72 Cutlass Supreme Low Budget and Slow Progress Thread

[72cutlassS]

I got replacement radiator installed. Went with a cheap ebay unit as I had great luck in the past. I'm pretty happy with fit, just had to bend the upper trans cooler line. Will hopefully see how it performs soon. Trans seems to still have a leak, maybe from overflow. Haven't had a chance to borrow a truck and get engine from my dads to my house yet. Still trying to get what I have working to get to cars and coffee and cruise locally.

Man, you've had some nice rides.



Back in my Navy days I found a 425 in my neighbors yard and had all these plans to make a high revving big block but the aftermarket support wasn't quite there 20 years ago. I ended up with a 455 and the all the anecdotes about boat loads of torque were true(and so fun). I ended up having to rebuild it 3 times in the span of about 2000 miles for what I realized later was due to shifting at 6k.
After graduation I bought an LQ9 for literally a tenth of the build price of the big block (1300 vs ~13,000).

The big blocks torque was sooo great, and it was also cool to be able to pull up to a car show and not have the other Olds guys hate on me as they do now usually for the LS motor. Just like TankmasterJ said, whichever route you go will have it's benefits.

Appreciate it. I have been looking around the internet for a 455 block to swap my 425 internals over to but no luck within a reasonable distance. I might start looking into adapter plates to keep my th350 with a ls based swap. Probably better to switch to overdrive trans anyways though. Manual swap would be ideal. I need to make up my mind.

Cool build, I really like your wheel choice!

Appreciate that. Wish they were 18s or 17 had more tire choices but I wanted to get something that looked OEM+