Re: V-8 engine design flaws

Posted by R Anderson On 2010/1/25 18:03:04

'50s cars did indeed have many problems, but the steel used was not one of them as far as gauge, it was still far heavier than that used later on, particularly from the late '70s onward... my father worked for Bethlehem Steel 1946 to 1982 and was Divisional VP for Cold Rolled Sheet Steel, Galvanized Sheet, and Galvalume, among other products, all of the US car makers and large appliance makers were his customers. Packard and others still used good steel at the time. The biggest lightening occurred after the gas crunch, and he told me Chrysler was the last to go to thinner "high strength" steel, around 1979. He also told me that the engineers at American Motors were "a bunch of horses asses" (he himself was a Masters degreed Mechanical Engineer), he never did explain why.

The Chrysler Double Rocker was indeed a fine power plant, but the B Block Wedge 350/361 introduced in '58 was even better! It further evolved through 383,400,440 B and RB iterations that survived in production for decades... the '64 Hemi was an entirely different engine than the DR "hemi" 331/354/392 and the separate Dodge Red Ram and DeSoto FireDome versions. I've had many of all of them, including the 392 dual carb in my old '57 300-C convertible and single carb 392 '58 NYer convert. The '58 and later wedge was a better engine in most respects. As far as I know it had no teething problems whatever, and my '58 DeSoto still has it's original untouched first year only 350... bet a GM guy if Mopar ever made a 350 and you'll likely win that bet!