1978 Oldsmobile Toronado XS

Oh, GM certainly attempted assimilation with that hunk of crapola!

 

Have you run the numbers? Ensure it's the correct carb for the Olds?

 

Not to put too fine a point on it, but I am getting just a bit tired of your constantly haranguing my car's components with comments like this or like "quadrapuke." It's my car, and I like it. No one likes to hear his car criticized or belittled. You got something constructive to say, I'm glad to hear it. Otherwise, please keep it to yourself or say it somewhere outside of my earshot.

 

That's one of the first things I did. The carb number, 17058259, is correct for a '78 Toronado, non-high altitude, non-California car.

 

Let's stay polite, please.

Jaunty75 is preserving and restoring a unique example of American automotive history. Good deal.

 

Thank you.

 

I apologize. I do prefer Oldsmobiles if I had to choose a GM car; I just was never enamored of Rochester carburetors, and, to be fair, carbs in the first place. When I make reference to an item disdainfully, I should remember to make the point I'm not wanting to put the car itself down. So, once again, I apologize.

 

That's good the carb's correct; I've seen customers bring in a car or truck they want to purchase and keep original, only to find the carb isn't the original one.

 

Words to live by my friends. ALL of us.

It's not fun getting "Harangued". I've seem some guys get harangued here and I felt bad for them. Especially new people.

 

I don't do it to harangue people, it's just a bad habit I picked up as a kid, to misname something in order to put it down (Wacky Packages, anyone?), and it followed me into adulthood. I just hope you don't think I'm a dirty rotter to others; quite the contrary, I'm one of the nicest guys you'll meet. But I have stuck my foot in my mouth before, and when I realize it, I make apologies, own up to my responsibilities.

 

Carburetor is rebuilt. Doesn't look a whole lot different externally except for being a bit cleaner and with a new choke pull-off, but it is all new inside.






I've not installed it on the car yet because I've run into two other problems. That's the way it's been with this car. Two steps forward, one step back, or maybe it's one step forward and two steps back.

Anyway, problem 1 concerns the EGR valve mounting. I don't know how unusual this is, but the EGR valve on this car does not mount directly to the intake manifold. Rather, it mounts to an adapter that mounts to the manifold. It's essentially an extension, and thus two EGR valve gaskets are needed. But the problem was that the adapter had a crack along one mounting ear, and it broke into two pieces when I removed it from the car. Bummer. See photo below. The broken piece is on the left side.

I've been working with a fellow in Oregon who is parting out a '78 Toro, and it turns out that the mounting adapter on his car is cracked in the exact same place. Perhaps some kind of design flaw?




So I took the thing to a local welding shop, and they welded it up for $40. But that wasn't the end of the job because the mounting surface needed to be machined flat as well ("decked," as they say), so I then took it to a local machine shop, and I just got it back today. Cost to deck it was $35. They actually smoothed both ends for that money, so we're really good to go now.






The other problem is not resolved yet, and that has to do with the choke heat stove. The two tubes coming off the manifold were both cracked at the point where they attach to the fitting on the manifold, and they broke off. Only the part that sticks inside the engine is intact except for the two pieces of broken-off tube stuck inside it (those tubes are press-fit into the openings on the stove).



Fortunately, Fusick Automotive offers these new. They're not specific for the '78 Toronado, but the design was the same for many years, and their offering for an early '70s 455 engine looks to be an exact match.



I also ordered the two upper tubes. The shorter one is an exact match for my shorter one, but the longer one is shaped differently, so I may have to do a little tube bending to make it work. But it attaches to the carburetor via a rubber hose, so as long as it clears everything and terminates somewhere near the back of the carb, I should be fine.




I should have these parts by the end of the week. Then everything goes back together, and we see how the car runs. Or we move on to solving the next batch of problems that come along!

 

Olds engines were notoriously bad about collecting water and trash in this area and rusting those tubes away. Other GM v8s weren't as bad (except in the Trans Am with its leaky shaker of doom-by-rain-water).

I am surprised by that EGR extension block. I've not seen that on other '73+ era Olds engines I've worked on. Is it a Toronado thing or a 1-2 year only thing? All it looks like it does is flip the EGR valve around, would the EGR valve still mount backwards without it or is there an interference? If there's no interference the only function it would serve that comes to mind is a way to isolate the exhaust gas directly from the EGR valve itself and maybe prolong its life, but I'm not sure that would even work...

 

The EGR adapter/extender/whatever does cause the valve to be mounted 180 degrees opposite of what it would be if mounted directly to the manifold. However, my guess is that the reason for this adapter is simple: without it, the air cleaner would not clear the EGR valve.


Here's a photo with the air cleaner removed and the EGR valve mounted. You can see how it sits on the extender.




Here's a photo from the other direction. You can see the crack in the mounting flange just to the right of the bolt. That's the crack that ultimately gave way once the adapter was off the car. It basically just fell apart in my hands.




Here's a photo that not of my car but shows the EGR valve in place with the air cleaner in place. There's just enough room for it between the air cleaner and valve cover.





I happened to have a photo of the engine on the '73 Custom Cruiser I owned until a a couple of years ago. The EGR valve on this engine, which is a 455, connects directly to the manifold with no extender. This photo shows the old valve. I did replace it, and I certainly would have remembered that it needed two gaskets if it was mounted the same way as on the Toro, but that was not the case. It was an easy replacement with no adapter with broken ears and only one gasket required.

 

I see what they did. On your intake that piece is its own unique extra bolt on interface between the EGR and the intake. On the all of the Olds engines I have had (and can find pictures of) it was cast as part of the intake manifold and not removable. The EGR valve is still in the same place on a 1979 403 and a 1974 350 engine I can find pictures of and an Olds 307.

I don't know why yours is like that though unless it's part of an unusual throttle linkage\intake setup specifically for the front wheel drive... GM had to have done it like that for a reason as it would have cost them a chunk of change to make an intake specifically for this car when they'd had an intake for it since 1973...

 

IIRC, the Toronados required closer hood clearance due to the front transaxle design, hence the 'offset' design of the air cleaner, and the adapter that moved the EGR valve. I had only seen one of those adapters once in my life, new, that a co-worker installed on a Toronado way back in the day. I would assume it was the replacement because the old one did the same thing.