Do you want to see and hear a running diesel? Here you go. This was taken by me at the Gilmore Car Museum's All-GM Show in May 2022. This is a 1979 Toronado diesel, and the owner started it up and let it run. The owner is Bruce Powelson.

You'll hear someone saying "what memories" towards the end, and that's me. My father bought a '79 Toronado diesel brand new, and I drove that car for several months including on the start of my honeymoon. The video is only about 90 seconds, but you can definitely hear the diesel!

 

One of the Mid Atlantic Olds Club families had a Delta 88 Diesel sedan that they bought new and got a couple hundred thousand miles out of it. They credited it to 1) it was driven 30 miles one way to the wife's job so it got thoroughly warmed up with little to no short trip driving and 2) their youngest son was a certified Diesel technician and he added the water separator and extra filtration soon after purchase. That car also got the best fuel and oil they could find for the whole time they had it.

Having an Olds dealer who understood the Diesels along with a Diesel tech son helped. Too many people who bought them had no business owning a Diesel car. GM itself hyped the ad copy as "low maintenance!" which a lot of people took as no maintenance.

I think this is a nice and well cared for car and it's bound to be one of the best ones remaining if not the only one. Did anyone else notice the condition of its steering wheel?

 

What you imply here is getting awfully close to crossing a line. As I noted above and elsewhere, my father bought new a ‘79 Toro diesel. As I’ve also mentioned, whenever it was relevant, that car was fine for the first 20,000 miles, and then it began to eat head gaskets, leaving him stranded by the side of the road on more than one occasion. He ultimately traded the car in before it reached 30,000 miles and bought a gasoline-powered car. A class-action lawsuit was filed against GM on behalf of early diesel owners, and my father ultimately received about $1000 from GM as compensation.

My father was as much a car guy as any of us, having literally grown up next door to a gas station in the 1930s and ‘40s, getting his first job at age 14 at that gas station, and ending up rebuilding more than one engine in his time there. To imply that the problems he had with his diesel were his fault and not the fault of GM and their poor design is a bit much. To imply that the people who bought these cars should have known better and not bought one is a bit much. The fault lies entirely where the lawsuit placed it—at the doorstep of GM.

Yes, some diesels from that era went on to accumulate many miles. Most of those cars were the later, early ‘80s diesels, not the earlier, late ‘70s diesels, as apparently Oldsmobile learned from the problems of the earlier cars and made improvements. The ‘79 in the video above is the rare exception. The owner of that car just got lucky.

 

Time to change that policy, maybe?

Classicolds is essentially a chat site. It is almost irresistable to avoid making a comment in any thread, for-sale threads included, if you have something to say. It happens in most vehicle-for-sale threads on here. Instead of frequent, futile attempts to stop the comments, perhaps it’s time to consider embracing them, or at least quietly allowing them.

Bring-a-Trailer, for example, which is a vehicle-selling site if anyone isn’t familiar with it, pretty much encourages comments, and it’s not uncommon for a for-sale listing to accumulate dozens of comments by the time the sale ends. If I’m a seller, I’m not 100% sure I like this, but, on the other hand, the more comments there are, the more people are likely to visit the thread, and that can only help a seller. BAT allows comments, and the site sells LOTS of cars.

Just sayin’.

 

X2 with everything you said Jaunty. I go to BaT everyday. I often comment but make no negative comments until the vehicle is sold and then that is rare that I do that. I don't want to jeopardize somebody's sale.

 

Jaunty. Nowhere did I say "everyone" who bought one had no business owning a Diesel. I said "too many". People like the Ganshaws who got good service out of their Oldsmobile Diesel are, like your Dad, mechanically inclined and knowledgeable and aware of the importance of maintenance. So no offense meant to you or your Dad.

The "too many" were people who, shall we say, were barely capable of properly maintaining a gas-powered vehicle and who, when they saw the ads promoting lower maintenance requirements than a comparable gas car, were all over it. Lack of maintenance combined with the design faults and inadequate engineering GM pushed on the public with the Diesel were a sure recipe for disaster.

This Delta appears to have been one of the good ones to start, and to have been owned by someone who understood Diesels and their maintenance requirements as evidenced by ownership of Diesel powered farm machinery.

I could enjoy a car like this but since it's well established that buying another reasonably priced interesting car would mean having to build another unreasonably priced garage, someone else please give this well-preserved piece of Oldsmobile history a home.

 

No I am not going to change policy. Be considerate of others and open a discussion thread.

 

It is hard, for me, to comprehend seeing Toronado on the front of that car with a diesel engine under the hood!

Reminds me of the car that blew up in the beginning of Casino.

 

I had a Cutlass Ciera Diesel sold to me and my new wife by her brother ($1000). He was a semi-con man. Always working an angle. pos. Anyway, that car ran like ****. It had a harmonic distortion that reared it's head at about 42 mph. Then the whole front end would shudder until you got to about 46. It felt like the car was coming apart. What a pos. I remember in '87 a starter for it cost me a hundred bucks just for the part! Reverse went on it and I traded it for $650 bucks towards an 87 Notch Mustang 5.0 5 speed. Neat little car.

That Gutlass was THE biggest piece of **** I have ever owned and I've owned about 30 cars now. It was a standout.

 

I worked at a garage in the summer of '85 & we converted at least 2 diesels per month over to 350 Olds gas engines.

We would grab a 350 Olds engine at the junkyard & totally rebuild it, then pressure wash under the hood & make them look like new.

You would not believe how happy the owners were with all the "power" they had afterwards.

 

oh ok, so you let some poor schmuck get screwed ..then you’ll say something?

do you personally message the buyer and laugh while saying , I knew that thing was a pos chit before you bought it…bwahahahahaha

 

how about quietly allowing this..your dad didn’t do his do diligence. He could have waited a couple months before he jumped on something new. They were failing within weeks of purchase

 

putting it in the Toronado was the height of stupidity…those were the high end cars meant for people who had money to spend.

I can see it making sense in a low end car where the noise and stink didn’t matter to the cheap *** buyers..but a Toro? dumb dumb dumb

 

Back then a friend of mines dad had a chev pickup square body with one from the factory.

he treated that thing like a princess …oil changes on schedule, all the regular stuff. It ate transmissions once a year. He only towed a car trailer with it..nothing heavy. What a pile of chit

 

Whoever buys that diesel Olds needs to make sure it has a water separator. I'd install it with the first oil change.

https://www.tractorsupply.com/tsc/pr...ng-fuel-filter

Head studs would probably be a good addition too.

 

How about I make it simple for you? Not my father nor anyone else should have been required to do "due diligence" before buying ANY Oldsmobile, diesel or not. Period.

Olds marketed its diesel to the general public. It's not the public's fault that Oldsmobile failed them.

 

Nah. This falls directly on Olds. Directly. We used to expect a good car when buying an Olds. Not a lemon.

 

Your comments are not even worthy of a response.

 

The family 81 GMC was purchased used by my grandfather in the mid 80s, I was involved early in his ownership removing the 350 diesel and swapping in a 307.

My grandfather died in 1990, the truck rarely moved after that. Someone filled the radiator with water, it then froze and cracked the block. My dad told me to “get it running as cheap as you can” all I had was 455s. It’s been 455 powered since 1992-93, it’s a great truck now.

 

Great story!

 

because I’m right ..say something when you know something. They can decide if it’s true or not

in this case..it’s true.

 

i had a 79 toro diesel.drove the crap outta that thing,gave me a consistant 25 mpg,only thing i hated was the leather seats were hard as a rock.white with black landau top and black interior.

 

if your missing that 4.3 v6 diesel i have one sitting in my garage.i pulled it out of an 84 celebrity wagon.i put alot of miles on that thing and that v6 was the smoothest running engine i have seen since my old 67 vista 330.

 

Boat meet anchor. I will pass on your offer. Thanks all the same though.

 

I had an 81 Coupe De Ville that had one, bought it not running, ripped the diesel out and dropped a 403 in it's place, so easy to do.
I also had a 79 Chevy 1/2 ton "Detroit Diesel" that someone had already put a 403 in. I bought it clacking pretty hard and bought a 73 Cutlass
for the 350 engine for that truck and drove it for about 8 years.

 

I drove my 86 Ford F250 with @Oldsguy to Moore, OK last summer for a truck show. It was hosted by a Chevy dealership. I saw plenty of Chevy trucks. Many Cummins and LS swaps, but not 1 Detroit or Oldsmobile diesel.

 

Yeah, I saw the results of the Olds Diesel Disaster. A Delta 88, Olds 307 swapped. A Diesel 1/2 ton converted to an Olds 403. My ex BIL had a 81 1/2 ton, really nice shape with an oil burning mid 70's Olds 350, an original diesel truck. Apparently he had a 1970 Olds 455 in the truck, blew it up. He tried but failed to blow up the Olds 350. Another guy I worked with converted his low mile diesel 1/2 ton to an Olds 403. I maybe saw one running vehicle with one, other than one on a run stand in high school shop class.

 

I have had only one opportunity to see/look/buy one of these, it was a 260 Diesel 1979 Cutlass Calais, but it didn't work out. the car was too far gone and the motor would not start.
parts car material.

 

Would make a nice fish habitat in the briny deep.