1976 Oldsmobile Cutlass Reviews, Pricing & Specs

My '76 Cutlass's originally came with the Olds. L-34 350 motors. They were underpowered gas-guzzleing slugs. Both of the cars had that nasty looking side molding and pin-stripes. I repainted them and removed that stuff. The body style on the '76 2-doors(Supreme Series), and the S coupes looks great, the addition of the stainless steel trim around the doors/wheels/rockers looks OK. Both cars have the SSIII 15X7" wheels, I put BFG P22560R15's on them. I have a set of SSIII's that are now painted to look like SSII's, I'm going to put those new Mickey Thompson S/R's on those and use them for "spares". These cars make descent daily drivers, you have to be willing to do the up-keep on them. Parts are plentiful and the interchange amoung GM's of that era is benificial. After I removed the 350/TH350 engine combo. I installed TH400's, with the corresponding driveshaft/cross member/wiring/brackets and 455 Olds. motors. This is a really straightforward swap due to the fact Olds. optioned it. I put the 4-core rad./HD cooling set-up in them and changed out the factory steering box to an AGR 12:1, replaced all the hoses, installed the HD front/rear sway-bars/springs/shocks. And had the rear diff. changed to a 3.42 :1 Anti-spin. The fuel economy actually went up considerably over the original engine combo. The interiors were in good shape, I installed carpet kits in them. One is a Brougham so it has those pillow bench seats the other has a notched bench. Other do-dads include the factory gauge option which was fairly involved install. These cars ride good and are still fairly solid after 34 years, dont buy rusted-out examples, to much hasstle to repair properly and theres no value gains when your done. I think I'm into both of these cars for about $12,000. Hope to keep them around for awhile. I've found camshafts with .455" lift on the intake and .475" on the exaust work very well, good idle, vacuum, acceleration,economy. Other than that and 110# springs/stock valves/stamped fulcrums/roller chain the rest is stock. I left the 795 CFM Quadrabog's on them and reworked the distrb. I'd say 0 to 60 times is around 8 seconds...not bad for a six thousand dollar car @ 21 mpg weiging in at 4000#Mar 10, 2010