Could a Studebaker have won a championship

[jnormanh]

Overall, my mission has been to successfully challenge your statement in Post #23: The bottom line is: There was no year that normally aspirated Studebakers had enough horsepower to be competitive.

In my opinion, that's been accomplished. BP

Which year was that?

[BobPalma]

Which year was that?

1956: The horsepower and potential was in the 1956 Golden Hawk, as you conceded in Post #26:

"I'll take that, the '56 GH, as your best shot for a Studebaker which could have been competitive in NASCAR."

(Or at least I think that's what you said, Jeff!) BP

[jnormanh]

1956: The horsepower and potential was in the 1956 Golden Hawk, as you conceded in Post #26:

"I'll take that, the '56 GH, as your best shot for a Studebaker which could have been competitive in NASCAR."

(Or at least I think that's what you said, Jeff!) BP

Okay - Studebaker offers two carb option for the 56J. What's that then? Half way to the Caribbean engine, say 285-290HP?

And that will run with a 355HP Hemi?

Good try, Bob. But I don't think so.

But thanks for the courteous discussion....now if only Studebaker had Utzman twin cam heads for the 352....and a better crank....

[R3 challenger]

One aspect of high speed racing that has not been discussed is total frontal area. That's not exactly the same as coefficient of drag. Studebaker cars, on average, were significantly narrower than most of the cars that raced in NASCAR or in other high speed venues. That's one of the reasons they have been so successful at Bonneville. Less frontal area requires less power to push it through the air, all other things being equal. When you get up over 150 mph, it takes very large increases in engine power to overcome wind resistance, and that resistance is determined, in part, by frontal area.

So a Studebaker would likely have required less power say, at speeds over 150 mph than many other competing cars. Studes usually weighed less, too, but that's not nearly as important as frontal area at high speeds. Weight is the enemy in drag racing, but not necessarily when you want to go over 150 mph. When we raced Ron Hall's R3 Avanti at Bonneville, we had a couple hundred pounds of lead shot in the spare tire well, along with two very heavy batteries in the trunk for traction. That didn't keep us from reaching speeds over 200 mph on slippery salt at an elevation of over 4,000 feet.

George

[studeguy54]

Regarding Studebakers in NASCAR.....when I was at Daytona USA (at the Daytona International Speedway), back around 2000, The listing of records on the walls there included a '53 or '54 Studebaker which set a record in (I believe this is the correct name) Modified-Sportsman 300 in the early 60's, around 1963. The car was driven by LeRoy Yarborough (not related to Cale), and, I believe powered by a Ford. At that time, the Studebaker coupe body was VERY popular in that race and I can remember seeing the results of a race where the finishers were overwhelmingly Studebaker coupe bodies (with other engines, of course), which qualified them as "Modifieds" for that race.

Denny Foust

[jnormanh]

One aspect of high speed racing that has not been discussed is total frontal area. That's not exactly the same as coefficient of drag. Studebaker cars, on average, were significantly narrower than most of the cars that raced in NASCAR or in other high speed venues. That's one of the reasons they have been so successful at Bonneville. Less frontal area requires less power to push it through the air, all other things being equal. When you get up over 150 mph, it takes very large increases in engine power to overcome wind resistance, and that resistance is determined, in part, by frontal area.

So a Studebaker would likely have required less power say, at speeds over 150 mph than many other competing cars. Studes usually weighed less, too, but that's not nearly as important as frontal area at high speeds. Weight is the enemy in drag racing, but not necessarily when you want to go over 150 mph. When we raced Ron Hall's R3 Avanti at Bonneville, we had a couple hundred pounds of lead shot in the spare tire well, along with two very heavy batteries in the trunk for traction. That didn't keep us from reaching speeds over 200 mph on slippery salt at an elevation of over 4,000 feet.

George

Wind resistance increases proportional to the square of the speed. Indeed it is wind resistance which limits the top speed of any car so long as adequate gearing is available. As someone once said: Top speed is wind versus horsepower. The wind always wins, horsepower determines when. Put another way: if a given car will run 100 mph with 100 horsepower, it will need 400 horsepower to run 200 mph.

[nels]

I think what all this boils down to is this: If the factory really wanted to compete they could have and if doing so certain options would have been made available and other developements would have come forth, such as the 310 engine, tripower carbs etc. The 53 or Hawk body was absolutely more aerodynamic than any of the big three's offerings. This alone is/was a huge advantage and certainly would have made up for sizable HP differences. Studebaker really had no interest in NASCAR and money, what little they had at that time, would have been better spent elsewhere or so they reasoned.

[jnormanh]

Sure....IF.....IF....IF Studebaker, Nash, Kaiser, could all have won NASCAR races and championships IF...IF...IF they had the desire and money.

But they didn't, so what's your point?

"The 53 or Hawk body was absolutely* more aerodynamic than any of the big three's offerings. This *alone* is/was a huge advantage and certainly would have made up for sizable HP differences."

Oh, baloney.

A 1953 Studebaker obviously did not have enough HP to compete in NASCAR regardless of drag coefficient, so, no, a 1953, 120 HP Studebaker could not, no way, have run with a 210 HP 1953 Hudson.

Bob Palma thinks a '56 GH might have. A question: what was the drag coefficient of a 275HP 56J versus a 355HP Chrysler 300B?

* Numbers count, guesses and wishful thinking don't.

[(S)]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Mundy Pretty sure the 232 was the little engine that DID......

[Chicken Hawk]

[QUOTE=You're claiming that a *stock* R1 Studebaker will run 1/4 miles within a second of a Ferrari Testarossa?

'scuse, me, but, as the saying goes: "I was born at night, but it wasn't LAST night."

Maybe an R1 will run mid 14s, but if do, it ain't stock.[/QUOTE]

I can't be quiet any longer. Sorry but this may be lengthy.

I don't know what we have to do to convince "supposedly" Studebaker people just how underrated the V 8 Stude engine is. To say Steve Doerschlag's R 1 is not legal is beyond me and not fair to Steve since this car has passed tech the last two years and I realize it was not torn down and everything checked but there's Richard Poe that ran his R 1 for several years and cleaned many more big blocks than cleaned him.

In fact I don't think Richard ever lost but one shoot out in all the years he ran at the PSMCDR. Again, his car passed tech every year and even though it was not torn down I think most know the car is legal just like Steve's is. And by Richard spending hours doing the little things that add up and make a difference, his car almost always turned the LOW 14's and under ideal conditions (weather, traction, etc.) made it into the high 13's MORE than once!

Peter Sant's R 2 Avanti with air and loaded weighing in at OVER 3900 pounds with him in it and turning in the high 13's and over 100mph along with Chuck and John's white R 2 Avanti doing the same thing, it is frustrating to hear some of the comments about our cars not being stock or legal. Peter, Chuck and John have spent HOURS tuning their cars also.

Steve's clone R 3 was not performing like it should and he discovered the supercharger was going to almost zero boost in high gear. He got that fixed but still was not doing as well as he thought it should. So he put on a new fuel pump, filters, checked the timing, tires, etc. and he ended up turning 13.20's at over 106 mph. He could have easily not done anything and kept running slower than its potential.

We got the feeling early on at Stanton that many thought the Studes were not legal and that's why in 2004 we volunteered the Tomato for complete certification by taking it a day early for Bob and Dan to certify it as STOCK.

The engine was checked with precision tools in checking the bore, stroke, heads, valve springs, cc's, cam, compression, intake, carb, etc., etc.

We had it certified again in 2010 with the clone R 3 engine. This one Bob Palma was there and had pictures in TW of some of the things they did.

The neat thing about that 2004 certification was that the BEST it had turned up to that time was 13.40 and after the certification, the next day it turned 13.301. Could have been due to better traction, weather, or something else but the fact it did pretty well quieted down the nay sayers.

I would venture to say that most of the cars at Stanton are not completely stock and I'm sure most have never volunteered for certification.

But some complainers are back again and probably the reason the Tomato was selected as one of the seven cars to be "heavy teched" out of 134 cars this year and again passed with zero problems. At this heavy tech George Krem volunteered the Wrapper to be heavy teched next year if they so desire.

What more can we do to prove our point? I guess nothing will convince some people no matter what. I would like to encourage Richard to bring his R 1 out of retirement to again put the fear into the big blocks running against a Stude NORMALLY aspirated.

Richard has built a '64 normally aspirated (not legal for Pure Stock) and it has only run the eighth so far with an 8.2 et at 85 mph. He has trouble launching without hopping, getting the T-10 to shift good, etc., and has not had time to sort out jetting, timing, etc., but I'll bet after he spends time fixing these problems so he can get into the fine tuning it will EASILY dip into the sevens and close to 90 mph in the eighth.

The supercharger will knock a full second off and I imagine if I ran the Tomato without the supercharger with re jetting it would definitely run in the 14's but not as good as Steve's or Richard's due to the R 2 heads with lower compression.

The Stude people running at Stanton get this power by hours of work experimenting and trying different things to see what helps and what does not. And the ones not running real good yet will if they stick with it and spend the time and getting help from the rest of us.

The first year I ran the '51 at the 1962 NHRA Nationals it turned 16.90 at almost 81 mph. Ten years later it ran a best of 15.4 @ almost 88 mph. Some of this was due to better tires, strip prep, etc., but the point is all the hours spent trying different things and all the little things add up. For example I found putting 25 pounds of air in the right air bag and 5 in the left improved traction and kept the car going straight instead of drifting to the left and left both tire patterns the same. This helped lower the et some. Just one example of experimenting.

Drag racing is NOT the only venue Stude has shown its potential which includes Tom Covington and soon to be, Jeff Rice, and too many others to mention or that I can think of off the top of my head.

Look at the Bonneville cars, the records set back in the early 60's, what Jim Lange, Dave Bloomberg, Dave Livesay, Greg Meyer, and others I don't recall at the moment have done.

What kind of proof do you need from a small independent company that produced only a minimal fraction of what the big three did?

There are faster cars at Stanton and we get beat by them but I think overall we win more than we lose. And in my opinion, winning the shootout is actually overrated. You are paired with a car that runs practically the same et as you do and there is a LOT of luck in winning the shootout. The race is usually won with the driver that has the best reaction time and the best 60' time. If you are lucky enough to dominate those two things, you will usually win your shootout.

You can't expect to just set your timing, jump into your daily driver and expect it to run to its potential.

I apologize for the length of this but it frustrates me that we spend all the time and expense (although I enjoy it immensely) and continually see comments degrading what has been proven by so many so often.

Off my soap box now.

Ted

[SN-60]

Just for the sake of gab.....I believe everyone agrees that '56 was the only year Studebaker offered a car that would have a reasonable chance against the Chrysler 300's. The 'Jet Streak' package
that was contemplated by the factory for the 56J would have been a must ....with one addition ....the 352 replaced with the 374 (or bigger). But when You factor in the teething problems that the new Packard engine surely had......I envision several sleek 56J's 'parked' with blown engines, after perhaps putting on a good show early on in a NASCAR race.

[jnormanh]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Mundy Pretty sure the 232 was the little engine that DID......

The record shows that Frank Mundy started 23 NASCAR races in Studebakers and won 3 times. (13%)

He then switched to Hudson, started 18 AAA stock car races and won 8 times. (44%)

After that he switched to Chrysler, started 16 times in AAA, won 8 times (50%)

After that he started 19 NASCAR races in a Dodge and won 6 times (32%)


Frank was one heckuva good driver. His overall win percentage is better than Richard Petty. Except when he drove Studebakers.

The Widkepedia info for Frank is way incorrect as it shows him winning only three times, the last time in 1951. His last win was June 17, 1956 at the Missouri State Fairgrounds a NASCAR convertible race.

[BobPalma]

What Ted and George said. What this underscores, to some extent, is a danger of internet forums. I think I'm a pretty good wordsmith, but the following is difficult to ask diplomatically: Why do some people demonstrate how erudite and intellectual they want to appear by deliberately cutting down the very marque we all profess to love, warts and all?

Quite frankly, as Ted hinted, this intellectual masturbation gets a little old, seeing who can beat up on Studebaker the most and attract attention to themselves by appearing to be such an automotive genius, embodying a vast knowledge of Studebaker's deficiencies and all too willing to enlighten those poor souls who actually think Studebakers are doggone neat cars who did their level best to compete against enormous odds, even successfully every so often!

With that off my chest, the Original Poster asked if Studebaker could have won a NASCAR championship during any year in which Studebakers were in production, a perfectly legitimate question. The answer, as I'll demonstrate presently, is YES. That they never mounted a factory campaign to do so is beside the point; the basic equipment was at the ready, and that's what the original poster asked about.

Before long, though, we heard that "Studebaker's little V8 didn't have a ghost of a chance," and, "GM, Ford, and Chrysler had stock engines that made lots more horsepower," and "had better aerodynamics," (that one really floored me), and that we would need to "factor in the teething problems that the new Packard engine surely had," (which I assume would be the oil pump issue cured halfway through the 1956 model year and might have been cured earlier had the racers got a hold of it), and the definitive, unqualified conclusion, "The bottom line is: There was no year that normally-aspirated Studebakers had enough horsepower to be competitive."

Now let's zero in on 1956. The Studebaker Golden Hawk had a 352 cubic inch engine, only two cubic inches smaller than the 354 Chrysler hemi, as enlarged for 1956, and 'way more cubes than a 1957 Ford (312), Chevy (265), Plymouth (277), Oldsmobile (324), Pontiac (317), etc., etc. Yet the Golden Hawk had a shipping weight of only 3360 pounds, a narrower frontal area, and superior aerodynamics than any of them, any of them...unless you want to include Corvettes and Thunderbirds, which were generally not allowed to compete in NASCAR because they were considered 2-passenger sports cars.

Even if the Golden Hawk had been held to 352 cubic inches, the Jet Steak dual-quad high-performance kit already had part numbers in que and could be easily installed in the parking lot of any race track. The 1955 Caribbean 352 dual-quad engine was rated at 275 horsepower with 8.50:1 compression ratio, whereas the 1956 Golden Hawk single-quad 352 was rated the same, presumably due to the compression ratio being bumped to 9.50:1 for 1956. The stock 1956 Golden Hawk 352 was rated at 380 ft/lb of torque, too.

May we assume, for the sake of discussion, that the Jet Steak dual-quad kit would have added a modest 10 HP and 10 ft/lb of torque to the Golden Hawk 352, bumping its HP to 285 and its torque to 390? That's conservative, but we'll go with it so nobody thinks I'm being overly optimistic.

The highest-performance 1956 Chrysler 354 hemi engine was rated at 355 HP with dual quads, solid lifters, and a host of other performance goodies that rendered it unsuitable for everyday street use. It had a whopping 405 ft/lb of torque at 3400 rpm. (For comparison, the 1956 Packard 374 V8 also developed 405 ft/lb of torque at a lower 2800 rpm, with hydraulic lifters and manners that enabled it to be fitted with air conditioning and quietly, smoothly, and unobtrusively driven to church by Aunt Mable for as long as she cared to do so.)

But the Chrysler 300 had a shipping weight of 4005 pounds and lousier aerodynamics than a Golden Hawk. The Chrysler's 355 horsepower hauling around 4005 pounds yields an important lb/hp ratio of 11.28:1. By contrast, if you'll accept 385 HP for a Jet-Streak package, dual-quad 352 Golden Hawk, that 385 HP is hauling around only 3360 pounds, for an important lb/hp ratio of 8.73:1; almost 30% less than the 300, and in a more streamlined body to boot!

So I say: The bottom line is, there was indeed at least one year during the 1950s in which Studebaker marketed a normally-aspirated "stock" car that could have competed favorably in NASCAR racing had the company dedicated itself to the mission to the extent that Karl Kiekhaefer dedicated himself to winning NASCAR races with Chrysler 300s, and that year was 1956.

Now I like 1950s Fords, too, especially 1955-1959 models. So I think I'll go over to the Y-block Ford forum and establish myself as liking those cars because I sincerely do, warts and all. Then, I'll demonstrate my erudite automotive knowledge by pointing out the oiling deficiencies of early Y-block Ford V8s. After all, some of those forum members may be laboring under the delusion that those engines are perfect, and we can't have that! It's the least I can do, and it will underscore how much I know. I'm sure they'll appreciate my pointing out a defect in the cars they and I profess to like, contributing something about which they may have no knowledge.

(And if you think I'm being rough, you guys ought to be glad Nelson Bove doesn't weigh in and unload, 'cause he would make me look like a piker!) BP

[R3 challenger]

Amen to that, Ted and Bob. And BTW, even though my R3 was a bit "off its game" this year because of a problem with blower belts, it still turned a 12.78 and 112.62 against a moderate headwind...times in the upper 1/4 of all the well-prepared musclecars at the Pure Stock Drags.

Its easy to take verbal potshots...but it's just a bit harder to actually get one's car on a track and do something. We'd love to see more SDC members join us in promoting Studebakers and Studebaker engineering...on the track and off.

George

[8E45E]

One cannot overlook the police car market in those years! I believe Studebaker was very successful in this area because of the performance of the 289 cubic inch engine.

Craig