Mickey Thompson 3-Valve Chevy V8 Engine

what happens when you awaken an iron Beast after a 50-year slumber Jason or of 955 automotive described it as opening up a time capsule of sorts the last time the 1967-68 Mickey Thompson IndyCar lapped Indianapolis Motor Speedway was back in May 1968 with Bill Puterbaugh behind the wheel it's been sitting in a warehouse storage ever since it wasn't until George Lyons purchased the car in 2016 from the Mickey Thompson family with plans to fully restore it that the race car featuring a three valve Chevy v8 engine had been gone through the end goal for Lyons was to show the car at the 2018 Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance Lyons an Indy car collector brought the car and engine to Bob or restoration in Erie Pennsylvania Bob's son Jason or owns 9:55 automotive the machine shop in the adjoining building to the restoration business jason had the pleasure of getting the engine working order again and we're going to give you the details I'm Greg Jones the managing editor of engine builder magazine and welcome to engine of the week this video is sponsored by Co medic gasket sealed by Co medic and by pen grade oil precision performance pen grade always the original Green oil Jason and his team at 9:55 automotive were the first people to do anything on this engine since it came off the track in 1968 jason said the engine leaked a lot of oil and subsequently they found nearly 40 shop rags stuffed inside as a means to stop the leaks here's Jason to tell you more it was as raced has not been run obviously since May in 1968 so we were tasked with getting the thing apart reverse engineering everything that was in it and we had chromatic made us gaskets we're thing was just a you know a lot of our ings you know no real gaskets in that engine but the corrosion took over so much those guys over there made me head gaskets and they made us intake gaskets and they made us a bunch of stuff that it didn't have that we needed to make this thing live now it was pretty cool because it's actually it was a race engine you know it had our camshaft in it milled on main caps mold X crank we kept all that stuff as original as we could just went through and found modern-day parts for all the wearable stuff valve spring was it was a tough find I mean I think I scoured three months and catalogs trying to find something that would work and he said because there was such a wacky design other than that the thing was pretty cherry block work wise 9:55 automotive touched up the line hone and had to weld the ducts up they found that two of the exhaust ports had porosity in them so they had to fix that so the engine would hold water again the magnesium Valley tray which is also a water spider was completely rotted out the shop ended up repairing it with aluminum slugs and making a whole new water spider by replicating the old one using pictures in addition the engine needed a typical valve job and cylinder head repair however those jobs turned out to be a little more than typical and heads were Mickey Thompson specific he had two versions he had an eight port version and a sixteen port and these were 16 port I mean it took 12 hours to get the cylinder heads off the thing because there's hidden bolts and you got to take the rocker system off in a specific order you know it had push rods that run down across the head and actuated rocker arms on the exhaust side that seemed to work backwards you know everyone thought it was a dual overhead cam motor well that was the rocker covers on the thing despite some corrosion and a couple funky setups the 50 year old engine ended up being in pretty good shape 955 automotive didn't do any performance upgrades to the engine rather they simply tried to keep the history of it parts wise that meant the engine had Mickey Thompson titanium rods the original Crower cam and lifters the original mold ox crank and Mickey Thompson Pistons cleave light bearings pack and cop Springs and a Hilborn fuel injection system in total between labor sourcing parts and having stuff made the bill took a full year 50 years ago this v8 made 565 horsepower out of a 305 cubic inch engine it's now race ready once again and what's presented at 2018 Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance earlier this year well that does it for this episode of engine of the week a special thanks to our sponsors Kemetic gasket and pen grade motor oil and remember if you have an engine you'd like to see featured please email me at G Jones at Babcock's com see you all next time

Channel: Engine Builder

Views: 86,238

Rating: 4.7381206 out of 5

Keywords: Engine of the Week, Engine Builder magazine, Cometic Gasket, Penn Grade Motor Oil, 955 Automotive, Mickey Thompson, Indycar

Id: gN55c3qT-_A

Length: 5min 4sec (304 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 14 2018