true to my name i,ve given in to temptation and bought a super neat 62 tempest lemans today. 52,000 miles, runs, moves, doesn't stop. another oddity saved from the crusher. hope to get this cobb road worthy soon,any suggestions pos. or neg ?? thanx oddrodron.
The guys who frequent this subforum on the Performance Years site will tell you everything you need to know, they've been there and done it. Just ask 'em and they'll tell ya! http://forums.performanceyears.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?s=&daysprune=&f=427
Cool find. As it's half a 389, you can do a lot with these Poncho fours. Mickey Thompson used to offer speed equipment for the Tempest-4 back when they were new and even campaigned a blown digger with one of these little mills up front.
Slant four? Leaning tower of...not much power? I'd like to see one of those, the old slant sixes were indestructible!
Mickey Thompson had a bunch of 'em in various forms, even a blown one. i beleive Hot Rod Deluxe mag did a a feature recently on the little mills. Do it.
Quick Google search: http://www.thompson-motorsports.com/attempt.html Since the Attempt was built is has used many different engines. One of the most popular was his Tempest 4-cylinder engines, these engines were half of the old 389 Pontiac engine cut down the middle to make a slant 4-cylinder they were used it the early '60 Pontiac Tempest. Mickey had a 180 cubic inch which was a destroked Pontiac 4-cyl and was blown by a 4-71 "Jimmie". Using a 26 pound inlet bust(boost?-R.D.) and 25 % nitro fuel mix it set a standing mile record of 230 mph. Increasing the Nitro mix to 50%, the car run 163 mph in the quarter mile with an ET of 9.50 second. Pretty damn impressive.
I remember seeing Mickey's rail when I was a kid, and somewhere I have a bunch of articles on the gear he was offering for the Tempest Four. Jandlcars is right about the 'wet noodle' driveshaft as it was of the flexible variety. Interesting technology, especially with the Corvair-style transaxle and swing-arm rear suspension.
The driveshaft on these cars was a 5/8" diameter solid rod on automatic cars and 3/4" on stick cars, slightly bent in a 19' radius to give a flatter floor. Flexible sure but no wet noodle in my opinion.
My old man got suckered in by that "car of the year" hype & bought a 1962 Tempest wagon. The motor needed replacing shortly after the warranty expired and became a neighborhood project. It was my first opportunity to do anything mechanical (I was 11 at the time) and remember being small enough to clean the engingine compartment when the motor was out. The rope drive to the Powerglide transaxle was so unreliable AAMCO eventually gave Dad all his money back in exchange for signing a paper to never, ever bring it to one of their shops again. Four rebuilds in two years!
FWIW, the driveshaft of the Pontiac Tempests was the most reliable part of the car. Not much can go wrong with a solid rod of steel. thnx, jack vines
One of the guys on Performance Years has a '62 that's been his daily driver for many years. He's put 500K miles on his car, with the usual maintenance and repairs you'd normally expect. It's a Powerglide car too, no unusual issues with the flexible driveshaft. Sometimes you get a bad one, that goes for any brand of new car.
The driveshaft had a support bearing in the center to maintain the bend. Rear transaxle? Absolutely, these cars are known as 'Transaxle Tempests' by the guys that are into 'em.
i'll have the car home by the weekend. i've done the usual research through my manaul's and old mags ect. my brother just got a very rusty 63 gran prix for the interior and misc. peices. was thinking of swapping the 389 into the tempest since the 64 models offered a 326. will i need a 64 v-8 bellhousing ?? thanx oddrodron
The 'glide cars had the torque converter hanging out the rear of the transaxle for all the world to see. Very odd thing if you've never seen one before. The '62 Tempest I had was quite the oddity. But kool, nonetheless.
I had one when I was 16, my first car. Bought it for $35. Eng needed a rebuild so my dad showed me how to yank that little motor out and replace all the bearings. It ran real nice and then the trans axle would lock up with absolutely no warning doing 65 mph and you would find yourself going sideways down the highway. Scared the shit out of me and my brother. We tossed that car into the local land fill after that. Its been burried now for 30 yrs. rest its soul!
The '63 Tempest was the first Pontiac to be equipped with a 326 (actually 336 cubes that first year only), still a transaxle car. The V8 drivetrain is quite a bit beefier than the one used with the 4-cylinder, so a V8 would overstress things a bit. If you really want the best info on these cars from guys who currently own and work on them, use the link I provided in my first post. Here's a little more that I copied from the PY site: As far as the "rope driveshaft", it was an alloy steel torsion bar, about the hardness of an antiroll bar. It had a forged head at the front which bolted solidly to extra holes in the center of a Pontiac crank on the automatics (and all SDs) and to the clutch output shaft on the production manual, I believe. It was splined at the rear and approximately 80 inches long. It was bent into a gentle arc (maybe 3-4 inches max at the center)and retained in a upside-down U-shaped torque tube. It didn't really need the little bearings about 1/3 and 2/3 of the way along the shaft. They were just there to retain it if it broke or came loose from the engine and for installation purposes. Pontiac built maybe 300,000 '61-'63 Tempests with this shaft. VERY few ever failed in the field. Producton automatics had 5/8 dia shafts and manuals had 3/4 dia. as did the Super Duty cars. You can demonstrate to yourself how it worked by putting a gentle arc in a piece of wire like 1/8 dia. music wire, and have someone turn it while it's in the arc. The rotation is transmitted smoothly without any sinusoidal variation like you find in a u-joint. Because it's a torsion bar, it will wind up under high torque loads. In testing, I believe it wound up over 2 revolutions when a 389 or 421 WOT at hp peak was dumped into it from a clutch at the front with the rear fixed to the test fixture. It stalled the engine (and then unwound the 2+ turns). In the production Tempests, the TC was in the rear, but the manual clutch was on the engine. You could dump the clutch and feel a little of the windup/unwind. The 3/4 dia. shaft minimized that, but I think the 5/8 would have been plenty strong enough. The biggest production engine to use it was the '63 "326" HO (4 bbl dual exhaust), which you probably know was really a 336 cube engine. I don't recall if it used the 3/4 shaft for the 2-speed auto, but probably not.
My mom had one for her first car. Said it wouldn't make it up a hill with three 'larger' friends in the car. They were known for thier fibre timing gears going south. Cool rarely seen cars though!
Thanks for the bit of history, draggin'GTO. I've always been fascinated by the transaxle Tempests, although my time with them was usually doing minor maintenance - I've had much more experience building 389s, 421s, 350s and the odd 455 way back when. About 30 years ago a bunch of my Bonneville racing buddies and I were having a bench racing session and one came up with the crazy idea of taking the front pot off a Tempest Four block to build a 500cc single. Unfortunately, I don't think he ever built it.
I bought one new in '63. The only thing that ever went bad was the timing chain and the bumpers that were suspossed to keep it tensioned. The bumper would braks, then the chain would become loose and wear. I got good at changing them. Always said I was going to make a good solid 4130 bumper mount but never did.
Most of the reliability problem stories with these cars can be attributed to the unfamiliar technology of an I.R.S. Torque-Tube Transaxle with a Delorean Patented driveshaft (no u-joints) on an 1960's American car and what happens when an ignorant mechanic assumes he can fix any GM car.... (AAMCO transmission shop!?). The timing gears were not fibre, in fact they were stronger than most, but they did take the brunt of the unique "windup/unwind" stresses and would wear faster than 'normal' cars and contributed to the vibration which would convince mechanics who were unfamiliar with the cars that they were junk. With proper maintenance (and 'normal' use) the drivetrains are nearly indestructible. The handling characteristics were normal when operated within limits but had some surprises to any who pushed the envelope.
i owned a 62 tempest in the early 70's while in the army . i also had a 66 ford failane GT (390 engine)w/ a factory 4 spd. , i used to come home on the weekends and switch the rear wheels fr. the poncho to my front of my ford , they had the same bolt pattern ( alum. slots on firestone mini sports) and go cruisin and street racin in bremerton,washinton..........ahhhhh the seventies were great, thanks 4 bringin back the memories
The 326 63 Tempest was a 3 speed stick,no 4 speed? Back in NJ ,street racing in the mid 60's was a guy we called "Jack the Hack" than ran a 63 with a 326 3 speed.
Everyone made fun of the Tempest design, but when "Porsche" built the 924 and the 944s using the same design they were geniuses because they were Porsche and German engineering. Much better than G.M. engineering?
i made comment about wet noodle i drove one quiet often in 67 it was kina different that you could wind up the engine and drop it in gear and feel the wrap up kina wobbled through the car before the car jumped i still have the shaft out of that car. i cut the end off and made a pry bar that is strong
'63 Tempest LeMans Sport Coupe was my second car, and my first custom project. Lots of dechroming, and some blacked out trim and grill. It was a slant 4 auto (console shifter), with 4-barrel. This was 1972, and gas was to become scarce, so it was a great commuter. I spent 200 hours woodgraining the interior with a #0000 brush... Sold it for 3x the book value, too. Great ride!
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