Oldsmobile like mine are real popular in australia. Except as otherwise indicated, all written content and images are copyright Aaron Severson dba Ate Up With Motor. 1949 Oldsmobile Rocket 88 The Oldsmobile 88 was introduced in 1949 as a replacement for the 70 series. Its unclear at what point Oldsmobile engineers became aware of the Cadillac engine or how much they knew about it. (If you need to review or change these settings after you accept, you can do so from the Privacy Tools page.) 1967 Oldsmobile Delta 88. It also used the .921in lifter bore size of the Toronado Rocket. While the 260s were not very powerful compared to the larger 350 and 403 V8s, fuel economy was almost as good as the base V6. The 260cuin (4.3L), 307cuin (5.0L), 330cuin (5.4L), 350cuin (5.7L) and 403cuin (6.6L) engines are commonly called small-blocks. It was a sliding gear like a manual and held in some fashion I cant remember because it couldnt lock to the engine through the torus member. Embedded video players for content hosted on the YouTube video platform (which is owned by Google LLC) may set these third-party cookies and/or use similar technologies to store data in your browser (or other user agent) for purposes such as (without limitation) managing video settings (e.g., tailoring the playback to your connection speed), storing video preferences, providing certain functionality (e.g., allowing you to pause a video at a particular point), showing you advertisements, associating your video viewing and other activity with your Google account (if any), ensuring proper functioning of the service, preventing abuse, and/or compiling user analytics data. Anyway, thanks for making my visit here an enjoyable one. The following are turn key engines available . The grilles under the headlights of this 1950 Oldsmobile Rocket 88 are for the ventilation system, replacing the traditional pop-up cowl vent. In a flathead engine, the air-fuel mixture has to go around several corners to make its way into the combustion chamber and burned exhaust gases have a similarly circuitous route out of the cylinders. Google, Google Analytics, and other related marks and logos are trademarks of Google LLC.). Comments may be moderated. The first second-generation Oldmobile V8 330cuin (5.4L) "Jetfire Rocket" introduced in 1964 and produced through 1967. This was the only engine offered in 1923, when the Model 47 continued alone. The Turbo-Rocket V8 was offered exclusively on the Oldsmobile Jetfire, a special version of the Cutlass compact hardtop coupe, which is noteworthy as it is one of the world's first (in fact the second) turbocharged passenger car ever offered for public sale. In a flathead engine, the camshaft is in the block, driven directly by the engines crankshaft. The Rocket 88 won six of nine NASCAR late-model division races in the 1949 season and 10 of 19 races in 1950. 49 rocket 88 was my first car back in 1964. The Oldsmobile engine block formed the basis of the Repco 3-liter engine used by Brabham to win the 1966 and 1967 Formula One world championships. Oldsmobile Rocket 88 s by Year 1958 Oldsmobile Rocket 88. 1959 and 1960 371s used green painted valve covers. ), If one was trying to tally how many Rocket engines were built in Olds cars in 1949-50, do you have those numbers? Other American manufacturers would reach the same conclusion. Olds were very popular in Brazil but I can t give you any numbers. Just didnt have any power. 34-41; Arch Brown, Richard Langworth, and the Auto Editors of Consumer Guide, Great Cars of the 20th Century (Lincolnwood, IL: Publications International, Ltd., 1998); F. Gibson Butler, History of the Rocket Engine, originally written 15 November 1977 and excerpted in Desert Rocket Report: Newsletter of the Oldsmobile Club of Arizona October 2004, pp. The cylinder head is little more than a cover for the top of the cylinder, which is why L-head engines are commonly called flatheads. Cookies whose names begin with "_ceg" are associated with the Crazy Egg web analytics service (which is subject to the Crazy Egg Privacy Policy and Cookie Policy). Second, the combustion chambers of a flathead engine have a lot of surface area; more surface area means more opportunities for the heat of combustion to escape (which engineers call heat rejection) before its had the chance to do any useful work. The package was expensive to produce, and Oldsmobile discontinued it after 1958. Although I often wondered why GM needed three mid-level brands, since you already have them, why not preserve them, especially since it is embarrassing and demoralizing to lose one, now two. With an 8.75:1 compression ratio and a 2-barrel carburetor, the Olds 215 had the same ratedhp, 155hp (116kW) at 4800rpm, as the Buick 215, with 220ftlbf (300Nm) of torque at 2400rpm. ), Diagram of a typical pushrod/rocker-arm layout of an overhead-valve engine. Me at the age of 70 in the back seat with a 21-year-old blond. Classic Car Deals (844) 676-0714. (For each of these cookies, "xx" will be a cryptographic hash.) The early Rocket V8 weighs a bit over 700 pounds (318 kg) and had an SAE gross rating of 135 hp (101 kW). Unlike a Mustang or a later Chevy, where theres a thriving business in replacement pieces, finding parts for an Olds of that vintage isnt necessarily easy these days. For more information about how Akamai may collect, process, and/or use personal data, visit the Akamai "Privacy and Policies" page and Privacy Trust Center. $8,888 or BEST REASONABLE OFFER. When the engine is running, transmission oil pressure disengages the pawl. [citation needed], Introduced in the middle of the 1957 model year,[6] the 1957 and 1958 J-2 Golden Rocket had three two-barrel (twin choke) carburetors with a vacuum-operated linkage. Every 307 used a four-barrel carburetor, which was a variant of the Rochester Quadrajet, usually the CCC (Computer Command Control) Quadrajet. An engines static compression ratio is the ratio of the swept volume of each cylinder to the volume of the combustion chamber; the higher the ratio, the more the engine compresses its fuel mixture before combustion. The standard 1965-1967 425cuin (7.0L) was called the Super Rocket, and was the most powerful engine option for the Oldsmobile 88 and 98 of 1965-1967. Some L-head straight-eights were MORE powerful than early OHV V-8s, although they were getting to the limit of their potential, at least in states of tune that were still reasonably streetable. 1952 88 and Super 88 V8s used a 4-barrel carburetor for 160hp (120kW) and 265lbft (359Nm), while 4-barrel 1953 versions raised compression from 7.5:1 to 8.0:1 for 165hp (123kW) and 275lbft (373Nm). Talk to the experts. Rockets, Vikings and Your Old Man. Moreover, correct tuning was a continual headache. 2027; John Katz, Racing the 88, Special Interest Autos #145 (January-February 1995), reprinted in The Hemmings Book of Oldsmobiles, p. 88; Jamie Kitman, The Secret History of Lead, The Nation March 2000; Allen Hunt, Horsepower from Detroit, Part IV: Cadillac, Oldsmobile and the horsepower race, Car Life Vol. The other members may be able to help you decide whether a price is fair, and in some cases, they may even know the specific car (Ikes 53? $300.00. Many customers did not keep the reservoir filled, or had mechanical problems with the turbocharger system which resulted in many of the turbo-charger installations being removed and a conventional 4 barrel carburetor and manifold installed in its place. The other Nash driver was Robert Owen, the Dad of my best friend, also from Corsicana and my neighbor on S. 16th ST. Been an Olds man a long time. Making its debut in 1957 as standard equipment on all Olds models,[4] the 371 was produced through 1960. Google, AdSense, Google AdSense, Google Analytics, and other related marks and logos are trademarks of Google LLC. $22,000 (OBO) Displacement was 259.5 cubic inches, with almost square bore and stroke. Im not a mechanic, so Im afraid I cannot provide any kind of repair advice. 12 (December 1964): 36-47; William Kovarik, Ph.D., Charles F. Kettering and the 1921 Discovery of Tetraethyl Lead In the Context of Technological Alternatives, originally presented to the Society of American Engineers Fuels & Lubricants Conference, Baltimore, MD, 1994, revised 1999, www.radford. Presumably this says something about the cars place in the culture. The introduction of the "Rocket 8" V-8 for the 1949 Oldsmobiles was perhaps the pinnacle of his achievements, incorporating in its overhead-valve design such features as five main bearings,. [citation needed]. See these additional Auto Museum Online articles on the links below (Thats a lesson that many Jaguar and Porsche owners have learned the hard way.). Have a 47 98 custom cruiser. Learn more. Sending my 53 olds to Dallas for overhaul. The _gat cookie, which may appear as _gat_gtag_UA_6113964_2, was sometimes set along with the _ga and _gid cookies to control how frequently requests were sent to the Google Analytics servers; this cookie typically persisted for only a few minutes at a time. I can see it now. The OHV V8 would dominate the American industry well into the 1980s, resulting in some staggeringly powerful engines whose output has only recently been surpassed. Make: Oldsmobile Model: 88 Year: 1956 Engine: 455 Rocket Engine - Turbo 400 - Foose Mags - Airbags Suspension. Many modern engines deal with this problem by placing the camshaft in the cylinder head along with the valves (an overhead cam (OHC) engine), but there still has to be some way for the crank to drive the camshaft. (Those pages do not currently discuss the storage of data in your browser (or other user agent) using technologies other than cookies, e.g., in web storage.) The 400cuin (6.6L) version was the second tall-deck "big-block" Olds. Unfortunately, it also creates more friction and means that the average piston speeds are very high, particularly at high RPM, which is detrimental to engine longevity. Based on the Cadillac Northstar engine, this 4.0-liter engine, called Aurora, was a DOHC design with four valves per cylinder. Get a Oldsmobile crate engine for cars like the cutlass, 88, 98, or the 442.GTO. True-to-scale detail. 98 J-2. Phone: 480-285-1600. They normally expire in just under one year, but you can delete the cookies in your browser (or other user agent) at any time. To learn more about what information the YouTube platform and other Google services may collect through and/or in connection with embedded video players and how Google may use that information, see their "How Google uses information from sites or apps that use our services" page and the Google Privacy Policy. These cookies manage your cookie and privacy preferences. Logging in sets the wordpress_logged_in_xx, wordpress_sec_xx, and/or wordpress_xx cookies, which store the user's login credentials to allow access to the administrative dashboard and other administrative functions; there may be multiple iterations of each cookie. 74-81; Bob McVay, Oldsmobile Starfire Road Test, Motor Trend Vol. 96. Runs great. To learn more about how Google may use information collected by the Google Analytics service, see their "How Google uses information from sites or apps that use our services" page, the "Information for Visitors of Sites and Apps Using Google Analytics" section of the Google Analytics "Safeguarding your data" help page, and the Google Privacy Policy. The overhead valve engine concept offered both power and efficiency, with an improvement in fuel economy (estimated at about 10 percent better than prior engine designs). This car has the pushbutton radio, which cost about $96. You could say the same thing about the original Century, if you were so inclined, which I am. Full instrumentation is standard Olds had not yet succumbed to the allure of warning lights. The 324cuin (5.3L) version was produced from 1954 until 1956. The 88 model remained in production for a whopping 50 years and over ten. Unfortunately, they were also thirsty and a pain to tune, which was not at all what wartime buyers wanted, and after the war there was a gradually increasing array of cheaper alternatives. This was much flatter than the 23 of the small-block Chevrolet and 20 of the Ford small-block wedge heads. The output of the 307cuin (5.0L) wasn't particularly high in terms of horsepower. The cheap ones are expensive, and the expensive ones are cheap. I heard it (fittingly) in connection with Jaguars, but of course its true in general. Set an alert to be notified of new listings. . The wahFontColor and wahBgColor cookies, which are set if you alter the site's color scheme, normally expire after about 14 days, but you can remove them immediately by clicking the "Restore Defaults" button on the sidebar. Particularly enjoyed your succinct descriptions of the engineering factors behind certain design choices. $200.00. For example, the stock (non-high-output, VIN "Y") 307cuin (5.0L) in the 1983 Oldsmobile 98 was a mere 140hp (100kW), although in that year a high-output model (VIN "9") was available producing a nominal 180hp (130kW), at approximately 245lbft (332Nm) torque. 1962 OLDSMOBILE 88 CORE SHORT BLOCK ENGING 8-394 860673. Its taken economic downturns, the occasional oil embargo, and mounting signs of environmental calamity to get Americans to take a real interest in how much fuel they use; even then, that interest never seems to last for long after the latest crisis has passed. Model: 1949 - 1960 Oldsmobile Rocket 88 Engine/Motor: V8 Horsepower: 135 Torque: 283 Pros Cons Design Let's try and forget the full-size Oldsmobile 88 models that were produced all the. The demise of Olds is yet another dreary episode in the ongoing story of GM losing its way. As part of this I ran across a very interesting 1934 paper by a GM engineer Chris H. Bouvy and would like to know more about him and whether his design method was used within GM. A pushrod layout is more expensive than a flatheads valve gear and the extra mass of pushrods and rocker arms hurts mechanical efficiency. In Brazil, OHV V8 engines are commonly known as motores roquete (rocket motors), no matter which producer. SAE gross power was 150hp. A smaller 260cuin (4.3L) V8 was created for the new Oldsmobile Omega in 1975 by decreasing the bore to 3.5in (89mm). Deciding Burrells ideas had promise, Wolfram and Skinner organized a new advance design group to develop a new overhead-valve (OHV) V8 engine and assigned Burrell to lead it. BMEP, IMEP), you will immediately see that bore/stroke ratio does not directly effect engine power. Following the Automobile Manufacturer Association ban on factory supported racing, power ratings went down for the 1959 and 1960 88 models: 270hp (200kW) and 390lbft (530Nm) for 1959 and 240hp (180kW) and 375lbft (508Nm) for 1960. This 1950 Oldsmobile Rocket 88 has the Deluxe trim with a dashboard clock; Deluxe models cost $78 more than the standard-trim version. The popularity of the flathead Ford engines depended heavily on the first two qualities. The Oldsmobile V8, also referred to as the Rocket, is series of engines that was produced by Oldsmobile from 1949 until 1990. Ate Up With Motor, its logo, and other associated icons and graphics are trademarks and/or service marks of Aaron Severson dba Ate Up With Motor. These cookies expire in about 15 days if the user clicks "Remember Me" when logging in; if not, the cookies normally expire when the user closes their browser (or other user agent), or, failing that, within about two days. Clarke (Cobham, England: Brooklands Books Ltd., ca. (4,213 cc) L-head six. The Oldsmobile Rocket 88 has a current value close to $96,250 at some auctions. The shape of a flatheads combustion chambers also limits its maximum compression ratio (the amount the fuel mixture is compressed before burning). 15 results per page. I might have to find or make some kind of diagram of that. It was offered in the Hurst/Olds version of the Oldsmobile Cutlass Calais and in the 4-4-2 version of the Oldsmobile Cutlass Salon. The bore was so wide that the cylinder walls were siamesed, as in the Chevrolet 400 V8, with no space for coolant to flow between the cylinders. spark ignition engine for high-compression studies. Complete Engines for Oldsmobile Delta 88, Motor Mounts for Oldsmobile 88, Fuel Injectors for Oldsmobile 88; Additional site navigation. I would certainly agree that the Rocket V-8 was overshadowed pretty quickly, in part because Oldsmobile didnt pursue the competition or performance avenues to the same extent Pontiac did in the late 50s. A few years later, the Chevrolet engine started taking over the flathead Fords role as the cheap-and-easy hot-rodder choice. Cookies whose names begin with "optimizely" are associated with the Optimizely digital experience platform (which is subject to the Optimizely Privacy Policy; the "Privacy" section of the Optimizely Trust Center provides additional information about Optimizely privacy practices, including a link to the Data Processing Agreement that applies to personal data the Optimizely services process on customers' behalf that may be subject to certain regional privacy and/or data protection laws, while their "Cookies and localStorage in the Optimizely snippet" help page provides additional technical information about the cookies and/or similar technologies used by that platform). (I quess that would be total Olds minus Olds 76 model.). (author diagram). R.M. Two-barrel carburetion was standard; all high performance 324s came with four-barrel carburetors. Unlike the 76, powered by a straight-six engine, the 88 came with a V8 under the. The second generation of Oldsmobile V8s was produced from 1964-1990. Initially the paint was red, except for metallic blue in the Toronado applications; 1970-1976 versions were metallic blue at first, then nonmetallic blue. [citation needed] The 1977-1980 350s have lighter castings, including a thinner block with large "windows" in the main bearing bulkheads,[citation needed] and have crack-prone cylinder head castings[citation needed] manufactured by Pontiac Motor Division (castings are marked "PMD"; these heads were also used on the 260),[citation needed] and a lightened crankshaft. It kept the retired 425's 4.126in (104.8mm) bore to produce between 275 and 400hp (205 and 298kW; 279 and 406PS). 1968-1974 350s were painted gold; 1975-1976 350s were metallic blue like the 455; 1977-1980 models were painted GM Corporate Blue. This motor is blue which makes me think its been gone through. The 403 is fundamentally the exact same block as an Oldsmobile 350 V8, however it features a larger bore. From your research, do you have any information on Bouvy? The optional heater-defroster cost $85 that year, the optional base radio $96. I never had one apart to that extent, but my understanding from the theory of operation is that there is a pivoting pawl that will engage a toothed wheel when the engine is stopped with reverse selected. . By contrast, both the Cadillac and Oldsmobile V8s were oversquare, with a wide bore and a short stroke. This setting is stored in your browser (or other user agent) in the gdpr[consent_types] cookie described in "Privacy and Cookie Preferences" above, so if you delete that cookie or access the Ate Up With Motor website from a different device, browser, or user agent, you will need to adjust this setting again if you still wish to hide the box. Unless youre building a rod, its often worth it to spend more upfront for a car thats in better condition. Coincidentally, Cadillac had been working since 1936 on a very similar OHV engine to replace its familiar monoblock flathead V8. Im not sure about the early Hydramatics but later ones, 54-56 you put in reverse to park. All full-size 1962 Oldsmobiles had the 394. I just wanted to know if I have a rocket engine and how can I check if its a 394. Until well into the 1950s, most engines were undersquare, with a narrow cylinder bore and a long piston stroke. Im currently writing a book on Yankee iron of the 1955-1973 period (the true golden age of the American Car in the modern era.) The 1950 Oldsmobile Rocket 88s were considerably cheaper than the 49s, although that was largely because Hydra-Matic, which had been standard equipment on all 1949 V8-powered cars, reverted to being a $185 option. However, the only badging identifying it as such was a simple "88" underneath each taillight. 1955 Oldsmobile 88. (For more information about our discontinuation of Google Analytics tracking on this website, see the "Online Tracking" section of the Privacy Policy. Richard A. Lentinello (Bennington, VT: Hemmings Motor News, 2002), pp. Free shipping for many products! 9, No. Yes, the Hydra-Matic had a parking pawl, which was engaged by selecting reverse with the engine off. Some things, like the Hydra-Matic, arent so bad, but trim pieces can be a major pain, and even the early Rocket engines can be challenging at this point. However not practical to drive around pittsburgh, pa. To many hills for that single chamber master cylinder. The Cadillac and Oldsmobile V8s represented the start of several major trends in American engine design. in. Crazy Egg is a trademark of Crazy Egg, Inc. Optimizely is a registered trademark of Optimizely, Inc. in the United States, EU, and elsewhere. 98. Brand new box. Even in markets where fuel is substantially more expensive than in the U.S., fuel efficiency is widely regarded in purely economic terms. [5], This engine was used in GMC heavy trucks as the "370" of 232 gross HP at 4200 RPM and torque 355 gross lbs-ft at 2600 RPM from 1957 to 1959.It had hardened valve seats and other features for heavy duty usage. Free shipping for many products! Additionally, the 403 had windowed main webs, which reduced the internal strength of the block in the crankcase area. 303CI ROCKET V8, 4SPD AUTO, COOL, ICONIC 50S STYLING, 4-DOOR CONVENIENCE, CLASSY. in. (Thats a lesson that many Jaguar and Porsche owners have learned the hard way.)[/quote].