Frenzel Speed

Frenzel Speed

“That’s what was great about the golden era of hot rodding. If we needed a cam, a carb, or even a complete running motor, we’d just head down to the Speed Shop and pick it up. There were no ‘parts clerks’ like we have today. Usually the guy behind the counter was a small business owner with a love for speed. On the weekends he was at the drag strip or the lake bed honing his craft and on the week days, he was manning his shop to pay for it all. We had real speed shops back then.”

I got that quote out of “The Business of Speed” – a low circulated book that chronicles the speed industry from its birth in the midwest to its hey days in Southern California. It’s a quote I always look back upon when the latest “speed shop” opens its doors. Most of these new ventures, of course, aren’t speed shops at all. A good chunk of them use the “Speed Shop” tag as a novelty to sell graphic t-shirts and maybe a part of two. Others are actual shops that fix and repair old cars and might even build a few as well, but almost always farm out the actual “speed” part of the colloquial tag.

Think about it… Can you name more than a handful of “speed shops” that actually build motors or, at the very least, sell the shit you need to build speed yourself? I certainly can’t…

And for years, I’ve half heartedly given my pals at Austin Speed Shop grief for their own name. These guys are close to me and they know me well enough to take anything I say as half shit and half sugar. Plus, they have turned out some pretty fantastic cars through the years – who am I to turn a nose up at that?

In any case, I’m getting ahead of myself here. Let me rewind a bit…

About two years ago, everybody’s favorite ER man (otherwise known as Doc) landed himself one of the rarest flathead speed parts known to man – a Frenzel Supercharger. Most of you that actually know what a Frenzel is, would not if it weren’t for the October, 1952 issue of Hot Rod Magazine. A Frenzel graced the cover and inside, the story of Ray Schlachter’s aluminum blocked flathead spoke to the incredible power gains due to the funny looking aluminum pancake.

The Frenzel Supercharger was produced by Frenzel Engineering out of Denver, Colorado in late 1949. For around $175, Frenzel supplied you with a centrifugal blower, two truck water pumps, a crankshaft pulley, all the v-belts you needed, an idler, oil lines, and carburetor linkage. Bolt that mess on your stock flathead Ford and you will see astronomical power gains of around 40 to 50% from six pounds of boost at 4200 RPM. To prove it, Frenzel took a stock 1947 Ford coupe to El Mirage. Here’s what happened:

Without the Frenzel:
Top-Speed: 84.5 mph
0 to 50mph: 11.4 seconds
0 to 60mph: 16.3 seconds

With the Frenzel:
Top-Speed: 100.046 mph
0 to 50mph: 8.1 seconds
0 to 60mph: 11 seconds

And this isn’t just marketing fluff. Both Hot Rod and Road Track Magazines backed these claims with tests of their own. So you would expect, given these numbers and given most superchargers of the era were minimally effective, that the Frenzel would be a big seller. It wasn’t. No one seems to really know how many were made, but most are certain it was less than twenty – I’ve heard as few as 12 were produced and that only nine are known to exist today. Of course, there is no Frenzel Registration of any kind that would help us figure the exact numbers. Even the history of the Frenzel company itself is sort of cloaked in mystery,  but it’s pretty damned apparent that what Doc bought himself was the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker of flathead speed parts.

I do, however, have a theory. All of the marketing material that I was able to find claim that the Frenzel was designed and manufactured to sit on top of a stock Ford intake. However, Doc’s setup came complete with an intake cast by Frenzel (making it all the more rare). My theory is that after initial tests it became apparent that the stock Ford intake wasn’t efficient enough to support the relatively massive amounts of air the Frenzel pushed down its runners. To battle this, Frenzel designed their own intake to include in the package. This, of course, pushed up the price of the kits as well as the price of manufacturing. In the end, I think Frenzel priced themselves out of a viable business model.

Whatever be the case, Doc had the blower and now he needed an engine builder. He called me and asked for my advice knowing full well where I would send him. The Frenzel showed up on Keith Tardel’s doorstep just a few days later.

Between then and now, a lot has happened. Keith is no longer in Northern California. He uprooted and headed to Texas a few months ago and has set up his engine room at Austin Speed Shop. In the writing business, it’s this point of the story that we call a “plot climax.”

See where I am going?

Keith’s first engine build at Austin SPEED Shop was a stroked, cam’ed, and Frenzel blown flathead Ford. He put it together late last week and given the rarity of the occasion, Silva and I took off work and spent the day looking over his shoulder as he finessed the jewel atop a beast of a flathead. I know it’s cliche, but the only proper way to explain the experience is to say that it was religious in nature. At one point during assembly, I looked over at the October, 1952 issue of Hot Rod Magazine hanging on a clipboard and said, “You know, this blower that we are fingering right now could very well be the exact blower on that cover. I mean, the odds aren’t bad…”

Surprisingly, the 65 year old low production blower went together really smoothly. The only problem Keith ran into was a clearance issue with the 7 1/2 inch impeller and the pancaked case. He worked that out in short order and a few hours after we started, we had what might be the most beautiful flathead Ford I have ever laid eyes on. Here’s a few pictures to prove it:

If you are gonna be at the Lone Star Round Up this weekend, drop by The Jalopy Journal or the Austin Speed Shop booth. We plan to have the engine on display and hell, we might even fire the damned thing up if you tickle us just right.

……….

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