, a '67 Skylark. I had semi-serious ideas about swapping in a Buick 400 and Turbo 400 but fortunately never did it.
1970-74, but they're still a fairly
hot item 30 years later. Detuning in 1972+ and deglamorization of racing was their doom. As a previous poster said, "Great heads",
and they were and they are. A lot of other great engines, but the 351C and all its variations has got my vote.
But essentially you are correct in stating that you have to set the time machine for what period you are talking about. In 1911, the Peugeot racing engine was unbelievable, outstanding, a breakthrough...but today an mailtruck engine probably has more power.
Nah, I don't much like the M5 engine...it's a gas hog for one thing, and it's in the wrong car for another (not really the engine's fault). Most American V8s are big nasty things with no grace, but they do put out power and they are reliable, you can't take that away from them. But driving a car with a big heavy bellowing V8 banging around up there is not my idea of fun....perhaps yours, so you see it differently. I'm fond of high revs and smoothness and long miles durability, so that leaves out a lot of high power American V8s....but they do get the job done, don't get me wrong!
None of the Detroit V8s are particularly attractive, although I guess a few are ruggedly handsome. Cosmetics helps. The early Corvette small block with finned valve covers and louvered air cleaner. Dual quad nail valve with that huge ribbed chrome air cleaner.
That weird alternator they used on MoPars killed their looks.
Also, not for the race world, if you mean road courses--I'd have to say Ford V8s did that by winning Lemans, which GM never did.
But all of the above are great engines....the issue is "impact", which is tricky to decide, since often the inventor doesn't get the credit.
Of course, the small block brought a level of performance to the low-priced field that hadn't existed before, at least in stock form.
The Europeans have put out some very nice V8s, but really the V8 is an American style engine and hasn't influenced Europe too much....except for those interesting "hybrids", such as the Pantera, Iso, Bizzarini (sp?), Facel Vega, Jensen Interceptor, AC Cobra, Sunbeam Tiger...but these are all very low production cars.
I'd say the greatest V8s would be:
Ford Flathead
Olds Rocket 88
Chevy V8 265 on up
Ford 289 & 427--especially in racing--GT40s, Cobras
Mopar Hemis/440s/383/318
There were some other decent engines, but I think most of those are really "also-rans". If they never were invented, we wouldn't miss them like we would the ones listed above, don't you agree?
Maybe if they named their engines instead of just calling them by displacement....
I mean, who doesn't know what a Hemi is?
Major biggies:
flathead--power for the masses
Olds 303--first modern OHV V8, 88 could be considered first musclecar
Cad 331--the other "first modern V8", even more popular with hot rodders than the Olds
Chrysler 331--first V8 with hemispherical combustion chambers
Chevy 265--power for the masses, part 2
Ford 289-302--can you imagine the Mustang with a Y block? See also "Cobra", a huge part of '60s folklore.
Ford 427--racing wins at Le Mans, takes the Cobra where no man has gone before.
Chevy rat motor--takes Corvette performance image one step further, big musclecar image (although the rare solid lifter big port versions were the world-beaters, not the base versions)
426 Hemi--the icon of '60s musclecars
I don't think I'd include the 383. The 335-hp Road Runner version was very strong but then you'd have to include the Pontiac 400 Ram Airs, Olds W30s, Buick 455 Stage I and several other engines that won lots of races but didn't have the history-changing impact my short list did.
I also wouldn't include the 318, a good but not great engine. The MoPar 340 was a great smallblock, but so were the Olds W31 and Ford 351C and none of them had the historical impact the Chevy smallbock and Ford 289-302 did.
Okay, that's the definitive list. You can freeze this thread now.
How about some great European V8s. You want to go there? Or we could even touch on (gasp!) my favorite Japanese V8 engine....
Sure, I'd like to hear about European and Japanese V8s.
WAS one of the fastest around, along with the Cad 331, and later, in 1951, the Chrysler Hemi 331. The old Hudson 308 Flathead 6 was also fast for the time. Some of us aren't old enough to remember those days either-just interested enough to read the old road tests of those days and get the facts. By the way, the Chevy 283 wasn't the first to advertize 1hp per cube-like most people think-it was actually the Chrysler Hemi 354, which advertized 355HP the year before, in 1956. You don't have to be old as dirt to know that, just interested enough to read and get it right before you make smartxxxed comments to others. Say goodnight rude dude.
Except for the Duesies and Cads and a few other expensive engines, the tech was low. Just look at Packard.
It's hard to imagine that we had 30's tech engines in some American cars clear up until 1960! I've forgotten now-even though I've read it somewhere-what were the first engines to achieve one horse per cube, ANYWHERE-racing or not? Notice when I referred to the 283 and 354 Chrysler, I said "advertised" horsepower. Anyone know what the "actual" output was for those motors? The fifties, of course, were full of horsepower hype and all that. But that's what makes that era kind of fun to recall in a way.
This is a V8 topic-so, what about those Japanese V8 engines? When was the first ever Japanese V8?
I'd love to have something with a 283 fuelie in my garage, but Skidmarks' comments got me thinking that its real impact was mostly just more ammunition for the "Chevies rule dude" crowd.
Remember, the key phrase is "if it had never been invented...".
Was it the first Detroit V8 rated at one hp per ci? No, as Carnut says, that was the '56 Chrysler 300. Why do 9 out of 10 car books say it's the 283? Because 9 out of 10 car books are written by guys too lazy to do their research. And how meaningful are hp ratings when many engines were rated by ad agencies, not engineers?
Was it the only fuel-injected Detroit V8 offered in '57? No, Pontiac used it that year in the Bonneville. Even the '57 Rambler Rebel had electronic fi.
Did it lead directly to the widespread use of fi in Detroit cars, or even just Chevies? No. FI was a rare option on Chevy passenger cars through '59, and was discontinued on Corvettes after '65. After '58, Chevy was the only maker to offer fi.
Did it lead to great engineering advances for the small block? No, the "fuelie" heads and cam were always available on a carbureted version.
So did the fuelie lead to big things? As an engineering exercise, it looks like a dead end. But as a marketing exercise, it still gets the Chevy nuts excited 44 years after it was introduced.
For low end "grunt" it's hard to beat the Rolls Royce....a 6.7 liter V8 (around 1980) putting out a measly 226hp but a whopping 339 ft/lbs of torque at 1,500 rpms. I guess at over 5,000 lbs they wanted to get the thing rolling, huh?
Maserati had a nice 4.7 liter V8, a 4-cam model used in the Bora (this engine was designed in the late 1950s and used into the 80s)...it put out 310HP at 6,000 rpm (where US V8s fear to go) and 325 ft lbs of torque at 4,200 rpm.
I really don't know the first Japanese V8.....I recall that the one first used in the Infiniti Q45 was a nice engine...an ohc unit that put out some 270 HP or so. The Q45 is a quick car for a big sedan.
On the other hand, in the 1970s, US engines really suffered. The poor 1973 Firebird with the 400 cid engine could only put out 230 HP and a feeble 177 ft lbs of torque at 3,200 rpm.
So not all V8s are created equal, that's for sure. As a rule, Europeans aim for higher rpms and design in less torque at low rpm....quite the opposite of what American drivers prefer.
Speaking of international V8s, I seem to remember that the first BMW V8, the one used in the sportscar, was based on the Stude V8, which was based on the Cad V8. Any truth to that? If there is, it shows how far they've come.
The 1957 Adventurer came with a 345 Hemi V-8, with 345 horsepower. Technically, it was the first American car model to offer one horsepower per cubic inch standard. The Chrysler 354 from 1956 had 355 HP, but that was an optional engine. Standard was 340 hp. And Chevy's fuel-injected 283 from 1957 was optional.
Also, DeSoto's first hemi, the 276.1 for 1952, put out 160 hp, which is probably one of the higher hp to cubic inch ratios for that era. That must have been enough for those early 50's Firedomes to give their Buick/Olds/Mercury competition a run for their money. By 1957 Consumer Reports was griping about the 341 having too much horsepower for the mid-priced field. If it's enough to get CR riled up, it must be a good thing ;-)
As for the Chevy smallblocks, I've always heard they were junk, but of course you're going to hear that from Mopar guys ;-) Still, the 305 in my 1986 Monte Carlo was still going strong at 192,000 miles when the car got t-boned.
-Andre
Chevy 250/Mopar 225: 145 gross/110 net
Chevy 307: 200 gross/130 net
Mopar 318: 230 gross/150 net
Mopar 340: 275 gross/240-245 net
I guess there could be no set formula, as a lot depends on how much the transmission, differential, exhaust, intake, etc rob horsepower, and those factors are different for each car. Plus, some of the engines cut compression for 1972, which would also skew the numbers lower.
As far as real-world road-tests, I remember a Consumer Reports comparison of a 1955 DeSoto Fireflite, an Olds 98, and an independent (I think a Hudson). The Fireflite, with its 200 hp, 291 Hemi did 0-60 in a whopping 13 seconds. The Olds did it in 11.8 (I forget which engine it had...by that time, probably bigger than the DeSoto, though). I know those results sound pathetic, but remember that the DeSoto weighed about 4,000 pounds and had a 2-speed automatic. The Olds wasn't much lighter. And that 200 hp would equate to about 130-140 today.
The sad thing is, by the late 70's/early-80's, there were 350's, 351's, and 360's that were only putting out 120-150 hp! My '86 Monte 305-4 only had 150, and my '89 Gran Fury 318-4 only has 175!
-Andre
Now what's 112 hp gross...about 75-80 net, if that? Do they even make cars with hp ratings that low anymore? Subcompact cars with 75-80 hp are pathetic, so it should stand to reason that a 3800 lb tank with 75-80 hp would be even worse. Still, on a few occasions, we would go to car shows and events, and his 1950 semi-automatic had no trouble keeping up with my 1957 Firedome with 270 (gross) hp, 3-speed Torqueflite, and dual exhaust. While I'm sure I would have burned him in 0-60 and quarter mile times, in normal driving that 1950 had no trouble keeping up with highway traffic.
I think another reason that '50 had no trouble getting around was torque. My 2000 Intrepid has 190 ft-lbs of torque...at 4850 RPM. That's nothing. A 225 slant 6 has that much torque, at about 2000 rpm. In normal cruising, that '50 was probably in its peak torque range, so it had no problem getting around. At 60 mph, my Intrepid is loafing at 2000 rpm. At 90, it hits 3000. So to get any action out of it you have to stomp it.
I don't know what ratio that '50 had in it. My '57 has a 2.94, I believe. I think the '55 in that Consumer Reports test was a 3.31 or so. I read somewhere that one of the early Chrysler 300's could be had with a 6.xx ratio! This was around 1955 or 1956.
-Andre
426 hemi
426 wedge
273
318
340
383
440
Most muscle cars were tested with street gears, usually 3.31s or thereabouts (or at least that's what the magazine specs said). 4.11s would have required slicks to hook up and maybe a few tweaks to the rear suspension to keep the car going straight off the line. Considering all the torque those engines had, 3.31s were probably too much gear for the street. They could have easily handled something in the 2.8-3.0 range. In fact, most stock V8 Mustangs (not a musclecar, but good torque/weight ratio) have those gears and you'd never know it.
I remember my 62 SS Impala fondly. Still have a photo of myself and by best girl (now my wife) heading off to her prom.
It was a 327, 300 horse, powerglide. It was white with blue interior. Had a couple of rare (for the time) options such as air conditioning and power windows.
A funny memory that I think I mentioned before here somewhere...
One summer, So. Calif evening we were leaving a party, heading for another. My buddy knew where the other house was and I didn't. He got too far ahead of me and I had lost him.
Finally, I saw his tailights in the distance. I slammed on the gas, faster, faster, probably was going 80 plus in a 45MPH zone. Right in front of Marineland for those familiar with the area.
But...as my rotton luck would have it, somehow, a cop had gotten between us! It was the cop's tailights I was chasing!
Oh, the obcenities that spewed from my mouth when I realized what I had done!
The cop, simply pulled over, let me pass long enough to pull me over and give me a hell of a ticket.
This is a funny story...now. At the time, it was a disaster!
By the way-I intend to kick the living xxxx out of this lymphoma crap. I've got too much to do.
But that was pretty common back then as we have discussed in other threads.
It burned a valve around 60-70,000 miles which required a valve job, the powerglide started slipping between first and second as was the norm.
It cost something like 180.00 to overhaul it then.
And, of course, the lower ball joints.
If you get to Bellevue, stop by the store. I would love to see it. I'll buy lunch!