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Old July 19th 05, 05:40 AM
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Billy Ray wrote:
> .The 'big" V-8 in marine use was Chrysler's 440. There are still a lot of
> them around in the older wood boats.
>
> As for professional racing they used WWII era Allison's designed for
> aircraft, V-12 Packards, or Rolls-Royce.


The older heavy as hell Chrysler 392 went into a lot of boats,
gensets, irrigation pumps and start carts. All of which have been
bought up and made into drag and schlock rod engines today. They were
reliable but they were 250-300 hp engines tops and they weighed close
to a thousand pounds.

The 440 was a great engine. There are still a lot of them in boats but
older working boats made with them are usually repowered with diesel,
have been for years.

The Unlimited hydro idiots bought Allison 1710s by the trainload, used
them up like popcorn and scrapped them. When the old castings and
cranks got scarce they changed the rules and are now all running
surplus runout Lycoming turboshafts, rather than paying to build new
Allison stuff. The V12 Packard you are talking of is either the PT boat
engine, which has never been used in marine racing to my knowledge, or
the V-1650-9A Packard license built RR Merlin, of which a few were, but
the two stage two speed blower was a disadvantage.

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