Hot Rods Kurtis Hemi Roadster

Great article! Hope my picture is of help to you. They didn't let the 331 run the track in '52, but I got my one lap in last month with my 331 at the Indy Goodguys show, 70 MPH on the backstretch, and I had this straight axeled '36 Hemi powered pickup leaning over hard in the third turn. The track lap was much more fun than I expected!

 

Saw it run at the Miller meet in Milwaukee in 2007... amazing!

 

Maybe from a Poly Motor? I know they had a 6.62 and a 6.358 rod.

 

301 Poly, 331, and 354 still had a stroke of 3.625. Just smaller pistons (3.625" diameter pistons). 6.625 long connecting rods for all low-deck stuff.

 

Interesting car. I have seen this Kurtis Hemi run at the Milwaukee Mile during the Miller Meet the three times I attended this gathering. The color photos in the first post were taken at the Miller Meet. The engine is a Chrysler 331, with a custom set of Stewart Hilborn injectors and lessons learned from running the Chrysler Hemi at Le Mans.

During the Miller Meet, I spoke with the owner and his chief mechanic about the car. Briefly in 1952 Chrysler decided to take advantage of a USAC rule that allowed stock block engines of up to 5.0 liters displacement (335 cu in); in contrast the limit for overhead cam racing engines, such as the Offy 4-banger, was 4.5 liters (274 cu in).

The Kurtis Hemi was used as a Firestone tire test vehicle and was lapping faster than the qualifying times of the 1951 Indy. When the word got out how fast the Hemi was lapping, the old boy network had the rules changed in time to prevent the Hemi from entering the Indy 500. There were unsuccessful attempts to qualify a Chrysler with displacement reduced to 270 cu in. Tony Capanna and others tried to qualify a stock displacement 270 Dodge Hemi a few years later but without success, as it was difficult to squeeze the same RELIABLE power out of the OHV V8 compared to the twin overhead cam Offys.

Here is a relevant link:

http://www.thehemi.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=14786

While at the Miller Meet, I took a few photos of the engine compartment, which are very similar to the others already posted. I have included one “birds-eye” snapshot.

If you are interested in seeing a little Dodge Hemi with Hilborns (?%$#@!) in a 50s style track roadster go to:

http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=356019&highlight=track+roadster

trakrodstr
aka charlie

 

I was just going to say that I pulled the old Tex Smith Mopar book out, and in the Hemi white paper article it mentions several 270 or so inch Desotos and Dodge motored Indy cars. Nothing about this car though. It is truly beautiful!

 

I shouldn't be allowed to post while working graveyards! Rod change would only change compression. So, they destroked it to slow engine down for reliability and then bumped up compression to make up horsepower?

 

That is a great car, and it has a great caretaker as well, Joe started out with Ford 4Banger Sprint Cars years ago, this is just a natural progression. There was a special "HEMI Powered" cl*** at the Fairfield Concourse last month, this car was there a**** the HEMI powered Cunninghams. Hope he joins in the thread with some info on the car and driving it.

 

What year was it Penske entered the 5.0L OHV Mercedes (or something like that) and just killed the compe***ion? I think USAC / IRL ? CART banned that also. Gary

 

Interesting. Hadn't heard about the later attempts with the Dodge 270. Is there an article about this somewhere? I would like to read it.

In the article you linked to (which is also in the first post) they mention...

Any mention of this by the owner?

Reducing stroke allows the engine to rev at a higher RPM, which I believe means more top end. (I believe that's the theory, in so few words) You lose lower end torque consequently, which is why they probably had difficulties "not pulling as well out of the turns". 7000 rpm's is some serious revving for a Hemi.

 

So did I miss the boat with this statement from the article:

Are they basically alluding to de-stroking that 331? Is that the wrong ***umption? It doesn't say what the engine actually was, but being that Chrysler is the topic in the test bed, I was ***uming that's what happened here. De-stroke to increase revs and reduce overall cubic inches.

 

The Hemi in my folk's 53 DeSoto was a 276. Gary

 

From my little bit of research today, trackroadsters description of how it went down seemed accurate. The stock block rules went away seemingly about the time this car came to be, and later they tried to work within the rules with the smaller motors and had several reliability issues.

 

Was was mentioned by Need Louvers, it's on pg 8 of the Tex Smith Hemi Book. Says a dodge Hemi in '55, & a DeSoto in'58

5.0=apx 305

 

Here is a bit more on Tony Capanna’s Dodge Red Ram efforts at Indy. BTW I spoke with Tony, by phone, a few time early in my Dodge Hemi project. What a privilege, I think he was in his late 80s, I bought a flywheel from his son Lloyd, who died unexpectedly before his father. Tony died not long after Lloyd... what a shame to loose all that fantastic knowledge. Their company Wilcap is still in business.

The text below is lifted from the following web page:

http://www.hemmings.com/mus/stories/2004/03/01/hmn_feature8.html


“A good early example of this phenomenon was the arrival at Indianapolis of California hot rodder Tony Capanna, who with Red Wilson formed Wil-Cap, an early dyno-tuning and engine shop in Los Angeles. Capanna looked on with interest at an effort to run a Chrysler Hemi-powered roadster at Indianapolis in 1953 that came to naught. Capanna, a dry lakes emeritus, was already familiar with the early Hemi and in 1954, began working independently on a Chrysler Indy engine. He quickly realized the bottom end was weak and fabricated his own billet crankshaft, in addition to cutting new rods out of aluminum stock with a band saw. He headed for the 1955 race with the rebuilt engine in Jimmy Bryan's second-place car from 1954.
Chrysler, which had gotten wind of the project and observed a full-throttle dyno pull of the engine by Capanna, supplied him with a fresh 270-cu.in. Red Ram block and cylinder heads and sent several engineers to the race. Patrick McGu ire, who today owns Wil-Cap, recalled that after the work that was needed to make the engine oval-compe***ive, "stock" became a relative term.
"Tony dropped the center of gravity bygoing to a dry-sump system and ran a smaller clutch, so by the time he was done with it, it really didn't resemble a stock block," McGuire said. "His big interest was fuel, and he was really tipping the can, probably a 50-50 mix." In the end, driver Bob Christie was on the back straight heading for the green on his qualifying run when the engine locked up and spun him into the wall. Capanna said inadequate oiling had seized two main bearings, which some onlookers, eyes smarting from its nitromethanelaced exhaust, felt obliged to question.

 

Wow!! That's really cool info! And Pat McGuire is FANTASTIC to work with, I might add. I've spent a lot of time chatting with Pat regarding Hemi stuff. Never knew the relationship of how Wilcap came to be. I'll have to pick Pat's brain on this stuff as well.

 

Wonderful people indeed at Wil-Cap

Will- for Red Wilson

Cap- for Tony Capanna

During our telephone conversations I suggested to Tony, and later to Lloyd, that he (they) should make an oral history of Tony’s gearhead life. Tony poo-pooed the idea by asking...”who would be interested”. I can’t tell you how many times I have lain awake at night wishing I had got off my *** and spent a few days recording Tony’s memory bank (***uming he would have let me do so). Unfortunately I lived in Charleston SC at the time and Wilcap is in Calif...

Oh well, in my next lifetime I will complete more of my good intentions.

charlie

 

My guess on the copper tubing, is it go's into the draft tube. ??--TV

 

Chrysler dealer Roger Walcott had this one off Kurtis Kraft 500A roadster built for him, which was a new design especially for this engine. The Hemi was created by Chrysler engineers and the combo of the car and engine was incredibly fast. Basically what happened was the car was involved in tire testing for Firestone at Indy and the cars lap times were several miles per hour faster than all of the Offenhausers which everyone else ran. As soon as this was discovered the Offy owners banded together and ended up getting the bigger engine banned and they were forced to go to the smaller displacement which took away its edge and made it uncompe***ive. If they had not run that tire test and things went well and they did not show all their cards, it might have won the 500.

It belongs to a good friend of mine and it is the real thing and its history is do***ented. He has even uncovered the Chrysler engineering data for the car. I will try to have him put something together to post.

Stop by the website, theoldmotor.com to read a post about this car and to see more photos. We also have many other racing posts and thousands of photos.

 

OH! That makes since... Wil-Cap

For those of you that don't know what we're referring to (and you probably do) this is Wilcap:

http://www.wilcap.com/

 

Tony



Probably one of the Indy Red Ram 270's that's in discussion:



And on a side note... I would LOVE it if Pat got something going with Wilcap/Sharp to get Aluminum heads out the door. Hot Heads wants entirely too much money for their chunks of aluminum...

 

Thanks for the marvelous post and the link to the oldmotor page. Great stuff.

charlie

 

Boy have you got that right. I began dealing with the founder of Hot Heads, Mike McCloud (sp?) and since he sold out to the present owner... let's just say things have not remained on the original trajectory......

I would settle for a modern aluminum 1x4bbl manifold for the hi deck (315/325) Dodges...

 

Is Bob Walker the "present owner" you speak of? Didn't realize Bob wasn't the originator. Learned MORE stuff today.

Someone REALLY needs to give HH some compe***ion with those heads.

 

Here's some pics of the first "Firestone Test Car" (1952 Kurtis Kraft 500A Roadster #355-52) at the 2006 Amelia Island Concours d'Elegance:

click thumbnails to enlarge
NOTE: All images from conceptcarz.com ​

 

... at the 2007 Monterey Historic Automobile Races at Laguna Seca:

click thumbnails to enlarge
NOTE: All images from conceptcarz.com ​

 

... and at the 2011 Amelia Island Concours d'Elegance:

click thumbnails to enlarge
NOTE: All images from conceptcarz.com ​

 

Here's a low rez video I took at the Miller meet.

 

Here is a pic of the engine front, showing a road draft tube. I would guess the copper tubes are air in, from the little scoop on the cowl.




Here are some more pics I took.