for $300, Someone offered me a 74 or so oldsmobile 4 door BOAT of a car with a 455 and a 400 Turbo Transmission. Any Ideas on what i can do to get it to fit in my 85 Sport coupe?

Thanks

 

I doubt its really worth the effort... those motors are pathetic performers unless you wanna dump alot of cash into it. It would be cool and different, but its probably easier and you'd get more out of something like a 454 BBC or a 455 Pontiac or Buick.

 

how do you figure that there are any really important differences between the buick, oldsmobile, and pontiac engines? i mean besides what the front cover looks like, little variances in the heads, and oil pans? the buick and olds engines are basically the same. they will all probably cost more/ have less parts available than a bbc, but the B.O.P. engines have alot of similarities between them

 

ahem... Remember the 71 Olds 442, 455 4 speed?
And this is coming from a Pontiac man. $300 sounds good to put it in any car.
Be prepared to make some investments, if it came from a land barge it its probably a low compression small hp engine (for its size), but a starting block for a good engine... take your time. run the numbers, and see what your getting.

 

I would recommend not taking that on.

The motor Bob refers to is completely different from what you'd be getting. Just because the motor he's talking about ran good, doesn't mean squat about how some mid-70s smogger land barge motor will run. It's about like somebody giving you a free 76 Impala with a 350 2-barrel, and then tellng you that it's going to put out 375 HP just because a 70½ LT-1 350 did. Ain't gonna happen. Sure it's got the same cubic inches; the similarity ends there.

The Olds motor is a big, bulky, heavy thing. The one you're asking about in particular is a low-compression, gas-guzzling, dog-slow pig. My stepfather had one of those when it was much newer, a 74 Olds 88 with a 455 4-barrel, and it was pretty pitiful then, basically competitive with the 170 HP 350 2-barrels in the Impala (same chassis); I can't imagine that one of those would have got much better over time. My 74 Caprice 454 even in stock form would walk all over that Olds.

Without dumping huge amounts of money into it, and finding the necessary performance-oriented parts that are scarce as hen's teeth, it will remain a dog. Just graunching it into your car will be expensive and troublesome enough, and when you get done, you'll end up with a car with hundreds of extra pounds on the nose, that won't even run with a L69 305 car. In other words, an extremely labor- and money-intensive disappointment.

Guys like Bob that have been building those other brands of cars and motors typically have networks of sources of parts, their own collection maybe, the knowledge about what fits with what and works the best, etc.; the rest of us don't. They tend to overlook the difficulties that the rest of us face in dealing with those comparatively rare "other" brands. If you don't have a way to tap into Olds-specific resources like that, you won't be able to overcome the limitations of that smogger motor.

Now if you could get the 71 442 motor for $300.... that might be worth fooling with. What you're talking about needs to be melted down and forgotten.

 

I'm doing this swap, except with the Buick 455. I ran into problems with the TH400 tranny though. You'd be set if you've got a short tailshaft TH400. YearOne makes conversion kits for these transmissions, which I've gotten already. It does require the 4" tailshaft, which I don't have. I think I'm going to convert to the 700R4 for better gas mileage, since it's a 4 speed with overdrive.
Here's my progress.

Here's the info for the 700R4 swap.
You can find these rebuilt on ebay for $500.[

 

Go for it! Headers will be a pain, but otherwise they are great engines.

I've had several Oldsmobiles and i'll take on any L69 with my 4000# '72 Vista Cruiser with a bone stock 455. No problem.

It's too bad people have experienced poor running Olds big blocks. It's even worse they comment on them. But if they are so bad, send them my way! I'd have one in every car if i could. I've had head-snapping SBC's, but i've never had one that wraps my guts around my spine like and Olds BB.

If the Olds was such a bad engine, why did it survive longer than any Buick, Pontiac, or Cadilac's popular 50's - up v-8's? Why was it placed in soooooo many different cars and trucks from all of GM?

Don't let them bring you down. They are great engines.

 

Quite a bit different motor from what he's got.

Just because some Olds motors are good (and there's no doubt there are some very good ones) doesn't automatically mean that the 70s smogger turd he's talking about is any good. It's the wrong foundation for a build-up. He will end up spending a ridiculous amount of effort and money, and not go any faster than he could for a fraction of the cost with a motor that doesn't require any special engineering to get it in there at all; and above all, nowhere near as fast as all of the motors you Olds partisans are talking about. That's not what he's got. He's got a land barge motor from quite possibly the most worthless of all the worthless years; not a hot-rod motor out of a hot-rod car from a year when that actually meant something.

All of us who have our "favorite" brand of motors, need to keep the stars out of our eyes when somebody mentions it, and think a little more in terms of reality and practicality for the person who asks the question. If this fellow was telling us he had a 71 442 motor, it would be a whole different story; or if he was an experienced Olds person like some of the people here are with the other brands of motors, then that too would be a different matter. Advising him to put that POS he's asking about into a perfectly good F car is just sending him on a serious left turn down a dirt road.

 

I'm gonna have to agree with RB83L69 on this
Unless you have the parts, tools and know how to convert this engine from the block up it would be wise to stay clear of it. While this would be a great deal for an engine project it will require a lot of time and investment to get the power you want out of it. For the money, and if you have the time, it would be a good buy to strip and build (slowly) for a future engine and a learning experience. But dont plan in installing it any time soon. If you can post the engine and head casting numbers I can try to find out excatly what it is.

 

Buick, Olds, and Pontiac motors are COMPLETELY different!
There is NOT one single part that will work from one of these motors to the next except for the carb and the distributor cap and rotor! "Theres little difference between the heads"?? Have you ever seen any of these motors they're totally different.
I own and have owned 350, 389, 400, and 455 pontiacs, I own and have owned 350, 430, and 455 buicks, and finally I own and have owned 403 and 455 oldsmobiles. They ARE NOT the same.

 

Aren't all the BOP 455 blocks the same?

 

Nope. The bolt patern for the bellhousing is the same but thats it. The blocks are completely different.