Quote:
Originally Posted by mgarblik
At our school before they became all politically correct, every spring for ten years or more we had the "brick test". The marginal students with D- and F+ grades were given the "Option to improve their grade by 1 letter grade". They would have to line up their cars and drain the oil and coolant, start them up and put a brick on the gas pedal. Last one running got the letter grade bump. Some years we had 4-5 cars in the contest. The smart students, (among the dummies), would intentionally have extra poor running engines that would not rev too high. Their were many memorable engine epic failures. One that just wouldn't die was an iron duke 4-cyl in a Sunbird. It must have run wide open, no oil, no coolant for 20 minutes then just slowly seized up and stalled. After cooling for an hour or so, it started right back up and ran another 10 minutes before finally tossing a connecting rod. Good times!!
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Mike, too me it's not surprising that a derivative of the inline chevy 6 ran that long. As my posts have indicated, it's really hard to kill one of them in my experiences, whether it's the older design previous to 1963 clear back into the 30s. Or the newer design that came about in 1963, they are damn tough to scatter even with severe abuse.
The iron duke is a reworked 153 CI four cylinder chevy 4 with two cylinders removed from their straight 194 straight 6. It was used as the economy option in the early chevy II/X body platform that began in 1962.
I had a disagreement with a friend of mine that they were built on the same parameters, and it was just an updated design that Pontiac massaged to update it. We drug out the parts books, and sure enough the timing gears and bearings are the same part numbers as the 153 4 cylinder, and the 194 straight 6, as the 151 iron duke.
The 301 Pontiac also shared parts and dimensions with the iron duke. Just divide 301 in half and you get 150.5 displacement. Kinda like 389 divided in half equals 194.5 early on, no slant on the 151 blocks though.
Midget racers used the early 153 4 cylinder, as was the iron duke 151 design adopted later on by the midget racers. It had to be a durable design to make it a favorite in the midget ranks. The midget ranks also grafted a crossflow SBC head to the 153 to improve power. Pontiac made their own crossflow head, with staggered valves to up the power of the early iron duke mid 70s.
Way off topic, now, sorry to the OP ......................
