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350 Olds Rocket V8!!

M

Murray Hebblethwaite

Member
For all of your motor experts, what is your knowledge about this engine?

Olds basic engine in their '70 Cutlass was a 6 banger, then the next was their 350 Rocket (Gold) painted block!

Of course there was the 4-4-2, sporty model!
 
I had a 53, 55 & 57 with the Rocket 88 engine. The older two had the same displacment. I think just under 340 cu. inch and the 57 was a little bigger. All had 4 barrel carbs. The 53 & 55 had 4 speed automatics that were real firm. Under ideal road conditions 21 mpg, was possible except for the 57.
 
That brings back some memories.
Back in the early 80s I had a 65 Cutlass with the rocket engine in it.
But I thought it was like 330CI or so.
It would sure haul tail.
I put new shocks and new radials all the way around.
Was living in Vernal UT and would go visit a girl in Denver on weekends. Up and over Rabbit Ears Pass on US 40.
325 miles and I could do it in just over 4 hours.
Yee Haw
 
Olds combustion chamber was narrower angle than Chevy, slightly less flow in theory but less knock, better mileage from tighter combustion space, larger quench area. At end it meant another 2 year cycle of carb use and still met EPA standards while Chevy was debugging throttle body injectors. Spark plugs easier to get at also. RN
 
I had an uncle who was an Oldsmobile salesman in Battle Creek, MI. He always had a new Olds during the '50s. I still remember those summer visits where my aunt Jane would fly down those straight, well maintained, dirt roads at 90 MPH. My two brothers and two female cousins were breathless after I would ask, "How fast can this Baby go"? Not sure we ever found out but it was fast enough.

She was the same aunt who sent me a miniature roulette wheel and table for Christmas.
 
If I recall correctly, they also had positive valve rotaters to keep the valves cleaner!

Does this make any sense?

Yes it was strong and did NOT suck back the fuel!

A Flying Eagle caught Gramps in Ohio! He caught Gramps doing over double nickles!

Speed limit back in Canada at that time was 70mph on the freeway, so 80 - 85 mph was common!
 
I just know some are more valuable than others. Depends on the casting numbers. My son could tell you all about them. He builds high performance engines and gets Olds engines from as far as Canada to build up. I guess they can be tempromental and it's pretty easy to screw them up.
 

When they were new the 4 bbl 350 needed good gas with it's 10.25 CR. The 2 bbl 350 with 9 to 1 CR I don't know about.
 
Worked at a dealership in the 70"s, they were over all a good engine, heavy, and full of surprises. I was told that olds never scrapped a block or head, You would find a factory engine with an over sized lifter bore or an over sized valve or a heli coil in a spark plug hole. The earlier ones had a lot of power and the later ones were stump pullers and liked high gears and would get great gas mileage. The rear main seals would like to leak a lot. They were probably one of the better engines that GM made through the years, seems like they would run forever. I have one in a 67 chev 1/2 ton 4x4 pickup, runs good.
 
i have a 1964 olds super 88 with 394 cu.in. also have 1974 cutlass with 350 rocket. this 350 is the one that GM turned into the 5.7 diesel engine. very good long lasting engine. , but the diesel was garbage. just too light and did not stand up at all. trouble from one end to the other. cranks breaking camshaft and lifters, rocker arms. injectors. one good thing though you could remove the diesel from the 1/2 tons and replace them with the gas rocket , then you had a truck.thats what i did with my 1980 1/2 ton. want more power put in a 455 then go.
 
My dad has a 1958 Starfire 98 with the optional J2 371 CI 312 HP tri-power engine and 4 speed hydramatic.

The 371 CI engine was used from 57 through 59. The 394 came out in 59 and both 371 and 394 engines were built in 59.

Dean
 
I had that 350 Olds engine in a 1979 Chevy Scottsdale. The truck originally came with the 350 diesel and the farmer that owned didn't like the diesel since it spent a lot of time in the shop. He had a shop to install a gas engine. They installed the 350 Olds gas engine. After the swap the farmer didn't want the truck. I bought it when I went down and drove it. It only had 40k miles in 6 years of use. It would sure haul a heavy load and I never had it sniffed. I sold it in 1997 to a Chief Warrant Officer in the Army stationed from where I retired. He drove it to CO. It also had dual gas tanks. I paid $2900.00 and sold it for $2500.00. Sure was a nice truck. It also had dual exhaust and I had to have that replaced once. Hal
PS: I won a set of Michelin radial tires and had them on the truck and they went with the truck and I put a new water pump on it from JC Whitney.
 
Only thing I remember about the Olds 350's was my brother bought a '77 Olds Cutlass S new with a 350 V8 in it. There was a recall on the car because some of the Cutlass' had Chevy motors in them. Olds oversold the motor and replaced it with the Chevy 350. Supposedly the only way to tell on the outside was the oil filter was different. My brother's was an Olds so he couldn't get any rebursment.
 
Only thing I remember about the Olds 350's was my brother bought a '77 Olds Cutlass S new with a 350 V8 in it. There was a recall on the car because some of the Cutlass' had Chevy motors in them. Olds oversold the motor and replaced it with the Chevy 350. Supposedly the only way to tell on the outside was the oil filter was different. My brother's was an Olds so he couldn't get any rebursment.
 
Had a friend that had a GM dealership back in the day. Sold cadillac- pontiac-buick and GMC trucks.He told me at that time Olds was GM's experimental car. They tried out a lot of new ideas on them and if they worked they would come out the next year on the other GM brands. I always thought they were good cars,liked them a lot better than a Buick
 
rrlund, you mentioned that your son builds hi performance engines. I have some complete 84 Olds V6 diesel engines and have wondered if they would be candidates, to convert to hi performance gas.
 
I bought a 1977 Olds 88 with a 350 rocket engine that turned out to be a Chevy engine. Some had the real rocket engine and some had a Chevy engine, only GM didn"t tell anyone they were doing a switcheroo. I got a check out of the class action lawsuit.

Ichabod
 
Might. I've never been to their website,but I know they have one. I would imagine you can contact them through there. Just do a search for Pierce Race Engines in Lansing Michigan.
 
I have one of those engines sitting in my garage that is a horse of an engine. Its out of a 1970 Olds Delta 88 Royal 2 door and is a Gold motor with factory 4 barrel. The heads were milled 10 thousands so it has higher compression. The only bad thing about these engines is they are not high RPM engines. But they still have plenty of power at get up and go and sound great with duals on it. Bandit
 
Ya,the neighbors brother in law was an engineer for Olds at that time. That deal had something to do with California emmission standards at that time. I'm thinking,if I remember the story right,the Olds engine would pass the California tests,so they all went out there in the Olds and Chevys and some of the rest of the country got the Chevy engines in the Olds. He said the dealer here in town knew about it and would always order a certain engine special to make sure he always got the Olds engines.
 
The top dog 350 in the 69-70 Cutlass era was an option called W31. (not to be confused with the 455 W30 option)

The W31 had 455 valves fitted to the 350 heads. All things equal, they were a little faster than a 350 Chevy, Buick, or Pontiac IMO.
 
I was never a big fan of the Olds 350 probably because I was a Chevy fan and the Olds 350 did not rev like a Chevy SB.

My Olds favorite in the 1960s is the aluminum V8, 215 cubic inches, and turbocharged. Two guys could pick it up. Complete engine weighs around 300 lbs. 62-63 Olds Jetfire turbo 215 was rated 215 horsepower, i.e. one horse per cubic inch. Also had 300 lbs. of torque at 3200 RPM. I had one in a British MGB. British Leyland bought the engine from General Motors. It got used in Land Rovers, Rover cars, TVR, MGC, Triumph TR8, etc. I worked on a few. It was weird to see an American - Olds-Buick-Pontiac engine with British carbs on it.
 
i had a '69 cutlass with the rocket 350, 9.5 to 1 compression i ran premium gas in it [ once in awhile a little aviation fuel accidently got in the tank,] for 2 tons of detroit iron that thing could run! it would easily burn rubber for a half a city block, got 9 mpg, and we gave that car all sorts of hard running, it never failed i wouldn't want to put it up to a era shelby or hemi cuda ect but it could hold its own with about everything else around
 
The ORIGINAL '61-'63 215 turbo was an aluminum block with cast iron heads. If you wanted a FULL aluminum 215, you had to rob the aluminum heads off a '64 Buick (I believe it was) 340...but they were a direct bolt-on.

I'd wager the Brit version likely was all-aluminum from the get-go.
 
I worked on several Truimph Stags with the 215 and thought they were factory original. Found out later they were dealer installed replacements for the awful Truimph-designed V8s. Triumph did use the 215 though in the TR8.

GM sold all rights to the 215, but saved the basic engine platform and used it (partially) on many later engines. Buick 300 V8 and much later the 3.8 V6. Also the Olds Jetfire 198 V6.

I never had a turbo-verion 215. I saw only one and seems they were scarce and problematic. Super high compression and a water-alcohol injection system.

I remember reading about when GM sold the engine to Great Britian. Popular Mechanics claimed it was an engine way ahead of it's time, and Americans were ruining the engines by using pure water for coolant (that corroded the aluminum). I have no idea if there was any truth in that story, but do recall reading about it (over 40 years ago). I DO know many of us did use pure water in our engines at times.
 
(quoted from post at 16:42:51 12/18/10) I have one of those engines sitting in my garage that is a horse of an engine. Its out of a 1970 Olds Delta 88 Royal 2 door and is a Gold motor with factory 4 barrel. The heads were milled 10 thousands so it has higher compression. The only bad thing about these engines is they are not high RPM engines. But they still have plenty of power at get up and go and sound great with duals on it. Bandit
Click to expand...

For 455s with 10.5s, take another 60 off the heads. Be sure and get rid of the 8.5 or 9.5 units they were required to install for production. And never use them crap Felpro style gaskets. Stock metal ones. Change the springs and related parts, they are intentionally flattened at 5500. I never worked with that particular intake so it may be okay? Heads already flow well beyond Chevy. Any stock Olds 350 head will exceed 300 CFM with very little work. Run bottom end bearings a little loose. 10 to 20 psi hot idle. Stock 455 bottom end will make 7500 RPM. Mine was never afraid of anything that said "Hemi".

GM corporate stepped on Olds all the time. Despite that, Olds had pistons available to 12.5 if you could find the part numbers. In later years I found that you could get parts like dual overhead cam 4 valve aluminum heads and aluminum blocks.

Got a brother who has a hard time with people who build Chevys. Ha ran a dyno service, and nearly all "built" cars that came in made less than stock HP. The arguments were endless. People who only have worked with Chevy will never realize how little they know about OEM engines.

Sorry, but low RPM statements kinda rankle me, especially compared to those old Chevy valve trains and soft metal blocks.

Who can quote the wrist pin height change in replacement pistons for small block Chevys? And vs other brands?
 
Started making them in 1968 (before that they were a 330 ci). !968-1970 were the best. 1971 on up they lowered the compression ratio amoungst other things to burn unleaded gas. Like others said the W-31 was the "hot" one. The Chevy 350 had larger bore and shorter stroke which allowed it to use larger dia valves and rev quicker and higher plus had a lot more cheap speed equipment available. Olds for longevity , Chevy for performance. A few advantages over Chevy were 8 bolt valve covers , stronger block , internally ballanced crank , larger oil drain back holes in heads and exhaust manifolds "under" the spark plugs for lot easier plug changes. As far as the Cutlass compared to the Chevelle? No comparison! The Cutlass was a class act all the way. Interiors were twice as nice and better body lines. The 442 from 1972. on came with a 4bbl 350 unless you got the "Hurst" model which came with the 455. The 442 '65 , '66 , '67 , 68 , '69 came with the 400 engine , '70 and '71 442 came with 455 or 455 HO (W-30) '72 on up 442 came with 350.
 
Neighbor had a Buick station wagon with the 403 Olds engine. I believe the 403 Olds was also the 6.6 liter engine in the Pontiac Trans Am of "Smokey and the Bandit" fame.
 
We once owned a '71 Olds with the 350 two barrel. Plain old brown 4 door family car.

That was the neatest car ever to screw around with at stop lights. Nobody would ever suspect a plain old family car would run like that sucker would. On the top end, I once held it to the floor in passing gear and backed off when it hit 115.

I once squared off with some kid with a souped up'55 Chevy, killer pipes and all. I smoked him so bad he wouldn't even look over at me at the next light.
 
JD - we had a guy in our neighborhood who had a little red and white Olds with a turbocharged hi-tech engine in about 1965. 2 door hardtop with a windshield that seemed to come up over the front seat. It was FAST. I rode in it a couple times, and decided I wasn't going to get in it again. I found him one night on the way home from my girlfriends house (now my wife). He had hit a tree dead center. The transmission tailpiece had come up through the floor and was stuck through the back of the back seat. The tree was three inches from the windshield. They buried him three days later.

He had left slide marks on both sides of the road for around 300 ft. No sign of ever touching the brake. Went out in a blaze of glory. I guess. . .

One of the fastest cars I ever rode in.

Paul
 
My car was not afraid of anything that said Hemi either. In fact it wasn't afraid of anything that said Oldsmobile or Pontiac or Chevy either. My 1970 Challenger with the 440 sixpack and a 4 speed would take care of itself. I would like to have that car back with some of todays computer technology things could be quite interesting i think. Steven
 
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