Does anyone here have much experience with the old GM diesels?

I'm looking at buying an 84 Cadillac Seville diesel (with NO leaks ) that needs a new oil pump (about an $80 part). Body and interior are in beautiful condition.

So what do you guys think? Is it worth the $700? Or should I try to talk him down? I was thinking just getting a non-leaky running GM V8 diesel might be worth almost that much...

thoughts, comments, etc?

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'79 300SD
'82 Chevy Chevette diesel

um... its just my two cents ....

but before we had MB's... we had GM's...

'82 caprice coupe
'83 Olds (delta?) Diesel.
'84 LeSabre
'87 Regal T Type (still have 52,000 fair weather miles later)
'90 Cad. Deville
'96 Cutlass LSS
'98 Deville Concourse
'00 Bonneville SSEI
'03 Suburban


out of that entire list... guess which one of them my parents didn't have the patience to run into the ground and traded in 1 year and 3 transmissions later???


the rest of the cars have well... stayed around, or been driven into the ground...

avoid the diesels... "a leak here and there is the least of your worries"


I remember when i got my 240D... my dad told me it felt like the same amount of power as the Olds... (scarry )

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Matthew McIvor

2016 E350 4Matic Black/Black
2007 GL450 4Matic with Off-Road Pkg Silver/Black
1995 E300 Diesel White/Gray
1994 S600 Euro Black/ Black Velour
1986 560SL Blue/Blue/Gray
1986 190E Blue/Blue 93k

Wow, I didn't even know Caddy ever made a diesel car....

That said, they aren't the most valuable things on the market in terms of resale, and Caddy was known for being tightly linked with Oldsmobile. You should find out what the engine is, GM used a diesel in a lot of things, that they created from an Olds gasser engine with a few mods. It's well known as a rather short living poor attempt at a diesel. I'm not sure which it was, the 6.2 or the 6.5, one was the better one to have, the other was the junk one. I'm thinking the 6.2 was the bad one though. If it's a clean car & runs well, it's probably worth it, if that engine smokes a lick of oil, it's got the curse of doom.

Since the block was originally made for a lower compression gasser, it was thinner and weaker that an average diesel design, then GM bored the block out thin to accept heavy (yet thin for a diesel) cyl sleeves, which have a short life as they heat up and wear faster than normal due to the above.

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Chris
64 190D R.I.P.
80 240D W/617 engine -for sale
82 240D -for sale

When I was in college in the late 70s, a friends dad had some kind of big caddy diesel (with shag carpet, believe it or not). I remember about 7 of us jammed ourselves into it for a 4 or 5 hour ski trip. The whole car smelled like a bong by the time he got it back.

I heard GM used a BMW diesel for that car?

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1985 CA 300D Turbo , 213K mi

I just realized you are talking about one of these:



The only person I every knew who owned one of those was some second-rate wanna-be mobster in providence, RI.

That was Lincoln.

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1979 240D- 316K miles - VGT Turbo, Intercooler, Stick Shift, Many Other Mods - Daily Driver

1982 300SD - 232K miles - Wife's Daily Driver

1986 560SL - Wife's red speed machine

A long time ago I got the chance to get a pretty mint mid 80's Caddy for free, I wouldn't take it. I can't stand those things they are exactly the reason Caddy is trying to play catch up right now.

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1999 SL500
1969 280SE
2023 Ram 1500
2007 Tiara 3200

If you can live with the looks, hey it's only 700 bucks.

GM made several diesels for passenger car engines at that time. The best (er, least bad) was the 5.7. Those earned a horrible reputation, but that was really more from the dealer techs not knowing how to service them than from the engines really being THAT bad. If properly maintained, they can do ok. There were also smaller displacement GM diesels, a 260 was one of them IIRC, and it made Car Craft's Ten Worst V-8 engines of all time.

The 6.2 and 6.5 are related engines used in pickup trucks and the Hummvee. As far as pickup truck diesels go, they aren't very good, but I've heard of lightly used examples surviving beyond 300,000 miles.

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Whoever said there's nothing more expensive than a cheap Mercedes never had a cheap Jaguar.

83 300D Turbo with manual conversion, early W126 vented front rotors and H4 headlights 400,xxx miles
08 Suzuki GSX-R600 M4 Slip-on 22,xxx miles
88 Jaguar XJS V12 94,xxx miles. Work in progress.

If you have $700 to throw away, this could be interesting. But beware, these diesel engines were known to blow heads and they were a total piece of junk.
It was poorly designed and the metals used for things like crankshaft and head bolts was definitely substandard! Even if you had motor problems and had to look for a new engine, this seems like a lot of work for a car that really isn't worth much and don't expect a great deal of fuel economy.

Incorrect. The blocks were made specifically for the Diesel engines. They were NOT converted g@ssers.

Well the consensus seems to be, "It's probably a POS, but what the hell for 700 bucks!"

I tend to agree.

If I can talk him down to $500 I'll buy it right then right there. I'll probably just bring the cash with me for the classic "I've got $500 cash RIGHT NOW" trick. He inherited the car for free, so he just might go for it... seems like it might be a neat diesel to have, even if it's not necessarily the best diesel ever made. If the diesel engine craps out could be a good "practice engine" for a DIY rebuild. Worst case, I can probably sell it to someone across the border in California who wants to convert it to a gasser (from what I've heard, these cars are a piece of cake to convert to gassers) so they can have an emissions-exempt gasser.

Thanks for all the input guys!

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'79 300SD
'82 Chevy Chevette diesel

Not so, the infamous gm 5.7L diesel was a factory converted 5.7L olds gasser. The blocks were the same. They were junk! We had 3 in the family. In fact, a mechanic friend of the family converted a 5.7L diesel BACK to a 5.7L gasser. Stay away from them! 6.2's and 6.5's were decent if they were maintained. Unfortunately, GM only offered the junk 5.7 olds diesel in the passenger cars. The others were only offered in trucks and suburbans.

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Oh yeah, the bustleback Seville from about 1981-1984.

$hit dog eat a milk bone, that is one ugly pile of f***.

I saw one of those, amazingly, in a lower class neighborhood, in of all places, Lima, Peru!!!!!!

UFB.

Damn thing probably has the infamous GM THM200 "Cellophane"transmission,
too.

TOTAL pos. One of the worst piles GM made. Worse than the Chevette Scooter.

If you buy it, ONLY put Diesel fuel into it. Run it straight into the ground, just drive it till it drops, like Hatterasguy's 1995 VW Jetta.

A total pile

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1991 560 SEC AMG, 199k <---- 300 hp 10:1 ECE euro HV ...

1995 E 420, 170k "The Red Plum" (sold)

2015 BMW 535i xdrive awd Stage 1 DINAN, 6k, <----364 hp

1967 Mercury Cougar, 49k

2013 Jaguar XF, 20k <----340 hp Supercharged, All Wheel Drive (sold)

Car was a POS. My grandmother had one that she bought brand new but with the 4.1L aluminum head cadillac V8. It blew up with less than 3k miles on it on a 230 mile trip. This car was front wheel drive. Not sure which tranny it had, but i dont think it was a 200R4 since that was for RWD gm cars. I drove her seville a few times in highschool. Talk about dog slow. My 240d would keep up with it. That thing would downshift to 2nd over every overpass on the expressway with the cruise control set. Talk about VERY underpowered. After the new engine she drove the car for almost 15 years without a single problem. Seats were like the livingroom sofa. Overall, total POS though.

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