Hot Rods Olds Rocket engine with crazy work done

Weren't the center exhaust ports siamesed on the Olds heads?

 

Man, someone did a bunch of work to that! Very cool find.

 

Wilcap machine shop used to do that stuff all the time.. There is about a hundred machines that could do the work easily; another hundred that took some operator ability and another hundred with some operator imagination and I'm leaving a few out...

 

Blocks were cheap and there were some that were drilled and all-thread cross bolts were added to keep the halves together. Another method was to drill extra holes where the valley cover went and add a steel plate to tie it all together

 

No but you have to consider the age of the block.

 

To quote Dolly Parton "It takes a lot of money to look this cheap".
I'd bet money they didn't even check crank to belhousing bore with an indicator.

 

Yes they were. It was supposedly a problem. I own a dirt modified that ran in the sixties with a 324 Olds. I am missing the engine that was in it, but I have spoken to one of the original owners and builders, and he told me that the engine was heavily modified and one of the major modifications was enlarging the center exhaust port, installing a divider, and running four pipes on a side. Unfortunately, all of my old pictures of the original car are back in Minnesota while I am in Florida for the winter. I'll try to remember to look for them when I get back.

I do have one picture of the car back in the day on this computer. It is not very clear, but they had orange rubber balls shoved into the exhaust pipes. If you look closely, I think you might be able to see two pipes in the middle, each with an orange ball.

Don't you love the tow vehicle for the parade and the period stores? "Montgomery Ward" and "Coast to Coast"? How mid-century mid-America can you get?

 

Maybe not? May have been a large portion of luck in just not knowing how close things have to be to be right. As bad as some things can be built they can also just work; until they don't. I'm trying to grasp what the intake manifold started out as. 4 x 2v and moded for a one 4v rule??

 

I wouldn't be surprised to find out it was built on a dirt floored garage with a shelf full of trophies. As nasty as the thing looked on the outside I was pleased and surprised the innards where so clean.

 

I imagine the bell housing mods are related to it having that Ford top loader 4 speed behind it.

 

Bandit billy It Was built in a dirt floor barn surrounded by orange orchards. Although the barn was full of heavy duty milling machines, lathes, drill presses,huge power hammer, and other machines all large wwII or older.

 

Yep, that's a great picture. Looks like the racer is being towed by an old Rumley or Hoyt-Clagwell tractor.

The only reason that I even thought about the Olds' exhaust ports is because of some of the stories told by a good friend of mine years ago. He was involved in drag racing with these early Rocket engines in the '60s in Stock/Jr. Stock classes. The NHRA rules at the time required stock head castings with no porting and no material added or removed. And the siamesed exhaust ports on the Olds heads were considered to be a bottleneck. So at least some racers, for some period of time, developed a workaround. Though I don't know how much of an improvement it made with the stock head castings.

Since they couldn't really modify the heads legally they would instead modify the headers by welding a tab in the middle of them that extended into the center exhaust port when bolted onto the head, fitting them to the shape of the port as much as possible. But considering the relatively small size of the siamesed port I suppose that they might have added enough additional restriction to largely offset any benefit from splitting the port.

To eliminate revealing their modification if the car had to go thru tech, they'd remove all but one header bolt and lay a towel over the header and valve cover. When the inspector got there they'd remove the last bolt and pull the header and the towel away from the head. The other edge of the towel would slide down from the valve cover and drop down to conceal the exhaust ports and the tab on the header. Though I'm sure it didn't take too long for the tech inspectors and other racers to figure out what was going on. And I suppose this could have been one of those tricks that didn't prove to be that helpful and was soon forgotten about.

 

Engine number ID's block as a 1956 324

No expert however taking a stab in the dark. Bellhousing could be Ford FE with dual bolt patterns to suit early (Pre-65) and later top-loaders. Early FE's used Bednix starter so bellhousing had a large bulge for starter whereas later housing doesn't have the bulge. Top-loader appears to from a Galaxie due to long extension housing.

• 1964-65 Fairlanes -25-1/2"
• AC Cobras (427/428), all Mustangs, Falcons, Mavericks, Cougars, 1966-67 Fairlanes and Comets - 24 "
• Full size cars, Cyclones and Torinos (428/429) - 27"

 

Yes it’s a 64 galaxie 390 toploader according to the tag and case numbers

 

Your probably right. It's been a long time since I've actually seen a first gen 4 speed. At first glance I thought it was a 3 speed Overdrive. Looks like a solenoid on the right side of the tailshaft housing. I went back a looked again. Looks like a dip in the tail housing for the factory 4 speed shifter. I missed that first time around. I also thought the first gen 4 speed was a 3 piece case. Like I said, been a long time. Kool stuff for sure!

 

That's awesome! What an interesting engine to pull apart.

 

Pulled the bellhousing and found a Scheifer clutch bolted on with Mr. Gasket grade 8 bolts and a Scheifer flywheel. Then removed the aluminum spacer plate check out how everything was held together

 

What is the DPCD Mopar emblem on? Is that the aluminum plate between block and bellhousing?

Dave

 

Yes that’s on the plate between bellhousing and block

 

More crazy stuff, is the Mopar plate part of a factory setup?

 

In the latest photos there is a "reducer" ring in the belhousing bore.........thoughts?

 

That Mopar plate sorta looks like the one I took off a Desoto Hemi 25 years ago.

 

That thing is crazy cool! I´d love to hear it run!

 

The cam says Super Full revmaster Iskenderian 4 j-33 no guarantee