That POS 350 diesel may have been the most worthless piece of junk foisted onto the public by GM. And to think they even put it in Cadillacs *shudder*.

Speaking of Cads, they should have spent the extra year to perfect that V8-6-4 engine rather than rushing it and bringing us all a disaster.

The 305 was sort of a wannabe too. Smogged down to embarrassing levels the way it was, it never developed much of a following, and is still not an easy engine to build up because of that. It has potential, just no aftermarket support. At least itwas a really, really good sounding engine. Long live the SBC exhaust note.

 

What about the 305? I heard those things love to detonate.

And let's see how the 5-cylinder in the Colorado/Canyon turns out. Power of a 6, economy of a 4? Or vice versa?

 

The chevy 350's popularity is a double-edged sword just now swinging back to chop off the head of the American worker. It made GM enough money to branch out into different business interests, allowing it to become the #2 real-estate holder through banks and mortgages. The 350 so dominated what the American public wanted over the past 40 years, that it blinded GM, Ford, and Chrysler to what the import car companies were doing with small engines, allowing the imports to slowly erode the Big Three's market share. When they woke up, they started exporting jobs into Mexico and Canada to lower costs to battle the import companies who already had winning small engine designs.

350 = GM becoming the 2nd largest land holder in North America
350 = The Big Three's declining marketshare
350 = GM exporting jobs and laying off American workers

If GM keeps losing money and goes bankrupt, America goes bankrupt and the economy stops. Thank you 350 for the decline of the American way of life....

 

Worst: Vega 2300
2nd Place: 350 Diesel
Honorable mention: Caddy 4-6-8

 

I seem to recall a 3.0 V6 used in mid-80s Buick Century/ Olds Cieras that wouldn't go much past 40,000 miles before it blew up.

 

That was the 1970's era Vegas and badge sisters.

The concept was to use a high Silicon contnet aluminum in the block. This supposedly would give it the desired durability over the expected life of the car.

What happened though was different. The concept for the car was originally a car that was essentially disposable after the first and maybe second owner were through with it. It wasn't really designed to last more than say 100,000 miles. But just as the cars started production the tree huggers got serious about conservation and GM deemed it politically incorrect to market the car as disposable. So it was marketed as just another economy car.

The trouble with the car was that if you let the water get too low, the engine would overheat and then the cylinders would wear. So over the years the disposable engine truly did become disposable.

Some shops made an effort to keep the engines running by putting in cast iron cylinder liners and this worked OK, but there were just too many cheap cars around that weren't worth the cost of rebuilding them.

This is the hsitory of what I recall from reading way back wehn and seeing them running around all over the place. I did kind of like the Cosworth version tho.

Jim Henderson

 

Diggin up an odd one. lol. Used to see them in junkyards alot, but aven't seen one in a few years.

How about the Dohc 3.4 litre engine Oldsmobile used int he early 90's? That one didn't last long. Don't know too much about it, but a few years back I almost bought a Cutlass supreme Conv (truely a pretty car) with it. The tranny slipped and the engine made a lot of racket.

 

I'm probably going to get some heat for this but here it goes...


The 350 gasser that was converted to diesel was a P.O.S. Many people think that the 6.2/6.5 are the same junk motor as that 350 conversion. They are not. I ran one in my land cruiser and loved it. Sure it didn't have tons of power and wasn't the best motor but it is a totaly different motor than that early junker. Nobody here on this thread has said the 6.2 was the same junker but I had to defend it.

Ok I'm off my rant let's bash some more chebbies!

 

I test drove a Cutlass in 1979 or 80 with a 260 v8 diesel, a smaller version of the 350 diesel. It never reached 40 mph in between traffic lamps. What was GM thinking? It only was offered a year or two. At the time I was near the far North end of the world in upstate New York, and we had to have customer's diesel Bonnevilles dragged back to the service bay to warm up in order to start. I sent dozens of injection pumps out for rebuild due to water that GM had not yet figured out how to remove from the fuel.

 

ok, here's another vote for the vegas, they sucketh royale. I'm still not totally convinced that Chevy can make a reliable four banger. That whole reverse engineering project called Saturn didn't work out very well for them either.

Not much experience with the 350 diesels, but around the time that they were running them Ford came out with the 7.3. (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong here) The difference in overall performance is so great that every die hard chevy fan that I talk to still has to recognize that the 7.3 was/is a great motor.

As for the Iron Duke or the 2.8/3.1/3.4 they are hit or miss. A cast Iron block with aluminum heads seems to be a brain fart, but I have one and other than the noise of it (which I consider throaty) they seem to run just fine to me. Like what Jim Henderson said about the vegas the only thing that I can find wrong with them is the overheating, especially with the air conditioning running. If you find one that has overheated one too many times you got a crap pile, but otherwise they run until the cows come home. I have an old corsica as my beater and it's got the 3.1 with ~140k and it's still strong as ever. I met two people with similar cars and same engine, they went 220k and 335K before crapping out. It really seems to depend if they ever overheat, and if the overheating blows something substantial.

oh yeah and Joeblow, I believe that the 3.4 you're referring to is the Iron duke bored and stroked. You're right they are rare. They made decent power (about 220) but that dual chain driven overhead cam system is overly complex and frought with failures. Unless you enjoy full rebuilds you dodged a bullet with that olds.

 

My wife drives a '89 Chevy S10 Blazer 4X4 with a 2.8 & 5sp trans, the thing has 280,000 miles on it and the only engine trouble it has had was a leaking intake gasket. Its a little under powered for me but the wife loves to drive it.

 

I've got to say that the GM 60-degree V6s (2.8, 3.1, 3.4) have treated me very well. It's a real beach to work on the FWD ones, but not as bad as a FWD 3.8 in the Taurus. The Buick 350 and Cadillac 472/500 are a couple of my GM favs.

Worst GM motor... they had some crappy diesels, the Vega motor is a classic though.

 

You asked to be corrected.........so here I go;

GM's 350 diesels and Ford's 6.9 (not 7.3) are not even comparable. The Ford(or International or Navistar) was never installed in a car. As far a I know the GM 350 was never in a truck.........the 6.2 and 6.5 diesels were the truck motors and were Detroit diesel designed not in any way related to the Oldsmobile POS convert.


Iron Dukes were Pontiac 2.5L four cylinders...........no such thing as a Iron duke v6. The Duke was a direct bolt in to the Vega and actually made a total garbage car into a somewhat tolerable POS.


Your cast iron block with a an aluminum head disdain is almost comical. That's for the most part a common combo today INCLUDING the Duramax diesel........no need for that phobia.


JIm Henderson or not, overheating or not, the aluminum bores of the Vega motor flat wore out at around 40K.............don't care how they were pampered, no cows coming home for that junkbox.

 

marauder you are so right on the phobia of iron block alum heads bieng a load of bull. Look at almost every race engine used in almost any type of racing today, adn for the most part they are Iron blocks, and alum heads, and they last just fine thank you. Even my BBF race engine has alum heads on it, and I can't think of a single iron head that I could replace them with that would even come close to the power plus you can use higher compression with the same fuel without detonation.
now I will say I was worried about hte duramax with the alum heads ( I personally don't like alum heads on a diesel since there is no spark it relies on compression, and cyl heat to fire the next time, and the advantage of alum heads is they disappate the heat faster seems to me to be a loosing proposition to me or atleast a situation with no gain but added cost) and the only other experiment with that combo on a diesel I can think of was a miserable failure due to cracked heads but that wasn't GM so doesn't belong here.

 

Just to let you know, they did install the olds style motor in trucks for a few years, before they made the 6.2. They started putting them in as far back as 78, but according to Autozone's website, only about 5% had them. I have worked on some, but it has been a while. The 6.2 came out in 82. Ford didn't start with the 6.9 until 83