Seff

Cracked up when I finally found the cause for the flickering of my shifter position light - it has somehow been wired so that pressing the console compartment lid fully down turns the light off. With your arm on the lid, going over a bumpy road would make the light flicker.

Made me wonder what other charming little oddities you guys have experienced.

edzolz

Many years ago my son had a 67 442 4 speed. The balancer ring let go one day. We put on a new balancer and the engine was making a weird hum that was rpm related. Not wanting to destroy the original engine, we pulled it and went through everything. Found nothing that was suspicious to cause the hum. Put the engine back together, new water pump, other new parts and machine work. Still had the hum. Later the heater core started leaking so we replaced it. NO HUM. Still don't know why the heater core had anything to do with it after the balancer came apart.

cutlassjoe

My Olds has it's own personality. Sometimes when I drive it it squeaks, rattles, and doesn't run as good as she should. Almost like she's cranky. Other days she is smooth as glass and just wants to get up and go...

allyolds68

The tranmission gets jammed between two gears when one rear wheel is in a low spot

RandyS

Geez, that sounds like my wife...............LOL

Intragration

When I make a sharp right turn sometimes, the engine skips a single beat, just an individual miss. Never any other time. I've checked wiring, all connections are good, nothing seems odd, just this single quick miss on right turn sometimes. It's so insignificant that I haven't dug any further.

The_Jeremiah

my 69 cutlass did the same thing! Hahaha

Intragration

Weird! What kind of carb and ignition did you have on that car? Mine is an Edelbrock 1406 and factory HEI. If I had to guess, I'd say it was an electrical thing, it's just too instantaneous and isolated to be anything else.

don71

Yep..

Sometimes the dome lignt won't come on when I open the passenger door.

In response to turning right...that sounds like a fuel delivery problem..the jets or pick up are losing fuel or Maybe a float mis-adjusted. Or maybe not. I too, have not worred about it.

Sometimes i wonder why some car guys give female names to their cars. Hmm......maybe they are right about something.

w-30dreamin

My dome light always works properly but once in a while my door buzzer dosen't work.

Seff

My door buzzer does the same.

I don't know if it's a feature, but I can turn the key in a fourth position, further toward myself than the OFF position, where only my radio works - no fan, no lights, no wipers.

Had my dome light come on a few times when braking, it got to the point where it would flash on a bumpy road. Turned out to be the driver door jamb switch.

my72vert

In 1985 while working at a olds dealer in Illinois, I was given the task of finding a whistle noise in the rear of a custom cruiser. After a handful of other techs replaced everything in and around the rear differential I eventually found the slats for the roof rack were installed backwards causing the whistle. In those days the slats were shaped like airplane wings, so if installed backwards they made noise. Never forgot that one. Took me around 3 days and around 50 test drives.

stevengerard

mine can all be fixed but are frustrating non-the less. Sometimes the neutral safety switch doesn't work on the dual gate so I have to remember to move the shifter back and forth to start the car. Every once in a while while starting the car it will backfire - scary but actually kind of cool, smokes right out of the hood scoops, looks bad@$$ but I think I need to fix that soon before I melt a hood

my car squeaks on some days too, mostly cold days.

I bet everyone with an OAI hood has had one of the latches stick. Man that's a bear!

Seff

Mine squeaks quite a bit. My exhausts bump against my frame on certain turns. They're leaky under driver's side floorboards.

D. Yaros

While I have yet to figure out the why, I did in fact once own a '54 Olds 88 (a real beater at the time) on which one had to use the inside handle to open the driver door in order to get into the car, and to exit the vehicle the driver had to use the outside handle?

at3reg98

On the F-85 once in a while there is this sound like a molding is loose on the left side that I hear occasionally when I drive in the rain. At times it sounds like an electrical short but everything is ok. I never hear it any other time and have no idea where it's coming from.

Mike77

Strange rattling noise ,once in a while, near the foot well in my 77 olds. Did it for 30 years. On my restoration I found a new door lite switch in the frame rail area. Worker must have dropped it while installing during assembly. One less NOS part I had to buy!!

Mike

Seff

Jeremy Clarkson said once, when reviewing US cars of the ~73-85 era, that you might find an old tuna sandwich in your car, if it was made on a Friday or something like that.

Here, found the video:

Mike77

Clarkson sure has put on a little "patina" since that show! Now it make me wonder, maybe Mr. auto worker put that switch in the frame rail as a little "present" for the buyer.
I just got a 1932 license plate from a friend. He got it from a guy who found about a 100 of them in near mint condition. He found them in a wall of an old prison he was helping tear down. People put things in the strangest places!!

Seff

Makes you wonder who will find some of the junk I leave in odd places.

Olds_71_442

Mine has a quirky thing about it. Whenever I step on the gas, the ash tray comes flying out of the dash.

Olds_71_442

Besides the quirkiness, I think it's appropriate to name these cars after women because they are some of the most beautiful cars ever made.

jensenracing77

The biggest quirk i have is turbo rocket fluid blowing out my fluid metering valve when i build boost. This will be a big Spring project to figure out. This is on a 62 Jetfire

starfire

Yes, that is normal. Look in your owner's manual, it will tell you about it.

Paul dodd

When I launch at the dragstrip on Nitrous the alloyDPP07DA0501140E36[2].jpg tax disc holder literally flies off the winscreen and flashes past my eyes ending up on the back seat so now i detach it before i race, Paul, UK.

Seff

Starfire: Hah, the lack of indication on the column threw me off. Thanks, man.

radioburningchrome

I had a similar problem, it turns out it was the distributor was worn. My 1965 Olds 88 did the same thing - on a right turn!

at3reg98

Now I know why mine does that. Same thing, sharp right and I get a miss.

67 442

When my foot slips off the clutch the back tires have a tendency to spin like ole Tas.
I think it has something to do with RPMs but I am still testing.

Seff

I think it has to do with the rear tires and poor traction, but I'm not sure.

442rocketdave

30 years ago on my 69 442 the dimmer switch on the headlight switch the one you turn to lower the interior light or brighten it would dim my tail lights, I took it to 5 auto electric shops and to the local Oldsmobile dealership in Killeen Texas and nobody could find the problem, I worked on it for months to no avail finally I found a shop in another town called Harry's Auto Electric and he said he would give a try and he fixed it but the funny part was he did not know how he did it.

Seff

Chased away the gremlins you had behind your dash, no doubt.

Nunyadam Biz

One of my sisters had a 70 something Delta 88 that would get so much carbon build up on the distributor car contacts that it wouldn't start. happened every couple months. She would wind up borrowing my car for the day, and I would wind up grabbing a screw driver, knock the crap off of the cap and rotor, and then go cruising in the boat for a day. I told her every time to buy a new cap and rotor, but she never did. It would have been easy for her to do considering she worked in the parts Dept at Kmart (back when they actually had a parts ans service area.)

hawks70

When driving with driver side window down I can tell when I'm doing 55 because somehow at exactly that speed my door mirror starts to whistle. Also the light under dash on driver side only seems to work when passenger door is opened first, but even then it doesn't work every time.

brddg

Not random but definitely weird, the last 10 inches at the bottom of my drivers side quarter panel are hand welded from the factory.

z11375ss

When I shut my Toro off it makes a sound near the center of the dash that sounds like a spring expanding. Kind of like boing, boing, boing. Then nothing.

W30Olds

That's that Oldsmobile torque.

My 85 442 started to make a weird grinding, squeaking noise that kinda sounded like a duck call, happened when you revved it in park or in gear at low rpm. I found out the distributor shaft inside the housing had no lubrication and caused the "duck call".

ELY442

Remember the bensi box? The radio that you can pull out and hide it under your seat? Mine use to fly out when i step on the gas and hit my girlfriend in her lap. She hates sitting next to me. So i have to shove some napkins in between the radio and the frame to prevent it to fly out.

oldcutlass

Sometimes for know reason at all, my car will put down rubber and start smoking all the way up the street. Me thinks it's a loose nut behind the wheel.

Colville

A quirk I think I fixed, but seems to be a problem with the 53 models, at least the ones i've owned.

https://classicoldsmobile.com/forums...ng-column.html