I loved the 68 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme in October's readers rides. I've been wanting a 455 for my 70 Cutlass Supreme for a long time, but sadly they are harder to find than your average Chevy engine. Plus I have the original 350 block in my Cutlass in prime condition. CC asked if anyone wanted to see them build an Olds 350. My response: For the love of all things good and holy, heck YES! I don't care what you do, nitrous, turbos, blowers, anything, just make my tiny engine fast. Heck I'll even donate my engine as long as I get it back when you're done. (I live in So Cal and really, the CC guys can borrow it any time they want) I've been looking for ways to make it fast on a budget, so obviously I looked into nitrous, but it seems that there aren't any single plane intakes for the small block Olds. CC, you do this and I'll subscribe for life.  

I was pretty excited to see that car in there too...as it is mine.  Oldsmobile 350's are amazing motors.  The one I have is pretty healthy and has gotten me 20 MPG on the highway.  I would LOVE to see CC do an article on one of these.  It'd be different, thats for sure!

Edelbrock makes a victor single plane intake.  Its not cheap, but is available.

I would subscribe for life too!

good to hear the 350 has some potential. With Memory Lane, the junkyard in my area downsizing due to a location change, I don't have high hopes of scoring a decent 455.  

There's a 455 olds sitting in my buddy's garage right now, came out of a boat after blowing the big end out of a rod.  God knows what they're going to do with it, they mostly work on old Alphas and Datsuns there.  Off topic, I just saw an old Alpha v6 they were tearing down, craziest engine I ever saw, basically a hemi with an overhead cam and no $hit, an overhead pushrod going over to the exhaust valve.  Weird stuff.  

well currently my first step on the cutlass is the carb/intake combo. Currently I have the stock 2 barrel and matching intake, and needless to say that just aint doing it for me. Now I heard that a quadrajet is a great choice, but obviously that limits my intake choices to whatever I can find at the junkyard. I found a 68 Cutlass at the yard today, and they would sell me the q-jet for $75 bucks, but wouldn't sell the intake. Jerks. So would it be worth it to go for a square bore carb, which would allow me to just buy new? Any ideas on a good, affordable (preferably junkyard) carb and intake combo for the olds?  

A quadrajet will work on either a performer or performer RPM intake.  So if you wanted to go ahead and get the qjet and a stock intake for now, you could upgrade the intake later.  And to answer your other post about 350's having potential, they certainly do.  

All oldsmobiles (at least from the muscle car era and late 70's 403s) have forged rods from the factory.  Supposedly 403 rods have the best alloy.  You can drop a 330 crank into a 350, and all 330's had forged cranks.  There are aftermarket forged pistons available, which would give you a completely forged bottom end.  The hard part would be finding the 330 crank...but its doable.  My 350 has stock 1966 B cast big block heads...but it would be just as easy to drop in a set of edelbrock aluminum big block heads and port match them to a RPM intake.  Side note: for a more mild combo...a set of #5 small block heads will still allow plenty of power...Edelbrock made 400HP with that casting with their RPM power package.  There are lots of cams available, including roller cams.  And with screw in studs there are plenty of rocker arms out there as well.  Hooker makes super competition headers for them, and with the intake being either squarebore or spreadbore, you can use any carb you like (shy of a dominator...but for that you could buy a victor intake).  Oiling issues would have to be addressed with restrictors keeping oil down on the bearings...but thats not too terribly difficult.  Oldsmobiles are awesome.

Or...if you really want...you could just buy a 350 diesel, convert it to gasoline, and bore and stroke it to a 440 small block.  Like I said...Oldsmobiles are awesome

Edited 8/15/2006 9:33 am by CSIROC