cadillac/studebaker V8 similarities?

The Volvo B36 could be a Stude except for its skirted block and single bolted rocker shafts. The water pump is higher. There are fewer head bolts on the B30. The mains are the same at 2.5 inches but the rods of the Volvo B18 four and B36 V8 are a fraction more than the Stude 2 inch journals. Bearing thrust on the Volvo is probably not at the front like the Stude. Intake and dual carburetion looks different but porting seems similar. Otherwise they are as peas in a pod, but the Volvo, stout as it was, managed to weigh less.

 

As a side note, I believe that a popular swap in southern California in the sixties was a reworked stude 289 crank in the small block chevy for a displacement of about 370 cubic inches.

 

Never heard of this one before. Can anyone elaborate?

 

These two engines were the same to the extent that engines from any period of time tend to be similar. Even today new engines incorporate technologies and design features developed by competitors.

 

Since the Stude Bore Centers (4.5 vs 4.4) were different it would be quite a rework.

 

That would be correct if he said they used the stude crank in a cad, but he didnt. He said SBC, which is 4.4.

 

A buddy of mine made epoxy adaptors to use a SBC Edelbrock Victor intake on his blower 63 ? Lark. He also made a block plate for it, bolted it on the block and it did absolutely nothing. He owned & ran Precision Auto Machine in Ft Lauderdale Fl and said he had never seen another make block that a block plate didnt distort the bores on it. His Lark ran 11.21 in the mid 70s in SS/IA. Unfortunately diabetes did him in. He was famous as the builder of the 55 Studebaker stocker called the Crockagator. Bob Dwyer was his name

 

A Studebaker crank in a Chevy right, that's what I read.

Originally Posted by 48jeep
As a side note, I believe that a popular swap in southern California in the sixties was a reworked stude 289 crank in the small block chevy for a displacement of about 370 cubic inches.

And the Studebaker bore center is 4.5.
So we'are putting a crank out of a 4.5 spaced engine into a 4.4 spaced engine.

Am I missing something?

Hoop

 

DOH! Thought your post said cad...

 

I worked at a salvage yard while I was going back to school in the summer time back in the late '60's and saw a forged 312" y-block crank that a recycler grabbed up before I even knew what it was.

I used to take a 10 pound maul and knock the snouts off all the y-blocks to help speed up stripping them for the metal piles back then.

pdq67

 

But you can use the adjustable
Stude rockers on an early Cady V-8.
i've sold a few set to the Caddy folks.

 

I found the stude crank to sbc conversion info over on the racingstudebakers.com forum under the thread "billet block".

 

Didnt Dr.Kettering design both power plants ?

 

As I said, must have been a lot of rework.



Necessity is the mother of invention. We used to make Mazda valve seats out of Chevrolet cam journals before there were parts for their little trucks..

 

Hmmmm.....I don't know why they'd go through the trouble of adapting a crankshaft from another engine design. At the same time, Reath was building 3.5 stroker cranks out of the stock 283 shafts and boring the block to four inches for 352 cubes.

 

Cost?

 

There are assorted cases where a crank from one engine has been adapted to another. I read recently about someone using SB Ford cranks to make cranks for Olds/Buick/Rover aluminum V-8 engine.

As was mentioned, it's cheaper than having a billet crank made.

 

The Stude was a forged part with better counterweighting than the SBC. It did not have great fillet radii like aftermarket speed parts however. It had its thrust face on the front bearing not the way Chevy was at the rear. It was 0.10 longer pitch than the Chevy so needed some facing off for clearancing that undoubtedly reduced its counterweighting a bit, but allowed some improved radii to be cut. It had a longer front snout which was no handicap for machinists to deal with. It had a thinner flywheel flange and six bolt flywheel pattern that probably demanded the use of the Stude flywheel as well, but that took a half inch larger clutch anyway, which was fine. The long stroke version of the Stude was 3.62, not a negligible increase over the 3 inches of the 265/283 Chev or even the 3.25 of the 327. Of course the 3.25 or 2.81 inch Stude versions were of no use as displacement enhancers on an SBC.

 

You meant of course Stude (4.5 inch) versus SBC (4.4 inch) whereas the Cadillac was 4.563 inches, as was the original FirePower Hemi. How about the fact that new Nascar engines of all competitors including Toyota are 4.5 inches like the Stude! Not likely to revive interest in the Stude unless someone makes a cylinder head that fits the bolt pattern. Oh, wait, those all have the six bolt stud pattern as well. Nope. sorry, you would have to rout out the narrow cylinder walls and go for wet sleeves, and then there would probably be little anchorage for the head studs left in the cored out block. Besides, a Stude iron block with a Winston Cup cylinder head would still look like a Winston Cup engine and not the Stude, which was the supposed intent. Ah, well, the DOHC Indy Stude is the only legitimate hot rod evo for a Studebaker nut.

 

The BOP engine has the best chance of being enlarged by using an iron block 300 inch Buick crank. Even then mains would need considerable turning down and who knows what would break through in the attempt. It has been done nevertheless. In Australia there was a Leyland P76 long stroke Olds type BOP that offered similar options to the tinkerer. Now those Ford cranks, in addition to being 0.14 too long in pitch were mostly cast crap anyway. Where any of this ancient stash of iron would turn up half a century later is hard to predict, but that is why there is EBAY.

 

Chevrolet had an incrementally smaller V8 Kettering design underway that was deemed too costly. So what became the 1955 "Dolza" SBC began only when that first attempt was shelved. Now just when that happened is significant. The Ketterings began in 1946 and emerged in 1949. The Stude may have begun in 1946 but debuted in 1951. The stillborn Chevy had to have been junked by 1949 to have been acquired by Studebaker. I think (merely conjecture) the Cross and Trecker or F. J. Lamb transfer line itself might have been ordered for GM to the preliminary hard points of the early Kettering clone, and then reluctantly resold to Studebaker, a good acquisition but one which would have nailed them down to what was essentially that "smaller" Kettering. Not small enough for GM's Bowtie brand, but quite suited to the South Bend needs. Indeed, if Packard had not shown up with the useless 352 lump that "Studebettering" could have served all the needs for engines up to 400 inches, given a better head design and an easily achieved recoring. There were in fact a few special 342 and 372 overbores on special foundry blocks that were machineable on the standard 259/289 tooling. What I cannot recall is if the late style full flow oil filter gallery that ignorantly went on the wrong side (the rearward staggered right bank) in 1961 was interference for such larger bore prototypes. The big bore trials were done in the Egbert era, 1962 or 1963 for 1965, and much of the work was jobbed out to Szalay's Speed Shop in South Bend, where one of my own engines was sent.

 

Nash and Hudson bought Packard engines OEM in 1955 and 1956. It is claimed that they were stiffed by Packard for the cost of such units, and so they designed a much more current, more compact unit of their own, which was still the generous size of a Buick Nailhead for growth. It was cast in South Bend by Studebaker, but machined in Kenosha by AMC. Now Packard was forced to trash their own engine before its third year, but Studebaker's premature and final pathetic enlargement of their own "smallblock" unit to 259/289 inches (the latter requiring a stroker crank) never attained an appropriate displacement of six liters for its original dimensions and heft. It would have been simple for them to offer a deal on the AMC castings against buying some of IT complete in return. Their own production volumes were modest, not by intent but by reality. That HASH V8 deep skirt engine was frankly a better and more contemporary design than the Studebaker, regardless of negative connotations of it being "a Rambler." It was, indeed a better engine in every way than the Ford Y block and in most ways than the early SBC.

 

Go to my blog "looking back racing" for decent engine diagrams of all the above referenced engines and about eight dozen more, virtually all such technical art extant in one single location. I am only lacking certain ones from Automotive Industries special "Engine Portfolio" that I once had scanned, specifically a Pontiac one, two Oldses, and a middle era Cadillac 429, though I have already displayed alternate ones for each.

 

So who was "Scat" anyway, the current company? Isn't that the technical term for cat dung?

 

The worst drawback of "cast crank engines" is not the crank itself, easily replaced, but that they enlarged their main saddles to 3 or even 3.25 inches to regain strength for them. You can always gin up a forging to fit, but the very diameter of the saddles induces oiling problems related to centrifugal force. Also a lot of unnecessary viscous drag. That is the drawback of all the 455 size GM stuff as far as high rpm sustained operation is concerned. Big MoPars are still okay at 2.75 inches, as are BBCs and Nailheads, or older Rockets and AMCs. Even Y blocks and FEs. Furthermore, to achieve the biggest overlap on the crank throws the big ends of the rods were also pushed way past 2 inches, which is more than enough for a 10,000 rpm 358 or 410 Winston or Nationwide pushing 850 horsepower. The reciprocating inertia of a large big end has to be counterweighted, and again the viscous drag is higher.

 

I know the 300 Buick crank fits a 215 Buick/Olds/Rover with very little work, this is the first I had heard of using a Ford crank in one. Getting a raw forgiing would probably make the job easier.

Irrelevant aside, the Mercruiser 4 uses a custom block with a a 460 Ford head and a crank made, if memory serves from a raw forging for a British diesel of some sort. Perkins? Dagenham Ford? Bedford? Dunno.

 

IIRC a Pontiac 421/428/455 actually has smaller journals than a 400 or smaller displacement engine. To the point that some guys have turned down the rod journals on a 400 crank, replaced with 455 rods, and had a 455 from a 400 block. May not be true for the mains, I don't recall.

 

No, the rod journal size was the same on all Pontiac V8s right from the start--guys would use the '58-'62 forged rods in later engines that came with cast rods--and the 421/428/455 crankshafts had larger main journals than the other engines. As usual, the 301 doesn't count.

 

I don't know anything first-hand about using the Ford crank. Like you say, the 300 crank is an option. The down side is that it's iron. I doubt someone would bother adapting an iron Ford crank. You can get raw 4340 forgings for the SB Ford. I suspect that is the story. Beyond the 300 crank, a possibility for even more stroke is a modified Buick 350 crank. However, that is iron too. It's a coincidence this conversation started up again because just yesterday I was at a junk yard looking for a scrap 350 to get as crank from.

 

It's amazing the things you can learn from an old thread.