While at the shop of, Jerry Willis, in Princeton, Texas I had a conversation about 235 powered race cars since I had heard he had a 39 chevy coupe that held the national record for his class. It would take a book to write down all he knows about making these engines into top performers but two things really grabbed my thoughts. Number one was when you start to high rev one these engines keeping the flywheel tight to the crank is a major problem and, the one that made my jaw drop, was that they turned their best times when revving the engine to FIFTY EIGHT HUNDRED rpm's. Jerry is a no bull type guy and went on to say the crankshaft is so heavy that on two occasions that they exceded this limit the bottom of the block seperated even though they had built a main girdle. I wonder what the exhaust sound would be on one turning this many R's?
Wow ~ old hot rodders never die.... Be aware that the rods tend to _stretch_ when the engine is revved over 3,500 RPM's for long periods of time , causing catastropic failures when they break just below the wrist pin and then come flying out the side of your cylinder block.... This is why 261 rods were designed and folks used to use GMC rods back in the day too...
Wel yeah but , these are 1930's tech engines so being able to run it all day long @ 3,200 RPM's was pretty good , remember , Chevy got an overhead valve engine in 1929 Ford didn't untill 1953 and Chrsyler kept thier old flathead untill the early 60's in passenger cars , kept using the flathead in trucks untill 1967 or so...
