Thanks for the compliments.
I'll start with a little background on the car. I bought this car from a dead guy (of course I actually dealt with the widow, but the official records indicate otherwise
). The local salvage yard had offered the little old lady 25 dollars for the car, so I offered 100, bought it, and took it home. 3000 dollars later, I had an operational car. I would keep upgrading and restoring from there.
The body -
Yes, it is in very good shape, but this wasn't always the case. The car was formerly covered in dings and scratches and dogs had chewed the polyurethane corners. The car was hit by a van in Sept '06 which prompted me to seriously address the bodywork, which otherwise, would have been the last thing on my to-do list. I hired a bodyman to splice in a new rear quarter panel and address some other issues. The following parts are in excellent shape: doors, quarters, roof, front fascia, and rear bumper. The front fenders are pretty good while the hood has a ripple and the rear trunk could have been sanded more evenly (my fault).
The engine -
My car is an automatic, so 6.6 litre in this instance stands for the 403 CI Oldsmobile which is essentially a Olds 350 small block bored over much more than it was ever really supposed to be. The engine is oversquare meaning it has more bore than stroke. Usually that kind of geometry would give great revving potential but the stock oiling system can't keep things on the top end up under high rpm. Of course, you want the numbers. Like any smog era engine, they're disappointing, however, like smog era engines, they're easy to modify to make big power.
Stock Olds 403 - 320 ft-lb’s of torque at 2200 rpm
- 185 bhp at 4800 rpm
The engine shows it has potential with its effortless low end torque but the torque curve pretty much falls on its face after 2500-3000 rpm. This is due to really low compression (7.9:1 static), a lame camshaft, and some of the least desirable cylinder heads of all time. At least the low end torque results in decent average horsepower which allows stock TA's to post fairly decent performance numbers. A common remedy is to bolt on a pair of heads from an earlier Olds 350 (with much smaller combustion chambers). A pair of 64 cc heads will bump the compression up to 91 octane-friendly 9.5:1. Accompanying more compression with a cam to let things get some air results in about 350 horsepower.
My engine -
The engine currently in my car is an Olds 403 with a little bit more cam than stock. The previous owner used it to pass smog with before dropping his (not smog-legal) Olds 455 back into his car. It was a great deal as I paid only 575 dollars for a solid running motor and TH350 transmission, both of which I use in my car today. I figure the engine makes about 200 peak horsepower as the car posts slightly better numbers than stock TA's of the period.
Also, I theorize that the automatic TA's were actually faster in the quarter than the manual ones tested in the magazines . . . everybody knows automatics rule drag racing.
I'll get more pics up in order to show what has become of the original Olds 403
