Trivia questions - just for fun.

I'll post the answers soon.

  1. What was the first American car company to produce an overhead cam engine?

  1. What was the second?

  2. What American car holds the record for number of carburetors as delivered from the factory?

Have fun.

Reply to
Lhead
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Who knows- that's kinda lost in the mists of antiquity. I know Duesenberg used a "modern by modern standards" DOHC 32-valve inline 8 (in normally aspirated and supercharged versions) in the 1920s. But I doubt it was the first. There was an awful lot of experimentation with engine configurations (OHC, L-head, T-head, OHV, etc.) in the 19-teens and 20s before things settled in on the OHV cam-in-block setup in the

50s thru late 70s.

No idea.

No idea.

Reply to
Steve

My father had a Ford Pinto that had about a dozen carburetors until the dealer could find one that actually worked right.

Then it turned out it was also delivered from the factory with a cracked block as well.

--scott

Reply to
Scott Dorsey

  1. Pontiac LeMans

  1. Ford Pinto

  2. TriPower GTO
Reply to
Irwin Corey

I'm not going to post my answers just yet, but as to the LeMans, Pinto and GTO - no, no, and no.

Reply to
Lhead

Believe the 53 Corvette, striaght 6 had three carbs.

Reply to
willy

I think it was Scott in about 1906.

No clue

Shelby Cobra 4 Webers.

Reply to
Tiger Pilot

Impossible- both the Duesenberg and the Willys OHC engines predated that by 40 and 5 years, respectively.

See above.

That's 3, but that's only a tie with the 440 and 340 "six-pack" Dodge and "six barrel" Plymouths. And I think Chevy had a tiple-deuce setup at some point too.

Reply to
Steve

Plymouth roadrunners had the "6-pack" set up, three two barrel carbs, synced to each other to open in stages as throttle compressed. They were a bear to keep sync'ed, but when they were, they were awesome.

Reply to
Knifeblade_03

The 1910 Jackson used a shaft driven OHC, so might be a 1st for that, rather than using a chain, which was a pre 1900 maker. Wilks? Motor Company or something

Miller had an eight carb motor for racecars, but I don't know if that counts as 'Factory'

** mike **
Reply to
mike

I was going with "existing" car companies of the modern era, and if memory serves, Duesy never was so much a full fledged American car "company" so much as they were an "assembler" (i.e., they didn't do their own coachwork). And no, I don't need to be reminded that for years Fisher did GM bodies, Pininfarina and Bertone did Fiats, Karmann Ghia did VWs, ... ;^)

See above

Pontiac did it a few years before Mopar, I also seem to remember that Corvettes had a similar, albeit later, setup.

Reply to
Irwin Corey

6 Barrel.

Available from Dodge, Chrysler and Plymouth

They [the outboard carburetors] open based upon the amount of airflow passing thru the center carburetor.

No, not really.

I'd rather have a Thermoquad.

Reply to
aarcuda69062

Thermoquads were plastic bodied crap that (among many other problems) the well caps often fell off of, that we used rectifier epoxy to glue back on, and a poor mans excuse for a Rochester Quadrajet, even if its so called intended design purpose was to lessen radiant and convected heat absorption.

Reply to
Irwin Corey

Actually, they are pretty forgiving and reliable. In the Plymouth/Dodge setup built by Holley the two outboard carbs were vacuum operated, so no complicated synchronization linkage was used at all. There was a safety linkage to make sure the outboard carbs would close when you lifted the throttle, but that's it. Tuning the outboards for opening time and rate was/is just as easy as tuning the secondaries on a vacuum-secondary Holley 4-barrel.

Reply to
Steve

Sorry, gotta agree with aarcuda on this one. The Thermoquad was probably the most advanced carburetor ever mass produced, and is COMPLETELY relaible if you know how to service it without damaging it. I have one on my daily-driven Plymouth, which has been there for *years* without so much as an idle mixture adjustment. Even with the solvent-loaded monkey whizz they sell as "gasoline" these days. The Quadrajet is also a fine carb, but to call the TQ a "poor man's" QJ is just ridiculous. If anything, its the other way around.

Reply to
Steve

I could hardly disagree more vehemently, but I guess that's what makes horse racing. And for a so called "successful" design, it certainly wasn't copied a la the Torqueflite, for instance. Btw, the Rochester Quadrajet preceded, not followed, the Carter Thermoquad which was nothing more than a "glorified" AVS which was itself an update to the legendary and still renowned AFB. I was always partial to the Holley 4 barrels myself though, except for my dislike for their badly warping float bowl mounts tendencies ;)

Reply to
Irwin Corey

Very interesting discussions. As usual, when discussing when something "first appeared" can be hard to nail down. I should have qualified the questions a little better to leave out racecars or race-only motors. I know that the early fuelers used eight Strombergs, but that's hardly a factory car or motor.

Also, does it qualify if it was a turn of the century car that they only built 50 copies of? Subject to debate. That said, here are the answers, sort of.

  1. The 1920's Duesenberg J engines. Not only OHC, but DOHC and 4 valves per cylinder to boot. I've read of the 1906 Scott and the 1898 Wilkinson that both had OHC as well, but I've never seen one nor heard anything in depth about them.
  2. The Crosley 4 cylinder engines.
  3. The AC Cobra of 1965-1968 with the 427 engine could be ordered the 4 downdraft Webers. The Chevrolet Corvair of 1965 to 1969 with the 140HP engine came with 4 single barrel Rochester carbs. So, I'm going to call that a tie.

Feel free to offer corrections if you'd like. This was just for fun and it's been fun reading the responses.

Reply to
Lhead

Here I agree- it was NOT a success. Too many ham-fisted knuckle-draggers over torqued the bolts when they serviced them and wrecked the carbs by flexing the phenolic body and making the jet wells pop off. AND it was the last major new carburetor design before fuel injection, so it was doomed to a short life in OEM applications anyway. Well, "short" being about 15 years... But if you set one up and leave it alone, it will work great for years. And it does a better job of what a carburetor should do- mix air and fuel very precisely and uniformly over the entire power and RPM matrix the engine sees, than almost any other carburetor. I get better mileage with a TQ on my 318 than it did with a 2-barrel, simply because the TQ primaries with the dual annular boosters are so darned efficient. To its credit, the QJ is just about as good in that regard.

Granted, today I'd rather have a new-in-the-box Thunder Series (a re-badged Carter AVS) than an old Thermoquad and that's what I run on my other daily driver. For my money, THAT is the best carburetor still in production short of a mega-buck Barry Grant. The AFB is tough as a brick, but mixes air and fuel about like a brick too. I did like Edelbrock's Quadrajet re-issue carb, but they had it over priced by about $200 and it never had a chance to make it in the marketplace.

No argument that the QJ came first. But it was and is a little more primitive albeit more reliable under abusive treatment. As far as the TQ being a glorified AVS- can't agree. The TQ doesn't share a single part with the AVS, is a spread-bore design, 3-piece carburetor to the AVS's near square-bore, 2-piece all metal design. Someone at Carter started with a blank page when they designed the TQ. Even the way the metering rods work is fundamentally different than the AVS, and also different from the QJ. About the only feature it shares with the AVS (and the QJ) is the secondary air door, but the TQ's air door is a complex shape that actually becomes part of the air path when open rather than a flat plate that just acts as a valve as it does in the AVS and QJ.

Reply to
Steve

So what do I win? :-)

I had the privilege of seeing a non-supercharged model J Duesy that arrived and departed a local car show under its own power last summer. No trailer-queen, that one! I've seen SJs in museums and I know Jay Leno has several he drives, but seeing a real Duesey *running* in the wild was a new experience for me. The owner even fired it up for us to hear- what an amazing sound. He told me he's driven it to the ACD show in Auburn Indiana (about 1200 miles) 4 times in the last 30 years or so. Cool stuff- they really DO NOT build 'em like that anymore. Not even close.

Reply to
Steve

The honor of knowing. Better than all the material goods in life, believe me. And, my heartfelt thanks for playing!

BTW, the first OHC that I know of built by any of the big three was the

1966 Pontiac Tempest that featured an OHC straight six. It was also the first mass-poroduced American car with a timing belt.

Reply to
Lhead

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