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The Last GM Big-Block V-8 Rolls Off the Line
DesScorp writes "It's the end of an era in auto technology, as the very last big block V-8 engine from GM has rolled off the production line. The L18 engine was the last variant of an engine that had been in continuous production for over 50 years. The big blocks powered everything from the classic muscle cars of the '60s and '70s to heavy-duty trucks today. From the Buffalo News: 'When GM said last June the L18 would be eliminated by year's end, the announcement triggered another show of devotion to the product. Some customers ordered two years' worth of L18s, to put on the shelf for future use.' More than 5 million big blocks have been produced over the engine's history. The final big block engine to come off the line in Tonawanda, NY is headed for the GM Heritage Center in Sterling Heights, MI."
...with a single tear running down his face.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
In the same way that the day the last caveman set down his club was sad.
Sent from my PDP-11
Screw V-6's. Inline 6's have more power and better reliability. Inline engines always do.
Shoehorn anyone? Inline V-8(or God forbid I-10 or 12) tends to be a bit of a reach for real estate under the hood.
Regardless of "better" designs, we're witnessing an end of an era here, considering this format has survived for 50 out of the last 100 years of the automobile. A sad day indeed.
You want an IT analogy? Fine. Sometimes it's about the finesse and raw power coming from a 1000W system with dual graphics cards and 15K RPM drives, and not always about "green" designs or overall reliability. Sometimes you want your machine to haul ass and look good no matter the cost.
"It sounds like this is the result of innovation?"
More like the rise in fuel costs coupled with the recession.
The big block Chevrolet is a simple, tough engine that produces excellent torque, is durable, very easy to work on and inexpensive to repair. Aftermarket support is excellent and one can build complete engines without using a single GM part.
The powerplant of choice that replaced big block gas engines is the diesel, which is vastly more complex, brutally expensive to repair, difficult to work on even for well-equipped shops, and burdened with complex emission systems. Diesel fuel quality is always a concern, especially with low-sulfur diesel. They make great power, but you pay dearly for it.
I'll be hunting more of them for spares (I just rebuilt a 366 for my C30 wrecker). Like the small block Chevrolet, these adaptable engines will be working for many decades to come.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
"Now they can finally join the 80's and work on getting rid of leaf springs next."
Leaves are versatile, easily stacked to suit intended use, and tough.
If you want an F1 car by all means buy one, but leaf springs work very well on trucks and other applications where coil spring towers would be awkward (and coils risk coil bind when overloaded).
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Kill off another icon?
I'm getting one of these and jamming it into my SAAB.
Front heavy front wheel drive indeed.
__ Someday, but not this morning, I'll finally learn to use the preview button.
Er, inline V8? I do not think that means what you think it means...
74 3/4 ton suburban with towing package. Damn that thing would pull anything. It got 11 miles per gallon in town, on the road, pulling a trailer. No matter what it always got 11 miles per gallon. Drive it 35 miles per hour or 85 and it still got 11 miles per gallon. Weird. I miss that big boxy thing. Nothing has that much room anymore.
While diesels do have their own problems, I've never seen a big block with over a million miles on it.
Sent from my PDP-11
Q: Why is starting a comment in the Subject: line incredibly annoying?
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Pretty sure they are talking about things like boat manufacturers and water pump manufacturers. GM stopped using this engine in their trucks over 2 years ago, the production line was kept running to fill those outside customer orders. Since this beast needed 30% more displacement to produce 10% more torque and significantly LESS HP than the 6.2L V8 it's no surprise that GM stopped using it.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Regardless of "better" designs, we're witnessing an end of an era here, considering this format has survived for 50 out of the last 100 years of the automobile. A sad day indeed.
What's sad is that GM had to almost go out of business before they'd finally acknowledge that such an inefficient engine type was obsolete. The handwriting's been on the wall since 19 ****ing 74, for crisakes. But GM couldn't change its mindset, and instead sat and twiddled their thumbs while the Japanese took away their business.
I'm reminded of Sun's inability to shift to commodity processors. But then, I'm an embittered ex-Sun employee...
An inline V8 would be an innovation.
Heroscape, it's like legos combined with anachronistic wargames.
I'm old enough to appreciate the value of a piece of tech that has served so well for so long. Likewise, I have a soft spot for the land-line and the command line. But there are pleasurable vices that we simply can't afford to cling to, and the big petrol-burning engine is one of them.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
I suspect GM kept at it this long for a good business reason: tinkerers loved that kind of engine: relatively easy to self-repair and powerful. Now the only choices will be wimpy or too complex to self-service. The Duke boys will have to rely much more on Cooter now.
Table-ized A.I.
Uh, this was the 8.1L (496 cu) engine that's being retired, it was a true big block. It was also a big hunk of cast iron with iron headers and hence heavy as all get out (734 lbs shipping weight vs 564 for the 6200).
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
leaf springs work very well on trucks
like Corvette
Who logs in to gdm? Not I, said the duck.
The Duke boys will have to rely much more on Cooter now.
The General Lee was a Dodge Charger (well, many Dodge Chargers).
Even the Duke boys knew better than to drive a GM product.
While the big block wont EVER make it to a million, I've seen an awful AWFUL lot of diesels fail to make 500k. When it comes time to rebuild the engine the big block can be rebuilt several times over for what the Diesel will Cost. (atleast in parts and machining costs) Diesels commonly give twice the service life of their gas equivalents, anything more than that while not unheard of, is not to be expected either. (some gas engines go 400k too) Don't get me wrong, I would trade my Vortec 454 for a diesel in a heartbeat. But my motivation would be for the improved gas mileage. ESPECIALLY when Towing. The only reason I own Big block is for pulling a 10,000# trailer, and it does this VERY VERY well. But it get's about 10mpg when towing (15.5 when not) A Diesel would probably get 18mpg when towing and i could run homemade bio diesel. My tow vehicle with a big block is inexpensive, dependable, easy to work on, and gets pretty poor gas mileage....
Wrong. Diesel is lower in energy in gasoline per pound mass. Evenso, the difference is one of a few percent and not anywhere close to half as you claimed. The reason you get more thermodynamic efficiency is that diesels run at a higher compression ratio. The compression ratio that an engineer selects is a function of a number of variables the most significant of which is the type of fuel. Engines and fuels go hand in hand in the design process. One does not "rock" compared to the other.
Vehicle fuel economy is another matter altogether. It very easy to have a vehicle that is diesel power that gets poor mileage.
Regards,
Jason
C'mon man - what this thread really needs is a car analogy.
__ Someday, but not this morning, I'll finally learn to use the preview button.
So obsolete that people went on a buying frenzy when they announced they were stopping production, because there was such a demand for them...
Consumers kept buying them.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
I think what they were saying is that pistons in a V configuration (e.g. V6, V8, V12 etc) are not in a line, hence they are not inline engines. An engine can either be a V or an inline, not both, much like a line can't be straight and curved at the same time.
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I don't think the big-block was so much obsolete, as it was becoming irrelevant. Their "small block" V8 has been sold up to 400 cubic inch displacement for street use (that I'm aware of), compared to 454 for the big block. Nothing "small" about that!
The few performance cars GM still builds with V8s use high revving small block designs to get their power. The big block has been used mostly in trucks for many years now, but the trend for high power in trucks has shifted to diesels.
Even NASCAR abandoned the big blocks decades ago, in favor of smaller engines that still make more power than they can cope with on the super-speedways (thus the notorious restrictor plate rules).
A dumb line in the article, though: the factory never put big block V8s into Corvairs, nor small block V8s for that matter. All Corvairs had air-cooled flat-opposed six engines (vaguely like Porsche 911s, but not nearly as well executed--take that fan belt arrangement, please!). Many hot-rodders did manage to stuff V8s into them, with the Olds Toronado engine-transaxle combination being a frequent choice. But that never came from the GM factory. A 455 CID Corvair--somebody should give one of those to Ralph Nader!
That happens with anything nowadays that they discontinue, or people THINK will be discontinued. See, there's this idea that's been driven into people's heads over the past 20 years or so that getting your hands on anything that's scarce will be an easy road to riches. The old "money for nothing" ploy.
If it's even remotely rare, some greedy, bottom feeding, unethical scumbag will buy the last of them, then put them back on sale at an inflated price, demanding huge profits while adding zero value.
It's all part of today's get-rich-quick society. Nobody wants to work anymore, they want a scheme that extracts money from others and puts it into their pockets with no effort at all. The housing bubble was a result of this and also reinforced this notion.
So you're saying you prefer shallow, phoney, gold diggers who are only with you for you car over down-to-earth, uncouth, possibly buck-toothed women who are only with you for your car?
That looks to be output from the Complaint Generator, so it involved less effort to create than your post did.
It's probably a reference to the fact that DNS-and-BIND has used that exact post before.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
Yes.
But lets be honest here. Once there was this total hottie who slept with this guy because of his totally awesome car. But it never happened again.
Really, because I don't see many soccer mom's with 8100's, more like farmers, construction crews, and race car drivers with towing loads of 7,000+ pounds. Oh and commercial trucks for intracity delivery and tow trucks.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
The reason GM needed to get bailed out by the government is because they ignored the evidence of every other country on earth and presumed US gas prices would always stay the same. If they'd produced the last of these ten years ago and started making cars which actually have something remotely resembling fuel efficiency, good design, or low carbon emissions, then American cars might not be a global joke, the government might be a couple of billion dollars less in debt, and a whole lot of Americans who used to work in the auto industry would still have their jobs.
It took near bankruptcy to finally get GM to acknowledge that they had to actually innovate(or at least copy everyone else) rather than continuing with a technology which is 50 years old.
No not really, V-engines have a little added complexity, which may drag down reliability, but for all practical purposes there is no dramatic difference that makes a inline superior in peformance and reliability.
:)
A V allows you package more displacement in to smaller overall volume or to have less car to package around given in engine. Weight savings from a V engine boosts handling performance and economy. Yet an inline engine will be cheaper than a V, due to one, block, single manifolds, two camshafts instead of four.
Difference in power may come from firing order, and the path intake charge and exhaust gas take and a small reduction in friction in a Inline 4 or 6. Inline 6s can have a good cross flow set up for top end power when mounted longitudnally in a front engined car (short straight intake runners and 6 into 1 headers, make a good turbo platform. BMW, Nissan and Toyota have exploited this to great effect in racing and in road cars. Aftermarket Nissan Skyline motors with 6-1 turbo manifolds make whopping power.
In the end, V8s rose to greatnews because it was probably the best balance between a number of cylinders, dimensions, displacement etc. A four cylinder block is about as long as you want to go. Big displacement engines need a greater number of pistons to stop the piston speeds getting out of hand along with smoothness reasons. Eight cylinders is just right, for big power or a big engine.
A inline 6, and a 90 degree V12 and a boxer six are probably the three ideal engines, having perfect balance. The greatest engine of them all on the balance of all considerations, including, cost, complexity and packaging is the inline four. That's why V8s are made out of two of them:
American V8s most often really are just two inline four engines stuck together. Right down to the split-plane (cross-plane) crankshaft. Yes there are hack mechanics who have lopped off one bank of cylinders to make a inline four, it works. Unfortunatley cross-plane crankshafts have a lot of drawbacks including difficult to control vibration, unbalanced piston movement, poorer exhaust scavanging in certain exhaust configuartions and need for counterweights that add rotational inertia. Yes every American V8 you drove had a dirty kludge under the hood.
IMHO, a real V8 has a flat plane crankshaft. Truly the correct format for a V8, better firing order, more power, more balance and even better sound
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
But a V8 turbo can sure as hell kick a straight six turbo in the ass. If your after HP and torque, the ol adage still holds true. There is no replacement for displacement.
Life is not for the lazy.
Newsflash: people who race cars on public roads are brainless tards and I pray that they die roasting in fiery crashes. Crashes with large inanimate objects, of course.
much like a line can't be straight and curved at the same time.
The Equator is both straight and curved.
Get your own free personal location tracker
That happens with anything nowadays that they discontinue, or people THINK will be discontinued. See, there's this idea that's been driven into people's heads over the past 20 years or so that getting your hands on anything that's scarce will be an easy road to riches. The old "money for nothing" ploy.
Well, there's 'rare' and then there's 'in demand'.
The big block v-8 filled a niche. It's not a niche that can't be replaced, but it's a niche.
Ordering a '2 year supply' isn't stockpiling in a hope to get rich, it's having a sufficient supply that you can still manufacture your product, whether it be an emergency water pump system, U-Haul truck*, mobile home, generator, boat engine, or what not until you've re-engineered your product to take a different engine. Or some Chinese company licenses the design and starts production...
If it's even remotely rare, some greedy, bottom feeding, unethical scumbag will buy the last of them, then put them back on sale at an inflated price, demanding huge profits while adding zero value.
Uh.... Sure that 'scumbag' is adding value: He's adding the value of it being available. He has to pay for warehousing them in good condition, sales staff to sell them, advertising to let companies know the product is still available(in limited quantities). He has to take the risk that it'll never sell, and in many states, play a percentage tax on their retail value every year. It's expensive to keep stock around.
Not that some of what you mention doesn't happen, but from what I'm reading, GM fulfilled all orders in before a certain date, so the 'scum-suckers' at least can't rape the customers who planned ahead and stockpiled some of their own...
*Still surprised these aren't diesel.
I don't read AC A human right
This is a big sign of the end of the era of user-maintainable cars.
Almost as sad as when the last VW Beetle rolled off the line in 2003 (after more than 60 years).
Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
If a diesel makes it to 500k it will have saved you so much in fuel costs compared to gasoline that you can afford to throw it away and still make a massive profit.
Plus I'm not so sure the difference "complexity" is anything like you claim. Modern diesels are computer controlled so they're a lot cleaner then the old ones and don't need anywhere near as much extra hardware to meet smog standards.
Diesels are perfect for American SUVs. American drivers are conditioned to expect grunt at low revs, which gasoline engines are terrible at delivering (you need a big thirsty V8 to do it). Diesel engines are much more suited to American expectations so you can have a smaller engine ans get double the savings in economy.
If you start extracting diesel from Algae then it will be much cleaner and more consistent than petroleum-diesel and you can probably get rid of all the emissions-control junk which is needed for diesel engines today.
No sig today...
Anymore this sounds just like a "GET OFF MY LAWN" comment.
I enjoy maintaining my own vehicle, and while I get the WTF moment when a part costs more than I'm expecting to pay (for instance, Ford wants 600$ for a light controller. 4 relays, a few transistors and caps... WHY!!!) I still notice that a new car has similar components to any other car out there.
Yes, it's a little complicated by the electronics now and then, but you still have a motor, a transmission, battery tires oil younameit it's all there, user serviceable. Even the steering components haven't changed much - and things you do more often are still accessable. Ball joints, brake pads and rotors, oil, wheel bearings etc.
With all the features cars offer today, I've got no complaints.
Karnal
Workers who now get 70% of their salary for not working... it is a small consolation, but it is something. Plus 3% of this plant's output is now closed off, NOT the whole plant.
Oh, right, because almost everybody likes to work on their own car.
fm6 does not like to work on his own car; therefore, powerful, easily-serviceable engines should not exist. You can't argue with logic like that.
That is general relativity.
"Straight" lines like the Gandfather post is primarily a Euclidean idea, and the extent of most people's view of geometry. However, Georg Riemann and those who followed describe a geometry where a plane isn't flat, lines aren't straight and many of the "truths" you learned in Highschool Geometry are no longer valid.
Start with a course in differential geometry, move to topology, then on to General Relativity, and if you have the stomach for it, there is a book that ties it all together, "Gravitation" by Misner, Thorne and Wheeler.
Suppose you were an idiot and suppose you were a member of Congress
then there's boxer engines, rotary engines, and even rotary piston engines.
The only GM product to include the big block V8 from the factory was heavy duty pickup trucks. This engine hasn't been for sale in a Caprice, Impala, Corvette, Firebird, or Camaro for several decades. While you're right in general terms that GM has screwed up its products, product reliability, and understanding customer needs for a very long time, your specific example here is inaccurate.
This huge old engine was excellent for towing, very nearly as strong as GM's large pickup truck diesel engine and far cheaper for both GM to build and purchasers to buy. High RPM performance was a joke, but this was built for running below 4000 RPMs, which is normal for an engine used to tow. This is a case where GM did something right, and sold something that customers in the target segment wanted to buy.
The problem with a tiered product lineup is that you divide your resources in research, marketing, advertising, and design too far. Toyota grew from nothing to a juggernaut of the US market with just two brands: Toyota and Lexus. They only added Scion recently. Honda bit off a big chunk of the domestic manufacturer's market share with just Honda and Acura. Nissan has just Nissan and Infiniti. Hyundai has just Hyundai and Kia, and only now that they're highly successful are they considering a separate luxury brand.
Ford has made an amazing turnaround in product competitiveness and desirability in the past four years, and they did it by selling Aston Martin, Jaguar, and Land Rover, cutting down their stake in Mazda, and reducing their number of Mercury models. Now they just have Ford, Lincoln, a bit of Mercury, and Volvo and Volvo is rumored to be for sale. GM is in the process of shutting down or selling Saturn, Hummer, Saab, and Pontiac and it has sold its pieces of Isuzu, Suzuki, and Subaru. The only reason Buick was kept is that it's GM's most successful brand in China. The only reason GMC trucks was kept is that most Buick dealerships are Buick/GMC dealerships.
GM management is finally focusing on building 30 decent products spread across four product lines (Chevrolet, Buick, GMC, Caddillac) instead of 80 substandard products spread across twelve product lines, which was the mess they had in 2001.
how about this - in NC you can't pass inspection if you have a check engine light code active.
even i that code is a dealer only code
even if the car runs fine and would even pass emissions if they used the sniffer
dealer wants 85$ just to read the code out. and 90% of the time it is a set of things that can cause it and are dealer only parts.
it has gotten to the point that you can't even get shop manuals for newer cars.
and with the way ODB ties every thing together - that 600$ ford part is going to be the only one that might work - where as in my older cars i can wire it up the way i want so that it works, using parts of my choice.
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
European pumps dole out gas based on RON (research octane number), whereas in North American they use "pump octane", or "anti-knock index". AKI is calculated by averaging RON and MON (motor octane number). MON is determined experimentally on a special engine.
RON-MON is usually 6 to 10 in North America. This is called the sensitivity, S.
Given S=10, then,
RON-MON = 10
95 - MON = 10
95 - 10 = MON
MON = 85
and
95+85 / 2 = 90
So 95 octane in europe is around 90 octane in North America, maybe a little higher depending on S.
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?