I agree, my VS V6 manual ute I bought in December 2000 was a good car. I wanted a V8 but was too late, however that V6 had good power, was smooth and I regularly got 30mpg out of it.

Yes, the 253/4.2 was a good all round engine. If you fitted dual exhaust and the intake plus Quadrajet from a 308 they were great little engines. The HT to HJ versions came with highway ratio rear axles 3.08 (manual) or 2.78 (auto). All you’d need to do with them by the time they were 5-8 years old was fit a new cam and lifters and normally avast iron body oil pump, the rest went for a long time. 283 and 307 were the same, just needed a 4BBL intake and Quadrajet but didn’t chew out cams like a Holden V8.

The down side of the HT to HG was the 253 got the dreaded banjo, however Salisbury were plentiful in 3.08 ratio. The upside was they all had decent boxes be it the M15 3spd, M21 Saginaw or ‘glide or Trimatic. At least you could get a 3spd or a Trimatic in a HQ-HJ, not the dreaded Aussie 4spd. Probably the best all round choices for towing, reversing trailers, carrying loads and highway cruising would be a HG 253 3spd ute with the diff changed out to a 3.08 LSD Salisbury. Or a HJ 4.2 3spd or Trimatic with integrated A/C, power steering and LSD, 3.08 manual or 2.78 auto.

Edited by user Thursday, 15 April 2021 6:19:54 PM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

Those VN and VP 5.0L were always stainless headers. It wasn’t until sometime in VR or thereabouts they changed to cast.

I'd forgotten about the nylon timing gears in 283's. All the ones I had I'd pulled the engine apart to make sure all good, checked bore and bearing clearances, fitted new gaskets and welsh plugs and put back together. Those plastic timing gears were reported to fail like clockwork around 60,000 miles so I never came across one so must have been changed out.

GMH's choice to make their own engine was an economic one. Using an imported one for the masses was never really a consideration, only by necessity for the 307 as the 253 wasn't ready. There was no guarantee it would even have been a V8. They determined prior to 1965 that they'd need a 250ci engine for 1969. Due to the need to mass produce to make it economical they also decide to build the same engine so it could be made in a 300+ cube version so then it was decided to make it a V8. One of the biggest factors in consideration to build it locally was the Australian Government Tariff Regulation, and their studies showed that the volume, longevity against the Capital investment was an economical proposition. The only thing I haven't been able to nail exactly is why they chose to design a whole new engine, rather than build a SBC design locally. The best info that I have been able to find is that:

1. They initially determined fitting the SBC design into the GMH chassis was a problem - the rear oil pump and rear steering on the proposed HK, HT, HQ and HU/HV was an issue.
2. The engine had specific dimension requirements so that the 5 x VAP's could assemble the HK-HU/HV and beyond utilising the body drop method without expensive modifications at the VAP's. Those dimensions were:

Length including 3 belt tracks and viscous torque fan drive: 29.02"
Width, symmetrical around the centreline: 22"
Height from crank centre to top of air cleaner: 18.5"
Weight dry: 480lb.
Satisfied with 97 RON grade fuel.

The 307 exceeded all of these, although a 307 auto engine was under 480lb. Width was over 23". Length with the fan was over 30". A SBC is about 17.7" from the crank to the top of the dizzy cap, so probably would also exceed the height requirement even with a drop base air cleaner. Whether or not the Engineers came up with these figures so they literally had to make their own engines, or they were the maximum dimensions fro body drop I don't know.

Holden had issues with the internal oil pump setup too. I know they made a point of having the oil external as a design feature, among many other things as pointed out.
They really nailed a good design with the cam wear issue being the only real bad point. A lot of that was related to cold start running with city driving I believe. They didn’t seem to have the lobe wear issue if they did long running.

Edited by user Friday, 16 April 2021 10:25:36 AM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

I think a lot of the Holden cam issue was the oil pump. When you read Fred James’ report they had massive oil pump issues, from no priming through to wear issues some of which they ‘solved’ by anodising the alloy housing. Other issues with the bypass. You don’t get those issues with a SBC. The reason they stuck it externally was so the overall height was achieved and also to make it easier to adapt it to many different chassis and steering.

dunno ... but I will repeat some comments made over the years to me (yep, I am a victim of missing cam lobes ! ) by
a number of fairly well respected engine buiders (Tate, Burns, Berryman) that the camshaft issue cause was ... oils

Castrol GTX (remember that? ) was under no circumstances, never ever to be used in a Holden V8....said Tatey
(and he laughed about the Castrol stickers on various Commodore and Torana race cars under the HDT banner)
Brian Berryman essentially repeated that...when he fixed the lack of camshaft lobe lift on the ol'mans HX 253 Kingswood
(with a new shaft and lifters, pushrods and rockers in that engine)

and remember, there was no running in of camshafts in Plant 16 at FB . Engine start covered a number of tests, no leaks etc
... all done in a few minutes for each engine (before going onto a stand and sealed for shipping to VAPs (via Plant 17)

plus the factory fill was some weird Castrol Multigrade 20W-40 (pumped into the engine test area tanks weekly from the Castrol tankers)

Highly likely. Castrol seemed to have a bad reputation. Don’t know if it was deserved or not, people seem to get more twisted up over oil than anything else with cars and bikes lol.
Tate should have known all there was to know about Holden V8’s though.

I think people with oil pump issues were just to do with yobbos, not changing their oil and after changing a head gasket all the shit falls down into the engine and is picked up by the oil pump shagging it out.
When I got a Holden V8 I would pull the oil pump down and the amount of metal crud in the bottom that part that holds the spring and piston was totally clogged full of metal, you can just undo the nut and pull the spring etc out, clean all the crap out and put it back in. maybe if it's totally full then metal hammers out the gear set and body and plate. you would think that the oil filter picks up all the metal in the pump but it clearly does not.

So the oil pump was worn out past spec ? well that's the problem of only having a oil light and not a gauge.
When one has a gauge you get to know were it should sit overall and if you see it's dropping out below norm then you may start looking at the oil pump.

From the pimps that I have seen, sometimes you may come across one with deep scratches now that has to of been shit in the oil from a head gasket etc shit being dropped into the engine.

Hell I have had one pump in my 308 do 650.000KM

I remember once in 1987 I changed the oil to a Caltex 20w-50 the oil was red and boy did the oil pump needle shoot up much higher then ever when it was cold as I hit the road, at idle nothing really more that the norm. now it did this maybe for a week and then it read just the same as all the other 20w-50 I have wondered why that oil did that.

I use ARP studs in my race engines for that very reason... never had one of those break
but also have seen instances where the normal small bolt (into the block) also comes loose
prolly coz of vibration

you go grey trying to work out why the bloody thing won't prime/pickup pressure on startup
(new or high mileage engine) or has suddenly lost pressure (coz its now sucking air!)