The Dork-O-Motive Podcast

The Studebaker XH-9350: The Largest Piston Airplane Engine That Never Flew

The most monstrous WWII aircraft engine that you have never heard of is called the Studebaker XH-9350. A truly mind boggling project that Studebaker was the last option for when it began in 1942, it's an engine that would have been unmatched in aviation history had it been completed.

Designed as an H-layout, it was to displace 9,350ci and make north of 5,000hp on gasoline. The engine was almost 10ft long and was over 100" wide as well. It was fed by two turbochargers that weighed 250lbs a piece and moved 14,500cfm of air.

This is the story of the engine's background, its development including some incredible single cylinder engines, and interesting gearhead tech, and finally a look at why the Army Air Corps believed that they needed it.

 

Few have heard of this long lost project from the skunkworks of WWII.

Oil Burners: The Improbably Awesome History of Cummins At The Indy 500

Cummins diesel engines are an American institution.

They've been one of the most massive manufacturers of diesel engines in the United States for more than 100 year now, but did you that they have an incredible history in racing, tied to the Indy 500.

From 1931-1952 Cummins ran five different cars with five different engines at the 500 and all of them are amazing. Cummins is credited for more Indy 500 firsts than any other single person or entity in the history of the race. This is the complete history of Cummins at the Indy 500.

Their most massive and well known headline was winning the pole in 1952 but that was a moment 40 years in the making. In this video you'll learn about the cars, the people, and take a deep technical dive into the engines that defined these events and Cummins as a company. These were production diesel engines mixing it up with racing engines on equal footing.

It's one of the most surprisingly cool racing stories in American motorsports history.

AMC vs The World: How Two 1979 AMC Spirits Won Class At The 24 hours of The 'Ring

This is the story of how a 1979 AMC AMX won its class at the 1979 24 Hours of the Nurburgring. Not only that, how it was done with two hastily built cars, a group of six drivers that included a Hollywood star, and how they did it all on street tires.

Oh, they also had a one armed German driving instructor. Not all publicity stunts are made the same and this video will be proof of that. In this case, Gary Pace of BFG had a big idea and teamed up with just the right people to execute it. Not only that, they had an ace up their sleeve which has gone largely ignored or simply not reported to this point in history.

The first American team to ever compere at the 24 Hours of The 'Ring battled hard for 24 hours against the elements, exhaustion, their cars...and the competition? Watch and find out why that's the ultimate question

The Decade That Tried To Kill Nitro Drag Racing: The 1970s

Incredibly, nitro powered drag racing nearly didn't survive the 1970s. It is a story often lost to modern history but it's a harrowing tale of shortages, price escalation, racer intervention, and the survival instincts of racers in Top Fuel and Nitro Funny Car.

In this podcast we examine the tumultuous decade that saw performances escalate, star power grow, and in the end, the sport brought to its very knees as its most famous lifeblood was nearly stolen from it.

Would you believe that many racers were advocating for its end in drag racing? They were and the proof is in here.

Drag racing history isn't all about the records set on the track, it's often about the survival of its cars, of its venues, and of its fuel off of it.

Sunken Hemi: The Chrysler Concept Car At The Bottom of the Atlantic Ocean

It was late 1956 and craftsmen in Turin were thrashing to complete the latest, mosrt beautiful, and most complex project they had ever done for Chrysler.

It was a concept car called The Norseman and it was both an exceptional design and a near impossible build.

After missing its first shipping date, the job was finished a month later and the car ewas hurriedly placed on the Italian luxury liner Andrea Doria, one of the best known ships in the world, for its trip to New York City. No one outside of the factory in Turin that produced it had ever seen the car in person. It would be a grand reveal.

The Stockholm was a much smaller ocean liner, in fact the smallest to be sailing the high seas in that class of ship at the time. A little more dowdy than the Andrea Doria, it was a tough ship with an ice breaking prow that could smash its way through just about anything.

This is the story of the disaster that befell these two ships and sent one of the most beautfiul Detroit dream cars, concept cars, or idea cars ever created to the bottom of the sea forever.

Slicks: The Sticky History of the World's Fastest Racing Tires

The story of drag racing is typically seen as one defined by insane horsepower. The super fuels, the massive blowers, the acceleration that is unmatched by any wheel driven vehicle on Earth.

 

But that actually isn't the root of the story.

 

The real foundation of it all? Traction. And where did that come from? It came from tire shops at first. Taking old passenger car tires and gluing more rubber on them than they were ever supposed to hold.

 

Next it came from a genius of a man from a small town in Massacusetts who quite literally invented the scratch built drag slick. And it's only gotten faster from there. This is the story of the genesis of traction. Of the birth of the one thing that drag racing has relied on more than nitromethane, more than superchargers, and more than steel tubing.

 

Slicks.

 

The tires that make drag racing the incredible sport that it is today.

Glorious Failure: Mickey Thompson's Wild 1967 Wynn's Spitfire Indy 500 Car

f there is a story in American motorsports history more compelling than Micke Thompson versus the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, I am not sure what it is. The man conquered everything in his path over the course of a titanic career, except Indy.

His ideas were wild, his concepts extreme, his timelines always stretched. In 1967 he would unveil a car so far out there that the media went crazy, the tech inspectors didn't know where to start, and engineers the country over scratched their heads.

Front engine, front wheel drive, four wheel steering, and a driver seated basically between the rear tires, it was incredible. It was also powered by a custom made 3-valve small block Chevy.

It was also doomed to fail. This is the story of the 1967 Wynn's Spitfire of Mickey Thompson.

War Boost: An Introductory Lesson In WWII Aircraft Engine Supercharging

There's nothing like upping the horsepower of an engine with boost. Multiple methods of supercharging exist today and have been brought to an incredible level of efficiency.

 

While these methods were not invented in WWII, their use was vastly studied, tweaked, and tested to their limits back then. This video is the next in a series about the history of centrifugal superchargers and their use on piston engines.

 

Consider this your 101 level course in WWII supercharging. Here we go over the various methods and systems used on aircraft from the USA, Germany, and Great Britain. Which countries did it best? Which country made a mistake in their method? Who ruled the horsepower roost and why?

It was a war of horsepower and boost was a huge factor in making more of it than the other guys 

 

Powerama 1955: When GM Ruled The Earth They Put On The Greatest Horsepower Show of All Time

In 1955 General Motors decided to put on a show, not just any show, a gathering of vehicles, horsepower, and entertainment the likes of which the world had never seen before and never saw again.

 

Powerama was a one million square foot fantasyland of every off-highway division of General Motors on display. Dubbed the "World's Fair of Power" it had locomotives, bulldozers, elephants, aircraft, tanks, a submarine, pleasure craft, a shrimp boat, the Motorama dream cars, an 85-ton cannon known as Atomic Annie, and more and more and more.

 

In this history we investigate the genesis of the event, the execution of the event, and the machines that made it one of the most unique gatherings in the gearhead history of Earth.

 

Seriously, this is wild.

The Birth of American Muscle: The Story of The Liberty V-12 Engine

This is the story of an engine. Not just any engine, but the engine that created the idea of "American Muscle".

It was the lightest, most powerful airplane engine in the world during WWI and it was designed by two guys in a hotel room during a five day marathon in Washington D.C.in 1917.

Making 450hp and being produced by multiple American car companies, this engine was a master class in simplicity, integration of existing ideas, and mass production.

While it can't really be said that it solved the war for the allies, what it did do was to introduce the idea of an America that stood as a colossus of industry among its peers in the world.

The Liberty V-12 has an awesome story and the engine itself is worthy of your admiration.