Learn me 32 valve Cadillac

I've been driving by a Cadillac with a crunched back end and it says 32 valve V ( I assume V8)   
is it a 4 valve cammer engine or pushrod ?  Any good?  What's it's story? 

It's almost certainly a Northstar.  All aluminum double overhead cam engine.  Early ones had head bolt issues and none of them had a great reputation, although for the time they made pretty decent power. 

That's a Northstar, it is 4 cam (non pushrod). Depending on the year it was built, it made somewhere around 300 hp. They sound pretty cool too, but some years had issues with blowing head gaskets due to head bolts that lifted out of the block, the fix was to drill and retap the holes deeper into the block if I remember correctly. In later years of the motor I think this was addressed by GM. They have some other weird stuff like liquid cooled alternators and I believe the starter is in the valley like a 1UZ. 

In reply to rslifkin :

Thank you. 

In reply to dannyp84 :

When were they built? 

The Northstar was made until 2011.  They had issues. They were popular for swaps into Fieros at one time but they had oiling and head gasket issues and bumping power was problematic.

I repaired a couple from the late 90s that had a run of poorly-cast blocks.  There was some kind of core shift and the front bottom of the water jacket was super thin on the inside.  They sometimes developed cracks and you got an oil milkshake.  Very limited run of a few thousand I think, but it bears investigation before running out and buying a random Caddy.

Very smooth, good power, modest torque.

A friend inherited a Northstar shod Cadillac and it made a heck of nice noise and had a very un Cadillac power band- not much grunt but it kept building and pulled hard when really spinning.  I've read nothing but bad things about trying to maintain them and that there are no parts to rebuild them.  Seemed like a real mill in search of a chassis from the passenger seat.  Another expensive GM blip.  

They're popular with the sand rail crowd, oddly enough. So you can sometimes find some useful swap stuff (trans adapters, etc.) from those guys.

Of note, there is a factory supercharged version of the Northstar out there. 

Don't listen to the haters. They're a wonderful powerplant and they perfect small block to swap into a jaaaaag. They can be had for chall friendly prices and love boost as well.

I made a face when my son said he was buying a car with one but he assured me he'd done his homework and it was going to be fine. He was right and it does move along pretty nicely making all the right noises in the process. 

dannyp84 said:

They have some other weird stuff like liquid cooled alternators 

The Germans have used water-cooled alternators as well.  Big luxury cars have a lot of electrical gadgets, which pushes the alternator requirements to the point where air cooling isn't enough.

My impression is that while the Northstar isn't terrible, it was mostly sold as a transverse FWD package.  Most people who want to do a V8 swap are looking for RWD, so you need a bunch of extra parts to make it work.  And then the elephant in the room is that if you're swapping a GM V8 you'll get more power for less money by using an LS, so why bother with a Northstar?

My uncle had 3 over about a 10 year period, bought new, put 200k-250k miles on them, trade for the next - until he decided he wanted an SUV as his work was kind of shifting to hauling bigger items. 
 

He never had an issue worth commenting on. Similar for my Grandpa, who had 2 or 3 over about 15 years. I'm not sure if his Buick was a north star or not. 
 

Good engines. Probably an instance of the Internet making things sound worse than they are. 

If I remember correctly the 60 degree v6 bell housing from a f body or s10 will work for rwd swaps.  I want to say there was a rwd Cadillac that used the Northstar as well

STS and XLR were RWD, and both could be had with the supercharged Version

I'll echo what has been said above, the earlier ones were problematic with head gasket issues, and GM sorted it out later. I can't find you specific years, however.

Now, there are aftermarket solutions that address the issues and they are pretty reliable after that. From what I remember it involves redrilling the block and heads to a bigger size, using coarse threads and head studs. I *think* the company is called Northstar Performance, but it's a time change weekend and I don't feel like verifying.

Car Wizard on YouTube swears by these engines after they've been upgraded.

I rented a few for Northern California road trips. The Devilles are speed limited to 112. The first thing I did was pull the air filter and cover off. They make some impressive intake sounds! 

The 2001 and later were much better. Bigger head bolts, better gaskets etc.

There was a 270hp version and a 300hp. Supercharger was 400 or so?

They are very coolent sensitive and upgrades as said before they are quite reliable. 

The Northstar was one of those cool motors that everyone was over the moon for back before the LS came out, since the proper LT1 was spendy and uncommon and not super upgradeable and there wasnt a good EFI option from Chevy other than the TPI Corvette or Camaro motors and those didnt make big power nor were they too common.  So everyone gravitated to this odd little aluminum V8 that was made for a transverse application, had a lot of reliability and packaging challenges, but could be had cheap.  

Then in 1999 GM started putting LS motors into trucks and that was the end of the Northstar dream.  

There was a guy near Fallbrook California that had a hot rod shop on his property and claimed to specialize in building Northstars for hot rods. I went in there one time a talked with him but now I can't find him on the internet.

In reply to sergio :

If I recall correctly, some weren’t limited.  They may have been manufactured for international sale? Or autobahn editions? 

I don’t recall the exact nomenclature, but have driven some much faster than that. 

Does anyone besides me, have a water pump socket for these? 

sergio said:

I rented a few for Northern California road trips. The Devilles are speed limited to 112. The first thing I did was pull the air filter and cover off. They make some impressive intake sounds! 

Every vehicle I have purchased from California has shown up with no air filter. You rented a lot of cars.

Will said:

They're popular with the sand rail crowd, oddly enough. So you can sometimes find some useful swap stuff (trans adapters, etc.) from those guys.

Also popular with the landspeed crowd in heavily modded form.