409 Burnout

A friend of mine sent a YouTube video of a ’64 409 Chevy doing a burnout.
I will embed it below:



It is just incredible!
This car obviously has “Line-Lock,” which I think is what it’s called.
Only the front brakes are activated, so the lightly-loaded rear tires can spin with abandon.
With a 409 Chevy motor pushing, tire-smoke bellows.
The 409 Chevy is a watershed motor.
I will never forget when it first came on the market, which I think was March of ’61.
The full-size 409 Chevy SS.
It was the first time an auto manufacturer crossed the 400 cubic-inch barrier.
Well, not exactly. Mercury had a 430 cubic-inch engine, but it was not a hotrod engine.
The 409 Chevy was. Two four-barrel carburetors, 425 horsepower.
Compared to that, the 430 Mercury was a stone.
The 409 Chevy is the 348 cubic-inch truck-engine bored and stroked. That’s increasing the piston-stroke and piston diameter to get a larger engine displacement.
Boring the 348 cubic-inch truck engine was risky.
Cast iron could have porosity, tiny voids in the casting.
Chevrolet had to inspect every 409 block for casting porosity, lest coolant leak into the cylinders.
Needless to say, some 409 blocks didn’t pass.
Inspecting each block was expensive, but the 409 was a siren-song.
Everyone wanted one.
“Four-speed, dual-quad, Positraction 409.”
“Positraction” (“Posi”) is a special differential design to keep one side from spinning.
This negated one-side wheelspin at the drag-strip. It also negated one-side wheelspin in slippery conditions, like snow.
In the middle ‘60s I attended Cecil County Drag-O-Way in northeastern Maryland.
Bill “Grumpy” Jenkins, later famous, was drag-racing a 409 Chevy.
The barest and lightest coupe available that year, a Biscayne coupe.
Grumpy always won. He even beat the Dodges and Plymouths fielded to beat the 409.
What got Grumpy out of the 409 was to switch to a Plymouth Hemi (“hem-eee;” not “he-me”).
A Hemi could beat a 409.
Jenkins was the head of “Jenkins Competition,” specializing in the Chevy SmallBlock motor.
But he really stood out in that 409.
I was always in awe!

Same car:


• A Hemi has hemispherical combustion-chambers (so-named the “Hemi”), with its valves turned 90 degrees relative to the crankshaft. The valves are therefore on each side of the combustion-chamber and can be aimed at the intake or exhaust manifolds, encouraging better engine-breathing at high engine speed. —Regular overhead-valve motors have the valves all in a row parallel to the crankshaft, which contorts one passageway per cylinder, usually the exhaust. Chrysler’s Hemi was an engineering advantage.
• The Chevrolet “SmallBlock” V8 was introduced at 265 cubic-inches displacement in the 1955 model-year. It continued production for years, first to 283 cubic inches, then 327, then 350. Other displacements were also manufactured. The Chevrolet “Big-Block” V8 was introduced in the 1965 model-year at 396 cubic-inches, and was unrelated to the SmallBlock. It was made in various larger displacements: 402, 427 and 454 cubic inches. It’s still made as a truck-motor, but not installed in cars any more; although you can get it as a crate-motor, for self-installation. The “Big-Block” could be immensely powerful, and the “Small-Block” was revolutionary in its time. (The name “SmallBlock” came into use after the “Big-Block.”)