283 vs 426 Hemi

[Joe Werner]

This prolly sounds like a dumb question though. A guy told me this story of this guy who had a 1957 chevrolet with a 283 drag car. this guy raced another guy with a 426 hemi and the guy with the 283 smoked the guy witth the 426. In any way could this be possible. I wasnt born yet during the muscle car era. so i dont really know what these cars were caple of. (Im only 16)

[DizzyDale]

Dear Joe,There are no dumb questions.Your story is certainly possible.The small block Chevy is for sure the most modified engine ever for a number of reasons parts availability and cost being the top two.The Hemi produces a ton of torque the Chevy likes to rev so it was probably a matter of the Chevy gettin the jump off the line while the Hemi spun the tires all the way thru 2nd gear and never got the power to the ground.Depending how far they ran the Hemi woulda caught him,my guess is the Hemi just ran outta room.Horsepower doesn't mean anything if you can't put the power to the ground. diz

[Guest]

Joe: While it is possible that the story you where told may be true, but I kind of doubt it..

Now let me tell you about my experience racing a 396 cid Chevy against a 426 cid Hemi.

Now keep in mind that I am 55 years old. Back in the early 70's I owned a 66 Chevy Caprice with a 396 rated at 325 horse power equiped with a 3 speed automatic transmision. While doing some street racing one night I came up against a Road Runner equiped with the Hemi and 4 speed. When the light turned green,low and behold to my suprise I got the jump on him out of the hole,everything was going fine for me till that fellow hit 3rd gear in his car and just plain stomped my Chevy in the ground in one city block

[Guest BruceW]

Dix has a possible point. I've seen a lot of cars producing high HP and loads of torque not able to make decent 1/4 miles times because the power couldnt make traction with the pavement.. either because of the design of the car or inexperience of the driver. If the Chevy was a drag car (as mentioned in the initial post) then its possible the chassis was set up properly and had nil tire spin on take off which would give it a lot of advantage over a stock vehicle that had lousy traction.

[Charles2]

Back in the 50's, a guy named Art Afrons from Ohio was running dragsters with Allison aircraft engines in them. I don't know the displacement of the engines but I do recall that they were supercharged, magneto ignition V-16's delivering well over 1000 hp. As I recall, they didn't do all that well against the souped-up Hemis' of those days. Probably had something to do with the difference in power bands between auto and aircraft engines. I think that modern SBC engines would beat the Allisons hands-down today unless the Allisons were re-engineered for auto use. Supercharging and magnetos don't make for quick throttle response or a "flexible" power delivery.

[DizzyDale]

OFF TOPIC BUT THATS WHAT WE DO BEST ..........Dear Joe,There are NHRA Competition Eliminator racers that are pulling over 800 horsepower out of normally aspirated small block Chevrolets.A number of years ago a racer from Texas had a cam grinder change the firing order of a small block cause he found out it made more power.WHATEVER it TAKES.diz

[Twitch]

It's possible. All there had to be was a minor misfire or something minor to detract from performance and the 283 could have smoked the hemi. Was the 426's valve lash adjusted right? Were the points set properly? Wa there a crosfiring plug wire? How far did they race? A true 1/4 mile= 1,320 feet or a "couple blocks?" Lost of actual quarter mile contests will have the loser out in front all the way to 1000 feet. In pro-stock where cars are pretty closely matched the car that makes the most HP will win at the stripe due to the extra power even coming from slightly behind.

Reaction times in pro drag racing has made more upsets than horsepower has won. It may not seem like it but leaving late off the line will spell defeat. And as others have noted, hooking up the HP to the ground is important. Be 4 hundreths of a second late leaving and get a half second of tire spin where the car isn't moving forward and you lost.

I had a 371 Olds in a '57 98. No lightweight but 277HP. A guy in a Chevelle with a 283 stick beat me one out of 3 races where we raced which was as close to a 1/4 mile as we could figure.

[Guest PRR]

> <span style="font-style: italic">Art Afrons ...dragsters with Allison aircraft engines....</span>

The Allison started around 1928 when Mr Allison got annoyed at a junky motorboat engine and built his own. It was good but not a big seller. He tried to sell it to the Army Air Corps as a dirigible engine, but that was not a big market. Over in England Rolls Royce Merlin engine powered an advanced race seaplane that became the Spitfire, hero of the early war over England. The US Mustang was a similar airplane, the Allison was a similar engine, and a lot of Mustangs were built with Allisons.

> <span style="font-style: italic"> I don't know the displacement of the engines but I do recall that they were supercharged, magneto ignition V-16's delivering well over 1000 hp.</span>

It was a V-12 (not 16) of 1,710 cubic inches (say 4 times bigger than the Hemi). With a blower, but you could not really use boost on the ground, it was for maintaining power at high altitude (above the reach of enemy guns). Magneto of course: you didn't trust cheap 1930s distributors any further than you wanted to fall. 4 valves per cylinder (48 valves to adjust!). No head gasket: barrels were shrunk into the heads. Rated power varied from 850 to over 1,200 depending on year and model, and this was for steady reliable flight: you could push it a bit for take-off, and quite a lot if you were in big trouble. Because of the large size, rated power happened at roughly 2,500 RPM.

After the war, until at least 1957, you could buy new/surplus Allisons for not a lot more than their scrap-metal value. They didn't fit anything. Unlimited speedboats did use the Allisons and the Merlins, until turbines took over. But several people tried them as drag racers.

> <span style="font-style: italic">As I recall, they didn't do all that well against the souped-up Hemis' of those days.</span>

Yeah. The Allison probably weighed 400 pounds more than an iron Hemi, but that does not explain it. The tires of the day could not take the power of a blown Hemi, so even though the Allison might have more power than the first blown Hemis it could not put it down. Also the displacement and the power RPM suggests torque far over 1,500 lb.ft.! And if the Hemis were running 4:1 axle ratio, the low-RPM Allison should run maybe 2.5:1 axle, and it is hard to find a high-torque axle in that ratio.

For more fun: the Allison, like most large mature piston propeller engines, was geared DOWN to the prop. The prop turned ~1,300 RPM eating ~3,000 lb.ft. torque. And this shaft came out high on the engine. Gearing the Allison down to slicks means a lot of very strong custom gearing. Or a lot of breakage, or gentle driving.

BTW: no flywheel on a flying Allison. The propeller was more than ample "flywheel", and it needs no clutch. So a lot of custom mechanism to use it in a car.

A propeller turns easy at low RPM, an airplane engine only needs power at high RPM. The centrifugal blower is just fanning at low RPM. But a car can use full torque at any RPM. Maybe it turned out that an Allison was gutless until it got to 2,000RPM. Then it pulled like a Mustang through 2,500 RPM, and in a land-race you could take it to 3,000RPM before it wheezed or burst. But then you'd have to grab another gear, and there are few 1,500 lb.ft. gearboxes. Meanwhile the Hemis could sag to 2,000RPM with some torque, then spin far past 4,000 or even 6,000 RPM (for a few seconds), and with the Rootes blower give a fairly flat torque curve.

I suspect a fully developed Allison, with Rootes blower and special clutch and axle, would be an interesting drag engine. But by 1960 the surplus engines were gone, while junkyards were full of old Chrysler Hemis.

[Guest imported_PackardV8]

I'll go one further than that: the 283 is most likely still running to this day while the 426 Hemi is scattered in pieces or recycled into Kia. Back in the early 60's as much as 500 hp was obtained from 283's with blowers and other mods strictly for racing. The so-called big-block engines (including Packard and chev) are more or less TRUCK engines rather than high performance automobile engines. The SBC has not stayed with us for 50 years because it has (or ever had) any deficiencies in any expectations of engine requirements. The SBC is no doubt the 8th wonder of the world.

[Guest imported_PackardV8]

PRR wrote: "But by 1960 the surplus engines were gone, while junkyards were full of old Chrysler Hemis."

YES! One must seperate that which was built for a man from the toys that are made for kids. The 0-60 crowd along with the People Magazine crowd has greatly clouded the true concept of performance as well as the autombile in general.

[Guest Silverghost]

The V12 Allison was a good aircraft engine...

The Rolls~Royce Merlin was a GREAT aircraft engine... An Allison powered P51 Mustang is lame compared to the V12 Merlin... This engine put into the Spitfire + P51 did much to win the war...and save England + the Free world!!! Hermin Goering is said to have stated when he first heard a Merlin he knew that the war was lost!!!

The Rolls~Royce Meteor was similar to the Aircraft Merlin...but was used in ground applications (some Tanks etc...) These can still be found via surplus today... I know of several friends who have these in their old antique mahogany speedboats!!!

[Aanderson44]

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">This prolly sounds like a dumb question though. A guy told me this story of this guy who had a 1957 chevrolet with a 283 drag car. this guy raced another guy with a 426 hemi and the guy with the 283 smoked the guy witth the 426. In any way could this be possible. I wasnt born yet during the muscle car era. so i dont really know what these cars were caple of. (Im only 16) </div></div>

Joe,

Not at all impossible, nor even improbable. Of course, keep in mind that with motorsports, a winning effort comes from the successful ocmbination of car, engine and driver.

1962, for example, was a year of the seemingly impossible in drag racing. At the NHRA Nationals at Indianapolis Raceway Park (Now called the US nationals), "Sneaky" Pete Robinson stunned the rail dragster contingnet by taking top eliminator with a suercharged 283 Chevy "Rail" dragster, beating out a number of Hemi-powered dragsters in the event. HOwever, those were not the legendary 416 Hemi (which was still 2 years away), but the venerable 1957-58 392cid Hemi--a much heavier chunk of cast iron--arguably the heaviest engine then in use in drag racing.

The other major upset came in SuperStock--where factory-backed 413 Wedge powered Dodges and Plymouths mopped up the competition, with AUTOMATIC transmissions, in the day when S/S was the territory of the fastest speed-shifting drivers in town! Of course, the trannies used were the legendary Chrysler Torqueflytes, complete with push-button controls.l

Even with such early wins as by Pete Robinson in NHRA, the small-block Chevy wasn't all that highly regarded as the basis for a race engine just yet--sure, they became standard powerplants for USAC, IMCA and other sprint car circuits by 1964 or so, and did toerably well in drag racing, but that was about it. A lot of this can trace back to GM's corporate unwillingness to support racing efforts using GM products, even in the face of all-out efforts by Frod across the entire scope of motorsports, and Chrysler in both NHRA and Nascar in the 1960's. The other area of success for the SM Chevy V8 came in road racing with Chapparal Cars in the mid-late 60's, but in Can-Am, it was the big block that ruled the day.

In drag racing though, it's as much a matter of power-weight ratio, and the ability to "hook up" coming out of the hole--and the driver who can do that stands a pretty good chance of a solid run.

Art

[Guest De Soto Frank]

I too have heard of Fords and Chevys beating out big Chrysler Wedges and Hemis off the line, and then a few seconds later, the MoPar zooming by and leaving the "lead car" in the dust...

Has a lot to do with power-to-weight ratio...

Also has to do with how those respective drag cars were set-up...you can build a race car that's a "dog" with even the best of engines...

Heck, stock Model T Fords could beat most other cars of the '20s & early '30s off the line...and keep the lead for probably 100 yards or so...then the bigger cars would leave the Flivver far, far behind...this was because the T was so light...they also had a top speed of about 40-45 mph (again, stockers).

The small-block Chevy is certainly a well-designed and amazing engine...

I think the 283 was one of the finer variants...certainly has enough oomph to make the family grocery-getter fun to drive...

The big old Hemis are fine motors too, but they are HEAVY and complex.

The Chrysler 300 with the 331 Hemi in 1955 were the first mass-production cars to offer 300 HP...this is off the dealer's lot, mind you ...while the 300 chassis and body were still a whale of a car, they were pretty fearsome performers...

Just my humble opinions...

I was afraid you were going to ask us about dropping a Hemi into your '57 in place of the 283 ...

[jerry burger]

my two cents,if you go back far enough the roll s got it design roots from early allison designs the late ones used allison rods and the allison lacked the dual supercharging of the rolls.with the same supercharging the allison put out more than the rolls.the military needed aircraft so bad curtiss was asked to build the p-51 but they couldnt keep up p-40 orders.enter north american who said they could do it.the oroginal plans for the 51 came from curtiss and north american produced it.it became our supreme fighter.but dont knock the allison

with dual stage supercharging it worked well on the p-38,and put out as much power.

[Oxnard Montalvo]

P38

Where do you put the Superchargers?

[Guest PRR]

Wow. I really stirred-up an old thread.

> <span style="font-style: italic">Herman Goering is said to have stated when he first heard a Merlin he knew that the war was lost!!!</span>

Great quote but unlikely, because the Spitfire with Merlin II was contracted in 1934, operational in 1938. Herman and friends were surely well aware of the machine. Herman would have been betting that planes like the Me 109 would compare well against the Spitfire. It was a close fight and many-many words have been said about the Spitfire versus Me109.

> <span style="font-style: italic">The V12 Allison was a good aircraft engine... The Rolls~Royce Merlin was a GREAT aircraft engine... An Allison powered P51 Mustang is lame compared to the V12 Merlin...</span>

I've heard that, but have never had the pleasure of flogging them side by side. I'd take either one.

> <span style="font-style: italic">if you go back far enough the roll s got it design roots from early allison designs</span>

I've heard it the other way too.

Clearly both are sired by the WWI Liberty V-8 and V12 engines. The dimensions are all similar, and the Liberty was very widely known. A decade or two of development wrought GREAT improvements, of course; and most improvements were widely-known but needed to find practical implementation. "Practical" limits how you actually do it. Designs tend to converge.

> <span style="font-style: italic">the late ones used allison rods .... the military needed aircraft so bad</span>

The one implies the other. In war, design and production get optimized. Willys designed a great little scout car but Ford made a majority of WWII Jeeps; Ford had the factory. Allison got joined into GM, who also had a factory and could turn out piles of parts, assisting R-R and the other GB makers if that helped. Packard's Twin Six was an early V-12, they grew it into large speedboat engines with much better power/weight ratio than traditional marine engines, then scrapped their pre-war automobile body tooling (Stalin got it) and built a LOT of aircraft engines. They designed a radial but nobody used it, so they built whatever engine or parts the War Dept needed.

> <span style="font-style: italic">the allison lacked the dual supercharging of the rolls. with the same supercharging the allison put out more than the rolls.</span>

Both engines were made with various blowers and power ratings. You may be right that Allison never grew 2-stage supercharging, which gives a modest (but potentially vital) improvement in the altitude/power curve. The actual power rating, and the manifold pressure chart in the cockpit, was based not on maximum possible power (as we do in car engines) but on power versus life. A 400HP car can't run 400HP for more than a few seconds without getting a speeding ticket or flying off the outside of a turn. An airplane has to run at high power to stay up, and may be asked to run hard for hours at a time and hundreds of hours between ring-jobs. The wartime ratings rose as actual wear-experience was accumulated, as improved materials were proven, and of course as the Other Side upped the ante. I don't happen to know how the Allison does against the R-R in unlimited racing, where winning is more important than engine wear or even engine failure.

> <span style="font-style: italic">Heck, stock Model T Fords could beat most other cars of the '20s & early '30s off the line...and keep the lead for probably 100 yards or so...then the bigger cars would...</span>

<span style="font-weight: bold">AT</span> the line, speed is zero so power is zero (not counting clutch losses). Power is speed times thrust. Since speed is very small, very small power is needed to leap 0-1 MPH.

Much larger power is needed to get from 59 to 60 MPH. Power is speed times thrust. Thrust in cars is generally traction-limited. As a very round ballpark, a 2-ton 2WD car can put about 400HP to the pavement at 60MPH before wheel-spin, but only 200HP at 30MPH, 800HP at 120MPH.

Flivver is say one ton. If the tires were good, it could plant 200 HP at 60MPH. It actually had 20 HP. With the right gears, it could accelerate at near-wheelspin from zero to 6 MPH. No other 2WD car could do better (unless it had all its weight on the drive wheels, as in a dragster). The T was specifically intended to climb anything it could grip, so it probably was geared optimally for the 0-6 sprint. But a 2-ton 80 HP deluxe car would hold wheelspin up to 12MPH, trumping the Flivver after the first hundred yards. Or if the luxury car were geared for top speed with a minimum of gear-change, the Flivver might beat it 0-6 but after that the better power/weight pulls ahead and stays there.

> <span style="font-style: italic">The so-called big-block engines (including Packard and chev) are more or less TRUCK engines rather than high performance automobile engines.</span>

The Packard OHV V-8 is a monster but I'm surprised YOU call it a truck engine. It might be a great truck engine, but Packard wasn't in that market.

The Big Chevy is clearly rooted in NASCAR cheating. Mopar could claim the 426 Hemi as "stock" because they made (a different) Hemi for a decade. Ford made a SOHC Hemi that Bill France banned on sight. All production engines had valvestems in one plane; on a V-engine with simple rocker arms, that ensures ugly port kinking (especially if Ford designed it). Chevy designers tilted the valves out of that plane, got much better port shape and flow. The first "porcupine" engine appeared in NASCAR briefly before GM withdrew from racing, but the same concept was produced in the Big Chevy (and the Big Ford and the Cleveland). Yes, it is also an OK light truck engine, but not in the same league as Real Truck Engines. It will pull a 50 HP cruise for 100,000 miles; it apparently won't pull a large horse-trailer at high speed across Texas many-many times before wheezing and smoking.

[Bob Kinker]

If I remember correctly, it was Bantam that designed the Jeep. Willys may have improved the design, but Bantam was actually the Jeep first tested & accepted.

[Matt Harwood]

A lot of it is in the driver. I used to work for a well-known Corvette (and now Pontiac Solstice) tuner. We built cars and advertised that they would run 11.90s in the quarter in as-delivered condition. At one large Corvette gathering, a recent buyer of one of our cars complained long and loud at the dragstrip about how slow his car was. It wasn't much faster than a stock Corvette, and he was really doing some badmouthing and threatening us with litigation.

My boss walked up to him and said, "Give me the keys." The guy handed them over and my boss proceeded to crank off an 11.73 in the guy's car, street tires and all. He pulled up in front of the guy, shut the car off, got out, dropped the keys on the ground and walked away without a word. Very effective--shut that guy and his buddies up fast.

The driver is often the most overlooked part of a fast car...

[Ron Green]

Anything is possible as stated in many of these posts. Could be the driver, points, set-up, etc.

Having had the pleasure of riding in vehicles with each of these powerplants numerous times with a crazy car collector friend, more times then not the hemi would be far superior.

[Joe_Materasso]

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">If I remember correctly, it was Bantam that designed the Jeep. Willys may have improved the design, but Bantam was actually the Jeep first tested & accepted. </div></div>

that is absolutely correct bob; politics and the logistics of mass production resulted the department of defense sharing all of bantams r&d with ford for the majority of the jeeps produced. bantam was "thrown a bone" in the form of getting the contract to produce the rugged trailers that were designed for use with the "gp" vehicle.

talk about being chopped off at the knees! sad - but bantam just didn't have the production ability of ford and the others, despite developing the jeep from start to finish in, i believe, LESS than 45 days {someone will correct me with the exact timeframe, i'm sure!}

regards!

jm

[Guest stude8]

I wish I could lay my hands on the copy of the 1965 or 66 Car & Driver or similar magazine where they matched a 426 Plymouth Belvedere against the Buick Grand Sport 455 ? and the Buick took the match for top gun street racer. A 426 is still a tough opponent but that match was to settle the arguments, can't remember the ET's.

Stude8

[novaman]

NoW I'm going to need to do some digging and find that article about the "jeep" concept. I can't remember who's got sumbitted first but, Willys was the only one submitted under the weight limit. The jooke was "don't get any dust on it" because it came in something like less than a pound of the weight limit. As you pointed out, Batam didn't ahve the facility to mass produce them.

Now where did I put that article..........