Hot Rods So, what do you think is the coolest hot rod engine ever?

Just surfing the net and I found this ad. Nothing special about the ad except look at who the seller is. http://www.racingjunk.com/Street/182566392/401-Nailhead-Buick-Engine.html

 

Well I don't like the color of it.

 

I like every kind of engine, I’m a car nut love everything in right combo.
This is a just personally refection of the question, I don’t want to step on anyone’s toes.

Early Cadillac OHV. Beautiful real eye catcher
Olds 303 324. Good looking
Old HEMI`s. Brutal/Evil looking
Flatheads Ford V8. Can't never be wrong
Y-block Ford. Sounds lovely, looks great with right stuff
Nailhead's. Classic
Bangers and old stovebolts.Cool old mills
Early Chevy’s. Classic looks
“Hot rod engine ever”,,

 

Thats pretty cool!

 

FWIW, its pretty easy to improve the center-oil system to the point where it is damn near as good as the side-oiler. Switch over to solid lifters and drop a .070 restrictor in the passage in the head that feeds the rockers, and drill the main oil gallery that runs from the filter adaptor face from 3/8 to 1/2". It also really helps to run the stock drip trays under the rocker stands, helps get the oil back in the pan.
If you are going to run hydraulics, the stock oiling system is less of an issue, but you want to make sure the rocker to rocker-shaft clearance isnt too loose.

 

Is that in order, or just random? Doesn't really matter either way, your preference is your's and nothing wrong with that. I'm just curious.

 

dont know, but its cool as hell...either way, I bet the machine work involved for this would set you back oh, say, 20 SBCs worth.....back in the same boat. in fact, if anyone can point me to a banger OHV conversion set up for, say, something around $1500.00, or 6 SBCs, i would be a buyer, but at going rate of about $4995.00, just for the raw parts, well, as they say in the old country, "no bueno por caca!" Got any pics of the intake side?

 

This............But i'm kind of bias..........I like my own shit
[/URL]

 

I too like so many engines. Always had a thing for inlines however.

 

The machine work consisted of drilling and tapping two holes. And tapping for several pipe plugs. Also drilling out the flathead valve guides. Since i was going to have the block and head surfaced anyway as part or a rebuild, the machine work came to "0" dollars. Of course you need to decide if you want to do the work or pay to have it done. If you can't or won't do either, "no bueno".

 

Rich,

That's just a dadgum (to quote 3wlarry) cool little engine you got there. Kudos to you for figuring all of it out and making it happen.

Me; I'm lucky to figure out where the key goes into a car.

f-w-i-w; a couple of buddies of mine figured out how to put an overhead cam Pinto head on a Model T engine about 20 years ago. They whittled an aluminum spacer to go between the block and the head to make the cylinder holes and head chamber openings line up. Well, they didn't so much line up as the spacer had offsets so that they mated. And they figured out a pulley system to run the cam. They raced it in some old time racing circuit for a few years. I don't think that they had much money tied up in it either.

 

This engine, also a 1932 Plymouth, actually cost more to build than the OHV version. The piece of aluminum cost $150 as i remember. The '57 ford 292 head on the OHV engine was $25. Engine internals were shared between both engines. Except for IHC Red Diamond lifters in the OHV engine. And some custom Smith Bros push rods.

 

Yea, but nothing could be cooler that seeing stacked Y-block hilborns on a 4 popper!

 

whoh, hang on, back up a bit here. What makes you think it was the rod that broke first, cause my guess is, it wasnt. Two key phrases here...
shoved about 450 HP worth of blue bottle tune up...blew out the cylinder from the 9 o'clock point to the 3.
I have leaned on a 3/8 rod bolt 2 bolt main BBC bottom end to the point that the main caps were dancing so much, it took the register out on two main webs, and it never broke a rod...but if a cylinder wall fails catastrophically, you can pretty well figure ANY rod will fail when the pistons starts flopping around.They aren't really designed to do that...

 

Back on track.

 

I like mine with rocker arms...

 

Full shot of Nailhead Hot Rod. 2014 Hunnert Car Pile Up show. Somewhere an old video tape of this running will re-emerge.

 

No, the wall didn't fail. It was about .270 thick on average, more on a lot of it, and I suspected that the excess cylinder pressure began to sort of "unscrew" the pin. I experimented with using a pressed pin in an effort to have a more solid piston foundation. 1 less clearance to tip or move was the idea and it improved longevity in some massive offshore motors so I gave it a shot. Shot in the ass was more like it. The crank held its own, was off .002 and my pal at Moldex fixed that I'm about 1 second with a well placed dead blow hammer. The next one went almost 500 rounds with near criminally low maintenance.

 

Thats not an unreasonable assumption. Pin bore distorted, and the pin got loose, that sounds reasonable. Probably not enough fuel for the amount of nitrous, and detonated REALLY hard, I have seen heavy detonation distort the pin bore in the piston before, and the consequences can be VERY ugly. In light of the damage to the piston dome and the crack in the wall, that would be where I would be looking. In my experience, almost every "rod failure" I have seen was actually caused by something else, most commonly a bearing/journal issue.

 

I have another story that relates to this. Years ago, like in the seventies, a friend of mine had built a very nasty 440 with max wedge heads and cross-ram and a BIG Crane solid for a local street racer named Danny, that put it in a very rough and ugly tubbed '68 dart with a glass front end.
So we all expected this thing to run deep into the tens, we are out at the track, and Danny is running high 11's, and we are ribbing him mercilessly about getting his foot down. The engine builder, who was also a hell of a driver, tells him to "get the hell out, I'll drive it." So he makes a pass, and right away, as soon as he hits the waterbox, you can tell this one is gonna be a little different. He goes through the traps and the scoreboard lights up, 10.98@123, and now we are REALLY ribbing Danny. So the engine builder climbs out of the car, and we are all high fiving and carrying on, he is scowling and swearing, says "theres something REAL wrong with this thing". So the motor comes out and is torn down, a circlip either broke, or fell out, and the pin slid out, and cut a .050 deep groove in one cylinder wall. So it went 10.98@123 on seven!

 

...A 350 Chevy...
April fools

 

Just enough detail for a very drivable interstate motivator.

 

Hem-I. The pick-up for the street & highway, right?

 

Coolest or most unusual? It would be both. About 25 years ago, we had a Nostalgia type race at Bremerton Raceway, and my usual job was starter. That meant I could't just run off and look at different cars. From the city of Tacoma area, a 1932 Ford highboy roadster with a turbine engine from a helicopter! Lots of chrome, and a huge "exhaust pipe". I know photos of it have been posted before, hopefully someone will repost them, or know who the owner is. Seems to me it made two passes that day, and not fast, but definitely an attention getter. It also was a street driven car.
I am Butch/56sedandelivery.

 

Tens. Tens of thousands of miles w/a torque-fest Buick. Pull that truck & trailer nicely.

 

I wasn't going to post, but what he said was the first thing that I thought of. I understand about the hot rod history, but personally, a SBC is the uncoolest engine anyone could use, in anything. The last rod show that I went to, all but ONE had a SBC. Cool isn't what everyone is doing. Cool is different. I don't really care about what other people think. That's my opinion. Everyone is entitled to one. I think that does add to the conversation though. Hot Rodding is all about innovation and uniqueness to me. The SBC doesn't contribute to that at all.


I'd have any Hemi or a SOHC FE. A supercharged Ardun Flathead would be nice too.

As for post '65 powerplants, the BMW V12 looks good done right. The Coyote with the SOHC valve covers. Boss 429. New gen Hemi.

 

^ ^ ^ ^ ^

Just goes to prove the old adage: "Opinions are like assholes - everybody's got one". I'd further add, "......and some people ARE one."

 

I seem to recall reading that it was in the Lemay collection.