dreracecar - "all four of the engines were pointing towards the center of the car, nose-to-nose"? I don't think so!! Check the construction pix in this article.
Oops! Never mind. I thought you meant the centerline of the car. The engines are indeed 'nose-to-nose. My bad. )-: Still, the article and photos should offer some clarification. I'm going to bed now.
So we still don't know if 2 engines were actually run backwards do we? Stan292s pictures don't show/tell if the front ring gears were flipped. It is possible that 1 ring gear was each way so a pair of engines were contra rotating. The stamping on the engine in question suggests that this was the case. Interesting concept!
One of the front engines and one of the rear engines are reverse rotation (at opposite corners of the chassis). I have spoken with Jim Travis who did the restoration on this car and that is what he told me, for the reason mentioned earlier, to exert torque to the centerline of the chassis.
When I mentioned 4x4 I was talking about the hybrid 14bolt front axles Posted using the Full Custom H.A.M.B. App!
Flipping the axle has no bearing on which side of the ring gear teeth are "loaded". As long as the pinion is rotating the "designed" direction the ring gear teeth will be loaded as designed. A few of the farmer/mechanics in the area I grew up made "reversed" loaders using Allis Chalmers W-45 and WD-45 tractors. To make them move in the proper direction, and still have multiple "forward" speeds, the ring gear was simply moved to the other side of the differential. They made a hell of a neat machine. See attachment.....
i'm betting that the right side engines were run counter clockwise while the right side was clockwise, this was done to eliminate any torque effect, just a wide guess.
Now we're getting back on track! Yes, you're right. The engine on eBay had iron heads, and it was the head that had the stamping in it (left front reverse rotation....). The article says the biggest improvement made to the engine is the aluminum heads. Interesting... Good topic to research.
I did. I started this thread to see if others could give some additional insight on this engine from another perspective. I would like to have this if it's the real deal, but without paperwork or anything like that it's a risk. The more info I can obtain the more I can reduce that risk. Somehow we got assbackwards and started discussing the physics of reverse rotation engines... lol... interesting, but not what I intended. I talked to Axle for about 30 mins. I don't feel he's being deceptive at all, and I don't feel he would intentionally misrepresent whats there. I'm the one that is uninformed and need to educate myself before forking out the $$ for that thing.
I never saw any pics of the engines with carbs. They were injected without the superchargers in the first setup and when they put on the blowers they also ran with injectors. Jerome
Some guys know how to build up a good story to sell items. I bought a flathead engine for big bucks from that guy and it was a real rip off. It was cracked beyond repair and nothing was as he told me, did not even get all parts. So DONT buy without to see it, and confirm the history.
The Jalopy Journal
