All time greatest engine?

283,327,318,300 six

 

I gotta throw in my 2 cents worth here, knowing that there will never be a definitive answer that everyone will agree on.

Personally I might lean towards the flathead Ford V-8 for historic and nostalgic reasons.

But I think that a very strong arguement can be made for the Chevy V-8 for the following reasons:

It's immense popularity.
It's longevity.
It's innovative design in it's time.
It's track record.

Below is a list of NHRA record holders taken from the 1961 Hot Rod Annual. Notice that roughly half of the national record holders were Chevy V-8 powered. This far surpasses any other engine in 1961 which argueably may be considered the hayday of hot rodding. That's my 2 cents.

 

Most of my favorite engines have been mentioned. There is no simple answer to what's best. Answering that required a more specific question.

- Early hemis were best suited to supercharging and nitro. They were not the best for many other automotive uses.

- Rules adjustments did help, but the toughness of the Offy engine allowed it to stayed around long after better technology should have made it obsolete.

- The flathead was popular and a lot was done with it, but even in it's day it was far from being state of the art.

- Wankel/rotary engines have some advantages, but there is are reasons why they never displaced 4-stroke engines.

- With respect to economic manufacture, the Vega engine was a landmark engine.

 

Small block Chevy.... maybe not the most powerful or the most unique but definantly the most used, the numbers dont lie!

 

Me I am voting Hemi.

 

Has anyone here actually, seen, heard of or was able to blow up a slant 6 other than draining the oil and water out and puttin a stick on the go pedal?
That is my engine of choice......of course I don't require a 500 hp engine in my cars.

 

FE Ford.

NASCAR was brought up earlier. Seems like FEs didn't do too bad there. . . or in T-bolts, or LeMans, or. ..

 

I like those 300s too, but I thought they were some heavy bastards. There was a swap article in a mag a decade or so ago where a 460 was swapped in a truck and actually weighed less than the 300 that was there first. I don't know for sure though--never messed with a 460 myself.

 

ah finally i know why dogs like sniffing me .......i have a SBC

 

Popularity doesn't necessarily mean "better".

 

I have to go with the four stroke gas fired piston engine. You rarely see a hot rod powered by anything else.

 

mopar????????????

 

I'll go with this one.

My big sisters generation leaned towards olds and caddy for valve in head engines. The Ol' Man thought that nailheads were the tits.

But for my crowd it was either a flatty or an SBC. Heavier on the SBC I'm afraid.

If you were building an F-1 when I was a kid it was still the olds motor. They were a shoe in and made lots of car hauling torque. But that was pretty much the exception at the time for the group I was around.

I was going to mention that also but not many rods got screwed together with 'em. They have got to be the all time best engines period. You just gotta love an Offy, I just love the sound of one, kind of like a swarm of bees.

 

Gotta be the Chrysler HEMI……..what’s the claimed HP today?... 9000

 

Just because it's a free for all and none of you can kick my ass over the internet..


I mean, imagine if this car had made it to 2010.. Fuel injected, all aluminum, turbocharged four speed rear engined plastic crapbox GM car? I would like that better than a dodge neon anyway..

Try putting a SBC in an airplane..

Oh yeah but they make about 80 horsepower and throw fan belts and rods like nobody's business.. not to mention the.. unsafe part..

 

Flathead Ford the beginning of Hot Rodding? Gave birth to the aftermarket Speed industry? Oh how the young like to think they discovered everything. Ever hear of Ford Fours? Miller heads? Roof heads? For Dodge Bros. engines and Chevrolets. How about the OHV heads that Chevrolet made for Ford Ts. Multy cams? There was a strong speed equipment industry long before there was a Ford V8. The world didn't start when Hot Rod Magazine began publishing.

 

Slant Six! Industeructable!!! Split headers and glasspacks nice sound and rap!

 

OK, bear with me a minute...

Just imagine that you were an architect and you designed a really neat house that was diferent from any other house in America....and within 6-years EVERY SINGLE HOUSE built in America had copied your design!!! Wouldn't you say that you had created a great design?

A man named Charles H. Kettering, a design engineer with General Motors did exactly that when he disigned the 1949 Cadillac and 1949 Oldsmobile V-8's.

90-degree V-8, cam in block, pushrod-rocker arm overhead valves, 5-main bearings, etc. etc. etc...Sound familiar?

By about 1955 or 1956, EVERY MANUFACTURER in America was offering this basic new design!

Yes, many minor improvements have been made since then, but the basic design is still being used today, 61-years later.

JG

 

Briggs and Stratton..proven over time, and still going strong (we all have at least one).
Seriously though:
SBC #1
Flathead Ford #2
Chrysler Hemi #3
Based on the fact that this is a traditional site. Reasons are obvious and stated many times on here already.

 

And there you go. You would be the supreme commander of all mortal beings with one of these in your hot rod, or your plane.
SBC has to be the BEST hands down, ALL the Street Rodders have one, OOOps.

 

They did a lot with the OEM hardware, but that was then. The current fuel dragster engines are whittled from solid(billet). Prior to that stronger aftermarket castings were used. The factory pieces could not support the power those cars have today.

 

Ford 427 s.o.h.c cammer,ford 289 271 hi po, ford flathead

 

as far as numbers are concerned the sbc,but i do not like most chevy engines the 409 the exception.a hot rod is what YOU want it to be.i've done a lot of engine swaps.i've never swapped a chevy in any thing except a 409 in a corvair.i like the unusal like a studebaker v8 in a 55 chevy conv.,460 ford in a camero,olds 400 in a nova,425 buick in a 56 chevy,so i would go with what you like.my current project is a 28 chevy p/u with a 289 studebaker v-8/5-speed out of a mustang
the yblock is and was my engine of choice. in 56-57 the y-block won 84 nascar races the sbc only 45.i can't help but wonder what would have happened if ford had put in as much time and money as gm put in the sbc???

there are alum. heads now for the y-block which pulled 56 hp right out of the box.the heads were cast by eldebrock but do not look for them in there catalog.mummert has them his web site is ford-y-block.com

 

From a historical hotrodding view point,

In the teens and 20's, Bangers started kicking ass when the aftermarket started supplying parts

Then came the Flathead which kicked ass for years to come


the hemi was next up in 1951~

sbc was to late to rate (even though it was two Ford Engineers who designed it).



.

 

Yes, but. The design wasn't really new in '49. Just new to the US market. As we all know the 1917 Chevrolet or something like that, had a pushrod OHV V8. Dont know how many mains it had. In WW1 OHV V8 aircraft engines were pretty common. I bet they had 5 mains. Really hard to be first with anything.

 

My freind could build them pontiac 400's with crazy torque. One was in a 64 gto conv.one in a 68 firebird,Brother had one in a 68. Sticks in my head as a truly outstanding engine.Ive had sbc ehh
shovelhead #1

 

Say WHAT??!!

 

Briggs & Stratton and SBC have a LOT in common...Cheap, common, sound like crap, unattractive to look at...Hmmm, come to think of it, that describes some of the women I have dated over the years...

 

Studebaker was way ahead of the major car makers. They had a super chargers on their v/8 in the early fifties. They were also understood wind resistance way before the top three auto makers.

How about the Chevy iron duke in 62?

The engineers that designed the sbc worked for Ford. Therefore the flathead was the design basis for the sbc. This makes the Ford flathead the all time outstanding engine.

I kind of like the John Deere 1 1/2 Hit and miss engines. They used the same design on the 3HP and the 5HP hit and miss engines and you could use them to boil your eggs.

This thread will not change what people think.

 

Still have a '79 Toro with a 3.5 horse B&S motor... Still runs like the day my dad first bought it.. always starts on the first pull..