As far as old vs new. Old engines are simpler. Less stuff on em. Easy to work on yet there are countless threads here with guys having issues. Me included. New stuff can go over 100k without being touched other than oil and filters. I like my wife’s newer ride, I rarely ever touch it. That leaves me more time to do the tinkering involved with keeping the old junk on the road. it’s a win win.
Never been a fan of odd fire engines. The 55 265 Problems lack of good oil filter cracked pistons and rapid cylinder and cam wear. I try to stay away from First year engine designs
I would second that engine as the worst! My brother had one of those diesel cutless from back then and it got so bad that they replaced his diesel with a gas engine as a warranty fix!
I don’t agree with you. The architecture of this engine is the Oldsmobile 350 V8. If you want to build a second generation Olds (gasoline) racing engine, you can start with the diesel block. Heads, crankshaft bolt on. There are significant changes, but they started with the gas engine. Saying it’s not “converted” is just semantics.
Keeping with the theme of this forum…I graduated HS in 65…typical problems with students cars, early Olds V8’s with ticking lifters and no oil to the rockers,Y block no oil to rockers, bad cams in 265 Chevys, exhaust and blow by smoke in most engines over 75,000 miles.
That’s the kinda crap we love now Maybe they were all just about the same bad but it’s all there was.
Yeah, none of it stopped the car dead but many of us lacked the skill or money to fix it…One guy with an Olds had holes in the valve covers to squirt in oil occasionally .Or the various oiler kits. These cars were not new then and the pulling a valve cover was like a Jello mold of sludge. A school of 2000 students and only two flathead V8 cars.
I only have second hand knowledge but dad always told me the gmc 305 v6 was a horrible junk pos and he never said a good thing about the 58 348.
43 years in the trade.. just hung it up for good, went from rebuilding starters and generators and using a timing light to multiplexed fully computerized electric rail car movers..what interesting is just because it’s old it isn’t ‘easy’ it just takes a different skill set. Vega engines, the early ones.. burned oil coming off the vertipak..
Most of those issues would have went away with todays oils There was a service fix for the cams in the 55 265 cams shim the oil pump relief valve to increase oil pressure. When Henery did the Model he didn't go OHV because the oil of the day and sludge plugging oil passages to the valves And no plug wires because of poor insulation
I always wondered about the aluminum rambler 6 and slant sixes...was it true the head mating surface pitted thus becoming impossible to seal? Or the first year 221 ford v8 sure didn't keep that displacement for long. As for worst individual (OT) engine : My aunt's 1973 Duster 318 V-8, a whole 2.8 miles on the odometer, down the street from Bob Banning Dodge ---windowed the engine block....
The worst engines built probably died and were replaced and forgotten so quickly that few even know they existed.
No wonder, they shipped them standing up on their nose, all the oil was in the front of the block. I doubt many unloaders took the time to let the oil flow back down to the pan when they let them down! Really though, their problem was the bean counters at GM wouldn't let Chevy put the same coating on the cylinders that Porsche did on their aluminum engines. Porsche didn't have any problems with oil consumption like the Chevy did. When Chevy went to the steel sleeves, they didn't have any problems anymore, either.
Those OT diesel Olds cars were the slowest pieces of crap on the road. Dad got a couple because they were nearly free. 85 MPH speedometers were pure optimism. The only saving grace was the ability to ''soot'' tailgaters. Which was like, everybody but a Yugo.
49 Olds 303 maybe not the worst but it had issues. Hard starting in winter, timing chains, poor fuel mileage where some problems I remember. It was faster and nicer to ride in over the 6 cylinder 51 chev but if it was a long trip we always toke the chev.
My history teacher said his grand da had a 1917 V8 Chevy. Stay in the repair shop all week to be driven on Sunday and back in the shop again. However , it was a pretty engine.
The Crosley Cobra engines had problems when put in cars after the war. Seems the engine did great when run at steady rpms powering military generators. Not so much in cars, where the rpms varied. Also, the internal liners, be it zinc or plastic, deteriorated after time, allowing corrosion. Hence the cast iron engines. Or so I have read.
chevrolay's trouble with soft cam's was a whole lot longer than just the 55. i personally had two 350's and one 400 that would blow them smoke rings and lose power when you would tear them down to rebuild several cam lobes would be completely round all with less than75,000 miles
I had the opportunity to talk to one of the engineers. He said it was a clean sheet design. Oldsmobile was to build it that is why all the olds parts fit it. If they were run constantly and oil changed every 3 mos. or 3,000 mi they were great engines. Saw many go over 275,000 miles. The injection pump that was the disaster of that engine. To say they were converted gas engines is rediculous. When you would have to replace most of the engine to do so.
An O/T one that would make any Aussie cringe: The Mazda Roadpacer. Take a heavy bodied mid-70's Aussie family sedan, remove the local 308 V8 and fit a 13B rotary. Then fit heavy smog gear to it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mazda...a Roadpacer AP (Anti,HJ and HX series Premier. Cheers, Harv
In the 20's the Knight engines that Willys and a few other manufactures used, smoked from the get go. They would only slow the smoking if they were all carboned up.
The Jalopy Journal
