Hey, whats the difference between an Old 350 rocket and a normal sb 350? It almost appears to be a big block but i've never heard of a 350 BB? Also the bellhousing size looks to be different, is it? The tranny would have to be a th350 right? what troubles will i have bolting it into a third gen? I know the torqe arm needs an adapter/mount. Any help would be greatly appreciated...
Yanked it out of a 72 Olds Cutlass.

Also not sure its a 350, how can i tell what it is by its casting #'s and where too look?

 

everything is differant, it would need a BOP trans and not sure if any adapters fit this trans to torque arm, but if you went aftermarket torque arm you would have any problems there.

 

Not too mention that building an Olds engine cost 2-3 times what building a Chevy does. Your part choices are extremely limited.

Even if you got the engine for free it would not be worth the hassle.

 

check out:

http://www.442.com

and

http://my.inil.com/~dlbrown/oldsfaq.htm (mirror of the 442 faq)

 

Dolph, the olds 350 rocket is an awesome motor. They came equipped with 6in rods. Torque monsters! Your casting numbers should be able to be found on the internet. The olds motors are almost all identical on the outside. like pontiac, 301, 326, 350, 389, 400, 455 are all identical size, and look the same.


The b-o-p th350 tranny is the same as the chevy except it has a different bolt pattern on the bellhousing. The adapter kits from b&m, and hurst, and others should work. I've seen chevy to olds swap mounts on the net in various places.

brad

 

The 'Rocket' 350 Olds is just a descriptive term. Means nothing.

Sort of like Goodwrench 350.

Rocket means nothing. It was just an Olds 350 engine. Decent engine, but by no means a world beater in stock form.

If it was a 1969 or '70 W-31 350 (also called Ram-Rod in the 1968 Cutlasses-less than 800 made) it would be something special.

The term 'Rocket' came from the late 1940s when Olds offered one of the stronger street cars (for the time) called the Rocket 88 with the then new V-8 in the lightest body line.

The Olds 350 engine is part of the Olds V-8 small-block line that included the 330, 350 and 403.

The big-block Olds (mid 1960s through late 1970s) included the 400, 425 and 455.

The big-block Olds engine is physically wider than the small-block and can cause some clearance issues in some swaps. Most times it doesn't.

jms

 

Wa-a-a-y back in the good ole days at GM, all the divisions used to be able to manufacture their own engines, the Rocket 350 was Oldsmobile's version of that displacement engine. After 1981, the [cough, cough] Chevy engine became the "Corporate V8" meaning, if you were to buy a car that had a V8 engine in it, then that was the ONLY one available. All in all, the Rocket 350 was not a bad motor at all. It made great power, got (for the time) decent gas mileage, and was a very strong casting for the engine.

I think the only people doing anything with those is Mondello, and it's been so long, I don't even remember where I saw the ad. Maybe a google search will turn up some info for ya.

And bradkeith, almost right in your last... except that the 301 was a much lower decked engine than the rest of the Pontiac engines (and never did get any aftermarket support because it was such an odd engine!) Other than that though, very good call!

LaterZ!

 

Hey guys, you've been great help, I just have one more question, ok maybe a few.. :hail:
Can i just get some olds mounts and bolt them into a third gen and will there be a hood clearance problem(not too worried about clearance).
I figure I'll just use a bop to chevy trans adapter and use the 700r4, because from what im told, I will be needing the torqe arm adapter, tailshaft, driveshaft, and shiftlinkage, just out of curiousity is this all true?

By the way the olds 350 is out of a 72 cutlass and it has gold valve covers (if that means anything)

 

well, i just figured i'd through in what i knew. I had a pontiac 301 and it was the worst motor i've ever had I had a 81 TA daytona pacecar with a 301 turbo. like 19.00 1/4mi.



brad

 

My 1989 chevy Caprice Estate Station Wagon(my beater car) Has a 307 Olds motor Maybe they were just using up the extra motors? lol

 

Right, the Olds 307 somehow managed to survive the ax longer than the Pontiac or Buick V8s, how I don't know... my wife had a 84 Buick LeSabre with one of those too, what a total dog, but got good gas mileage...

Why does everybody suddenly seem obligated the last few years to add "rocket" to every Olds engine's description? That just started up kind of recently. It's been years and years since Olds themselves even called them that, except for the racing division's Chevrolet-Olds hybrid products.

 

Again, I suggest you thumb thru a Summit or Jegs once before you do this. Try finding Olds Hi-po parts. There is not much. You basically have to go to specialists like Mondello and pay out the ***.
As example.
Edelbrock Performer Intake for Olds $181.99

Same manifold for Chevy $109.99

I used to own a 72 Cutlass Supreme with the Olds 350. Trust me it's too damn expensive.

Whatever money you save will be spent twice fold in the future if you plan to make the car faster.

 

I heard that, today i was off work and did some research, needless to say i didn't like what i found.
Definitely going to dump the olds 350 idea.

 

olds 307 is a durable motor. people have been known to get 300k or 400k miles out of the engine without ever opening it up for work.

 

I speculate that the Olds V-8 survived on the basis that the corporation had too much capital tied up in the assets at the plant that weren't depreciated. Since Olds was busy producing that "wonderful" V-8 diesel engine for passenger cars into the early-'80s, the line had to produce SOMETHING that the corporation could use to justify its existence until the assets could be depreciated off without taking a big bottom line write-off. Seven years of accelrated depreciation later, the accountants and CFO were happy, so the design engineers could dump the 307 beast from their cars in favor of the more cost efficient 305 SBC.

But that's just a guess....

Just remember, it's the accountants that call the shots at most major corporations, and they don't always make the most sound decisions.

 

i've rebuilt a few 350 olds back in the early to mid 80s for people replacing the olds deisel. they're pretty much the same engine. one thing i noticed is the olds is a massive engine, huge mains, like 3" i think and the block looked like it had a lot of meat in it. they sure had a lot of problems with the heads, gaskets, and injector pumps on the deisel

 

Yeah, that diesel thing was a total fiasco... IIRC that was the first American-built auto engine that used torque-to-yield fasteners... I knew quite a few people that bit on the "cheaper fuel" hook, and then couldn't wait to get out from under the headaches it caused, like minor details such as finding this supposedly cheap fuel as well as what to do when the thing puked and couldn't be repaired. The 6.2 was a far superior product although still far less robust than a real diesel engine needs to be. Seems like it was almost impossible to find used Olds 350 gasoline heads for quite a while in the early to mid 80s because of all the conversions.

Vader, that's probably a good guess, since it lasted just about right for a 7-year depreciation schedule; there may have been union contract issues and that sort of thing too. It certainly wasn't a purely customer-satisfaction driven decision, in common with so many of GM's notoriously bad product line malfunctions over the last 30 years.

 

those deisel 350s did suck stock but Ive herd of people converting to gas, boring them .60+ then useing a BBO crank, chevy or mopar rods, forged pistons; now they've got an almost invincible short block