On Mon, Sep 12, 2005 at 05:02:30PM -0500, Donald Snook wrote: > I saw something amazing over the weekend. I found a 1983 Oldsmobile 98 > Regency Diesel two door. It was in miraculous shape. It had 43,000 > miles. It was white with a maroon interior. This big sucker had the > converted 5.7 diesel engine. They were absolutely horrible cars. It was > a gasoline engine block with all the diesel works mounted on. I had > three different Olds 98's, I really liked them. When I was a Service > Manager at an Olds/Honda dealership, one of the Mechanics had one of > these cars. He had 300-400,000 miles on it. He also had purchased 6-7 > injector pumps from some connection that he had. The IP's were scavenged > from cars that had to be junked because pistons cracked or blocks > cracked. He was a real whiz at replacing the injector pumps. He never > had lower end engine problems. He replaced the intake gasket every year > I think and added a quart of transmission to the tank every other fill > up and only got diesel at the truck stop. Strange guy- strange car.
For what it's worth, the biggest problem with the 350 diesel was the head bolts. A decent set of head bolts would keep the headgaskets from blowing every 10k miles. Aside from that, they pretty much had the engine sorted out by 83, so 83 and later cars (or 83 and later replacement engines) were quite reliable, and got rather impressive mileage. Or, if you're strange, convert the 350 back to a gas engine. Get an olds 425 crank, offset grind the crank a teense, punch the block an eighth overbore (yes, it'll take a .125 over, but a sonic check is a good idea). This will yield 451 cubic inches, in something with the deck height of a small block. (The 350 diesel had big block bottom end to begin with). K
