Hey Guys, I was wondering if anybody had info on stuffing a 76 Caddy 500 in my 1969 C10 shortbox 2wd. Any modifications or parts I might need. I am looking for an Eldorado oil pan and pickup, I think. Any advice would be appreciated, Thanx.
Try www.67-72chevytrucks.com . There's a guy on that forum whose ID is Longhorn man (might not be a space in between the two words) that has installed a Caddy engine in that era of pickup.
You will have to build a plate that bolts to the stock mounts .The motor mounts are studs Thick Flat plate with Oblonged stud hole is what you need.You will have to install motor first To build . I wish I knew how to draw on the computer ,I have a template mount that my dad made for his 79 truck with 500 caddy in it. Ill Look for it and snap you a pic Pics are at my profile .Its crude but worked great for years. If anybody needs the measurements Pm me.
Put a 472 in my '70 3/4 ton. ****er would pull a house. Scaled one time at 9500lbs. full of ****. Used TH400 trans from Cad, Eldorado pan, and motor mounts from an '84 Cad with the 425 (that era of cad used the same frame as the Caprice cop car). Had to fidget around stuff only a tiny bit. Looks factory when finished.
I am looking to put a 472 into a early '80's P30 ch***is (motor Home), if possible i would like to see the pictures if the mounts you used. The ch***is I am using came with a 454 if that matters. (it is getting a AD pickup body, just to keep it on topic)
I'm keeping my eyeballs open for a wrecked Caddy with a 472/500 in it, for my son's early C-10 project. Always wanted to build a Cadillac-powered Chevy pickup!
The Caddy will be very happy if you have tall highway gears in the rear end. It will pull tall gears very well, so you won't have to worry about losing performance if you do use a tall geared rear. If you have steep rear gears like some pickups have, the Caddy won't like it very much. The oil will get much much hotter, and the gas mileage will eat you out of house and home. With 3.50's I got 9 mpg and huge amounts of heat. With 3.00's I could get 17 mpg out of it, it ran cooler, and it still out-accelerated everything it ran across, even when pulling a trailer. This was in a car, not a truck, but results will be much the same. Be prepared for m***ive amounts of radiated heat. You will want to make some sort of tin heat shield for the starter to either keep engine heat away from it or to direct cool air towards it. Ditto for the steering box if it is anywhere near the engine. There was a starter solenoid kit for many GM cars that had starter problems. When hot, many GM starters got very sluggish or non-functional. The kit amounted to a Ford-style fender-mounted solenoid, and straight-wiring the GM solenoid on the starter so the Ford solenoid did the actual work from a cooler location on the firewall or fender. Being a cheap rodder, I bought a typical Ford/Studebaker/AMC solenoid and hooked it up myself. I never again had the hot-start-sluggishness that used to plague the car before the fix. KEEP AN EYE ON OIL TEMPERATURE! You can wipe out a crank very very quickly if you let the oil get hot. The Caddy puts out HUGE amounts of radiated heat. If you use steep gears, oil temp climbs. If you use cheap oil, oil temp climbs. If you don't have the ign timing right, oil temp climbs. If you don't have plenty of flowing air in a tight engine compartment, oil temp climbs. In other words - PUT A TEMPERATURE GAUGE IN THE OIL PAN AND KEEP AN EYE ON IT AS YOU WORK OUT THE GREMLINS IN A NEW INSTALLATION. I used a cheap WalMart $18 water temp gauge to monitor my oil temps. There will be times you will be glad you did. Mine ended up as the reliable family car for many years, but for the first shakedown periods, I had some tempertaure-related gremlins to work out. I was also very surprised at which brands of oil ran cool, and which brands of oil would quickly get hot enough to melt bearings. I was pulling heavy trailers in summer heat for hours at a time, so my situation would bring out the good or the bad much quicker than most people's cars would. (In case you're wondering, just about any "house-brands", off-brands, and Havoline(awful) would get very hot and melt bearings in short order. The coolest oils under heavy loads were Valvoline, Pennzoil, Castrol, and MOBIL.) Before anyone tries to pick a fight over my insulting their favorite brands- my engine was used in extreme condidtions, and may not be typical of the lighter demands of other engines. Tall gears, a few things to shield from heat, and a little bit of redirecting of airflow made nearly all the bugs go away. The first summer was spent pulling out my hair and working out the mostly heat related demons, the next ten years were almost completely trouble free fun. If you have a truck with a huge engine compartment, you probably won't have as much work ahead of you as I did, but it may help you knowing what to look out for just in case.
A lot of good info there. Sadly being that I am building a 1 ton with a dually rear I will most likely be running 4.11s. Do you think a O/D unit will help me? They are not cheap but cheaper than tearing up an engine.
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