Thread: Olds 455 runnin' but in need of help...

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I just dropped a 455 Olds from a jet boat (not a marine motor and rotation is standard Olds counter clockwise) into my dads 1990 Olds Custom Cruiser Station Wagon. I just got it together this week and fired it up. It sounds good but upon my first short test drive down to the end of the block and back, my Edelbrock performer is hotter than my George Forman cooker.

First thing I thought was a bad thermostat. I pulled the goosneck and had plenty O greenstuff in the block. The next thing that I thought I'd try was oil pressure. My gage isn't working properly but I put a new Mellings high volume oil pump, 7 qt. pan with matching pickup. I was going to pull the valve covers to check that I have proper oil pressure.

Block is 1976 455 casting Fa, heads are 1972 casting Ga., Intake is Edelbrock Performer 455. I'm using the original 307 HEI distributer and Rochester smogger carb.

Anyone have any ideas

Not to insult anyones inteeligence or knowledge but. What does the coolant in the catch tank look like? If it's foamy or has any "chocolate look" to it you might have a block/head crack or a blown/improperly sealed gasket.

Abe

No insult taken. I haven't worked on a car in about 15 years. I'm just trying to get back into the swing.

coolant is bright green. It's brand new, I just filled it the night before mt drive. I really have no idea what's inside the motor and I must confess that I was told that it ran when they pulled it out of their boat. I bought it without ever hearing it run. The oil was in good shape, plugs were clean and the motor could be rolled by hand. I figured that it was a super deal at $200. I think that any BB Olds is worth $100 as long as there aren't any obvious problems. The lady also was in need of extra money so I tried to be as fair as I could and took her word for it.

I just checkedc the oil pump. I am in need of a new cap for my oil filler tube, I'm getting oil blowin' all over the intake.
I pulled the thermostat, I can now get 2 runs to the end of the block and back before I can't touch the intake. I believe that I may have found the prob though... The stock 307 rad. I'm getting full coolant pressure with no leaks but the tiny rad doesn't seem to be enough to cool the big 455.
Any thoughts????

Before you do any more runs on that engine- Go get youself a 2 guage Water Temp/Oil pressure setup from your local autoparts store.... Should be about $30 for the cheapest one...

Trying to tell Temp by the feel of the Intake manifold is pretty far from acurate.

It doesn't sound like you have an oil pressure problem, but hooking a guage up to see how its doing can't hurt either, and its cheap insurance so you know what its doing.


BTW: I wish I could find a running BBOlds motor for $100 or so bucks!

Thx. I have temp and oil gages. I'm just having problems figuring out how they get hooked up. I used the factory gages and removed the factory sending units from the small block. I labeled most wires and hoses before I started unhooking stuff but I used tape and it came off of a few of the wires and a couple of vacuum hoses. I should have used better tape. The problem is that there are so many wires on the original wiring harness that I can't tell which one goes to temp and which one goes to oil pressure.

Thanks for the advice. I went out and bought those gages. $29.00 for three autometer gages, voltage, oil and temp. Now about that radiator, I'm gona have to save up a couple of weeks worth of paychecks to afford that. I had to borrow $10.00 from my wife for the gages.

gotta be if they put up with hot rod junk piled in the garage so that there's no place to park the mini van. <GRIN>

First of all, Marine engines are cooled by outside water sources instead of coolant. Any particles or organisms in the water are also in the engine, if left sitting for any length of time they are prone to accumulate deposits to form blockages in the block. Drain and flush all coolant from system, remove the thermostat, fill engine with 1 QT of a product called CLR and the rest water, circulate for 2 min., let stand for 24 HRS. Drain and flush. Go to your local junk yard and pick up a Rad. from a Caprice Cop Car with the shroud and mounting brackets. If you live in a fairly warm climate, replace the thermostat with a 180 degree model.

Thanks guys for the great advice. I was also checking on the Internet for some possible problems. I found that if the turkey tray is not installed under the intake, hot oil can splash up onto the bottom of the intake making the intake get hot. I have no idea if theres a turkey tray underneath but that would give me an excuse to pull the intake and see what kind of work they had done on the heads. The woman that I bought the motor from said that she had $1000 into the rebuild, although she was unable to find any receipts.

I'm out west and around here re-cores cost about twice as much as I can get new alum rad. from a company called Silla Enterprises (Wholesale to Shops Only). I have found that you can come across used cop car rad. pretty easily for around 50-75 bucks. The trick is, The Factory used a Rad with an extra core and larger runners in the cop car for better cooling but, I have never been able to find new replacements for them. I jobbed out the Body and we did the mech. work on a Vegas Metro car and had this problem last month. We had to use a used one.

Got the temp gage in.... Running around 190... Took it up and down the street a few times, scared some deer out of the back yard... no exhaust yet...

...... The bad news .......

The motor is WAYYYYY to rad for an automatic without a 3000 ROM stahl...

Now I have three choices:

1. Park it.... Not really an option.
2. Pull the cam and lifters and replace them.
3. Pull the motor and use the stock 72 BBOlds in the corner of the garage...

Hey, I could always dump it in the ThunderTurkey.... Or maybe the wifes Astro...

Option 4. Get a higher stall converter.

The Turkey tray isn't normally used when you use an aluminum intake manifold. The reason is because the turkey tray also doubles as the intake gasket & The tin doesn't work well sealing the aluminum intake.

The Oil burn shouldn't be much of a problem on the bottom of the intake... remember the stock intakes sit way down inside the oil galley area, where as the Aluminum intakes sit up high above it, so shouldn't be much of a problem.

If you REALLY want to use the turkey tray, cut out all the tin that goes over the intake ports , just leave the 2 bosses on each side that hold it in place, and use regular gaskets over the top- That should work as well, but it may cause vacume leaks where that tin sticks under the intake gaskets...

Being your Olds engine was not a marine engine and out of a boat and if it was salt water cooled you better check the water pump impeller..The marine ones are sometimes stainless while the auto version is not..Salt water erodes non stainless parts pretty fast..I would never use a marine engine in a car if it was straight salt water cooled. The salt has taken too much material from the cast iron and raising the temp from the usual marine 140 degree stat to 180 or 195 can create a lot of heating problems due to even more break down of the cast iron plugging up the rear of the block..Besides having the cylinder walls too thin..But if it was freshwater cooled.(with an exchanger) and run in fresh water that could be a different story...OK...The heat exchanger is like a radiator..It has two parts..One half is sea water ..the other half antifreeze 50/50 along with the block..The sea water cools the fresh water in the same sense as the air going thru the radiator core..All this might not have even the slightest bearing on your problem but I had time to kill and can't seem to stop writing....I would pull the water pump and have a look see.. Good luck..Al..