1971 Oldsmobile 442 Joe Mondello Bill Somers 455 Olds

I've been doing some maintenance and sorting recently. The original B&M 11" converter developed a crack and was visually out of round with the engine running and leaking. Upon some recommendations from a key advisor(Dave Worthington,) I called PTC, talked with Ballard and asked for their idea for an appropriate replacement convertor that would better match the full tilt capacity of Joe's 425/455 engine that he built for his wife Mary during their ownership of the car. I've made some small changes to the car through going over timing, isolating vapor lock issues and returning the car back to an original style cooling fan with thermal fan clutch. All updates have been highly positive in terms of street manners, cooling, drivability, etc. albiet bad for tire longevity. Ballard and his crew took account of the car's specs, reviewed some driving videos and suggested one of their nitrous spec 10" converters. The car responded very well to the update. I would say that the convertor belongs behind this setup. In fact it's great. I bumped the shift points in the th400 vacuum modulator to keep the rpms a bit higher during auto shift operation. In this video the car is warming up before taking my son to school. The Sporty driving is after dropping him off and on the way home. You can see there is a fair amount of fight between the tires and pavement as indicated between the tach and speedo. On the first hit, I let off due to the back end getting out. The second hit demonstrates a bunch of buttery traction whilst the car makes gains. The speedo may or may not be accurate nowadays...(Ahem..agg Hack hack caugh...) Enjoy and take a minute to watch some of the older videos and notice the difference in how it pulls/blows the tires off. Track time is in the future.