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Man, where's Rusty and Dave H, our resident Olds fanatics?! They should be all over this thread!
Nice ride, looks like it was built for the local cruise scene...
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I'm here, Rob......and drooling. These things are unbeleivably cool and rare. I did a double take on the pics as I had an identical one back in the 80's, except it had the SS1 (Magnum 500) type all chrome wheels and wasn't a W30. In a weaker moment, sold it and bought an Escort station wagon. (OK to throw eggs and tomatoes, here, I deserve it).
The heads on the 1971 W30 are a one year only thing (code H) and are the rarest Olds production heads ever (and most expensive, too). 1972 W30's used the standard Ga 442 heads.
These cars were supposed to have the carryover high compression 455 from the 1970, but GM killed the high compression thing in March, 1970. Easy fix for Olds, all they did was change to a bigger dish in the pistons across the board. That killed the W31, though. Wouldn't run with the lower compression, and not worth the effort to develop the new package in the short time to production.
There were preproduction and pilot cars built with 1971 high compression engines before the hammer dropped. Some of the race teams already had their 1971 engines along with the "updating" trim kits to convert their 1970 cars to 1971's. Casey's uncle Jack still has his 1971 W31 engine in a crate in his garage.