Sgt Art

Are you losing oil or consuming it? By that I mean is oil actually leaking, if so you should see it. If you're consuming oil that means it's being burned. I'm not clear what's happening here. If you're consuming oil it's either being sucked in through the PCV system, down the intake guides or up through the rings. It's not uncommon for an engine's oil pressure to drop at idle speed to about 10 psi sometimes as low as 8 psi. What you need to do is check it at about 2000 rpm (I don't know what the specifications are for that engine you need to check your service manual). In general, I don't trust factory gauges, if you can find one to test with it would be better. Also, don't be mislead by high pressure when the engine is first started and then drops off. When the oil is cold, it's thicker and pressure is high it's supposed to drop some once everything gets to normal operating temps.

Basic good mannners would be to look, don't touch and ask permission of the owner. It's not Wal-Mart where most items are under $25 and bought by the shipload from Singapore. I've seen the same behavior at collectible gun shows. If you happen to watch History Channel, you'll notice in the Tales of the Gun Series, the museum guy always wears cotton gloves. Finger prints can etch the metal if left uncleaned. Just what you need is some kid with a pair of Levi's rivet pocket jeans rubbing his butt all over the side of you car. That's inexcusable.

It's no big deal either way. If it's working properly, I'd leave it alone. You won't see or feel any gain in power - turn the pulley by hand you'll see what I mean - and it's actually beneficial to the environment. Basically, it's like blowing on a glowing ember to make it burn faster. It helps to burn any unburned hydrocarbons that leave through the exhaust system.

I had a Pontiac Trans Am that had an oil leak through a defective oil pressure sensor. The car actually had two sensors (Chevy engine) on behind the distributor which I believe was connected to the idiot light, the other right above the oil filter fitting that was for the factory gauge. I kept finding oil on the driveway where I parked. I started the engine and had to lay down on the ground to see it, and sure enough, there was a small amount of oil leaking from the back of the sensor near where the wire fit on. I replaced it and had no problems. You state you have good oil pressure, how do you know this? BTW, which engine do you have in the car?

Are you losing oil but can't find where it's leaking? If that's the case, I'd suspect the valve cover baffle isn't working correctly or is possibly blocked allowing oil to accumulate there and be sucked into the carb/intake.

When you say cast metal, is that like pot metal (zinc?)?

Easy. 12 inch pounds equal 1 foot pound. Ergo, 120 inch pounds is 10 foot pounds. You won't run into inch pounds much on engines except rocker arm or cam covers. I usually use a "T" type 1/4 inch drive handle and hand tighten those nice and snug. If, however, he's working on a transmission (you'll run into all kinds of inch pounds values on those) then I would urge you to trundle on down to the gittin' place and buy an inch lb torque wrench. And, technically, these values are expressed as pounds feet or pounds inch. What it relates to, is the amount of twisting force or energy that would be required to move a foot long shaft one foot. In other words, you twist a door knob that's not locked and it opens easily. The torque or twisting energy is minimal. But, it's locked, and you got a one foot pry bar and put all your weight on it and it starts to move then it took (fill in the blank) pounds per foot to move it. If it doesn't move, then you hit with a hammer and cuss a lot. That generally doesn't work but it feels so good.

My 77 Electra has a 403 Olds engine. Runs great but I'm kicking around the idea of replacing it some day with a 455 Buick engine. Has anyone done this conversion? I once dropped a 455 Olds into an 85 LeSabre that originally had a 307 Olds with no big problems. Would it be that easy with the Buick engine?

The shop I've used for a number of years around here has a thick book that is put out by one of the companies that supplies the manufactorers. The guy there was able to order the fabric I needed and completely redo my driver's seat by using the old material as a pattern. Other than the passenger seat being a bit sun faded, you couldn't tell the difference. I've seen and used vinyl dash caps/skins and if done correctly, it's a pretty decent restoration (the cap for a Trans Am ran $70 vs. $400 for a new dash). It certainly won't be a show winner, but if all you want to do is have a decent looking car, then it's a way to save some money.

Just depends on what you want to do. If you're going to be doing lots of highway high speed driving, the high ratio (2.56) gear set is the way to go. Your engine will rev lower, less wear and better MPG. If you want to put a hole job on some little zit popper in his Camaro or Mustang off the line, then the lower ratio is the way to go.

It is for someone who is more interested in top end speed and better gas mileage, but kind of sucks for off the line performance.

I think they did a lot of that sort of thing, I can remember and still see "Carolina Editions" around here.

I ran a few searchs and counldn't find any specific on 1971, Olds production figures. Chances are good that there are books with this info. There were quite a number of F85 offerings as it was the base platform for the Olds Cutlass, Cutlass S etc. Back in those days, it seems the factories would make 10 variations of the same car. You didn't offer much in the way of specifics such as how many doors, hardtop or convert, which engine etc. That's important because it might be an odd variety or an unpopular offering. From personal experience, I can tell you of a 1982, Camaro we ordered with V-6 and 5 speed manual transmission. The dealer placed the order only to find out a couple weeks later, that Chevrolet wouldn't mate a manual transmission with a V-6 engine for some reason, auto only or so they said. We complained and they did it. According to the salesman (yeah, I know, I'm in the business) Chevy didn't want to make it, but did it special. So as far as I know, it's a one of a kind where ever it is now. Anyway, I did find this for 1966, production and it's possible your seller is telling you the truth. You'll notice the F85 standard 2-door club couple shows only 647 cars for that year. These were probably offered up as "loss leaders" a dealer could place a legitimate ad in the papers to attract buyers (bait and switch and it's legal as long as there is one car that can be sold at the advertised price, generally there is a stock number in small print with the ad) in hopes of up selling them to a model with more options and equipment. Hope that helps. Of the above, 21,997 F85's were equipped with the L69 4-4-2 package: F85 Standard; 2-dr Club Coupe 647 F85 Deluxe; 2-dr Holiday Hardtop 1,217 F85 Cutlass; 2-dr Club Coupe 3,787, 2-dr Holiday Hardtop 13,493, 2-dr Convertible 2,853

D '66 - '67 425 389244 Big-car engine. Toro is different internally. The 4 or 6 digit casting number is found around the center exhaust side rocker arm cover bolt or among the rockers on really early heads [pre-68]. Scrape the oily goo off and read the letter at the lower left corner of the head, near the #1 or #8 spark plug hole, a letter about 1.5" high indicates a big block, while a number indicates a small block. Some have an additional letter (an A or , about 1" high, right next to the letter (or number). This is the quickest, easiest way to get the most information about the engine.

Okay, so basic tune up fixed your high speed problem, now we want a smooth idle. Do you have a dwell/tachometer? If not, they are pretty cheap and easy to use. The dwell part is used to make sure your points are gapped correctly. on an 8 cylinder engine, the each cylinder has at most 45 degrees of dwell (360 degrees/8) by this I mean the length of time the points are closed and the primary circuit is "holding back" the secondary circuit which is where the power is being made. You want about 30 degrees of dwell. The meter will tell you that and you can make adjustments with an Allen wrench through the little slide up door on the distributor cap. Let me stop and say if you already know all this, then fine, not talking down to you, but others may not. This is the first step in the tune up. For every degree of dwell you are off, timing is either advanced or retarded by 2 degrees. So if you have only 25 degrees of dwell, your timing could be advanced 10 degrees. Conversely, if you have 35 degrees of dwell, you are 10 degrees retarded and that will cause a low idle and crappy performance. So check that and see if your dwell is at 30 degrees (1 degree +/-). Now, comes the idle speed. So, switch over to the tachometer and see what the engine is idling at. I like an idle around 750 rpm in Park, which goes to 550 in drive (NOTE: SET THE PARKING BRAKE AND PROPERLY BLOCK THE FRONT TIRES - IF YOU ARE THE LEAST BIT WORRIED ABOUT THE BRAKE OR BLOCKS, PULL THE CAR RIGHT UP TO A TREE - A BIG TREE - BEFORE PUTTING IT IN DRIVE). With in trans in park, check your timing. I don't know the specs for your engine, but somewhere around 12 degrees before top dead center (BTDC) would be a start. You should remove the vacuum advance line from the distributor and plug it (golf tees work great for this) before checking the timing. If you have 30 degrees of dwell and about 12 degrees (or whatever your car's engine calls for) then your basic timing is set. Once this all done, check the vacuum advance by reconnecting it. You should see a slight increase in rpm. This will tell you the vac advance is working. If not, make sure there is vacuum in the line. If there is, then the vacuum unit on the dist is probably defective and needs replacing, easy to do. You can also (with engine off) suck on the line with dist cap off and see if the vac advance unit moves that will confirm the canister is no good. Once you have established that timing is correct and vac advance is working, check the centrifugal advance. This the weights inside the distributor that sling outward as the engine rpm increases to compensate for it's faster speed by delivering the spark earlier. This is easy. Simply rev the engine with the timing light going. You'll see the timing mark move. If all the above is happening, you've done a proper electrical tune up. Next, check for vacuum leaks around the carb. Using carb cleaner (that's what I use) spray a little along the seal between the intake and carb base. A sudden increase in rpm (watch the tach) will tell you there's a leak there and it's sucking in air. You can tighten the carb a little but don't go over board here. The torque spec for carb bolts to intake isn't much I think around 20 lbft. YOu can warp the throttle plate by over doing it. If the leak persists, you should get a new gasket. Also spray around where the intake mates to the heads and using a 9/16 box wrench, check the tightness of these bolts. Spray around any vacuum fittings to see if there are leaks there. Based on your last post, I'm betting your timing is retarded either too much dwell or base timing is off. This means the spark is coming too late in the engine's cycle (after the piston has reached TDC) and unburned fuel is going right out the exhaust pipe. Also, power is down and your engine runs hotter.

The tests you suggest are good, but he's stated the engine is siezed. I think he needs to tear it down, if it's stuck to the point he can't rotate it.

Let us know what you come up with. This one has me scratching my head.

Great! I'm guessing you took it into the shop and let the pro's fix it?

Great off the line performance usually requires a fairly low ratio rear axle like 4.11:1. You could go higher, 3.xx:1 and still have respectible off the line accelleration. I think your 85 model car is probably going to have a stock gear set somewhere around 2.xx:1 which is really high. A high ratio rear and overdrive transmission are what allows fairly large cars to obtain decent fuel mileage and good high end speeds at low RPM. My 93 Lincoln MkVIII with 4.6L DOHC will cruise at 70mph turning something like 1600 rpm and get about 24mpg. It's a balancing act to get good dragstrip type performance and good cruising performance. As far as the torque convertor selection goes, that ties into what type of cam you'll be using, rear gear ratio, carb, intake etc. Also, you didn't mention what trans your going to use. Hopefully, not the 200 metric that came with it. I also gather that it's a Buick LeSabre (85 LaSebra 2 door?). That was mine until a young gal in a Camry decided stop signs don't really require you to look in both directions. It had a pretty much stock 455 with the following mods: "C" heads, Cloyes double roller timing chain set, Crane cam (mild) Edelbrock intake, Edelbrock Performer 650 cfm carb (basically the old Carter AFB square bore), TH350 trans with stock torque convertor and dual exhaust. Performance was very good, gas mileage around 16 mpg on 87 regular. The rear were the stock gearset which I think was about 2.70:1. I suspect you're fairly new at this. My suggestion is, to read some of the magazines such as Hot Rod or Car Craft, etc and find a formula that they put together. Do some internet searchs. I think you may have stumbled onto the Olds FAQ site and they have some good build up info, but I don't think they actually have a forum you can ask questions at.

Were any of them made by Oldsmobile? Or General Motors?

Is it set up for a square bore carb? I guess without a picture, I can't really answer your question. The 189 is the Julian date for July 8th.

Well, I was wrong! It's blue. Here's a place that sells the paint. http://www.hirschauto.com/acb/showdetl.c...ct_ID=3&CATID=1

do you know if fuel pump is in tank It is. I'm lost on EFI cars, and work for a GM dealership! I would suggest paying the diagnostic fee which is normally one hour labor. That will be cheaper than throwing a bunch of parts at the problem, hit or miss and maybe still not finding the problem. Sometimes it's really simply stuff but it could cost you a couple of hundred bucks trying to solve it yourself not to mention time involved.

Are you talking about the filler panels that fill in the gap between the body and the bumper? They are a common replacement item on older cars. I was able to replace them on an 85 LeSabre a couple years ago through the dealership. Try these guys too: http://www.billionsandtrillionsinc.com/olds.asp

Do you mean like this: http://community.webshots.com/photo/57510573/77629165JIAvlB