The Chevy 6 With a V/8 Head Punch!

Seen something like this once before and it may have been this one. Wicked!

 

Very cool, and very interesting idea with the spliced V-8 cylinder head! OT or not, I dig the old Vegas, floppers or pro stock. I'd love to hear this one go down the track....it gotta sound wicked! Thanks for sharing the photos, Jeff!

 

Leo Santucci built one with a spliced V-8 head and is running a turbo its in a 54 stude one powerfull straight six.
Later
Mike

 

The spliced V-8 head swap on inline 6's was banned from certain NHRA classes about 35 years ago because they were winning all the races.

 

You are correct... Mr. Santucci actually wrote about this Chevy Six (which Jeff has posted above) in his book !

The first time out for this six, using now very very rare and expensive Corvette heads, which would be worth a ton of $ now, ran over one second faster than the record in H/G at the time....

What you do not see in the pic's is the custom side covers (below the V8 Crower Injectors also cut in half) are angled, for the push rods exitting the lifter bores, on a slight angle, to enter the V8 head... The front and rear cylinders were cut and re-welded together much like the valve cover.....

This is an awsome build by a great guy !

Thx Paul Dunbar for the educational lesson and a trip down memory lane !!!!

 

Man that's cool!

 

Here is a pic of the car as purchased.
We have known Paul for over 30 years..Spent a lot of time going up & down roads,barns and flea markets.
I applaud my friend for taking this on..

Rick

 

Here's Leo on a shakedown run with the SBC headed 6., http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrRJg_WxaCQ

 

Too cool! There's a guy who did it with a Ford 300 using "Cleveland heads" -cast iron!!! I kept the url since I'm running a 300 in my 77 F-100.

 

Wow thats very cool! I remember reading about the V8 heads on the 4 bangers yrs ago but never heard of this, I would love to hear it running

 

I was just in Wes Rydells shop on Friday and saw the aluminum head they built for the 6. It was on a shelf above a photo of the car. Is this the head you are referring to?

 

Left coasters probably remember Kay Sissell and his altered,same type of deal, spliced V/8 heads on a 292,one bad jose in it's day.

 

I could be wrong but I think Rydell, Hope & Lang had this same setup in an Anglia before the Vega. I went to Indy to watch and theres the V8 chevy head on their car and the Cleveland V8 head on the Preperation H 300 ford 6 Maverick along with a $1000+ worth of Weber side draft carbs. At the time I had a 300 ford 6 powered Anglia and I remember thinking that I just got priced right out of the 6 cylinder classes. There was no way I could afford what was rumered to be a $3500 head

 

Yep - that's the head I saw at Rydell's. the picture was of an Anglia. I asked Doug Peterson about it and he told me it was a pair of aluminum Corvette heads that the got directly from Chevrolet through the dealership. they chopped them apart and welded them together. Had what looked to be a Hilborn set up on it too. They cut and welded a pair of aluminum corvette valve covers for the head too.

Must have run OK - the picture of the Anglia had its wheels off the ground a long way!!

 

I believe I saw this down at the Hartman Bash. Very cool set-up!

 

You might dig this one from decades past.

Because of different bore spacings, the Cleveland heads were cut into six pieces. A welder wearing an asbestos suit welded them up inside a furnace!

 

You don't do furnace brazing inside a furnace

 

Why go to such extremes? the furnace, not the 6 pieces.

 

The original head on the six was a cast iron head, arc welded, from what I have been told.

 

The Chevy six was originally in the Anglia, then the Vega....

It ran both Crower and Hilborn Injection....

 

Not likely, but good story and may have some merit. If they were trying to weld aluminum castings together, the castings would need to be pre-heated to keep them from cracking form uneven cooling rates around the weld area. Doing it all in an environment that was already up to preheat temp (like 250deg) would make the long welding process a lot easier to control.

Still calling BS on that one (for now) as that would be pretty damn hot for the welding equipment...

 

Never followed the rules, but there was a local early 50 Chevy coupe that had that V8 head and Webers back when Connecticut Dragway was still open. Sponsored by Gem Chevrolet, and that car was a handful. What a strange sound it had at full load.

 

Way kool thread, Jeff, thanks!

 

back in high school "82" my good friends uncle ran a 9 sec. pinto. ford 6 with a cyl head made from 3 351 heads welded.ithought it cost 3500

 

I thought that the cylinder head I saw was aluminum and Doug told me that was the one they made for the car in the picture. He also told me the trouble with that particular head is that the compression was so high that they were worried it would knock all the seats out of it. He never said if it was a problem or not - just that that head was not run on the strip as much as they would have hoped.

Maybe I was mistaken - maybe it was iron but I could have sworn thats what he said.

Custom aluminum valve cover too. Saw that with my own 2 eyes

 

Paul just got the motor back for Rydell ,Hope & Lang car.Wayne Lang built the original motors,and done this one as well.
He bought a new alum. set for this project and had them done.

Rick

 

You are correct, the one you saw was aluminum, however; the ORIGINAL head was cast iron from what I have been told....

 

Just repeating what was in an old article (HRM?), asbestos suit and all.