Cool motor and was a torque motor for trucks and full bodies. Whan they were 1st put in cars the would get spanked by SBC's all day. They (W's) did bettter later on but if you compare the 2 sb's are the better choice. Love the W's but you can get more out of a SB and weights ALOT less.
Bill Grumpy Jenkins, Dave Strickler, Bill Thomas, Ronnie Sox, Buddy Martin, Wally Bell, Malcolm Durham, Dyno Don Nicholson, Frank Sanders, Tom Sturm, Hayden Proffitt, Hubert Platt, Tommy Grove, Art Martin, **** Harrell, Butch Leal, Terry Prince and many, many more raced and won with 409 power....................... some of you guys need to go back to school.
You guys get too excited. We've been kidding 409ers since 1961 about being dump truck motors. That's as much a part of their lore as the Beach Boys. Don't take it personal. Dave Strickler was my personal favorite. They were the pros. The 409 Saturday night street racing reputation wasn't as stellar. Like the saying goes the older I get the faster I was. These nostalgia drag cars would run rings around the cars of that time and place. I was building hot rods not race cars, but I watched an *** load of them.
About the fastest car in our little central Oregon town in the mid 60s was Mike's black 62 chevy impala with the little [409 HP] dual quad, 4 speed 409. Don't know what gears he ran but it had a posi and at our Saturday nite drags on the old abandoned hiway outside of town, he regularly beat 406 galaxies, 413 Mopars and many, many 327 -55 chevies. The car was brutally fast for a street car. I was very impressed and I was witness to many a drag race with that car....never saw it loose. A buddy of mine in the military [Germany] and I replaced a blown-up 6 banger in our 60s Austin Healy roadster with a '59 chevy 348/3 speed with hurst shifter. That little car was so nose-heavy it spun out every time you nailed it..totally ruined the handling of a nice little sports car. It was fast, tho. Any carefully tuned smallblock 60's 'vette would have beat us. No traction.
Yeah, so was the 396, 454, 350, 496, 502....... There's probably more big blocks powering truck than cars.
The Jalopy Journal
