350 Oldsmobile in 92 K2500.......

[rickpilgrim]

Hello Everybody!

It’s been awhile since I’ve been here and here is my next headache solved in the end
Ever since we have been using our 92 K2500 ld we have put 3 tbi 350’s in it
To be fair all three were salvage yard engines with 100k miles or more.
We are tired of leaking/ blowby ?1) cracked head (2) engines and our engine guy won’t even rebuild a TBI 350 without putting new heads on it and that makes a rebuild around $3200 which is out of budget.
I have a 1974 Olds 350 pulled from a Cutless with 52K mi that recieved a 455.
Would have to re gaasket and seal it and get a set of shorty headers and a speedway trans adapter and a CCC olds 307 distributor and TBI to 4bbl adapter
And set the ign timing different but has anyone else here ever tried something like this?
Thoughts Anyone?

[Mr_Rich]

I don't think your 700R4 trans will mate to the Olds engine which will also put you out of budget.

[Tom]

In 73-87's its cake, they had the olds 5.7L diesel and so oem brackets are available. In these newer ones I've never heard of it. Sell the olds and put the money to a new engine. New TBI from GM with warranty $2800 at summit.

$3200 to rebuild a 350 with new oem style heads is f'ing highway robbery.

[franken]

No inspections or sniff tests up there? According to (often ignored) federal law, the engine has to meet the emissions of the original engine as well have all the emissions stuff the original had. I doubt the law has changed but I could be full of it...
I think you can still buy a new what 290 HP GM crate 360 for under $2000?

[mountie]

I put a crate 350 - 4 bolt main in my '88 C2500 at 220,000. Exact / complete fit.

I installed it at a Corvette shop. Just re-use intake & pan, get a good water pump. It ran 'till I sold it, with 392,000.

Even though I bought it at Pep Boys, They were only the distributor. The crate motor company was great. Long block.. $1,400. Swapped it in a few days. ( I took advantage and cleaned everywhere).... But install was easy.

[rickpilgrim]

First- Speedway sells a nice adapter plate that mates a Chevy engine to a.
BOPC Trans or a BOPC engine to a Chevy trans for less than $50 so trans is not an issue. I have one in my Buick 455/4L80E powered 96C3500 dually and it works just fine.
Second- no emissions inspection here and the federal law is either ignored or unknown up here. The C3500 mentioned above is a DOT inspected vehicLe and the only comment the DOT guys say is “that’s a big motor you have in there” and yes it has a 14x4 open element air filter.
If $3200 sounds like a lot consider this. That’s with forged 9/1 pistons, debuted and weight balanced rods with floating pins and arp bolts, torque plate bored and honed cylinders,decked and align honed crank saddles, cut,polished and hardened crank journals. Cleaned and honed oil passages in the block and fully balanced and blueprinted. New cam bearings and choice of cam, choice of either arp bolts or main studs, blueprinted oil pump and new oil pan assembled short block.
Robbie will not use GM heads, he uses Engine Quest replacements saying they have thicker decks that don’t crack and are drilled for both vortec or gen 1 sbc intake. New pushrods and screw in studs with guide plates included fully assembled and dyno tested and painted your color with a 3yr 100k warranty and that’s the only way he builds a work truck engine. That’s around $3200 and takes about 2 weeks.
I’m still running the Chevy 350 ecm and tbi system on the 350 olds. It’s $55 for the tbi to Performer intake and $139 for the olds shorty headers.i still have the plates and mounts for olds to Chevy from another truck and if I want to spend another $370 I can use the Chevy serpentine belt system.
I know Olds Motors well, the ones I’ve had have gone over 200K mi and that’s one of my motivations for trying this

[mountie]

NOW, you mention all that........

Heck... put a Pro Charger on it.

[rickpilgrim]

Pro Charger would be nice for our Suburban or Grand Cherokee but blown engines and towing don’t get along well with today’s fuel.
I’m not looking for a performance upgrade by doing this, the Olds is 185 net hp and the Chevy is 190-200 net so I’m loosing some power ON PAPER. I’m looking for stone reliability here by using something I have that should be better than what I can find in the boneyard. I’m going to use the stock tbi system with the Oldsmobile 350 which should be okay but again I’ve never tried this before so....

[Tom]

Originally Posted by rickpilgrim

Robbie will not use GM heads, he uses Engine Quest replacements saying they have thicker decks that don’t crack and are drilled for both vortec or gen 1 sbc intake.

Thats the fun part. Gen 1 carb intakes, Gen1 TBI intakes, and Gen1 vortec intakes all have different intake bolt patterns. carb to tbi is slightly different, either to vortec is much different.

[Mr_Rich]

This is an interesting idea. I also think you will still stretch your budget; sometimes nothing is as easy as it looks. You seem to have a lot of the project thought out. Good Luck!

[rickpilgrim]

Thank You Mr Rich!

Yes, I always put a lot of thought into our projects around here even budget wise. The wife told me we could spend 1K or so on this seeing we have other projects so that’s the biggest challenge with this. I could possibly go as high as $1200 as needed as the cost of replacing a K2500 snow plow/ light towing vehicle is far more than the $4630. I have tied in this one over the past 3 yrs.

[mountie]

rickpilgrim, My crate 4-bolt main 350 I put in my '88 C2500 had a chosen compression ratio to accommodate a pro Charger set-up ( for just a little bit more HP , but not a race deal).......

But never did it..... the 350 was just fine for what I needed.
( I had an Art Carr 700R4 'built' tranny capable to handle 500hp, that REALLY helped the engine performance)

[rickpilgrim]

A few yrs ago I built a turbocharged 307 sbc for our 82 C2500 crew cab truck use and learned a lot about boost and towing. First was towing 9500lb and even with 8/1compressio with stock heads and valves and a stage 1 Crower turbo cam with only 6 psi boost 91/93 octane pump gas was not enough octane. Luckily we just burned some valves and trashed rod bearings trying that.
Then I went to propane and a blow thru 700cfm mixer after rebuilding the engine and that worked much better but on a long steep uphill grade the
Methonal injection pump failed and with 7 psi boost the number 3 piston
broke and the rod went through the block and that ended that. I put the jet boat Oldsmobile;455 with 10/1 compression in the 82 and kept the propane system and had better all around performance and until that truck got totalled one winter day yrs later had 0 problems.
These days I like reliability and I can either give Robbie $3200 or take the 350 olds I have with 52k mi from my cutlass and use that which should give me the 5 yrs and 120K mi before we replace the truck.

[hatzie]

Run it with a Quadrajet. The small cap computer controlled HEI isn't available for the 307Y and that was the only rocket motor still in production by the late 80's early 90's TBI era.

You'll need a Chevy to BOPC bellhousing adapter and the motor mounts will be a small amount of fun but not too bad.

If it was a 2wd I'd tell you to put an oldsmobile 200R4 in it and drive it.

[mountie]

Have the Quadrajet blueprinted by a guy who knows what they are doing.

I had it done....... WAY worth the added performance.

[rickpilgrim]

On Distributor for this the last yrs of the 307 olds in the big cars was 1987 and had CCC ( computer controlled ) In 88 when they started making our tbi trucks they didn’t change the wire colors,just the small 2 wire connecter plug.
O’Reillys sells the pigtail for the old CCC plug so splice and solder and shrink wrap. Now the module is different but GM kept the same screw pattern in both early and later distributors so put the Chevy module and wiring in the Olds distributor and send Amazon $40 for an HEI remote coil cap. Now I know the olds 6 degree head needs more timing than the Chevy 23 degree head but I’ve been told by the guys that know Oldsmobile that running 6-8 degrees ignition advance instead of the 0 on the sbc is really close to ideal.
The big HEI fits our trucks with small or big or even tall deck engines.
I like Q-Jets and Thermoquads on our summer stuff but seeing it’s winter 5 months a year here (still have 18” of snow to melt here yet) TBI works better all around for the cold starting and back and forth of plowing snow and doesn’t quit when you hit the frozen snow pile at 10-15 mph.
Adapter Plate I already have from the Caddy 508 in 93 K3500 dually project that we aborted yrs ago. And somewhere along the way my 6 bolt wheel k2500 picked up a rectangle plug 4L80E mated to the NP241 and it really looks like it was part on the “snowplow prep package” that this truck and a lot of them up here have.

[rickpilgrim]

Dragged the olds motor out from storage and here it is. New gaskets and seals and then the fun begins
Also today my new trans adapter plate showed up. I decided to go new as while at the wrecking yard the other day they offered me a 17k mi ago rebuilt Buick 455 out of the uncles car and for $400.00 I could not pass it up as I bought a rust free 96 C3500 ex cab Dually with no driveline or ecm ( former 7.4/5spd ) and decided to use the old adapter plate for the Buick with 4L80E swap for that which may or may not be another thread

[rickpilgrim]

Open up the 350 olds to regasket and seal it and found out that water had gotten in the back 2 cylinders awhile back and I have stuck valves and 2 cylinders that MAY clean up with a .060 bore but .090 might be more realistic.
I’m so far into this with the shorty headers, flex plate tbi adapter oil pump cam and lifters and gaskets/seals and CCC distributor that I placed a call to my boneyard friends and I’ll need to spend another $350 in a tbi chip and tbi spacer and injector spacer to do this but I scored a 81K mi 79 Olds 403 from a rolled Toranado. They said 403’s are useless to them as everybody wants LS Motors now so $100 sealed the deal.
As always more unforscene headaches but if it was easy.......

[rickpilgrim]

The shop can fit 4 crew cab long bow trucks with room to work on them on the lower level and upper level 8- 60” zt mowers plus 2 garden tractors and 6 snowblowers with room to walk around all. Chrome olds script valve covers would be nice but finding them even though one of our accounts is our favorite boneyard that has a section of pre 1980 vehicles and they don’t have that either.
I have time now until the snow melts and from then until next winter I have every nite from 6-9pm and Sat afternoon and Sunday also or later depending on what Lisa wants to do
Th joys of being self employed and also the curse I guess

[rickpilgrim]

I had to table this project for awhile due to my (1) broken ankle pin removal surgery getting delayed 2 weeks, (2) one of our shop employees quit saying needed more money($16.20/hr with all tools provided not enough??!!) and (3) this 99 C3500 taking to long as we would like to make it Ford Tractor Blue on top and metallic gray below the windows and with it needed by April 20 me and my rolling stool are needed for DA sander. (4) employee quit with the 440 for the 89 D350 stripped down so that has to be reassembled and installed by April 30th also.