► Muscle Car Used Car History Free VIN Check, Vehicle History Report, VIN Number Check, Free VIN Check, Vehicle History Report, VIN Check

Dyno Testing: "Good Luck Guys"

The pace of Hemi design development and testing throughout the sixties never slackened, as Chrysler worked to keep up with the ever-changing NASCAR rulebook and performance gains by its competition. Ted Flack joined Chrysler in 1967 and landed a job that 426 Hemi enthusiasts dreamed about.

"I was 20 years old and wanted to go racing. I figured if I could get into a car company, I could learn more—the secrets of this engine stuff," he remembers. "So I walked into personnel and asked, 'Have you got any openings for mechanics?' And they said, 'Yes. We have one here in the dynamometer section.' They brought me around and walked up and down the dyno buildings. They were running a couple of Hemis—racing engines. I felt like a kid in a candy store.

"When I was working there, there were six guys in the motor room just building Hemi engines. Many times we'd put an engine on a dyno stand while the paint was still wet. Then, after a power run, we'd have to back off to deliver it to somebody for a race and the engine would still be hot when we loaded it onto a truck. When they would ship engines for a race, they would write notes on top of the manifold like, 'Good Luck Guys.' When it came time for the race, the guys down there would send up reference charts, so we knew which engine was in which car and the guys here who built it would know which car actually had his engine."

The dyno labs literally performed destructive testing on the 426 Hemi to learn its limits as well as confirm performance. Explosions were unpredictable because of the test cycle and the number of hours on an engine. When a Hemi finally came apart under the most grueling test conditions, the results were spectacular.

"We had them blow up," Flack recalls, "where there was nothing on the stand—the crankshaft would be on the floor, the heads blown off into the corner. One fellow here had a picture where one engine actually sawed itself in half. The back half was gone and the front half was hanging there by the radiator hose. There are holes in the ceiling down there still to this day.

"The back side of the dyno cell used to be all windows. When we'd run the engines, the headers would glow red. A lot of guys would stand and look in the windows to see what we were doing, sometimes with their face pressed against the glass. It wasn't really safe because you never knew what was going to happen. One day, we shut down the engine, went outside and told the guy, 'We don't want you standing right by the window.' He left, we brought the engine back up to speed—about 7000 rpm. Thirty seconds later the engine blew up. Complete connecting rods went through the window right where he had been standing. One landed out in the driveway, still sizzling, and burned a hole down into the asphalt."

When NASCAR tightened the screws again requiring a restrictor plate using 1 1/8 in. bores, the dyno lab was crucial in surmounting this supposed problem.

"We came up with a venturi-effect spacer about two inches high," Flack says, "and actually made more power with it than we did without it—about fifteen more horsepower."

Power gains came from new camshafts with ever-increasing valve lifts that were possible with the higher valve springs that had been started with the A148 program. It was also decided to change from a chain-driven camshaft to a gear-driven camshaft to eliminate any camshaft rotational fluctuations caused by chain flexing.

A flat crankshaft was tried. The theory was to improve power by always alternating exhaust pulses from one bank to the other rather than having adjacent cylinders fire, as is the case with a conventional V-8 crankshaft. The problem was that the engine was no longer in balance and the secondary forces shook the engine. There was so much trouble with bolts loosening and parts breaking that it was finally decided that the power gains, if any, weren't worth it.

TITLE: Muscle Car Used Car History Vehicle History Report at Auto Lemon - Used Car History Check	Muscle Cars Directory : Auto, Automobile, Automotive, Car, Cars, Vehicle, Vehicles, Used Cars, New Cars, Used Car, New Car Price
Site Description: Car Consumer Reports and Consumer Guide on automobile, brake, buying car, car care, car cost, car safety, cooling system, drivetrain, electrical, exhaust, emission, fluid check, fuel system, ignition system, lubrication system, suspension and steering. Offers Free VIN Check, VIN Check	Muscle Cars Topics: car consumer reports on automobile, brake, buying car, car care, car cost, car safety, cooling system, drivetrain, electrical, exhaust, emission, fluid check, fuel system, ignition system, lubrication system, suspension and steering.

BEST Sellers Shop new or used	Baby	Books	Camera & Photo	Classical Music	Computer & Video Games	Computers	DVD	Electronics
BEST Sellers Shop new or used	Kitchen & Housewares	Software	Magazines	Tools & Hardware	Outdoor Living	Popular Music	Toys & Games	Videos

MAKE:	Acura	Aston Martin	Audi	Bentley	BMW	Buick	Cadillac	Chevrolet	Chrysler	Dodge
Ferrari	Ford	GMC	Honda	Hummer	Hyundai	Infiniti	Isuzu	Jaguar	Jeep	Kia
Lamborghini	Land Rover	Lexus	Lincoln	Lotus	Mazda	Mercedes-Benz	Mercury	Mini	Mitsubishi	Nissan
Oldsmobile	Pontiac	Porsche	Rolls Royce	Saab	Saturn	Subaru	Suzuki	Toyota	Volkswagen	Volvo

State	Colorado	Idaho	Louisiana	Mississippi	New Jersey	Oklahoma	Tennessee	Washington DC
Alabama	Connecticut	Illinois	Maine	Missouri	New Mexico	Oregon	Texas	West Virginia
Alaska	Delaware	Indiana	Maryland	Montana	New York	Pennsylvania	Utah	Wisconsin
Arizona	Florida	Iowa	Massachusetts	Nebraska	North Carolina	Rhode Island	Vermont	Wyoming
Arkansas	Georgia	Kansas	Michigan	Nevada	North Dakota	South Carolina	Virginia
California	Hawaii	Kentucky	Minnesota	New Hampshire	Ohio	South Dakota	Washington

TITLE: Muscle Car Used Car History Vehicle History Report at Auto Lemon - Used Car History Check	Cars Directory : Auto, Automobile, Automotive, Car, Cars, Vehicle, Vehicles, Used Cars, New Cars, Used Car, New Car Price
Site Description: Car Consumer Reports and Consumer Guide on automobile, brake, buying car, car care, car cost, car safety, cooling system, drivetrain, electrical, exhaust, emission, fluid check, fuel system, ignition system, lubrication system, suspension and steering. Offers Free VIN Check, VIN Check	Cars Topics: car consumer reports on automobile, brake, buying car, car care, car cost, car safety, cooling system, drivetrain, electrical, exhaust, emission, fluid check, fuel system, ignition system, lubrication system, suspension and steering.

TITLE: Muscle Car Used Car History Vehicle History Report at Auto Lemon - Used Car History Check

Muscle Cars Directory : Auto, Automobile, Automotive, Car, Cars, Vehicle, Vehicles, Used Cars, New Cars, Used Car, New Car Price

Muscle Cars Topics: car consumer reports on automobile, brake, buying car, car care, car cost, car safety, cooling system, drivetrain, electrical, exhaust, emission, fluid check, fuel system, ignition system, lubrication system, suspension and steering.

Free VIN Check

VIN Number Check

Used Car Value

Vehicle History Report

NADA

CLASSIC CAR

USED CAR HISTORY

Car History

Auto Insurance

Auto Warranty

DMV

Shopping

426 RACE HEMI

CARS > MUSCLE CARS > 426 RACE HEMI

Muscle Cars

426 RACE HEMI

CARS > MUSCLE CARS > 426 RACE HEMI

TITLE: Muscle Car Used Car History Vehicle History Report at Auto Lemon - Used Car History Check

Cars Directory : Auto, Automobile, Automotive, Car, Cars, Vehicle, Vehicles, Used Cars, New Cars, Used Car, New Car Price

Cars Topics: car consumer reports on automobile, brake, buying car, car care, car cost, car safety, cooling system, drivetrain, electrical, exhaust, emission, fluid check, fuel system, ignition system, lubrication system, suspension and steering.