I run a 263 in my 53 dd and love it. I would eventually like to upgrade to the 41-42 dual carb and exhaust set up. what I really wanna know is whether or not they made a buick cross flow head like they did for the chevy and gmc sixes. Posted from Jalopyjournal.com App for Android
Lotsa good info in this thread but as far as "why so few Buick Straight Eights?", I think it all goes back to the reason Ford Flatheads are (were) so popular: Plentiful, cheap, and you could beat on 'em. Buicks weren't as plentiful, they weren't cheap, and you couldn't beat on 'em without bad results. They WERE powerful, and they WERE fast, but for the average guy, that wasn't enough to compensate. For the banker who wanted a fast smooth ride (one you could drive without using first gear), they were the answer. For the kid working at the gas station who wanted fast but didn't care about luxury, the Ford was the ticket.
Dale is right. It's the same as why were Olds engines more popular than Cads or Chryslers in the 50s. There were lots more Olds engines. And they were cheaper at the junk yard. Buicks are big, heavy engines that don't fit well into much of anything but Buicks. Fords were cheap, available and fit right into the Ford car it came out of. Some Fagol busses came with Buick eights in them and there was always a story that they had 16 port heads. I only ever looked at one Fagol and the Buick in it looked pretty much the same as the car engine. The Salt Cat guys converted a Buick head into a 16 port non-crossflow head that worked well enough that the SCTA changed their rules to make it illegal in class. PS> The flathead record at Bonneville is 302.674. The GMC record is 302.462. I guess the flathead is faster. But there is not a lot of separation.
Not odd at all. IF you are willing to PAY THE PRICE for a SMALL increase in power, you could get it out of an OHV engine. Case in point. In 1927 there was a ding dong battle between Stutz and Auburn for the stock car racing crown. On Daytona Beach, the Stutz managed to beat the Auburn by less than 2 MPH. The comparison is interesting because both had straight eight engines of identical bore and stroke, 298 cu in. Stutz made their own engine, a single overhead cam, overhead valve of their own manufacture designed by "Pop" Greuter. Auburn used a conventional flathead engine which they bought from Lycoming. The Stutz engine was larger, heavier and more complex as well as being more powerful. This in turn required stronger and heavier transmission, drive train, chassis and brakes. The result was the Stutz outweighed the Auburn by 700 pounds. The Stutz also cost $5000 vs under $2000 for the Auburn. Quite a price to pay for a speed advantage of between 1% and 2%. By the way... the Buick was equally eligible to enter the contest, but none were entered. There is also a difference between a production engine and a racing engine. A production engine for general use must be restricted in carburetion, cam, exhaust, etc if it is to be smooth, silent, economical and reliable. In the case of a racing engine, none of these restrictions apply. It makes perfect sense to throw all practical considerations aside, as long as you win the race. So, if an OHV engine or even an OHC engine will give even a 1% advantage, it is worthwhile. My point is that in the days of long stroke, low compression engines the advantage of overhead valves was small. In fact a good flathead could outperform a mediocre OHV engine. Which is more or less what Ford fans have been saying about Chevrolet since the Model A days.
If you love something enough you can make it work but, the straight 8s were tall, heavy and long. They were designed to run smoothly and pull a heavy car down the road at moderate speeds. There are examples of successful race cars built around them but you had to have the skills to make your own parts and do the developement work. If you check out the '60s drag racers that ran the inlines in the same class the GMC and Hudson sixes were the winners.
"Good defense of the venerable flathead! But not quite accurate. The OHV aka "poppet" valve-in-head engine was the "state of the art" for the 30 years you claim for the reign of the flathead. In the world of "state-of-art" internal combustion engines you have to include aircraft power-plants ---and those were seldom flatheads." Name me ONE new car engine between 1922 and 1949 with overhead valves. Several car makers changed from OHV to flathead in this period, but NONE changed from flathead to OHV. The ONLY exceptions to this rule, were car makers already committed to OHV, and luxury cars and sports cars made in tiny numbers. NO mass producer of CARS changed to OHV, with those exceptions. AFTER 1949 the situation COMPLETELY changed. EVERY new car engine after that, was a short stroke, big bore OHV. Again, with a few exceptions: Lincoln V8, 1949-51, quickly dropped in favor of an OHV V8. Hudson, 1951-56, dropped in favor of an OHV V8 and Packard, dropped in favor of a V8 in 1955. The reason? Higher octane gas, higher road speeds on the new interstate highways and automatic transmissions that reduced the need for max torque from a walking pace in high gear. Aircraft engines, like racing engines and luxury car engines, justify spending a LOT more money for a small increase in power. They pretty well all had hemi heads too. Comparing aircraft engines and racing engines to production car engines is rather pointless. If I wanted to be equally ridiculous I could point out that Briggs and Stratton, Wisconsin and others made flatheads for 50 years after the OHV came to dominate the car biz, "proving" that when you set aside fads and fashions, flatheads are best.
Back when I was a teenager;in the '60's, every serious backwoods sawmill used one. A few were diesels but the Buick was the engine of choice. Really, they preferred a Roadmster. I could trade a Roadmaster for ANY junker there,didn't have to start but have all it's accessories. This became their parts department. Nothing else had the torque and dependability............then the diesels appeared. I gathered a lot of model A sheetmetal off junkers there; only tiny mills had tractor or smaller car engines.
Just a little post script to this discussion, between our Buick straight 8 powered 1984 Jaguar XJ-6 and our lakester, we have set 16 inline records on the Salt with the fastest pass being 222 MPH. [in the Jag fastest was 193]. We are going back next week as a streamliner to visit a couple of more class'. We have never broken a crank, or hurt any rods. Any damage has come from the learning curve of heat when you add 15 pounds of boost. We have put most of those issues behind us and have the engine that we ran at Speed Week still intact and we will test it again at World of Speed. Heavy, yes, inherantly smooth though. Would a crossflow head improve things, absolutely, but we are not ready to take on the $10,000 prototyping cost until we wring out all we can get from the original castings. Glen Barrett the Speed Week announcer dubbed it "the world's fastest straight 8 Buick". Don't know if it's true, but it sounds good. We're just some old retired guys from Montana out having fun. Doug
OK. Here are two 1932 Plymouth engines. One a flathead and the other an OHV. (57 Ford 292 head). Both engines ran in the same car seen to the upper left. Same crank, rods, pistons compression ratio, same cam. Mostly Hilborn injection. Pinto distributors (two on the flathead) Everything the same but the head. The Flathead went 113 mph which was a record for a few months and the overhead went 135 and holds the record at Muroc. Apples to apples. Not a "good flathead could outperform a mediocre OHV engine" Sure and a good model A is faster than a top fuel that's not running. '
Sorry first Olds OHV 1949. That is what I was talking about, the new generation of short stroke OHV motors that made the flathead obsolete. Can you name one car company that changed from a flathead to OHV engine between the introduction of the Ricardo head in 1921 and the mass changeover to oversquare OHV designs starting in 1949? Didn't think so. I can name half a dozen that changed from OHV to flathead. As for a Plymouth block with an OHV 1957 head outperforming the same block with a flathead, that proves my point too. I said right off the bat, that an OHV in a RACE CAR would beat a flathead. Especially with the advantage of 25 years of progress. That proves absolutely nothing about what a STOCK motor in a STOCK 1932 car with STOCK head and STOCK compression ratio would do. I even said a STOCK OHV from the twenties or thirties MIGHT have an advantage over a flathead of the same year but the advantage would be small, and the advantages of the flathead might outweigh the disadvantages. The car companies and designers of the day agreed, and not because they never heard of an OHV engine but because they considered an OHV and rejected it. I also said one of the limiting factors was compression ratio and fuel octane. I suspect your OHV engine has a compression ratio of more than 6.5:1 and burns fuel of more than 76 octane. Higher compression has a big influence on horsepower but this was not available in the thirties. With the introduction of high octane leaded gas in the early fifties, this all changed.
Speaking of Buicks and OHVS how about a little comparison. First 1930 Buick and similar powerful cars. 1930 Buick Six (OHV) 331 cu in 99HP = .299 HP per cu in 1930 Chrysler Imperial 6 309 cu in 110HP = .356 HP per cu in 1930 Nash Twin Ignition 8 (OHV) 298 cu in 100HP =.335 HP per cu in 1930 Studebaker President Eight 337 cu in 115HP = .341 HP per cu in All the top models from reputable mass producers. Notice that the highest HP per Cu in is the Chrysler flathead six. Next is the Studebaker President Eight, another flathead. The Nash is about the most technically advanced of the lot with eight cylinders, overhead valves, and two spark plugs per cylinder. All this gets it third place out of four. The Buick OHV six comes last. How about the low priced cars? Didn't the OHV Chevrolet make its old fashioned flathead rivals look sick? Let's see. 1930 Chevrolet six 194 cu in 50HP = .258 HP per cu in 1930 Ford four 200 cu in 40HP = .200 1930 Plymouth four 196 cu in 48HP = .245 1930 Studebaker Erskine 205 cu in 70HP = .341 Here the clear winner is the Erskine flathead six, which rivals its high priced brother in HP per cu in. Second is the OHV Chevrolet 6, beating the old fashioned Plymouth and Ford 4 cylinder flatheads. The Chevrolet has a whopping 2 HP advantage over the Plymouth. Ford trailing badly at only 40HP Hope this demonstrates that in their day the flatheads were not the useless junk some people like to imagine. (If you want to check my figures they came from this web site http://www.carnut.com/specs/specs.html )
1. Flatheads are inherently less expensive to produce. That's why the stripper Mopars kept the flathead six on til about 1959, Studebaker until 1962. They knew better, but the flathead six engines were essentially free, because the tooling had long since been paid off. The other reason was inherently understood by every manufacturer. Make the base engine such a worthless turd, the buyer has to pay extra to get a decent engine. 2. Engines pre-1949 were long stroke small bore because the low octane fuel of the day burned better in a small chamber. Again, engineers knew better, there just wasn't the fuel to use what they knew how to build. Flathead Ford V8s wouldn't be running 303 MPH on 70-octane fuel, either. 3. After WWII, when 90-octane pump gas became available, everyone went to higher compression, larger bore, shorter stroke OHV engines. The engineers knew long ago this was a better way to make power. The fuel just hadn't been available until the taxpayers built huge new refineries for the war effort. All the new OHV8s were designed with the idea there would be 115 octane fuel and 12:1 compression in everyday cars. Didn't happen, but the engine designs were ready for it. 4. It still took a while to kill the better flatheads. The 356" Packard flathead straight-eight flatheads would outrun the OHV Cad/Olds/Hemi in everyday straight line runs up through 1954. In fact, the Packard was using a 4-bbl carb while the OHV8s were all 2-bbl. The Hudson Hornet Twin H-Power was running rings around the OHV8s in NASCAR up through 1954, largely due to superior handling. 5. The Harley-Davidson KR 750cc race bikes were the most highly developed flatheads ever. The best ones were making 60hp from 45" back in the late '60s. The OHV competition had to be limited to 500cc to keep them from beating the H-Ds. 6. As has already been said, the Buick I8 320" had displacement and OHV, but it was long, heavy, not the strongest bottom end and didn't fit the typical hot rod or race car. There's always a reason, because racers build what wins. jack vines
I've been followin this thread and its makin me miss my 53 a lil(album). I knew nothing about str8 8's when I bought it and put a lot of time and energy into it. I learned from nothing to something worth my while. I replaced and rebuilt everything myself. Always wanted to get that 8/dyna mutha to be badass but when stuff comes up it comes up and I sold her. love the thread. Guys!
I have a complete 53 four door with a great running straight 8 and std trans. I also have a 1950,s Bell Saw one man M14 antique sawmill. Im gonna scrap the buick and use that straight 8 mill for a power unit. I was using a 250 chev and it wasnt torquey enough. I had to run it at too high RPM and use several reduction pulleys to reduce the head saw speed to 500 rpm. and it used excessive fuel. Im hoping the buick will be up to snuff. there is a guy near here that has rigged two 322 V8,s to power a really large sawmill! OldWolf
I have been following the cross flow head rumor on the Buick site for a while now... http://www.teambuick.com/forums/sho...ic-new-head-for-the-263!&highlight=cross+flow
Bombshell Betty the baddest ass Buick 8 on the planet!!! IMHO http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y36IoqVT0xQ
There were straight eight Buick hot rods but not very many. Most hot rods were flathead Fords. Were the Ford fans stupid? Could they not see that an OHV engine is automatically better than a flathead? No, they were not stupid and at that time (before 1949) an OHV engine was not automatically better than a flathead. End of story.
Exactly. Back before WW2 flatheads were the engine of choice for most manufacturers because they got the job done. They were hardly the useless junk a lot of people think. Many a flathead gave good service for years and turned in a fine performance.
Hi ! Im sure to get some enemys with these comments but here goes , I have a -50 Buick Roadmaster with the 320CI and Dynaflow automatic , did you ever hear one run , fully muffled it sounds like a electric engine , I meen for me an American car is bench seat , column shift automatic and a 90degrees V8 . I know I know Im stereotyping but A 90degrees V8 and specially a Flathead has a certain sound so my fully running Roadmaster 320CI will probably be switched to a Cadillac 331CI with Hydromatic , not major raise in power output but much nicer sound . I also have a -52 Chevy pickup with a 216 and three on the tree , I will use it for a while but no , a -51 Oldsmobile 303 with Hydromatic is itching to get in there , well thats my two cent ! Wolf
I haven't read every response to your question of name an overhead valve between 1922 and 49, but Chevrolet, Buick, Deusenberg, Cadillac V16, Marmon v16, Franklin, Nash, Studebaker, REO, Auburn V12, and several others all had the more expensive to produce overhead valve engines. Some of the companies went to a much smaller cubic inch flathead once the great depression set in and cost cutting became a real serious issue for survival. I don't think any of them went from a larger overhead valve to a smaller flathead for performance reasons. I'm certain it was the depression and economics that caused the return to flathead use. Nash and Studebaker made some pretty powerful high end large overhead valve engines before they were reduced to producing economy cars in the 1940's. But I am never as interested in looking at an overhead valve Buick straight 8 as I am looking at a huge Packard flathead straight 8.
Chevrolet, Buick, Marmon, Nash and Duesenberg all had OHV engines before the Ricardo head made the flathead competitive.They are among the group I mentioned that stuck with the OHV when everyone else went to flatheads. Cadillac and Franklin used OHV on their V16 and V12 engines because they did not have room for valves beside the cylinders. Franklin even used 2 camshafts on the outside of the block, to allow room for air cooling passages. REO and Studebaker, so far as I know never made an OHV in this time period. The point is, an OHV engine was not automatically superior to a flathead in the twenties thirties and forties, and the companies that made flatheads were not stupid.
I blame Jan and Dean. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaZPYIRFUBg Some of the lyrics seem slightly, sadly prophetic, not in the quite the same way as Dead Man's curve. " I , er, buy all my car parts from mail order houuuuuse " "I got lights in my wheel wells..."
I'm a BIG fan of Jeff Brock and the Bombshell Betty buick... .....but I think the records, and speed, give that title to the Salt Cat team! Either way, these Buicks have proven to be fierce competitors!
Today it seems nostalgia has us looking back at all these cool old engines like the Fire Ball Eight, Flathead Ford and Caddy v8's and even Lincoln V12's, Flathead Mopars, Stove Bolt sixes, FirePower early hemis to name a few and waxing on their merits. Fortunately we are seeing a resurgence of these old engines as guys look for more unique and personalized rides. However as we all know most of these engines were considered castoffs at the time. For the most part, these were the engines you pulled out in order the drop in a go fast hot mill. The scene has changed. I think it is kinda cool that guys are running banger motors in there "A's" again, running flathead straight eights in rat rods, thinking early '50's four door Mopars are sweet rides. It may be a long way from true to form traditional hot rods, but in a world of mega buck go fast rides, auction unaffordables, and trailer queens, the old spirit of drive what you got lives on even if it is in the form of a hot rod black DeSoto four door. Party on!!
Here's a link to Bryan Blake's '36 Buick with a straight 8. I keep telling him it'd look better with fenders.... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTi_1f36UI8 ...
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