Corbin Walters

[jallen]

Occasionally I see the name Corbin Walters appear on various forums.
I'm wondering if anyone has actually been able to contact him?

[Roscomacaw]

Here's a Ph# for Jet City Studebaker. That was Corbin's biz name. But, the phone's no longer connected!

253-564-8800

Miscreant Studebaker nut in California's central valley.

1957 Transtar 1/2ton
1960 Larkvertible V8
1958 Provincial wagon
1953 Commander coupe
1957 President two door

[StudeRich]

I think the story is, that he had to quit doing Stude. stuff, because of all the CASO's not wanting to pay the big bucks for his professional expensive engine and head work and performance parts. You don't hear of Jim Pepper either, both worked on Ron Hall's record setting 200 MPH Bonneville car #1963 Stude. powered Avanti.

StudeRich -Studebakers Northwest Ferndale, WA

[sals54]

One of the other reasons Corbin has quit is due to the fact that others were getting the same or more horsepower out of their Studes for pennies on the dollar compared to what Corbin was charging. Thanks in great part to the venerable Dick Datson.

sals54

[PackardV8]

Hi, Sal,

"Even though we do not agree, I defend to the death your right to say it."

quote:One of the other reasons Corbin has quit is due to the fact that others were getting the same or more horsepower out of their Studes for pennies on the dollar compared to what Corbin was charging. Thanks in great part to the venerable Dick Datson.

JMHO, and I agree, Corbin did ask more for his very good parts than CASOs were willing to pay. However, his and Jim Pepper's engines set records at Bonneville and did post genuine high horsepower numbers on dynomometers. Corbin made hard parts no one else has ever offered for Studebaker V8s and had them out there for sale. DD wrote volumes of left-handed theories, but only sold photocopies. Very little of what DD espoused back in the bad old days - wooden intakes, belt-driven turbochargers, Chevy valve conversions, is still with us as best-science today.

thnx, jack vines

PackardV8

[Dan White]

I believe a divorce and his career in the airlines played a part in his decision to exit the Hi-Pro Studebaker business.

Dan White
64 R1 GT
64 R2 GT

[mbstude]

"JET CITY - STAGE 2"



[8D][8D][8D]

Matthew Burnette
Hazlehurst, GA

[sals54]

But lets not also forget that Ted Harbit himself was using and contributing to Dick Datson's newsletter. Dick is one of the reasons that Ted switched to turbos on his Chicken Hawk. That car can stand on its own in terms of horsepower. I would put the 10 second Chicken Hawk against anything Corbin built. You may also ask Tom Covington who was turning 11 sec quarter mile times with his Dick Datson inspired horsepower. C'mon credit where credit is due.

sals54

[Dan White]

I have two sets of heads, one R1 and one R2 that have the Chevy big valve conversion that Dick used to discuss in his newsletter and it works great, no complaints.

Dan White
64 R1 GT
64 R2 GT

[PackardV8]

Hi, Sal,

quote:C'mon credit where credit is due.

We could grant DD was/is a heck of a writer and did serve as a catalyst for some in the orphan community. He effectively repackaged some bits from the mainstream hot rod press as well as ideas shared by real builders, such as Ted Harbit and Tom Covingtion and photocopied them for sale to AMC and Studebaker readers. DD's minor stroke of genius, IMHO, was taking mainstream Chevy stuff, such as turbochargers and larger valves and bringing them to an audience, such as Rambler and Studebaker, who might not be reading about it and thinking it could apply to their engines. Some stuff did get done which might not have happened without his encouragement.

However, are we seriously saying DD was the first to suggest turbochargers for OHV8s? Turbocharged OHV8s were running at Indy, Bonneville and turbo kits were for sale for street-driven cars before DD ever mentioned turbos in print. I've got all of DD's books on the shelf right now and I can't find one idea in there which had not been written about years before for other make V8s.

Having given credit where credit was due, reading DD's years-long-saga about belt-driven-turbochargers, one cannot help but think of a quote from "Alice in Wonderland."

"Alice laughed: "There's no use trying," she said; "one can't believe impossible things."
"I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."

My bottom line, Corbin Walters tested and built real engines which ran at Bonneville and developed real parts and offered them for sale. It would be difficult to link DD's writings to CASOs not being willing to pay Corbin's asking prices. Corbin was just one of many over the years to fail in the face of that reality.

thnx, jack vines

PackardV8

[sals54]

Jack, I don't think we have an argument here. I never suggested that Corbin did not build great running engines, nor did I suggest that Dick invented any of the performance tips or tricks in his newsletter. I'm not trying to say that Dick was solely responsible for any of that information. He did start out doing head work though, as can be seen on the fenders of Ted's early version of his Chicken Hawk. His great contribution, in my opinion, was as editor. No one else was publishing that sort of information at the time he was. Of course turbos are not new. WW2 technology. Hot rodders, though were not using them in this manner to any great extent. Dick's head work for the STude V8 was great. Not everyone can deduce from Chevy tech, what will work for the Stude head. Where to grind without disturbing a water jacket for instance. One example: When I took my cylinder heads to the machine shop to have .125 ( 1/8 th ) inches milled off to increase compression, they thought I was crazy. I had to sign a release that they were not responsible for any damage done. I never would have found this info anywhere else. The improvement made in performance by virtue of the milling and bigger valves was remarkable. The greatest benifit that Dick made to the performance side of the hobby was to bring these ideas together at very low cost, when the internet was not yet available. Most of the Stude folks hated what Dick was doing. I for one, appreciate what he did, and love him for taking the arrows for the "heresy" he was committing. My cars have improved performance primarily due to the ideas I gleaned from his publications. It was often the only performance I could afford.

sals54

[PackardV8]

Hi, Sal,

As usual, we agree about the main points.

I said:

quoteD's minor stroke of genius, IMHO, was taking mainstream Chevy stuff, such as turbochargers and larger valves and bringing them to an audience, such as Rambler and Studebaker, who might not be reading about it and thinking it could apply to their engines.

You said:

quote:The greatest benifit that Dick made to the performance side of the hobby was to bring these ideas together at very low cost, when the internet was not yet available. . . . It was often the only performance I could afford.

Now, about the belt-driven-turbo?

thnx, jack vines



PackardV8

[Roscomacaw]

Looking at turbocharging from a historical perspective, you could actually go back as far as the late 1800s, to the German inventor Gottlieb Daimler, or even Rudolf Diesel, who was credited with designing the mechanical supercharger way back in 1896. But for the sake of this discussion, we're going to start with Swiss engineer Dr. Alfred Buchi. In 1905 Buchi was granted the first patent for a practical turbocharger - a supercharger driven by exhaust gas pulses.

General Electric began to manufacture turbochargers in 1910. In 1915, working as chief engineer for Sulzer brothers research department, Dr. Alfred Buchi proposed and developed the first prototype of a turbocharged diesel engine. Unfortunately, it wasn't very efficient. It wasn't efficient enough to maintain adequate boost pressure.

1918 was another important year, probably the benchmark year for aviation-related turbocharging. It was in this year that Dr. Sanford Moss, an engineer for General Electric, carted a 350 horsepower engine to the top of Pike's Peak in Colorado. And there, in the thin air of the summit of the second-highest mountain in Colorado, at 14,109 feet, Moss was able to boost the power output of that engine to 356 horsepower.

1920 was also an important year in the ongoing history of turbocharging. A turbocharged 12-cylinder Liberty engine was installed on a LaPere bi-plane for altitude tests. They selected this plane, surprisingly enough, because they believed it would be less likely to break up in the event of a long fall from altitude or a violent pull out. A young man named Lt. John Macready was selected to fly the plane. He took it to 33,113 feet! Macready didn't stop with that altitude. In fact, in a very short time, he became one of the most experienced high-altitude flyers in the world, testing turbochargers from 1917-1923. The highest he flew in his open-cockpit plane was an indicated 40,800 feet. And the date was Sept. 28, 1921.

Turbo technology evolved rapidly during the war years. The full strength of blowers was certainly tested during World War II. And as you can imagine, the B-17 and the B-29 bombers, along with the P-38 and P-51 fighters were fitted with turbochargers and controls. The B-36 bomber had six piston engines, each with 28 cylinders. The flight engineer's handbook for the B-36 states that without turbochargers, the B-36 would require 90 cylinders per engine to achieve the same performance as the turbo supercharged design.



Miscreant Studebaker nut in California's central valley.

1957 Transtar 1/2ton
1960 Larkvertible V8
1958 Provincial wagon
1953 Commander coupe
1957 President two door

[N8N]

Matthew, what's that stamp on? just curious

nate

--
55 Commander Starlight

http://members.cox.net/njnagel

[PackardV8]

We're getting pretty far off topic here, however, just to keep the record straight, the P-51 does have a Studebaker-Packard linkage, but no turbocharger:

quote: Packard had built a factory to produce Merlin engines for the Brits, but there was no US airplane using them. The Allison V12 was used in the P-38, P-39 and P-40, thus GE was at capacity producing turbo-superchargers, so the suggestion to put the Packard-built Merlin with its associated mechanical supercharger into the Mustang, where it fit neatly with no major re-engineering needed, must have been a very welcome one merely from a production point of view. The boost in performance the Merlin gave the Mustang was an unlooked for plus.

thnx, jack vines


PackardV8