Yes, and not favourably.

My mom had an early 80's wagon with a 350 diesel that gave up the ghost while driving down the street one very cold winter evening- long before cell phones- with her and 7 kids in it. We eventually got hold of my cousin, who came and picked us all up in his Mercury Topaz- a very interesting ride for 9 people!!

Mind you, the car did much better once we swapped in a 350 rocket!

I'd rather not.

Well Sir Robin are you saying you would not embrace a 350 diesel.Believe it or not I ran across one just the other day. The gentleman whom was driving it had locked the keys in it running. Upon hearing it run I knew right off this was one of the infamous diesel Oldsmobile's.He said it had been his dads then his moms and now his. It had 165,000 miles on the odometer and was purring right along made me wonder if it had been rebuilt. He said not that the only thing that had been done to it had been flushed out with kerosene and two back to back oil changes to clear out all of the sludge that they were prone to. He said he was going to drive it until it dropped dead.

Oh come on people, those engines made fine boat anchors once you degreased them.

But seriously the hot rodders loved the blocks, with a few modifications they became the basis of some screaming big bore small block race cars, I think you could over bore those things about .375 (or more this was a long time ago) and the main webbing was bullet proof as was the crankshaft.

And then throw on a supercharger with stock con rods!!

Wow!

Wrench twirler you forgot about the rods being the heavy duty service rods for high performance. (PINK) rods were all the rage we serviced out hundreds of these rods for high performance applications. Until guys found out they just had to roll over an old Olds diesel and snag the rods. Service reports went through the roof to replace them for all kinds of issues and most of them landed on the benches of the performance guys in the shops. Those were the days when the factories had hot parts in the parts department not much anymore. You have to order everything anymore, plus you have to find the right parts guy that is in too performance to track down the parts you require. As the regular counter guys don't want to look for anything that is not normal or too hard to find, because they can't be bothered to get off their phones texting to someone about nothing.

Nope didn't forget, that was why I pointed out that adding a supercharger with stock rods (heavy duty indeed) didn't make me flinch cause they would put up with about 20 pounds of boost without failure! along with the "stock" crankshaft (chuckle), that was a fantastic piece of steel and beefy enough to grind a stroker!!

Still smiling!

Anyone else remember how great it was to be stuck behind one in stop and go bumper to bumper traffic?

I think I am still coughing soot out of my lungs from an afternoon on the Dan Ryan in Chicago. (still not sure why they called it an expressway though.;-)

I must have had one of the first versions way back when I worked for my first medical device company. They were very interested in the fuel mileage, but for me it was always a trick to find the company card station WITH a diesel pump! Worst thing was getting fuel on my hands or shoes....

On the highway it was quite smooth (because it was big as a boat for all my supplies in back) but any city traffic was a challenge - the giddie up and go sure got up and went! Nasty thing too was surviving the Nebraska winters! I'd have to get up in the middle of a cold night to go out and warm it up a bit or else the glow plugs would never fire it up in the morning.

Don't miss it a bit! Guess they didn't either, that experiment with the leasing company lasted one year.

I had a customer who had the same problem finding fuel so they put a auxiliary tank in the trunk between the wheel wells. I believe that it was a 45 gallon tank. It gave them plenty of time to fuel up and find the best prices. And boy are you right about hard starting their leased vehicle's lasted about a year as well.

I just loved my 1980 Cutlass Brougham diesel. It was tough and fast and it looked pretty smart too! I parked it one fall and ended up selling it out of the yard when I decided to get rid of a few vehicles. At the time the engine had 230,000 kms on it and ran fine.

One of my partners had the larger Delta 88 - which silently broke it's crank at 100 kph on level ground in cruise control. I often wondered what led to the failure and assumed that the crank should have been forged instead of cast. The article alluded to stretched head-bolts and this may have been the cause. As a consequence of the 88's failure I bought a spare engine for mine - and kept it on hand for far too long after selling the 'gutless cutlass'. Takeouts were widely available for a period of time as owners 'lost the faith'.

I once towed a Jaguar e-type 2+2 through Ontario and Quebec to my home in NB with this car averaging 130 kph. We used the car on weekends to haul a glider-launching winch weighing 3000 kg.

I kept expecting it to fail - but it soldiered on. The new owner pre-emptively performed a gas engine conversion and was unsuccessful in getting it to be reliable.

The cars weakest point was that it needed new front springs every year.

The window motors were the next bugbear.

Problems from the power unit were: starter failure, and lock-up torque converter failure. Minor stuff and not necessarily a condemnation of the engine design.

I was saddened when GM dropped their diesel program. They had not done enough development work and were being sued 'big-time' by fleet operators who were facing 'fleet-wide' failures.

In the context of the times, the same failures were being faced by fleet owners on light/medium trucks powered by propane. The fleet average among a number of truck owner companies in Canada was in the 60,000 km range.