i got a 66 special and i got these cadillac 500 sitting there.im thinking of putting the engine in there can anyone give me ideas on putting in there??can it be done??a lot of u may not like it but its not a chevy!!!!!!!!!!!!and its not the easy way out !!!!!!i really want to put the block in there but i want to know if any one has any ideas on how to drop it or modifications??
Nothing wrong with 472" or 500" Caddy power!! They were the only engines to make more Torque than the Stage 1 455's. There are several sites dedicated to BB Caddy power......several vendors also. The Cowboyseven "Cadillac Forum" is one of my favorites. MTS has a good site and offers a great selection of Caddy parts. CadillacForums is another - they cover alot of newer Caddy stuff also. Potter Automotive's Cadillac Performance Parts is an excellent source for Perf. Caddy parts. Richard Potter builds some of the SICKEST Caddy engines in the country!! He competed in the Engine Master's Challenge. They offer a 500HP/600FT/LB pump gas engine for $5500. :TU: There are many others....but, that should get you started. Depending on what body style your engine came out of, you may need to hit the junkyard and pickup a rear sump oil pan from a late '70's/80's 6.0l engine - the notorious 4-6-8 engine!! Could grab the engine/frame mounts off that engine. Grab the oil pump adapter(external, like the BB Buicks) while you're there too. I believe it has a more favorable angle for clearance. Headers are somewhat easy.......BB Chevy headers can be modified fairly easily to work well with the Caddy 500''. You just need to cut off the Chevy flange & weld on a Caddy flange. A slight spreading of some of the primary tubes will be in order. :Smarty: Order a set of BBC headers for a Chevelle of that year and you'll be all set. Hope that helps.
I remember reading a post on here somewhere about a guy who had a caddy in a '70 - '72 Skylark. It may have been in the "kill stories" forum.
That would be me All of my swap stuff, as well as the engine buildup came from the cad company www.cad500parts.com Unfortunately, Larry Krudzic, the founder of CMD, practically the founder of the whole cad 500 movement is not with us anymore. That's a shame decause CMD is a mere shadow of its former glorious self. IMHO, MTS has taken the lead in this field, as far as catering to us normal guys. As far as your swap goes, yes! The big cad will drop in almost like it was made for it,,, but you better make sure the rest of your chassis is up to the challenge!!!!! You won't believe what 500 or 600 ft/lbs can do to a weak drivetrain.
Wont you have to change the the transmission, drive shaft and rear axle? Due to the tourque tube set up? I was thinking of doing the samething to my '56 Century.
Larry retired about 3 years ago due to "health reasons", and a friend of mine told me he passed on a few months later. Supposedly cancer
I remember reading a Hot Rod magazine article a couple years (or more) back where they put a 500 Caddy in a Chevette. Talk about doing major mods! Skylark would be a cakewalk compared to that.
I've always loved the big inch caddy's... I even contemplated a 500 into my '70 because I could've gotten one cheaper than a 455. If its easy then it may still be an option I'd love to see the build up.
Caddy engines are nice. Very torquey, I would much rather see a caddy in a buick than a chev. ford or the like. :3gears: :TU:
i got a 76 caddy 500 engine and i already got a edelbrock intake manifold ,870 holley street avenger.this week im a buy some kb 9:1 pistons and im going to put a borg warner t 10 behind it.i already got an idea on how the motor mounts are going to be made.the filter seems like it will clear. im going to run electric fans cause it seems very tight in the front.im going to use bbc headers with a cad flange.the biggest problem i see is drivers side header fitting because of the steering shaft.its going to be a very ''massaged header'' ill tell u that much.the car is an original 225 v6 3spd in the column. so i want to keep it stick and im going to more than double the cubic inches :grin: im glad the buick guys like it.i was afraid that it wouldnt be accepted.well ill keep u guys informed in my project.
Don't remember an exact weight, but, it's heavier than the Buick 455 and lighter than a BBC. Block is MUCH more rugged than our 455's!! ou: In addition to that, the BB Caddies can be bored a TON. Stock bore is 4.300"......you can go out to 4.500" with a short fill and out to 4.600" if you do a complete fill and run alcohol. :shock: For a street setup...I believe Cometic has a MLS head gasket that allows a 4.420" bore. Somewhere around there..... o No: Anything bigger will be with a copper head gasket. Most guys seem to limit offset grinding the crank to 4.420".....although, some have gone bigger. Alot of guys go with forged Mopar spec rods....some will grind down to the BBC rods. I know Al Betker of MTS and other Caddy 'gurus' have mentioned that they can get the 500" Caddy to 600ft/lbs cheaper than any other BB. :TU: Nothing wrong with that!! Stock (but modified) Caddy heads will support quite a bit of power. After that, there's the alum. Bulldog heads!! :TU: I've seen flow numbers on those (after porting of course) in the upper 370cfm range......with 400cfm on the intake supposedly attainable.
Weight is comparable to about any other big block, nothing particularly special that makes a cad 500 any different than other GM big blocks, other than cid and intended application. As far as how it performs, you must keep in mind what it was designed to do from the factory... Make MASSIVE torque from just off idle to about 2500 rpm. With that in mind, if you drop a bone stock 500 into a bone stock light weight chassis, you get little more than a tire burning machine..... Not nessecarily a lightning fast machine. Iv got a friend who did just that with a 79 cutlass, and it was almost un-drivable,,, but really fun The trick to making a 500 work in a street machine is: #1. Traction... Build the chassis to handle it #2. More cam... To bleed off some of the low end grunt, and move the power band up the rpm scale (and make even more total power) #3. A clean pair of underwear... Your gonna need them My creation is a 70 skylark, all steel. Tubbed, 3.91 spool with 12'' slicks. The tranny is a SP T400 with a 3500/1500 converter. The engine is stroked to 550 cid, 10.5:1 pistons, and about 298* on the cam,,, which is actually pretty mild in an engine this big. And to top it all off, a 200 hp shot of nitrous. You would be really surprised at how mild the buildup is. If it were a 454 chevy, it might be 430 hp or so. My car has run a best of 10.23 @ 127 mph, and that was a one time only banzai run. (Got kicked out for running that quick without safety equipment) With practice and tuning, I know it would break into the 9's.
I watched one of those episodes of Full throttle with those twin "master mechanics". And they did a build up of a 70-74 Caddy Devile 2 door with a 500 motor. 525lb of torque stock. So they put on intake,carb,cam,exhaust and something else if memory serves. The cars only ran in 14's. I suspect with some better drivers it would run faster.
yeah i saw that episode i think they also used a 150 shot of nitrous.they had lots of tire slippage and the cars are no lightweights. darryl do u have any tips advice on putting the engine in??what did u do to put the drivers side header on??hearing about all these torque makes me giggle like a 13 yr old girl in her 1st date :laugh: thats my goal i want to intimidate people just by launching off the line.im going to be using the original 8.2 bop rear with a mini spool.it should have 323s.i know this rear is not strong but im not changing it until it brakes.lets see how long it holds,that and my t10.im not going to use big tires.im going to use 17''wheels(undecided what brand)with 255s as im limited with space so im hoping tire slippage will save my drivetrain, at least for a while.
The last motor in my 65 skylark was a 500 caddy. I used an oil pan from an eldorado. Not really a true rear sump, still had a small sump in the front directly over the crossmember. Real tight fit. A new pan would have solved many problems. The front of the rear sump was against the crossmember. the tranny was so close to the firewall that it was difficult to remove bellhousing bolts. Stock exaust manifolds had to be modified on the drivers side. It looked like headers would be a real tight fit. I had to grind clearance on my manifold for the steering shaft. Best time was a 13.6 at PIR. Good for burnouts. with 2456015 tires i could do a 3 gear burnout from a roll.Worked pretty good for a completly stock motor. had a th400 trans with 2500 stall, manual valvebody, 12 bolt posi with 3.55 gears. Made room for a stage 2 455.
