Homage to the SmallBlock

The original 265 ’55 Chevy SmallBlock.

“I am 14 years old; it’s 1958.
I pedal my ancient junky balloon-tire bicycle up to the Fairfax Shopping-Center parking-lot.
I see three Corvettes parked silently in front of the bowling-alley.
I go toward the Corvettes; two ‘57s and a ’56.
One ’57 is fuel-injection. Both ‘57s are black, the ’56 is powder-blue with a silver insert. The ‘57s also have silver inserts.
All-of-a-sudden four dudes burst from the bowling-alley and jump into the Corvettes.
I immediately pedaled my bicycle up to the parking-lot exit out onto the main highway, U.S. Route 202, a concrete four-lane.
I knew I was about to witness AN EVENT!
Sure enough, the three ‘Vettes roared onto the highway, then PEDAL-TO-THE-METAL!
Spinning rear-tires and the engines wound as high as they would go.
At least 6,000 rpm, maybe 8.
Clouds of tire-smoke.
I WILL NEVER FORGET IT! That’s goin’ to my grave.”
Chevrolet introduced a V8 engine of 265 cubic-inches displacement in the 1955 model-year.
It’s still being made, although considerably re-engineered since then; which makes it 60 years old.
The bore-centers are still the same as 1955, 4.4 inches apart.
It didn’t get named “the SmallBlock” until 1965, when Chevrolet introduced a larger engine called “the Big-Block.”
It had another nickname. The Big-Block was also called “the Rat-Motor,” because it could be so powerful. The smaller V8 was therefore called “the Mouse-Motor.”
A car-guy with whom I attended college, e-mailed me a Yahoo link of a story venerating the 60-year anniversary of the SmallBlock.
My response was what I posted above.
To me the SmallBlock was the greatest engineering achievement of post-war America.
Chevrolet had built a V8 in 1917, but since then was known for building drudges. Reliable transportation that could be called upon to cart Granny pillar-to-post, plus be cheap.
Such cars could hardly attract the youth-market. Chevy needed a V8.
The Yahoo story made the mistake of saying Chevrolet’s V8 was needed to make the Corvette attractive.
The ‘Vette certainly benefitted from the SmallBlock, but the SmallBlock was designed for regular Chevrolet cars.
The ’55 Chevy was a complete redesign. A break from past turkeys.
And you could get it with a V8, which made it attractive to the youth-market.
An earlier post-war Chevrolet V8 design was more a drudge-motor. It used rocker-shafts, just like most V8s at that time.
A simpler and cheaper design was wanted, which Pontiac had with its ball-stud rockers. Instead of a heavy head-length shaft on which to mount the valve-rockers, which needed machining, ball-studs, pressed into the cylinder-heads, were used to mount the rockers. Thus the heavy rocker-shaft had been tossed.
The rockers themselves were a simple pressing, machined for the ball.
And oiling everything was done by making the valve-pushrods tubes through which to pump oil; this dispensed with drilling an oil-gallery.
Ball-stud rockers were lighter and cheaper to manufacture.

Ed Cole.

Ed Cole had been brought over from Cadillac to shepherd the new ’55 Chevrolets. He pressured his engineers to design a better V8 in record time. —Clearly they were inspired; what they were doing was fun.
It could be said the Chevy SmallBlock is what put Old Henry’s FlatHead V8 of 1932 out to pasture. The FlatHead had been the foundation of the hotrod movement.
But the Chevy SmallBlock could be so much more powerful, hot-rodders were pulling out their FlatHeads and replacing with the SmallBlock. Plus there were plenty around, and they were cheap.
The FlatHead had a flat cylinder-head casting, much like a lawnmower. The SmallBlock was overhead-valve.
And with its light-weight valve-gear, it could be wound to-the-moon. As attractive as a high-winding Ferrari or Alfa-Romeo. In fact, some Italian exotic-car makers were putting the SmallBlock in their cars.

The car of my dreams. (Photo by BobbaLew.)

The Wagon (’57 Bel Aire). (Photo by BobbaLew.)

I’ve never owned a SmallBlock, much as I venerated ‘em.
All through high-school and college I dreamed of owning a ’55 Chevy SmallBlock with four-on-the-floor, like the one pictured.
My parents got a ’57 wagon with a 283 SmallBlock. It was so much more pleasant to drive than our ’53 Chevy.
It would get up and go; 283 four-barrel with dual-exhausts and PowerGlide.
If anything, it was a little scary.
I used to take off the air-cleaner and wind it out in the PowerGlide’s lo gear.
I got 80 mph on the impromptu quarter-mile on Shipley Road. —That quarter-mile is long-gone. Suburbia grew up around it; it was open fields when I was in high-school.
I thought the world of that SmallBlock. I had the number “283” on the wall of my room at my college rooming-house.
Chevy had the makings of a great pony-car with that motor and four-speed, but Ford beat them to it with the Mustang.
And Ford was doing it with a motor patterned after that SmallBlock.
In fact, every Detroit V8 came to use engineering concepts pioneered by the SmallBlock, like ball-stud rockers with stamped rockers.
This included motors much larger than the SmallBlock.
And ball-stud rockers allowed splaying the valves for improved breathing, a concept introduced with Chevrolet’s Big-Block.
The SmallBlock had to be redesigned to meet economy and emission requirements.
What Chevrolet didn’t do was convert it to double overhead-camshaft four valves per cylinder.
But it can still be quite strong.
I remember SmallBlocks converted to race motors; 302 cubic-inches or so, 400+ horsepower. Now the NASCAR SmallBlock gets over 700 horsepower from 358 cubic-inches.

The ’57 Rochester fuel-injection.

A ’63 fuel-injection.

As first introduced in 1957, fuel-injection was aimed at getting maximum performance from the SmallBlock; which it did: 283 horsepower from 283 cubic-inches, one horsepower per cubic-inch; a landmark.
Fuel-injection was more even than carburetion. With carburetion the end cylinders might get a weaker fuel-charge than the middle cylinders under the carb.
Fuel-injection reversed that, supposedly by delivering equal fuel-charges to each cylinder.
Fuel-injection could more easily meet emission requirements, for which reason it was re-introduced. Carburetors are sloppy.
Today’s fuel-injection is far more advanced than 1957, or even 1964, the last Corvette with Rochester fuel-injection. Now it’s computer-controlled to more precisely meet emission requirements. Every car on the market is fuel-injected. Carburetion is gone.
So it’s hard to think of the modern SmallBlock as the same motor introduced for 1955.
But it’s the same bore-center; 4.4 inches between bores.
Go back far enough and the SmallBlock was state-of-the-art. Until about 1980 the SmallBlock was the preferred performance engine.
Even now the most desirable engine in a hotrod is the SmallBlock Chevy.
The fact it’s still being made, although that’s debatable, says General Motors rested too much on its laurels.
But it also attests to how revolutionary the SmallBlock was. For decades the SmallBlock was the pinnacle of performance.

350 SmallBlock crate-motor.

Detroit has taken to manufacturing crate-motors, complete engines for installation in anything, like hotrods or custom-cars.
The SmallBlock is the most popular crate-motor.