Why didn't Buick, instead of redesigning their engines before 67, just retool and make better heads for the nail head, keekping that good crank, rods, and block?????????????
Because something "new and improved" is eye catching in a brochure. From what I have learned here (from guys like you), the heads really cant be improved that much more anyway. The 45* V8 design became more efficient and powerful and was the state of the art with the designers. Time for change? . . . thats my .02:beers2:
Because engineers are idiots......it seems like whenever they finally refine a design to near perfection, they drop the whole thing and start all over again with something new. I've got to give the chebby engineers credit here.....the smallblock stayed relatively the same for a very long time.
I think Joe is on to something. Actually I was thinking of something else. As we know the nails are actually a semi-hemi design. Pent roof chamber with both valves on the same side. Imagine if the exhaust valve was enlarged and moved to the other side of the pent roof. A hemi 401 or 425. Mind boggeling.
I think it had alot to do with the pushrod/valve geometry. To make them all true hemi's, the cyl heads would have to be twice as wide and rocker geometry would have been a nightmare(just like the hemi). Why bother when the Buick engineers came up with a 455 that could beat a hemi, without all that engineering and extra weight of those huge heads! NOW who's the boss? Again. :3gears: Buick is!!! As always! Just like when the nails came out, they were the best at the track!!!:TU:
It was the greed of engineers. The "Nail" had out lived it's design parameters. I had asked the same question & talked for much time about all this to who we all feel is Buick's top engineer. The question I asked, "why did the design have to change?? we went from a bullet proof bottom end with superior oiling, forged steel crank & rods & poor breathing capabilities to a POS bottom end, cast crank & rods, to (in comparison) superior breathing capabilities"??? Would it not have been less costly to just re-design heads & an intake manifold & we would have had the best of both world's???? In the later years we no longer had a need for an engine that would fit between the frame rails of what once supported a straight eight (this was the original design parameters of the "NailHead")as cars & engine bays got wider. Let us not forget the little 215 & original V6's are what make up the 455's. This all started sometime around 1959. So the demise of the "nail" was evident. Besides, what would the engineers have to brag about or be known for???? The "All New NailHead"???? They would not have been given any credit for all the hard work they put into this "New" engine series. It was greed & notoriety. I always wondered if the "Nail" was kept as the V8 for Buick as the SBC was for Chevy where it would be today with fuel injection, DIS, turbo charged, super charged, etc. We know through experimental stages that the ole "Nail" with an old outdated turbo put out something like 800 foot pounds of torque at 2800RPM's. At the time there wasn't a trans. to hold it. Even rears were giving trouble. I don't mean the wimpy little 8.2's but the large car 9 3/8ths. rears. As old as the pent roof combustion chamber is this was nearly a "Hemi" design, or "Semi-Hemi". The spark plug is dead center of the piston & above to make a perfect burn pattern across the top of the piston. A very efficient combustion chamber. Because of this design you could run higher compression on lessor quality fuel. It's kinda funny, what's old has become new again. Look at many of your higher performance cars of today, many of them have "Pent Roof" combustion chambers. You can run higher compression with poorer quality fuels & still get good performance with less possibility of engine damage. Yeah, I for one also dream about the possibilities. Aluminum heads, fuel injection, high output ignition systems from the factory & all the other what if's. If the factory did it then no one will try to use their ingenuity to come up with TBI, TPI, mini-starters, Roller Tip Rockers, trans. adapters & many of the other goodies that have come out in recent years. Then we all would have little or nothing to bitch about. I have "NailHead" dreams every night & always think about the possibilities & what if's.
If you play around with Google images, you can find pictures of guys who tried to circumvent the small diameter of the exhaust valve in the nailhead. They had special cams ground and ran "backwards breathing" nailheads. The exhaust came out of what we all know as the intake port on the top fo the the head, 8 zoomies aimed directly at your face. The most popular induction design I've seen pictures of is a roots type supercharger running off the crank snout with intake runners going to what we know as the exhaust ports. That's one way to get around small exhaust valving. Ed I tried attaching one I copied to a doc. Maybe it will open for you.
I remember the old Ardun heads for the flat head fords that converted them to OHV. With the nails gaining popularity, why couldnt some aftermarket producer make a kit , [heads, cam,rocker arms,ect] that would do this. Some body like Brodex or Edelbrock that already had the people and resorces in place to develop this.
Dennis Manner, the engine design guy usually the source of the info, is a Hibbing, Mn native and grad of the U of Minnesota. A couple of us had a nice chat with him at Rochester last year. He indicated that the 'new' design engine was given the job of moving heavy electraboat size vehicles around-just like the nail had to do. Thought was not given to an A- body car blasting down the quarter-that came later. I agree with most of what others have said here. I was in evaluation engineering @Honeywell for many years. Engineers are rarely 'satisfied' and like to tweak and refine. The old saying that at some point 'you need to shoot the engineers and go to production' comes to mind!
The Ardun was made because the flathead was THE hot rod engine of the time, sure there were other little engines in the game but not many of them had speed parts made even back then. Now you have tons of engines and companies won't make parts for an engine appreciated by a scant few unless they are enthusiests themselfs. People like the AMC folks at Indy, the various different flathead junkies, early Hemi. It just doesn't make economic sense. Until you get someone with the passion and the resources to put something like this into action with thier own or with a small handful of others resources... it ain't going to happen. I'd love to see Northstar style twin cam heads for the nailhead, or offset dual shaft rocker pushrod heads but the answer is there isn't the market. Who buys most of the nailheads? Street rodders who basically want a cam, headers and intake nailhead. Forged pistons? can't see them and they don't make it any louder. Aluminum heads? Would be cool to polish them up but why spend the $3000 on them? And it goes on like that. Market for the Nailhead, MPFI, single 4bbl aluminum intake, bellhousing with a chevy trans pattern and shaft depth, shiney stuff. Hardcore nailhead will be like it was back in the early days, you want it, befriend a machinist and fabricator like Tom T. Just my commentary on all of this,
Yeah, CTX I hear you talking. And yes it would have to be economicly friendly. This whole thread was just a coulda , shouda, wooda thing any way. But then who would have ever dreamed that the nails would ever have have had efi or turbos??? Lets all continue to dream and scheme.
