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182K views 574 replies 47 participants last post by  greencadillacmatt 
#1 ·
It's finally happening. I started my engine swap today. My Olds 350 is just about done, so I figured it was about time I got cracking on the car itself.

I think I am going to pull the trans along with the engine, as I have heard it is much easier than trying to hook everything up in the car.

I have everything disconnected from the engine except for the mounts and exhaust. And I climbed under the car and found that there is just one electrical connector to the trans, and one crossmember bolt. Well, that and the shift linkage. Should be easy.

I started with draining and pulling the radiator. The shroud and brackets came out super easy.

The electrical connectors and and wires are all unplugged/off, and the vacuum lines are off.

And my little brother and I took the hood off, just because it is so much nicer to NOT have it eating my head. ;)

Without any further ado, the pictures of the progress of a total engine-swapping newb.


One of the last pictures of the Horror-Time 4100 hooked up...


Where'd the hood go?


Oh, there it is :)


The MASSIVE hole where the radiator and fan shroud was.


My AC might have been slightly improperly vented. :shhh: ;)


And last but not least for tonight, it seems as though my car has decided to do wheelies. :lildevil:

I'll post more tomorrow. Thanks guys!
 
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#345 ·
...Milk Jugs is our recyclables container for plastics. Kind of odd, I know. :)
I went to school with a girl named that....on second thought, I think it was a nickname.

Man I see what you guys are always bagging on him for...I never knew it was that long either. Still glad he stored until he can get to it instead of scrapping it.
A Cadillac Gentleman Of The First Order!:worship:
 
#8 ·
77CDV-I'm going with the 200-4r that's in the car. It's only got 50,000 or so on it, and it has new fluid and a new filter. They are rated to 300 HP or so, and I should be making low to mid 200s for power. High 200s to low 300s for torque.

CS and The-Dullahan-I'll post up pics of the engine tomorrow. Has everything on it but the accessories. (Those will go on this weekend :))
 
#13 ·
Hmm, I like the idea of this getting FAQ'd. :D

And now it's time for a big long post! (I tried to get as many pictures as possible.)

I started off the day by putting the carb and exhaust manifolds onto my engine. I think it's starting to look pretty good. :)




My carb and distributor. If you look really hard you can see all of the plugs that I threaded into the manifold to block off all of the emissions stuff.


After the engine work I decided to unhook the linkages on the trans. The speedo cable came off nice and easy (forgot to get a picture of that). Then I took the shifter linkage off. All that holds it in is a little pin, so be careful where you put it. I put mine back in the end of the linkage once it was off.


Once the trans connections were unhooked, I thought it was about time to disconnect the old exhaust. Instead of trying to unbolt the manifolds from the engine, or unbolting the exhaust from the manifolds, I decided to grab this:


I figured that since the old exhaust will be of no use to me anyways, it's not really going to matter if I chop it up a bit. Might I add that the sawzall I used was a freaking beast, and it made short work of the pipes.


This is what I ended up cutting out. It's a little T-pipe that hooks the two pipes from the engine together and then routes them through the cat.


Ah, the cluttered workbench. My parents are cool and let me take over the garage for this undertaking.


Finally, I have some new parts to install tomorrow!
 
#16 ·
Ah, I knew someone would ask about the colors. They stopped painting the Olds engines gold in '74, I think. The '75 and '76 engines were just plain GM Corprate Blue. I figured that since mine is mostly stock but with a hot cam and valvetrain, it was like a stock+ engine. Back in the day the gold only went on the more powerful engines. So I gave it the gold, because now it will have some more oomph. :thumbsup:
 
#25 ·
Don't say that or I'm going to make you do mine!

I'd love to do the work myself when I get the cash for an engine, but I lack the basic essentials, such as a garage or any tools to move/manipulate heavy engine blocks. Bet I can lift one myself though...

Don't mock the colors, look at it next to the original engine! I think it looks better than THAT...

I'd keep mine black myself, when and if I get the engine work done on mine, the entire engine bay will most likely all be black, just to be a putz I can even paint the coolant reservoir and relive the days of it being all cloudy and having to probe it to determine where the fluid was...

Also...you call that a Garage? :hmm: Where's the Guinness?
 
#24 ·
Thanks for all the compliments guys! I thought the paint turned out pretty good. I didn't get a whole lot done today, I had work and whatnot. Tomorrow, however, will be a different story. I'm going to pull the driveshaft and start swapping the accessories over from my 307 parts engine. Sunday will be the big day, the day that the HT4100 decides to leave home and go on it's merry way.

Let's hear about the cam and valvetrain!
Since I'm not all that good with cam specs and that sort of thing, I asked my teacher when I built the thing what he would recommend as far as the cam went. He recommended a Comp-Cams K-Kit. I called up Comp and got a rundown on how that kit would run (powerband wise) and was pleased to find that it would work from just off idle to about 5000 RPM! Aaaaand it would have a nice torqey pull to it. (I like torque. :))

The K-Kits come with everything you need for the timing and valvetrain (assuming your valves are still good). I got a timing chain and gears, the cam itself, lifters, valvesprings, guides, and keepers. It was pretty inclusive.

Since my engine only had (has?) 54,000 miles on it when I got it, I only had to lap the valves. It was so fresh inside that there was even factory cross-hatching still left on the cylinder walls! :D I rebuilt the heads and put in the higher-tension valvesprings (I can't remember what they are rated at) and put in all the new timing and valvetrain goodies.

So, since you wanted to know what the cam specs are, here is what I got off the cam box about 20 minutes ago:

Advance Duration: Int. 256, Ext. 268
Duration at .050: Int. 212, Ext. 218
Valve Lift: Int. .453, Ext. .456
Lobe Separation: 110.0

There you have it, the specs (more or less) on my cam and valvetrain. I hope this has been helpful. :yup:
 
#22 ·
gcmatt, You're doing a good thing by giving your car the life it deserves. Someone could make a business out of creating a kit to swap out all those HT4100's and put in a viable engine. There were lots of attractive cars made by Cadillac which were afflicted by the HT4100 and I'm sure too many of them were dragged off to the crusher despite the car being nice but the engine being bad. Matt - bravo to you! :)
 
#26 ·
^Hey, get your engine bay de-greased and maybe we can play artist with it this summer! :D And seriously, don't try and move one of those engines by yourself, it took two of us guys at the college to move just the BARE block of mine, and both of us were hurting for a week after that. Should have used the hoist. As for the Guinness, um, uh, elsewhere? :hide:
 
#29 ·
I took out the heads (I should say my mechanic did it :) ) on a 75 Electra with a 455 that I owned several years ago and brought it to the machine shop - back breakingly heavy! Those old iron engines last forever for a reason. :) Go Matt! I'll have a Guinness for you tonight to cheer you on. :)
 
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