The Northstar

[Julio]

Mine went at 70K its a 97 eldorado dealer wanted a ton to fix it I did mone in the driveway Itook it out the top it cost me about 700 with the helms manual gasket set rear seal I did the 1/2 case while it was out gasket set and bolts, the time cert kit its self was a little over 300 at the time.

Take your time you only want to do this once.

[TDK]

Dear all,

I feel that Jims 97 ETC, Dave K, OnyxSTS, Jan and Bruce himself have submitted some of the finest supporting posts in quite some time. I found myself nodding to the screen as I hope many of you were as well. I certainly agree and can only hope that GM/Cadillac is reading this forum as well.

Do the math; a state of the art DI, VVT, 3.6 liter V6 with 300hp at 50hp per cylinder makes a fine 4.8 liter V8 with an easy 400 hp. Then do the supercharge thing for the next couple hundred hp.

To paraphrase another author; Cadillac is not about being adequate!

Bruce, please consider sending GM this thread with the above authors' contributions in particular.

There is no better "Focus Group", than this forum.

For the record, Our '94 Concours was over 215,000 miles with NO engine or tranny work and only 2 green coolant changes that I know of. It was wound up as tight as I could find asphalt for it to run, and it NEVER gave up. I can only hope our 99' Deville now at 60,000 miles - is as legendary.

Regards,

[Cadillac Jim]

When they do the DI head design, they can look at the port and valve angles and get better breathing. They need to surpass the best LS heads. With the current 4-valve heads they are close but the design is more for mid-range. The bottom end is good to go. I'm assuming that they have better O-rings and head gaskets now.

[Bruce Nunnally]

TDK -- I concur.

Back to my 3.6L V6 HP rant -- the new 3L LF1 DOHC DI VVT V6 makes 270 hp in the CTS. Scale that up to 3.6L and you would have a 270 x 3.6/3 = 324 hp 3.6L instead of our 304hp 3.6L LLT.

So get with it Powertrain, why do we have a 304 hp LLT and not a 325 hp LLT?

We are also still missing the 4L V6 variant, which is the upper planned limit of the design, although due to fuel economy concerns I fear we'll never see it. Theoretically a 4L DI V6 could make 270/3 x 4 = 360 hp.

The missing new tech V8 was referred to as the Ultra V8. It possibly would have been a 4.6L DOHC VVT V8 variant for 375-400 hp. It was in development before the Direct Injection was deployed, so I am not certain if it was planned as a DI engine or not.

With a terrific engine in the 430 hp LS3 or the Escalade's 403 hp, 417 ft-lb torque L94, which is Cadillac-exclusive, I would honestly use that instead of developing a new DOHC VVT V8.