Olds Rocket 350 | Stadt11.com

Where do I start? Well, I finally got my website updated 2 weeks after completing the swap of my Rocket 350 into the Cutlass. First I'll give a little background information on how I obtained the 350 and a little information about it.

Towards the beginning of November I was really looking for an Olds 350. I've looked everywhere. Some people offered me theirs' but it wasn't rebuilt. I wanted something I could swap into the car and not have to worry about rebuilding it later. I came across this auction listing... As soon as I saw this I was emailing the guy twice an hour. He was a retired man who was out of the house for the day. He then got back to me later that night and we chatted for awhile, and when I had a question (before the auction ended) I'd give him a call or email him. Finally we worked out a deal, check out that price!! As soon as he got my payment he shipped the engine right away. I received the engine in about a week. I couldn't really play with it yet since it was still on the crate and I hadn't gotten a chance to put it on the engine stand. The guy I got it from (I prefer not to disclose his name because he was having heart problems, I hope he is ok!!) shipped it with the oil pan upright and it sat on the pallet on the valve covers. I didn't have too much of a problem with that because I was going to put on some Edelbrock Signature Series valve covers, which I did!

Finally Christmas break came and I had the chance to go home and get it ready for the swap! I asked a friend to help me, Dan, and he was more than happy to help! I brought the car over to his shop the night of January 5th, 2003. I pulled into his shop and we got to work right away! First thing was first, I had to get rid of that darn, worthless air-pump. Before the swap, I couldn't even tell if there was an engine under the hood, I couldn't see anything behind all that smog-emission junk! We started unplugging things and disconnecting wires and before I knew it I saw the engine! The process of unhooking and unbolting the engine from the frame and transmission went a lot faster than I expected. Two (2) hours after I pulled into his shop, the engine was out and hanging from the ceiling. Is two hours fast? I thought it was. Dan's a race car driver so he's fast at pulling engines out of his car and fixing them in-between races.

The next day we got to work at 9am. We started taking brackets from the 307 and bolting them to the 350. I had to get new motor-mounts because the old ones were shot. We bolted on: a brand new water-pump I bought from Advance Auto Parts, the harmonic balancer from the 307, the thermostat housing from the 307, the temperature sender from the 307, the new motor mounts and fuel pump from Auto Value Parts Store, oil fill tube, cruise control, and the oil pressure sender and switch. This was enough for the first day so we called it a day.

The next day we had the 350 hanging from the ceiling ready to put in the car. Before we got the 350 completely in, we slid the headers in so it wasn't a headache to do later on. The 350 wouldn't go in easy, the new motor mounts were stiff and took a little persuasion to get the bolt holes lined up. Once the engine was bolted in, we worked on getting the transmission bolted up to the engine. That was enough bruising for the second day.

The next day we started hooking up all the hoses and vacuum lines(2 different pictures), we put in the new vacuum-advance distributor and timed that later on in the day, we put on the new Edelbrock 600cfm Electric Carburetor(#1406) and Edelbrock Adapter Plate(#2696), we put on the new Edelbrock Universal Fuel Line & Filter Kit(#8135). After bolting on the Flow-Tech headers, I put on the new Edelbrock Signature Series Valve covers(#4485), valve cover breather, and hooked up the new PCV valve.

The next day we hooked the A/C up, fit the belts on, and put on a new ACDelco 140amp Alternator from Advance Auto Parts with the ACDelco jumper wire to hook the existing wiring harness into the alternator (Check out JonMega's site for full details!!). We also put on the Edelbrock Pro-Flo Chrome Air Cleaner(#1207 which I already had from the 307), hooked up the spark plug wires and whatever was left, and tied the computer wires together and tucked them away to never be seen again!

On the final day, I had to do something about the torque converter, so the day before I bought a TCI Torque Converter Lock-up Kit from Jeg's for my TH200-4R transmission and had it overnighted because I couldn't wait another day to get my Rocket 350 project done.

For full specs on the Rocket 350, click HERE. Click below for more pictures.