Weird that they would do that
I assume they number the cylinders the same as Olds- 1357 front to back LH side, and 2468 front to back RH side. If so, the the most fwd rod on the crank is the #2 rod, not #1, which just seems not right, to me.




Never you mind why I was looking at other brands.

 

I've never worked on a Poncho, so I never noticed that before, but I did know that Brand F has always had the passenger side bank forward of the driver's side and calls the front passenger side cylinder No. 1 (of course, Ford also calls the front driver's side cylinder No. 5, so go figure...).

 

Ford had 2 different firing orders for later vs early v8's also. Talk about confusing.

 

Right...
Neither of those seem to me like the RIGHT way to do things.
First foremost rod and cylinder is #1, then #2... etc.

I just noticed Pontiac evidently put the distributor on the wrong side of the cam, like Chevy, such that the gear is forced upwards against the distributor body. The right way to do it is to push the gear DOWN against a boss in the engine block to carry the thrust load... like -oh- who did that? Yeah, OLDSMOBILE.

 

I got a good deal on an Econoline van due to a no start. Guess why?

 

I learned the hard way back in the 80's after stripping all the pollution stuff, doing cam, intake, 4V carb and headers on my 82 Mustang. I used my old books not realizing they changed the firing order. After hours and hours of fighting backfiring, sputtering, and spitting a buddy showed me the error of my ways.

 

Yep .....

Low-po vs high output 302's in that era used a different firing order.

 

isn't the firing order and cylinder numbering cast into the parts like Olds does?

 

No, that would have been too easy.

 

Every manufacturer does some things we question. Like why did Olds have the lower water pump bolts screw into little more than sheet metal? Many get stripped out and require removal of timing cover, lift engine off mounts and remove oil pan to remove the timing cover to repair. Yes, you can tap a slightly larger (metric) bolt into the stripped hole, but that is a really just a Band-Aid.

 

Starting to worry about ya Chris You've been dabbling in quite a bit of Poncho stuff lately Have you done relinquished, dismantled and deciphered any and all Oldsmobiles up there in your area and the well run dry on Oldses?

 

If I remember right, nailvalve Buicks (53-66) also had the right hand bank foremost on the block. And the right front cylinder was numbered 1 and the rest on that bank were 3,5,&7.

 

Of course, Pontiac had the "air gap intake" and adjustable valve trains when Olds was still baking oil to the bottom of the crossover and requiring serious mods to change valvetrain geometry. I guess if we took the best of everything from each division, we'd end up with... a modern LS-series engine?

 

Really? Go look at a 1949 303 Olds V8 sometime...

That predates the Poncho V8 by a few years.

 

302 and 351 winsor has different firing order also, you can run the same cam but have to run the wires different.

 

Simca (France), and Jaguar (UK) for reasons best known to themselves decided that #1 cylinder would be at the flywheel end, the main bearing caps were numbered back to front as well. I had a nightmare at work year ago when I had to reassemble a Simca engine someone else had stripped down. I couldn't figure why the engine wouldn't turn when I put the main bearing caps on, the bearings were the right size, the crankshaft had been ground properly. After half a day someone familiar with these engines showed me my error, or I might still be trying to fit the damn thing.......


Roger.