Seeing as GM owned Buick (still do), how come they wasted $100,000s designing and building the 350 when they had an off the shelf 5.7 litre from Chevy? I'm just intrested as over here that would be the yhink that BLMC would do! On a second note (I love Buicks ) how come the 350 was pulled and not the Chevy 350? Except for the obvious multi capacities of the Chevy ilk.:TU: AND Holley Vs MSD has anyone tried the new Holley ign setup that is taking the race world by storm? Alastair
#1, the chevy 350 and its variants were around LONG before the Buick 350. The Buick 350 started life as the aluminum 215 v8 which at the time was revoluntionary (the first all aluminum engine in an american production car). I am too young to know this for sure, but it is my belief that in the 60's and 70's each brand name pretty much had its own engines, in 76 this changed and I hear there were a lot of lawsuits and gripes over this. Also, I don't think they spent several hundred thousand on the 350 because it was derived from earlier engines that had already been in production almost 10 years. The 350 is basically a bored/stroked 215 made of cast iron instead of aluminum, but the basic design is the same, Y-block, same timing covers, distributors, oil pumps, etc.. the only design money they had to spend was on the heads, the intake was a copy of the 430 intake just made smaller to fit the 350. Keep in mind I was born in 1980 so ALL of this was WELL before I was born, let alone into Buicks... But, I did beat out my entire club at our christmas party on Buick trivia. mwuhhaha. Dan
Both engines came out around the same time - the Chevy 350 came out in 1967 and the Buick 350 came out in 1968. As was stated above, they both 'evolved' from earlier and smaller motors. The small block Chevy was quite revolutionary when it came out in 1955 as the 265". The sb Chevy has remained basically the same from the 265 up to the 400 in 1970. Sonny's Automotive Racing in Lynchburg, VA has taken an aftermarket block out to 504 CI!! Unfortunately for us Buick fans, the Chevy has every imagineable part made for it - we can only hope for aluminum heads for the Buick 350. At least over there, you can get some of the aftermarket Rover parts (al. heads, etc.) There have been some interesting posts regarding the little Rover V-8. Those Wildcat al. heads look pretty sweet! Just wish they were big enough to use on the Buick 350.
At one time time, Buick, Olds ,Pontiac and Chevrolet all built 350 engines and nothing interchanged.Ford and Chrysler built Corporate engines,and when GM tried to get rid of the different 350s the buying public went nuts! in the mid 70s ,they put Chevy 350 in Oldsmobiles ,and they almost had a riot. :blast: :blast:
