Transverse & longitudinal 4100s in 84/85 Eldos?

[James Landi]

Hi Otis,

THank you for responding to  my question in this lengthy thread... interesting how one has "impressions," accurate or not, about automotive history, and this is a great place to dispel inaccuracies.  I attempted some research on one such piece of history regarding the 8,6,4... that being, as I "remember it" a doctor lost his life on the Long Island Expressway, when he attempted to make a high speed entry into heavy traffic, and his new Cadillac stalled out when "floored."  Again, I have not been able to find any historical reference, but this remains as a "truth" in my mind.  As a result of this failure and other failures that replicated the same result-- intermittent stalls, Cadillac pulled the plug on the 8-6-4 program-- that's what I "remember," and why I asked the question.  It's heartening to know that this technology did and still does work, all these decades after manufacture.  SO many Cadillac innovations have proved to be extraordinarily durable, well beyond the service life of other car manufacturers.  James

[TJ Hopland]

I would imagine the/a stall would have been more related to the issues with electrical connectors they were having.  The issues must have come up fairly quickly just because they ended up with a new design for 82.  I doubt the test cars had the issue or they would have likely caught it before the production cars.   I would imagine it was sort of a perfect storm of the environment that caused the connection issues and that storm just didn't happen in any of their testing. 

Another thing we forget about is back in the 80's there were still a lot of leaky underground fuel storage tanks.  They let fuel into the ground and water into the fuel.  You especially knew about that if you were in a freezing climate, I know we always had a case of 'heet' de icer in the garage and a couple bottles in every car.   I can still picture the island at the local gas station there was a cart with about a dozen gallons of washer fluid and then 2 shelves of the heet stuff and just a few cans of oil.  Summer time it was mostly motor oil.   Even not in the winter I remember having stuff that ran like crap so till you ran through that tank or even cases were you had to drain the tank and change fuel filters because you got a lot of crap. 

I never drove one for extended periods but the ones I have driven I really didn't think it was a problem it was just different.  Kinda like the later 80's and 90's stuff that easily kicks in and out of OD and or the torque converter locking and unlocking.  Actually thinking about it its kinda like my 13 VW TDI.  There are conditions if you are fairly light on the gas it kinda lugs a bit and you almost think you can feel each cylinder firing.  You have to give it a fair amount of gas to get out of it or shift it to sport mode so it never runs the rpms that low.