1985 Oldsmobile Toronado Caliente

Great looking.

1985 Oldsmobile Toronado | eBay

 

Muy Caliente!...Sorry, someone had to do it. lol

 

My kind of car!

 

I new someone who had an '85 Toro Cali like this back in the day, and it seemed to me just as nice as an Eldorado, if not nicer.

 

The 1979-85 Eldorado/Riviera/Toronado were the same car essentially (although the engines did vary between them over the years).

The Eldorado just cost more.

 

Beautiful car, and we may never see another with so few original miles. Appears to have same engine as GM put in our 87 Pontiac Safari - smooth, reliable, durable, and all of 140HP.

 

I'm assuming your Safari has the 307ci Olds engine? For whatever it's worth, with the stock cam, the 307s were generally a little more reliable than the Chevy 305 of this era due to camshaft failures in some 305s. As I understand though, pre-1985 307s had significantly bigger ports in the heads and intake than 1985 and up 307s, and generally have much better performance overall. Regardless, they were all fairly good for what they were.

 

".. fairly good for what they were" is the best description I have ever heard for the engine in our Safari. Will be using that phrase a lot.

 

Try driving a pre-1985 car with a 307 in it. Apparently, the seat-of-the-pants difference is fairly noticeable.

 

@annap01gt I had to reference the interwebs for this, but the difference between the pre-1985 307 and the 1985 and up 307 is the older version had what's called a 5A head and the later version had a 7A head. On both, there is a large embossed '5A' or '7A' on the corner of the the driver's side head, just to the left of the spark plug closest to the front of the car. As mentioned, the difference between the two is mainly the port size...

Pre-1985 '5A' head:

Combustion chamber: 67cc
Port size: 1.30" x 2.03"
Intake valve: 1.75"
Exhaust valve: 1.50"

1985 and up '7A' head:

Combustion chamber: 64cc
Port size: 1.30" x 1.30" (square)
Intake valve: 1.75"
Exhaust valve: 1.50"

 

Port size and flow on the post-1985 307 motors is so drastically reduced that they won't even support the airflow needs of an Olds 350 if you were to swap the top ends over, unlike the pre-1985 engines. The post-1985 exhaust manifolds are downright tiny as well, it's not solely intake port size. As they say, "fairly good for what they were" sums it up...

 

Those 1.30" x 1.30" ports are positively tiny.

 

Makes sense, hp quoted for the 86 Safari is 165, down to 140 in 87. Thanks to all for the info. GM makes some strange decisions.

 

Just out of curiosity, do you know what the torque figures are and at what RPM? I'm sure they did it for emissions reasons though. Sadly, those old V8s were on their last legs and GM just didn't put any money toward further developing them, so that's what they got as a last ditch effort. However, those tiny ports should increase port velocity and it should cause it to make its peak torque at a slightly lower RPM. I'm sure the overall torque number took a hit after the new heads, but I'd be interested to see where in the power band they make their power.

 

I thought Caliente was a Mercury badge. They must not have trademarked it.