This afternoon my friend Kevin (thatdarncat) came by with his Drag Week car for the year and we took a cruise together. I got some good pictures, so I thought I'd use this as an excuse to start up the Drag Week board a little early this year. Kevin is actually still on the waiting list for the event, but he's right near the top, so its a lock that he'll get in. He's bringing his 67 Shelby to the event; to me, it is really cool that he races an original Shelby, and he is going to take it to Drag Week this year too. Here are some pictures of his car:
For my part, I'm going with the same car as last year, my 69 Shelby clone. It has given me fits all summer long, which I will detail in a long post right before the start of the event, but it looks now like I'm going to make it with the car, so I don't need to fall back to my 69 Mach 1. Here are a couple pictures of this car:
I'd say they look pretty good together
The Cobra mural on the hood of Kevin's car is original from the 1970s, according to Kevin. He has owned the car for about 30 years.
We have both been trying to get some shakedown miles on our cars, so when Kevin came over I called my old trunk monkey Captain Stabbin' (HemiJoel on the forum), and he was naturally in the shop working on his cars, so Kevin and I took off for Joel's place about 20 miles away. Joel has been trying to get two cars ready for some events at the end of the summer, his '30s Plymouth for the hot rod class in Drag Week, and his 1929 Duesenberg, for the Duesenberg drag race on Labor Day weekend. Unfortunately for Joel, he hasn't been able to get the projects finished in time, and so he'll be skipping the Duesenberg race, and is planning on bringing his 1967 Hemi GTX convertible to Drag Week. According to Joel the GTX convertible is only one of 17 built in 67 with the Hemi, so it is an extremely rare car, and just like with Kevin's Shelby, I'm impressed that Joel is going to take that car down the track at Drag Week. It probably won't be very fast, but it WILL be very cool.
Another reason that I wanted to get over to see Joel is that his Duesenberg engine is still apart. I was very interested in seeing the guts of that thing. For those who are not familiar with them, this is a double overhead cam, 4 valve per cylinder, hemispherical combustion chamber straight 8, 420 cubic inches, and built new in 1929! It sounded super cool, so I was looking forward to the visit.
This is the sight that greeted us inside Joel's garage:
Man, that is one Looooong engine compartment! After showing us the car, Joel took us over to see the cylinder head next. Here's a few pictures of the head, cast in 1929. The lifters look like a bucket that goes over the valve springs; you can see one installed over the valve and spring in the far bank in the middle of the first photo:
Unbelievable technology for the day, and you wonder why it took Detroit another 60 years to come up with something similar. I guess pushrods are cheaper
Anyway, next Joel showed us the short block, which is now assembled:
That's Joel's Drag Week car, the 67 Hemi GTX, in the background of the second picture. (It's too bad it has one of those oily, smelly, greasy, fluid couplings in it, instead of a 4 speed
) In the Duesenberg short block, those are some real domed pistons, perfectly hemispherical on top with no valve reliefs. They are aftermarket, because the engine originally came with only 5:1 compression, due to the fuel available back in the day. According to Joel the original pistons were flat tops. And how about that 4 row timing chain! A two row chain is a duplex chain, so this must be a quadruplex chain setup. In addition to the pistons, Joel also replaced the factory connecting rods with Carillo rods. Some pictures of the original parts are shown below; in the first picture the rod babbit is chipping away, which is why Joel took the engine apart to rebuild it this year:
Aluminum rods in 1929! Unbelievable. The pistons are a unique design that thermally separate the piston skirts from the ringed portion of the pistons at the top. According to Joel, this allowed Duesenberg to run very tight clearances on the piston skirts, to eliminate noise and scuffing. Joel is a veritable fountain of information on these engines, and he is using the opportunity of rebuilding his to write a book about them.
Next Joel flipped the engine over on his custom made engine stand (modified just for this project) so we could see the bottom end. Notice that some of the main caps are 4 bolt, and you can see the Carillo rods here. They are much, much heavier than the original factory aluminum rods, so Joel will have to keep the revs down on this motor
The picture above shows a couple of innovations on this engine. There is a float around the oil pump so that the oil level can be read with a mechanical rod that is attached to the float and comes through the block, so you can check your oil level without using a dipstick. Also, that can that is attached to the crank is apparently a patented Duesenberg invention. According to Joel, it contains mercury, and along with a matching can on the other side of the crank, it balances the engine. Kind of like a Fluidampr is supposed to work.
And look at the size of the oil pan in the picture below! It is complete with a windage tray and a round seal that fits around the oil pump, so that the oil has to scavenge through the slots in the windage tray before it gets picked back up by the pump.
I have to say I came away mighty impressed by this engine, and its too bad that Joel didn't get it back together in time for the Duesenberg drag race next weekend. I'll bet he'll make it next year, though.
Kevin and I had an uneventful trip back to my place after the visit with Joel. An uneventful drive is always good in your Drag Week car LOL! Drag Week registration is two weeks from today. I think we are all getting pretty excited...
