Cheva Montecarlo

I went to a car meet yesterday and I saw a Chevy Montecarlo from 1976, it looked a "bit" like a Rolls Royce and in my eyes pretty ugly. The owner told me that they just bulit 100 of them before RR started a legal procedure, and now there are 16 known cars and just 2 outside USA and one of them here in Sweden.

Has anyone of you seen that car?

I will try to take some photos of it next monday.

It had a 400 cu.in motor and I think th700 gearbox.

I am just curios if anyone of you guys and girls have seen one of them.

They were called Monte carlo Custom Cloud.

Custom Cloud, a conversion made in Florida in the mid seventies. Very rare now, and a conversation piece. A web search should turn up some info.

There is a local guy here that owns 2 or 3 of them. They keep getting different paint jobs, one step up from a roller job. I tried talking to him once, even correctly identifying them as Custom Clouds, but he was not friendly. He actually seemed annoyed that I knew what it was.

Car & Driver road tested a Custom Cloud when they were new. They called it the Chevrolet Monte Python.

Seemed to be the trend in the 1970's. Take a regular production car, gob it with accents from another time and call it a classic. The Stutz blackhwak II and later the Tiffany seemed to try to squeeze all they could out of the craze.

Definitely not my forte.

They were called Monte carlo Custom Cloud.

AAAAAHHH! My EYES!

I went to a car meet yesterday and I saw a Chevy Montecarlo from 1976, it looked a "bit" like a Rolls Royce and in my eyes pretty ugly. The owner told me that they just bulit 100 of them before RR started a legal procedure, and now there are 16 known cars and just 2 outside USA and one of them here in Sweden.

Has anyone of you seen that car?

I will try to take some photos of it next monday.

It had a 400 cu.in motor and I think th700 gearbox.

I am just curios if anyone of you guys and girls have seen one of them.

The automatic was likely a TH 350 because the TH 700R4 didn't come out until 1982.

It could have been the TH400 as well. I think those came out in 68 or maybe a year earlier.

It could have been a 1982 700r4 ...

Thirty years is plenty of time to swap the transmission (gear box)

;-D

It could have been the TH400 as well. I think those came out in 68 or maybe a year earlier.

I doubt a T-400 in a low horsepower small block 400 engine, and even most big block 454's of 1976 had T 350's because the horsepower/torque just wasn't there anymore.

Besides it takes 35-45hp less to turn a T350 over a T400 and in those emission controlled engines you needed as much help as possible.

It could have been a 1982 700r4 ...

Thirty years is plenty of time to swap the transmission (gear box)

;-D

That may be so, but in those years car's came with very conservative rear axle ratio's for emissions/economy. Those ratio's were in the 2.56-2.92 range, and that meant if you put in a 700R4 with a 4th gear overdrive you would need to change the rear end as well.....I doubt this was done.

That may be so, but in those years car's came with very conservative rear axle ratio's for emissions/economy. Those ratio's were in the 2.56-2.92 range, and that meant if you put in a 700R4 with a 4th gear overdrive you would need to change the rear end as well.....I doubt this was done.

That may be so, but in those years car's came with very conservative rear axle ratio's for emissions/economy. Those ratio's were in the 2.56-2.92 range, and that meant if you put in a 700R4 with a 4th gear overdrive you would need to change the rear end as well.....I doubt this was done.

WHY do people keep repeating this? I have several mid-1980s Oldsmobiles with the 200-4R trans (0.68:1 fourth gear). These cars came from the factory with 2.41:1 and 2.73:1 rear axle ratios and the "pavement ripping", 140 HP VIN Y Olds 307 has absolutely no problems holding fourth on the freeway in a car that weighs about 4,000 lbs. The 700R4 has an 0.70:1 overdrive, which should have even marginally less of a problem pulling those gears. And note that this is an AUTOMATIC. If the engine starts to lug, the trans downshifts to third.

WHY do people keep repeating this? I have several mid-1980s Oldsmobiles with the 200-4R trans (0.68:1 fourth gear). These cars came from the factory with 2.41:1 and 2.73:1 rear axle ratios and the "pavement ripping", 140 HP VIN Y Olds 307 has absolutely no problems holding fourth on the freeway in a car that weighs about 4,000 lbs. The 700R4 has an 0.70:1 overdrive, which should have even marginally less of a problem pulling those gears. And note that this is an AUTOMATIC. If the engine starts to lug, the trans downshifts to third.

I know all about those 307's and 700R4'sr and FWY rear end gears. They wore out those transmissions because they would constantly hunt for the proper gear. The first thing to go was the lock up converter. Anytime a car got near a hill it was out of lock up, then out of 4th. A friend got back from a cross country trip in one of those 307 88 wagons about a month and a half ago and said the 307 was so gutless and the trans was all over the place especially over the Rockies. I would hate to find out what a 260 Olds feels like. I suppose if you lived on absolute level ground and at sea level you might be OK with it, but with a little touch of the throttle your back to downshifting and hunting.

Probably why these new cars have more gears than the old ones.

An automatic transmission is supposed to go searching for the correct gear. If it wears itself out then get it rebuilt.

I know all about those 307's and 700R4'sr and FWY rear end gears. They wore out those transmissions because they would constantly hunt for the proper gear. The first thing to go was the lock up converter. Anytime a car got near a hill it was out of lock up, then out of 4th. A friend got back from a cross country trip in one of those 307 88 wagons about a month and a half ago and said the 307 was so gutless and the trans was all over the place especially over the Rockies. I would hate to find out what a 260 Olds feels like. I suppose if you lived on absolute level ground and at sea level you might be OK with it, but with a little touch of the throttle your back to downshifting and hunting.

So to recap:

1) We agree that the VIN Y 307 is a gutless POS. Due to the lightweight block with windowed main webs, it doesn't even make a good doorstop.

2) We agree that GM's selection of shift points and lockup logic in those cars leaves something to be desired. Based on first-hand experience with three of these cars, I will say that while driving from Northern VA to upstate NY over the hills of central PA (admittedly NOT the Rockies), you can avoid a lot of this hunting if you read the owner's manual and as directed, manually put the trans in D instead of OD when driving on hills.

3) Your argument is somewhat moot, since the original discussion was about using an OD trans in an older car with a Chevy 350 that presumably has more HP and torque than the Olds 307. Again, to my point, if the gutless wonder 307 can pull mid-2 rear gears while in OD, a larger engine with more HP and torque will have no problem doing so, even without changing the rear gears as you suggest is mandatory. In fact (and to bring this thread ever-so-slightly back on track), the 700R4 that is allegedly installed in the car that started this discussion (and to date we have no confirmation of that) not only has an OD fourth as compared to the TH350 but also has a steeper first gear. This improves off-the-line acceleration in addition to highway mileage. Lots of people have retrofitted GM overdrive transmissions into older cars without changing the rear gears. Personally, I'd do such a trans swap to allow me to run 4.33:1 gears on the street, but I'm somewhat of an anomaly..

Not quite sure how the discussion about a rare car like the Custom Cloud turned in to a transmission thread......

Not quite sure how the discussion about a rare car like the Custom Cloud turned in to a transmission thread......

Because the original post said: "It had a 400 cu.in motor and I think th700 gearbox."

Assuming the original poster meant that this is the original combination the car came with I said that was impossible because the 700R4 didn't come out until 1982.

Because the original post said: "It had a 400 cu.in motor and I think th700 gearbox."

Assuming the original poster meant that this is the original combination the car came with I said that was impossible because the 700R4 didn't come out until 1982.

Well, I was talking to the owner of the car and he said to me (what I can recall) that the car had that configuration when he bought it.

To be honest I was not that intrested because the car is way to new for me and it looks like s...t in my eyes, but you know how different taste can be :-)