1950's DOHC Studebaker Indianapolis engines...

I located these engines in Oregon about 11 years ago.
The three engines and all the tooling were purchased by "Speedy" Bill Smith of
Speedway Motors in Lincoln, NE.
He now has them in his museum in Lincoln, NE This is probably the largest race
car museum in the U.S., believe me.
ironframe
Ira Schreiber

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Speedway Motors:
http://speedwaymotors.com/Default.asp?wc=true

The museum: http://smithcollection.com/indextest.html


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 I DID get to
talk to Speedy Bill Smith! He's 74 and sharp as a tack, he works at his
business every day. The great news, BINGO!! Yep, he does have two of the
DOHC Studebaker engines on display in his museum. One is fully together and
one is partially broken down to display the inner workings.

He said he had one hell of a time finding the engines, he had to drive about
25 miles into the backwoods of Oregon to "some hippy's house" to retrieve
them. He said that judging by the condition of the engines and tooling when
he found them, "It wouldn't have been long before they were lost forever".
The two engines he has have been restored and the third engine is there but
was not put together because it was originally just a parts engine anyway.
Even the original tooling and molds are there but not on display, but he
thinks he has enough stuff there that it could be used to build another
engine

I asked him what he thought about the capabilities of the engine and he said
that it was "way ahead of it's time", and "would have been competitive for
at least 10 years", a long time for all out racing engines. He says the ONLY
problem with the engines was that after all the money was spent to develop
it, they needed a good crank lathe to do the crank work and they made the
fatal error, they tried to scrimp. A lathe that was too short was purchased
and was used anyway. The bad news was the crank casting had to have the
snout cut off to get it in the lathe. After the crank work was done, they
welded the snout back on and when they got to Indy with the car, the
external, 24 volt starter used at that time snapped the snout right off at
the weld, ending the career, (sponsors pulled the money), of the engines.
Bill says that it cost upwards of $250,000.00 in 1952 money to put it all
together and that the designer was a genius.

Bill also has the 1938 Packard straight eight that ran at Indy during what
he called "the junkyard era". It was a time at Indy that sounds more like a
stock car race than a high dollar professionally built race car event.

I've asked him to send me any information and pictures that he can on the
engines, but I hope I can convince a SDC member up in Lincoln, NE to do more
close up detective work. Anyone here from that area? What a GREAT
Studebakering day for me, this is like finding the holy grail!!! Stay tuned
for a LOT more later fellas!
--
Sonny
http://RacingStudebakers.com

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