Good day all,

Just curious. The parts catalog and the assembly manual all refer to the HD cooling option on the 66' Toronado. Just wondering what is part of that package? Is there any obvious way to tell if your car has HD cooling?

Looking at the pulley charts, it seems like HD cooling isn't an option if you have AC & Cali-K19 options as I do. These are the only combinations shown that have HD cooling:


HD cooling options only - not available with AC?

Just wanted to make sure I do not have HD cooling in mine (possibly ordered the wrong water pump).

 

Pretty sure HD cooling was included in both options, as they added significant heat load to what was already an overtaxed cooling system.

Not sure exactly what it included, but different water pump impeller, different sized water pump pulley, extra radiator airflow shrouding, and higher capacity radiator are common components.

 

This is from the parts catalog, I don't see the option. Now, I don't know if that means it's definitely out of the question.

 

Look at the bottom right hand diagram. I think that covers a car with AC, HD alternator and cooling, PS and A.I.R.

On the pulley charts, look at the pulley part numbers. You'll find A.I.R. and AC cars use different numbers.

 

Well, I don't see A/C as part of that lower right diagram but you could be right. The assy manual shows that one of the A.I.R cars have the same water pump pulley PN as the HD cooling option but this is confusing.

 

I just noticed on the 70' parts catalog that the HD cooling and the Custom Air Cond models use the same pump. I guess that does mean it has HD cooling? Jeez, pretty hard to figure this out!

 

Yes, HD cooling is just the A/C water pump on non-A/C cars (and the larger radiator to match). Note that the HD cooling uses the three-row crank pulley from the A/C cars despite only having two belts. For the 1966 model year this was RPO Y76, a $36.86 option on the Toro.

 

Ok, thanks Joe that is great information. 36 bucks! A bargain!

So to sum up, just to make sure I have it completely clear......the 66' Toros with air conditioning had a heavy duty cooling pkg by default. This consists of a HD radiator, water pump, and upgraded alternator. The HD cooling option was, basically, the upgraded cooling system of the air conditioning Toro installed on a non-air conditioned car. I guess this would be something you would get if your non-A/C car was going to be used for towing or something like that?

I did just check my original 1970 Olds part catalog and it lists a few radiator options for the 66. It almost looks to me that you could get an air conditioned 66 Toronado without HD cooling. These parts catalogs are all over the place.

 

EDIT: OK, ignore my first response to this post. Here's what the Sept 1968 parts book shows. Clearly C.A.C. without HD Cooling was an option. That's a mystery.



So 3006143 was the base equipment radiator
3005243 is C.A.C. without HD Cool
3005247 is all HD cool (with or without C.A.C.)

Hmmm.

 

In the 1975 parts catalog, they don't even show an option for the HD radiator. Very strange.



Edit......oh jeez. I've gone and found a glitch in the matrix!

 

Ok interesting. I suppose I could go down to the garage and look for a PN on the radiator somewhere. I guess that would tell me what I have.

I need to stop over-thinking this stuff.

 

And from the 1966 E-body PIM. The circled "R" is the revision note that shows this callout was revised Jan 27, 1966. Here is says "Y72" but on the page of IBM codes from the intro section of the PIM, Y76 is shown as HD cooling, which is consistent with the SPECS page I posted above.

EDIT: I just realized that the note says "35C60/61". The "35" refers to the A-body cars. Apparently someone copied this note from the A-body PIM and missed the fact that both the "35" and the "Y72" were the incorrect callouts for the E-body cars. DOH!

 

By 1975 the parts for 1966-67 cars had been dropped from the parts network. Your mistake is assuming that the parts book lists all the parts that went into each car. The reality is that the parts book only lists those parts that were still in the network as of the date of printing. That's why you want a parts book dated as close to the production date of your car as possible. If you spend any time looking through that 1975 parts book, you'll find things like the "B" heads on the 1966 cars have bee superseded with Ka heads.

 

35C60 refers to custom air conditioning, does it not? I think you may be incorrect that this means A body.

 

C60 was the RPO code for manually-controlled A/C on every Olds. "35" refers to all A-body cars. Note that C60 shows that it includes Y76.





Note that even the Toro page from the SPECS booklet shows Y76 is included with C60 and C61. This edition of the SPECS booklet has an Oct 1965 printing date. That note from the PIM was revised in Jan 1966. Apparently there was a change.

 

Ok, that's interesting. 35C60 and 61 is all over the Toronado assembly manual so I thought it was a generic thing. I guess it's been misprinted a bunch of times!

So, now I'm sufficently confused.......it seems like there is still no way to tell if my car has HD cooling. Other than looking for a PN on the rad. Would the RPO code be on the body info tag in the engine compartment?

 

Nothing on the cowl tag will tell you. The cowl tag only included info on options that were installed by Fisher. The radiator was installed on the Olds assembly line.

 

I have the original protecto-plate:

052-ZZ | 396786M538XXX
N764030T | J
OJ-42102 | 0111

 

Well this has been fun. I think we've gone about as far as we can go with this with no definitive answers. The only thing I can find that will give you a clue as to if you have the HD cooling is the mount on the LH side of the radiator. I guess the HD rad is bigger so it mounts a little further outboard on the LH side.

Other than that, if you can see the PN on the radiator it will be 3005247 for the HD.


See note H

 

If you have the original water pump, the heavy duty option water pump has a large letter "O" on the casting and casting number "384786".

 

Well unfortunately I do not have the original. The original was replaced in April of 1976 with this one. I have the receipt from 1976 from the local Olds dealer and the PN on the receipt says 388183.




I pulled this one off last year and replaced it with an Airtex model. The old one was leaking like crazy. I'd like to get this one rebuilt to have for my stash.

 

Those look like the mounting holes for the larger radiator. As a side note, I do not think you could put a larger radiator in this car with the A.I.R. filter in its current location. Strangely enough the Toronado assembly manual shows the A.I.R filter mounted to a bracket on the LH wheel well rather than on the upper radiator support like in mine.

Parts guys, back in the day, must have had to be some serious trainspotters to do that job well because this has been pretty nuts for a seemingly "simple" question.

 

In case you’re looking to cobble up a better performing radiator shroud, you can make one up with a slice from a later year Toro (68 - 70 probably).

From everything I’ve seen over the past 40 years, Olds made exactly 1 fan shroud in 1966. It was fitted to all Cutlass/88’s/Starfires/Toros. The one they made covered most all of the A-body radiators, but for the big cars and probably the Toros it left about 1/3 of the driver’s side uncovered, as you can see in the photo above.

I didn’t clue into the importance of shrouds for cooling until the 90’s or 2000’s, so overheating was a regular concern for me for maybe 25 years.

Eventually I grafted about 1/3 of a later-year Toro shroud onto the frame of the ‘66 shroud (for mounting). That Franken-shroud covered the full width of the Big Car (88’s/98’s) radiators. And it’s worked great for about 20 years or so. It ain’t elegant, but I’m not a show car guy. Since it works & I never see it, I can live with the cheesiness of zip ties tieing together 2 old shroud parts.

Combining that (admittedly zip-tied) shroud with a Flow-Kooler water pump, 7 blade fan with Hayden thermo clutch solved the overheating troubles. But I also got used to normal, not low, operating temps from 180-200F.

What I mean is I took steps for years to keep the cars running around 160F, just to give me heat margin in traffic. Once I’d gained confidence in the pump/shroud/clutch/7 blade fan solution, I got comfortable running the cars at the 180F they were designed to do.

I regularly run my ‘66’s in SF Bay Area traffic and haven’t had a problem. The ‘66 Starfire has A/C too and it’s been just fine. Even on hot days. Just today I had the 98 going at 4:30 p.m from SF to the north bay in bumper to bumper. The car didn’t even get to 200F on a 85 degree day.

Please disregard my comments if you’re trying to stay true to what Olds did in 1966, but perhaps this gives you some ideas about how to improve performance of the cooling system from all those years ago.

Cheers
Chris

 

Now that's a great bit of advice right there. Thanks so much for that tidbit Joe.......I was completely unaware of this believe it or not. I've learned a ton since I joined but I have a long way to go.