The best hemi story I know, circa 1967. Local Mopar hot shoe pulls into the small town local hangout,with his new hemi Belvedere. Chest pumpin' the big bad hemi in his new ride. Un***uming, quiet, (think Wally Cox) guy gets egged into a little street action eventually. Promptly thumps the elephant two for two, (third wasn't needed) with his '66 L79 Nova. Local lore, still brought up at bench sessions from time to time.... Of course the hemi lacked traction, & there were rumors of cheaters on the back of the Nova, but still I get a grin out of it every time it's brought up.
to put the boss heads on 460 block we drilled the heads on the lower corners of the heads an put in pipe fittings and xternaly drained oil from head back into oil pan. had to grind small amount from block for pushrod clearance. ran oil line from a tapped riser in the oil galley to galey in the head [all hidden]. there is a felpro 460 head casket that works so you don't need the O rings, don't remember the #. i ran the stock flattop pistons [slight dish] because i wanted to lower the compresion, don't remember if we had to relieve fot the valves, wasen't much if any. don't remember if these were the quinched heads or the full hemi heads. used the hd. truck con rods and a comp cams ''thumper cam'', awsom sound w/side pipes. have a lot of boss parts to get rid of. back to building a flathead T now.
Another hemi story, for years I've been hearing about 301 Polys with Hemi heads,most of the feedback I got was, oh yeah, do it all the time, or to many issues etc. anyone know the facts? I've got most of the pieces to make one.
Yes. Littich does seem to be everywhere, he took a 55 Chrysler to Mexico and I saw him at B-ville he had a belly tank racer and was pissed because he was limited to 175 mph ????
Of all the cars that I ever owned not one has ever been a HEMI. There is a guy that Lives near here JD Haygood that raced a Hemi powered Rail dragster way back in the early sixties. Their team had some success. made the cover of hot rod magazine. He is in his seventies. He has a huge collection of mostly chrysler cars junked & parted out near the hwy 251 &115 intersection. And a collection of better stuff at his home on Olive Street. He Uses a older Dodge 1 ton wrecker with a hemi engine.
Yes, that´s him, hahaha I was with him at an Airfield near Berlin when he did the first test run with the Hemi belly tanker...he was kinda pale after that. hahahaha 175mph is scary fast for that thing. All of us are some kind of crazy but he is one step ahead... I only found a pic of him trailering the tank to the airfield...
After all these years who really knows the real facts. I was mostly incorrect on what I posted. Storys always get changed & embellished with the telling and retelling.
Yes too true, most of what I know came from reading old car mags from the era as part of my research and because for along time I was the only one racing the cars old timers sought me out. there's some stories about Kiekhaefer at mexicanroadracecars.com if you are interested.
So several years ago a friend of a friend updated his drag boat from a 392 to a 426. So he gave my friend a 392 block and crank with a Gotelli shorty main support. My friend gave it to me. So of course i needed the rest of the parts to have a running Hemi. Between swap meets and another friend who ran a nostalgia blown 92 FED I ended up with an injected engine with 354 heads a roller cam of unknowen specs and about 10 to 1 CR. I put it in my Vega and went to Bonneville. Even then my health wasn't great and my fire suit was out of date so I got another friend to drive. I wasn't aware of how much he was drinking and how that was affecting his thought process. So it went 175 exit speed on the short course. 3 times. The car had gone faster with a 302 GMC in it. I decided the engine was a dog and sold it to a street rodder. Much later the driver commented on how much he liked the Chrysler and how good it ran. I pointed out how slow it was. Jerry, my friend, answered that he was watching the tach closely and had never floored it as he liked it so much he didn't want to take a chance of hurting it. He is not my friend any more.
years ago i bought alot of boss parts from a man who used to race them. i was going to build another boss car and a mechanic friend wanted to build a couple engins to sell.i have found that it's better to sell the parts and let them build the kind of engine that they want rather than building a generik eng and have them rebuild to their specs, i have blocks & heads[i had all the heads gone through ,new valves,seats, guides ,springs, etc.] cranks, rocker arms, etc. send me your e-mail or ph #
Years ago I had two motors apart and the blocks laying on the shop floor, one was a 354 hemi the other was a dodge 360, from 5 ft. away it was hard to tell one from another, which got me thinking (DANGER/WARNING) I was ordering some parts from the original Hot Heads guy in AZ. so I asked him if he had ever considered making Hemi heads for the 360 Dodge LA motors he said they had considered it but dropped it because the didn't want to hurt their current product offerings.
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