Mr PB said:
Quote:
The Chrysler Hemi was copied from the Cadillac engine, verbatim. The Hemi head was the only difference.
PatGreen replied:
Quote:
Wasn't the studebaker pretty much a direct copy as well? I would have thought Chrysler would have been more original....
The story* goes: Chrysler knew they needed a modern V-8 engine, and the Cadillac V-8 was the first modern large bore,short stroke engine engine and rather than start from scratch they went to a funeral home on Woodward ave, about a mile and a half from the Chrysler Highland Park headquarters, and for a sum of cash borrowed the parlor's relatively new Cadillac hearse, took it to the engineering garage, pulled the engine, mic'ed everything and put it back together, in about three hectic days. If you take to the two blocks, stripped bare and measure they are the same length, the deck height from the crank CL is the same, the machined land surface where the head mates is the same dimension. Compare the bore, stroke, compression ratio and journal diameters from these two charts:
The Cadillac:
http://www.secondchancegarage.com/public/492.cfm The Chrysler:
http://www.secondchancegarage.com/public/595.cfm The manufacture of the Hemi head was a very costly enterprise, and management was not for it because of that cost, but it was a very successful red herring to take GMs eyes off of the base short block numbers, which had been cobbed from the Cadillac OHV V-8.
* as told to me by a retired Chrysler engineer during my days at the Walter P. Chrysler Museum.
I can't speak for the Studebaker V-8, I have heard rubes insist that "it's a Ford engine" because of the discplacement, like a company can own a particular cubic inch displacement.
This Post was from: https://packardinfo.com/xoops/html/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?post_id=131488