Its true Oldsmobile didnt really maintain that position for long and didnt try again to go for the performance market until the 60s, but having a short season isnt the same as being overhyped. Were Oldsmobiles ever sold in Brazil in any significant numbers? Free shipping for many products! Oldsmobile might be gone, but the Rocket brand hasn't been forgotten by collectors shopping for a 1950s American automotive icon. Overhead valves did not suffer the same problem, which gave them the potential for much higher compression ratios. Now 70 years old and giving a lot of thought to building me a 1950 Olds casket. Oldsmobiles first postwar engine was born during the UAW strike that shut down GM production from November 1945 through March 1946. Free shipping for many products! 74-81; Bob McVay, Oldsmobile Starfire Road Test, Motor Trend Vol. Output ranged from 160-325hp (119-242kW). Instead, influenced by the Space Race between the United States and the USSR, the legendary Rocket was born, available in Oldsmobile's 88, Super 88, and 98 models. 18-23; Jim Richardson, Rocket Power: Oldsmobiles 1950 convertibles: The rocking 88 versus the jazzier 98, Special Interest Autos #188 (March-April 2002), pp. ), These first-party cookies are used to manage user logins and certain other administrative functions of the WordPress content management system, e.g., post editing. Deciding Burrells ideas had promise, Wolfram and Skinner organized a new advance design group to develop a new overhead-valve (OHV) V8 engine and assigned Burrell to lead it. Raising an engines compression ratio allows the engine to extract more energy from the fuel it burns, improving both power and fuel economy. The Rocket Engine Story by One Who Was Thereby Gibson Butler. Rocket Racing & Performance is a custom engine building facility that specializes in Oldsmobile Performance.We offer a full machine shop, in house engine dyno, and parts supplier serving the local Wisconsin area and worldwide. 26-31; Roger Huntington, 1965 Engines, Motor Trend Vol. The Vimeo Cookie Policy does not currently disclose the normal durations of the cookies and similar technologies the Vimeo platform uses, but it appears that some may remain in your browser (or other user agent) for as long as your settings permit. Ike Turner, later to be half of Ike and Tina Turner, played piano on the track and was miffed that Brenstons name, not his, was on the record. (For this cookie, "xx" will be a cryptographic hash.) at 1,800 RPM Transmission: Three-speed manual standard, Hydra-Matic optional Wheelbase: 119.5 inches Im wondering how many weeks of informative evening reading I can enjoy from your articles. The original Oldsmobile Rocket V8 soldiered on until 1964, eventually reaching 394 cu. So this sedan was delivering big torque with a healthy dose of Streetside Classics - Atlanta (877) 828-8754 Lithia Springs, GA 30122 (406 miles away) 6 It was generally paired with the Turbo Hydramatic 350 3-speed automatic or the Turbo Hydramatic 400 3-speed ustomatic in rear wheel drive vehicles, in the case of front-wheel drive vehicles, the Turbo Hydramatic 425 FWD 3-speed automatic. For all the administrative and login cookies described here, "xx" will be a cryptographic hash while "UID" will be the administrative user's user ID number in this website's WordPress database. The effective dates of the current versions are: Paid advertisements and/or sponsored links on Ate Up With Motor will be identified with words such as "Sponsor," "Sponsors," "Sponsored Link(s)," "Sponsored Content," "Ad," "Advertisement," "Advertisement(s)," or "Paid Promotion" (and/or by images or icons containing such words). Maybe just intake or vacuum leak. The 76 lingered for one more model year and then was dropped entirely; the division wouldnt offer a six again until 1964. [20] Parts peculiar to this system include a toothed disc between the harmonic balancer and the crank pulley, the "adjacent sensor" (an early form of crankshaft position sensor), a special distributor, an engine temperature sensor, and a rudimentary computer mounted inside the car, under the dashboard. I never had one apart to that extent, but my understanding from the theory of operation is that there is a pivoting pawl that will engage a toothed wheel when the engine is stopped with reverse selected. . With an overall length of 202 inches (5,131 mm) and an overall width of 75.2 inches (1,910 mm) on a 119.5-inch (3,035mm) wheelbase, the 88 was hardly a small car even by American standards and it tipped the scales (in this body style) at almost 3,800 lb (1,717 kg) with Hydra-Matic, but its Rocket V8 would leave Pontiacs elderly straight eight or Chevrolets Stovebolt Six for dead and the Oldsmobile name carried more prestige than Pontiac or Chevrolet. Assuming your car has its original engine, its the version Oldsmobile called the Skyrocket, which was differentiated from the base Rocket by its four-barrel carburetor and gross ratings of 330 hp and 440 lb-ft of torque. A tracking pixel, sometimes known as a web beacon, is a tiny image file that loads from a remote server; it's a type of embedded content (as is the button itself, which loads from the same domain). For sale 1967 Oldsmobile Delta 88 custom, 2 door hardtop. Crazy Egg is a trademark of Crazy Egg, Inc. Optimizely is a registered trademark of Optimizely, Inc. in the United States, EU, and elsewhere. Some consider Rocket 88, recorded by Jackie Brenston in 1951, to be the first rock and roll song. Except as otherwise indicated, all written content and images are copyright Aaron Severson dba Ate Up With Motor. 78-79; and Josiah Work, 1949 Rocket 88: This Is Not Your Grandpas Oldsmobile, Special Interest Autos #139 (January-February 1994), reprinted in The Hemmings Book of Oldsmobiles, pp. These photos were taken outside the Automobile Driving Museum in El Segundo, California (a few blocks south of LAX). $8,888 or BEST REASONABLE OFFER. All of this was occurring from about 1948 thru the first half of the 50s. Adding turn signals, backup lights, windshield washers, and heater tacked an additional $112 to the price these items wouldnt be standard for several more years. [2] [3] In 1929, Oldsmobile installed a 90 degree monobloc flathead V8 engine in the Viking companion brand before the monobloc was used in LaSalle and Cadillac vehicles from 1929-1931. With a 4-barrel carburetor and 10.75:1 compression, the Olds 215 made 195hp (145kW) at 4800rpm and 235lbft (319Nm) at 3200rpm with an automatic. (4,705 cc) displacement of the original prototypes once higher-octane fuels became widely available, raising compression ratios to maintain the same output with lower fuel consumption. As mentioned earlier, the Rocket V8 was initially offered only in Oldsmobiles flagship 98, a big luxury car that gave away little to Cadillac in size or appointments. [22] This was the first engine to use the smaller Rochester Dualjet two-barrel carburetor, the only carburetor used on the 260. It uses a 3.8in (97mm) bore (in common with the Buick 231 V6 and 350 V8) with a 3.385in (86.0mm) stroke. The practice of keeping model names alive even though applied to a vehicle with little in common with the original seems to annoy no one but me, [example Impala], why not keep division names alive and apply them to selected models. You make a good point about the L-head lifter. The 303 was available from 1949 until 1953. 15 results per page. Most of these engines were very similar, using the same bore centers and a 9.33in (237mm) deck height, raised on "big-block" versions to 10.625in (269.9mm). Vintage lovers are ready to spend any amount of money to get hold of a Rocket 88 of 1949. Thanks! Maybe. We are largest vintage car website with the. You could say the same thing about the original Century, if you were so inclined, which I am. Of those sales, 100,273 were the Rocket 88. The output of the 307cuin (5.0L) wasn't particularly high in terms of horsepower. Fabulous article. A popular modification made to the 403 to increase power was to swap on early Oldsmobile 350 heads to boost compression. This is incorrect, in the context of wider vs. narrower bore sizes with the same displacement. Rockets, Vikings and Your Old Man. The cheap ones are expensive, and the expensive ones are cheap. I heard it (fittingly) in connection with Jaguars, but of course its true in general. The PYPF cookie normally expires in approximately four weeks, the 01A1 cookie in approximately one year. Comes in plastic display showcase. A pushrod layout is more expensive than a flatheads valve gear and the extra mass of pushrods and rocker arms hurts mechanical efficiency. Required fields are marked *. mill or the Chrysler Firepower hemi of the same displacement. "Affordable Aluminum V8's [sic]", in, Turbo Hydramatic 425 FWD 3-speed automatic, "1975-79 Cadillac Electronic Fuel Injection", "Oldsmobile 403 Engine - Car Craft Magazine", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Oldsmobile_V8_engine&oldid=1138357918, 1968 and 1969 400s shared the Olds big-block standard 4.25in (108mm) stroke with the 455 but used a, 19681970 Oldsmobile Toronado GT (W34), 400hp (300kW), This page was last edited on 9 February 2023, at 06:46. Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for For 1957 Oldsmobile Golden Rocket 88 Battery Cable SMP 68152PP 6.1L V8 at the best online prices at eBay! There were 64 1st Gen sold in the last 5 years. Email: [email protected] Address: 7400 E Monte Cristo Ave . Produced from 19681980, the Rocket 350 was entirely different from the other GM divisions' 350s. The engine proved so popular, the division's 88 models were popularly called Rocket 88s. The J-2 engine also had a slightly thinner head gasket, raising compression to 10.0:1. The Oldsmobile 350s made from 1968-1976 have heavy castings, beefier crankshafts, and better flowing heads. Revisions to the engine for 1986 included roller lifters with a slightly smaller camshaft (.435"/.438" lift and 194/210 duration at .050"), new heads with smaller, swirl-port intake runners, floating piston pins, and larger piston dishes for lower compression (8.0:1 v. 8.4:1). However, my research has of necessity stretched back somewhat further than that and not just to the late 40s but, in tracing company histories, at least as far back as 1903 and the curved dash Oldsmobile. These limitations hurt both power and fuel economy. In short, the flatheads breathing ability is only mediocre. (author diagram). If you use the buttons to make a payment or donation, the PayPal services will set additional cookies (not listed here) to manage your PayPal login and transaction data (and potentially also for various other purposes, e.g., user analytics and/or advertising). The cylinder head is little more than a cover for the top of the cylinder, which is why L-head engines are commonly called flatheads. The second issue was that the practical limit for L-head engines was a compression ratio of about 7.0:1; above that threshold, it became difficult to control combustion roughness. From your research, do you have any information on Bouvy? The first second-generation Oldmobile V8 330cuin (5.4L) "Jetfire Rocket" introduced in 1964 and produced through 1967. Accessing certain posts or pages on this website may require you to enter a specific password. Oldsmobile 1949 Oldsmobile Eighty-Eight History Gallery Valuation Rocket 88 (1949 - 1953) 1949 1950 1951 1952 1953 These are standard specifications - not necessarily specifications for the vehicle (s) in the photo (s). (Vimeo and the Vimeo logos are trademarks of Vimeo.com, Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries. (5,880 cc) engine was a massive straight eight with nine main bearings may have played a role in that!) [citation needed]. The first generation of Oldsmobile V8s ranged from 1949-1964. Thanks for the great write up on the history of one of the most influential engines in the automobile industry! 1948 & 1949 Cadillac Fastbacks, Special Interest Autos #11 (June-July 1972), pp. Park is actually a parking brake that has a red light comes on when the hand brake is out. For the Rocket 88, Oldsmobile came up with a 303 cubic inch V8 capable of a maximum 135 hp and 283 lb-ft of torque. Even the flathead Ford held up well (courtesy of the Ardun hop-up parts mail order catalogue.) Man! In a flathead engine, the camshaft is in the block, driven directly by the engines crankshaft. If you delete or disable these cookies, your existing preferences will be lost and you may not be able to save your privacy settings for this website. The Ford/Mercury flathead V8 was of course a popular choice up until the early part of the decade (and had been since its introduction in 1932) but the introduction of the new overhead valve V8s Cadillac and Oldsmobile in 1949 and Chrysler and Studebaker in 1951 were a game-changer for the performance crowd. All Oldsmobile V8s were manufactured at plants in Lansing, Michigan while the engine block and cylinder heads were cast at Saginaw Metal Casting Operations. For example, the stock (non-high-output, VIN "Y") 307cuin (5.0L) in the 1983 Oldsmobile 98 was a mere 140hp (100kW), although in that year a high-output model (VIN "9") was available producing a nominal 180hp (130kW), at approximately 245lbft (332Nm) torque. [[[Chevrolet Corvair#First generation (19601964)#{{{section}}}|contradictory]]]. The starting gun of that race was sounded by Oldsmobile, with its advanced new overhead-valve V8 and the new mid-size model that shared its name: the 1949-1950 Oldsmobile Rocket 88. Ate Up With Motor and its embedded content providers may use cookies and/or similar technologies and collect personal information about site visitors as described in the Privacy Policy and Cookie Notice. To mitigate these problems, both Oldsmobile and Cadillac adopted an overhead-valve (OHV) layout. The new, mid-sized Oldsmobile Rocket 88 went on sale February 6, exactly seven weeks after the 98. Well, are you presuming that the 88s actual career in stock car racing or road races like the Carrera Panamericana somehow dont count? R.M. C. G. in. When the center carburetor was opened to 60 or more engine vacuum drawn from the windshield wiper pump would simultaneously open the front and rear carburetors. I might have to find or make some kind of diagram of that. Clarke (Cobham, England: Brooklands Books Ltd., ca. Note the quadrant for the Hydra-Matic atop the steering column. Flory. This is a session cookie that verifies that the user has entered valid user credentials pending receipt of the correct authentication code; the cookie normally expires when the user closes their browser (or other user agent). (This cant be viewed as an entirely altruistic effort, since GM still owned a major stake in the Ethyl Corporation, the principle producer of the tetraethyl lead additive that was the primary octane booster used in contemporary gasoline.) The cookies are not set at all unless you select that option when submitting a comment. The _gat cookie, which may appear as _gat_gtag_UA_6113964_2, was sometimes set along with the _ga and _gid cookies to control how frequently requests were sent to the Google Analytics servers; this cookie typically persisted for only a few minutes at a time. Any interest in better fuel economy was quickly forgotten; gasoline was cheap and speed sold more cars than parsimony. The Cadillac and Oldsmobile V8s represented the start of several major trends in American engine design. It is arguably the best engine Olds made in the muscle car era, although it never made it into a "muscle car". U.S. Pat. Many believe it was deliberately underrated to avoid offending Cadillac, which was concerned about its sister division outmatching the new Cadillac V8. ), This cookie was set if you clicked the "Disable Google Analytics Tracking" link to prevent the Google Analytics service from tracking your use of the Ate Up With Motor website. All Oldsmobile V8s use a 90 bank angle, and most share a common stroke dimension: 3.4375in (87.31mm) for early Rockets, 3.6875in (93.66mm) for later Generation 1 engines, and 3.385in (86.0mm) for Generation 2 starting in 1964. Olds were very popular in Brazil but I can t give you any numbers. Uniquely in the 1977 Toronado, the 403 engine was fitted with a crank triggered ignition system. Skinner and Wolfram tried again in March 1947, having decided that alternative engine configurations were impractical, and this time managed to secure production approval from GM president Charles E. Wilson. All other trademarks and/or service marks are the property of their respective owners. The immediate prewar Compound Carburetion cars were legitimately quick for 1941 you might get that kind of performance out of a flathead Ford, but not without a lot of non-factory help. A 1958 2-barrel version produced 265hp (198kW) and 390lbft (530Nm), but had problems with early camshaft failures due to the high preload valve spring forces. 1955 Oldsmobile 88. Compression was up again in 1956 for 230hp (170kW) and 340lbft (460Nm) in the 88 and 240hp (180kW) and 350lbft (470Nm) in the Super 88 and 98. Sunday - Closed. Two distinct versions of the 400 CID engine were made: The 1966-1967 4-4-2 400cuin (6.6L) V8 was a short stroke engine which featured B and C cast large-valve cylinder heads and hydraulic lifters of larger diameter, as well as push-rods of different length and diameter than the standard Olds Rocket V8. A very significant and, at this point, often misunderstood transmission that had a big influence on the character of the cars that used it. Powered by the rocket 2bbl. Other American manufacturers would reach the same conclusion. (Author diagram). Cadillacs OHV V8, released around the same time as the new Oldsmobiles, was itself an important and influential engine that earned Motor Trends first Car of the Year Award, but it was the Oldsmobile Rocket 88 that started an avalanche. The new V8 was designed with plenty of extra room in the block for future displacement increases, but Gilbert Burrell and his team actually hoped that Oldsmobile could return to the 287 cu. They were all painted Bronze and had V and G stamped on the cylinder heads. 76. (6,460 cc), which was about the limit of the original block design. The means exist to do the same work while burning less fuel; the question is whether a meaningful number of American consumers will accept those means while theres still fuel left to burn. 46-52; Testing the 212 HP Packard Patrician, Science and Mechanics June 1954, reprinted in Packard Gold Portfolio 1946-1958, ed. Thanks, I have enjoyed reading your many excellent articles. The demise of Olds is yet another dreary episode in the ongoing story of GM losing its way. Have a 47 98 custom cruiser. & Tm. The Turbo-Rocket V8 was offered exclusively on the Oldsmobile Jetfire, a special version of the Cutlass compact hardtop coupe, which is noteworthy as it is one of the world's first (in fact the second) turbocharged passenger car ever offered for public sale. If we have enabled multi-factor authentication (which requires an authentication code as well as a password to log into the administrative dashboard), the iThemes Security plugin may also set the itsec_interstitial_browser cookie during the login process. Popular price guides put Lansing's mid-1950s cars at an average of $16,500 for a four-door all the way up to $72,900 for a two-door convertible. Following the Automobile Manufacturer Association ban on factory supported racing, power ratings went down for the 1959 and 1960 88 models: 270hp (200kW) and 390lbft (530Nm) for 1959 and 240hp (180kW) and 375lbft (508Nm) for 1960. (I quess that would be total Olds minus Olds 76 model.). [1] 400cuin (6.6L), 425cuin (7.0L), and 455cuin (7.5L)[1] V8s have a higher deck height (10.625in (27.0cm) versus 9.33in (23.7cm)) to accommodate a 4.25in (108mm) stroke crank to increase displacement. Oldsmobiles engineering staff already knew what the Rocket could do in the B-body cars and there was no question that it fit, so Harold Metzel, then Oldsmobiles chief transmission engineer, asked Sherry Skinner if Oldsmobile could offer that combination in production. 50,000 cars were imported in 1952, US brands comprising some 90% of that total. The OHV V8 was still a large engine externally, but it was shorter and lower than the straight eight and weighed quite a bit less.
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