1966 OLDS 442

Update your progress on your various car projects.

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wxo
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Re: 1966 OLDS 442

Post by wxo »

There's one thing that I've been meaning to ask about. Have you checked that all the carb linkages are working as they should to bring in the carbs when they should?
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GMJohnny
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Re: 1966 OLDS 442

Post by GMJohnny »

wxo wrote:There's one thing that I've been meaning to ask about. Have you checked that all the carb linkages are working as they should to bring in the carbs when they should?
They all open up to full throttle and they work in progression. How "right" they are remains to be seen.
This is the first tri-power that I've owned, and I have to look into it some more. This thing I have called
"a job" takes up a lot of my time!!

GM
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MostMint
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Re: 1966 OLDS 442

Post by MostMint »

what is the factory idle RPM and timing for this car?
[quote="Basement Paul"]Is that a mint rocketship on the hood?? :shock:
-BP[/quote]
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GMJohnny
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Re: 1966 OLDS 442

Post by GMJohnny »

Factory timing = 7.5* --- factory idle is 650 rpm. We have it set at 10* and 750 - 800 rpm. We currently don't
have vacuum advance working, so we aren't finished 100% with the idle tuning process. I believe that next
Wednesday the center carb will come off and the vacuum issue will be fixed, then we will do the final
tune on it. The goal, before the tach was installed, was to make it so the car wasn't cackling at WOT,
which we accomplished. Putting the correct plugs in it and checking over the wires and points gap is
part of getting it to a baseline. It rained yesterday, so I couldn't take it out for a test run. It'd be nice
to see it go to 5000 rpm smoothly and to idle at a steady number when the work is done.

GM
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MostMint
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Re: 1966 OLDS 442

Post by MostMint »

I should also have asked what do you know about the cam as far as recommended idle RPM, power BAND, etc.
[quote="Basement Paul"]Is that a mint rocketship on the hood?? :shock:
-BP[/quote]
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GMJohnny
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Re: 1966 OLDS 442

Post by GMJohnny »

The previous owner gave us the cam specs, but they are in my barn now. I'll post them this weekend.
I know that it's a .540 lift cam, but don't know duration and such off the top of my head.

GM
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GMJohnny
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Re: 1966 OLDS 442

Post by GMJohnny »

Here are the cam specs for the 442:
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GMJohnny
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Re: 1966 OLDS 442

Post by GMJohnny »

Wednesday was supposed to be a day of getting a bunch done on the Olds. We were going to take out the
middle carb to see why the vacuum port on the baseplate had no vacuum to supply the vacuum advance on the
distributor. The theory was that they guys who put the car together used the wrong gasket on the middle carb,
and that one of the end ones had the gasket that we needed under it. This plan opened a can of worms. After
taking the carbs off we found that there was no issue with the gaskets and that the port that we think should
be a vacuum port does not create vacuum, even though it is in the baseplate of the carb. I'm not sure how this
can happen, but the port we hooked up the vacuum advance to creates psi not vacuum. A vacuum gauge proves
it. So, we now decided to get vacuum off of the back of the middle carb. When we hooked up the vacuum advance,
life was good. The motor smoothed out and we thought we were in heaven.....until we test drove the car. The car
from idle to 2800 rpm was good, then it would fold up and act like it was running lean. Fred and I were stumped, and
ended up undoing everything we did the prior week in search of the problem. To make an extremely long story
short, the coil wire that we "fixed" with an end from the parts store wasn't quite fixed. I "re-fixed" it and the car
ran well again. Then we re-did everything that we did the week before. Backwards steps to make progress, but
we made some. I have some work to do to neaten up the vacuum lines, and new plug wires are on the way to the
house to eliminate the potential issues with the stupid coil wire in the future. More to come.............

GM
Last edited by GMJohnny on Fri Oct 20, 2017 6:18 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Basement Paul
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Re: 1966 OLDS 442

Post by Basement Paul »

With that big of a cam, those gears, and a pretty good sized motor with good compression, if you can hook it up at all, it should be in the mid 13's once you get your tune dialed in. I bet it sounds sweet too. That's the one thing I forgot to do when I stopped to look at it is have you fire it up. Duh.

-BP
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GMJohnny
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Re: 1966 OLDS 442

Post by GMJohnny »

It sounds way better at idle than it did before, but we are still in the fix it process. You'll be able
to hear it soon. I'm not at all enthused about the 3.90 gear. The car is at 3000 rpm when at 50 mph.
With no posi, it'll never hook up, and going 60 mph is painful to listen to. I'm searching out 3.23's this
winter.

GM
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GMJohnny
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Re: 1966 OLDS 442

Post by GMJohnny »

I had about an hour or so to kill on Saturday, so I replaced the vacuum line to the distributor and to the
choke pull off. I got a nice "y" to put in the line so I could supply both functions with one line. I ran new
line the whole way for a clean look. I also pulled off the right front to check the brake adjustments. All
parts are brand new as described by the previous owner. I went around the car and made sure lug nuts
were correctly tightened, and installed the hubcaps with the rocket emblem aiming at the valve stems
because I'm anal that way. Spark plug wires are en route as is a dwell meter I purchased used on Ebay.

GM
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Blue_69_malibu
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Re: 1966 OLDS 442

Post by Blue_69_malibu »

So, I was out cruising late last night. 50 MPH per the GPS in my phone was around 2,250 RPM. That's with 3.36 rear gears and 255/60/15 tires. Now, my small tach is hard to get very accurate readings on when driving at night....while trying to sync up to a GPS reading.

Also, am I reading that cam card correctly? 270/274 duration @ .050 lift? Is that a solid lifter cam?
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GMJohnny
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Re: 1966 OLDS 442

Post by GMJohnny »

Blue_69_malibu wrote:So, I was out cruising late last night. 50 MPH per the GPS in my phone was around 2,250 RPM. That's with 3.36 rear gears and 255/60/15 tires. Now, my small tach is hard to get very accurate readings on when driving at night....while trying to sync up to a GPS reading.

Also, am I reading that cam card correctly? 270/274 duration @ .050 lift? Is that a solid lifter cam?
Tony ----

I'd love to have those lower RPM's while cruising. I'll definitely be working on that, it's high on the priority list.
As for the camshaft, I'll have to look at the paperwork the guy gave me to see if I can figure out if it has solid lifters
in it. I did a quick check on the part # online, but that yielded no information.

GM
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GMJohnny
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Re: 1966 OLDS 442

Post by GMJohnny »

We went to the barn today to tie up some loose ends. We got the new plug wires installed ( one old one had a bad connector
to the distributor cap ) and installed a new rotor. We are waiting for the dwell meter to show up in the mail, so next
week we will adjust the points with that, and that end of the deal will be done. We adjusted the throttle linkage to
ensure that we definitely get WOT by depressing the accelerator pedal. A small adjustment was required to make it
"right". All of that took us about an hour or so to accomplish, so we decided to do the lock cylinders. We struggled a
bit on the passenger door. The special tool to remove the window crank didn't work for beans, so I used a hook-ended
screwdriver to get the "stupid" ( other words were used to describe that clip in the barn!! ) clip off of the shaft. It took
15 minutes to get the window crank off. Then to the lock cylinder. After 20 minutes of wrestling the lock cylinder clip
to get the cylinder out we finally found out that the cylinders would fit correctly in the door. We spent about forty minutes
trying to figure out how the cylinder could go in the door and correctly move the linkage to lock and unlock the door. We
hypothesized that the cylinders were assembled 180* wrong. A small modification with a die grinder made the cylinder
go back in the door the correct way, and we were able to button up the door in a short amount of time after that. The
trunk lock and driver's door took us about 25 minutes combined. We then went after the ignition barrel. It didn't give
up quickly, so we waved the white flag for the day. More progress made. It's nice not having three keys for your car, and
more nice to be able to unlock all of the doors from the outside.

GM
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GMJohnny
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Re: 1966 OLDS 442

Post by GMJohnny »

So after last week's install of the lock cylinders I was a bit perturbed that the cylinders seemed to be upside
down in the hole in the door. Basically, to unlock them, the key had to be put in upside down. This worked ok, but
it was driving me crazy that they were not correct. As mentioned earlier, we struggled to get the cylinders in and
had to modify the cylinders to get them in the doors so they would work. Last Wednesday night I was on Ebay
looking at Olds parts for entertainment when I saw some lock cylinders for my car, complete with the lever on
the back that moves the lock mechanism up and down to lock the doors. That's when it hit me. The cylinders were
upside down because the left door's cylinder lock arm was on the right side and vice versa. This was just a hypothesis
until today when we took both doors apart and switched the cylinders around. It worked! The doors now unlock
with the key the correct way, and it took us about 40 mins to do the work. I changed the ignition key, which was
a piece of cake after watching a few dudes do the work on youtube. Now I have one key! Amen to that! We then
started the car to test the dwell. I'm not certain my dwell meter ( ebay purchase -- guy said it worked well ) is
accurate as I wasn't able to get the rpms on the tach to match the ones on the dwell meter, so we decided to not
touch anything until we found a 100% accurate meter. We found out that the left tail light has a bad socket, keeping
the brake lights and running lights from working correctly on that side. A new one will be ordered. We also found out
that the car has no reverse lights ( because there is no switch to tell them to go on! ) and the neutral safety switch
doesn't exist either..... More work to be done!!

GM
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