Over head valve engine

[Ron]

The Continental six cylinder engine used by Kaiser Frazer was also used by Checker Motors. Checker had two versions of the engine; a flat head that was the same as used  by KF and an Over Head Valve version.
Has anyone on this list used the OHV engine in their KF car?

Ron

[Gordie]

Checker in their later years used Chevrolet engines.  Are you referring to the Chev 6 OHV engine?

[Ron]

I'm asking about the Continental Six used by Kaiser Frazer, Kaiser Jeep and Checker Motors (and others).
A Checker Motors / Checker Cab site - and a Wikipedia entry - mentioned a OHV version of the Continental Six as an option on their cars.

Ron

[kaiserfrazerlibrary]

Willys Motors engineers upgraded the 226 L-head (flathead) to an overhead cam "Tornado" 230 cubic inch in line 6.  The date on the engine block print is 6/21/61.  

It had limited use until the company got the old V-6 tooling from Buick and began purchasing OHV 6 and V8 engines from American Motors that mated to the Chrysler supplied automatics or Borg-Warner manual transmissions.

Continental did upgrade the 226 block to OHV, but it was never used in Kaiser-Frazer or Willys products; the upgrade took place in the early 1960's.


Jack Mueller

[Fid]

There is a 1951 Kaiser that was once owned by Henry J Kaiser. It has an OHV engine in it. What type is that one?

[ben-tex]

That was a factory experimental engine. The car with the engine in it has an interesting history. Not sure where it is now.

[HJ-ETEX]

Some years ago the SCT & HOA Regions had a joint meet in Enid, OK. We had some Rocky Mt Members show up as well as Kaiser Bill Brown. But the main point is that Dave Cooper (who didn't live that far away) showed up with an engine in the back of his pickup. It was an OHV conversion of a 226 and he claimed it was from a Checker. It did NOT look like the OHV engine in the Edgar 52. He said it was rare and I tend to agree. The engine was an option and a stop gap until better units (Chevy) could be used.

[HJ-ETEX]

Jack Mueller refers to Willys or Kaiser-Willys upgrading from the 226 to the 230 Tornado OHC engine. He cites a company date of 6/21/61. Yes, this engine was optional in 1962 Willys trucks. There is factory sales literature showing this. I have not seen evidence of use in the station wagons. Of course, this was used in the new 1963 Gladiator trucks and Wagoneers so it wasn't THAT limited in use.  But, let's see if you can find one in use these days. This was a conversion of the old Continental 6 and literature illustrations suggest that it would take little effort to switch out with a 226. I would really like to see someone try this, BUT I suspect the Tornado engine had the shortcomings of the 226 plus a few new ones.

[1948 Kaiser]

Allis-Chalmers tractors also used Continental engines. Both of the later 50's models we have use the OHV 4cyl. engines.

[kaiserfrazerlibrary]

Willys Motors found that it was cheaper to go outside for motors than to develop their own powerplants.  That's why they bought the old Buick V-6 tooling when Buick discontinued the motor in the Special models (the compact version) or engines from AMC.  Trick on the v-6 was converting it for the Chrysler Corporation automatic which was standard issue (and the AMC motors were designed to mate with them).

[Gordie]

Didn't the English Rover use the Buick V-6 for several years?

[HJ-ETEX]

Jack - What in the hell are you talking about? The automatic used behind the V6 in the Commando/C101/Jeepster was a Turbo 400. AMC  6s and V8s used BW automatics until 1972. At that point they did switch to Torqueflites  and they also changed the bolt patterns on the engine blocks so the earlier engines could not be used with the later transmissions. There wasn't a situation where the ex-Buick V6 would have been used with the BW automatic or the Torqueflite

[HJ-ETEX]

Getting back to OHV conversions of the 226, I came across a Flickr collection of Checker photos
http://www.flickr.com/photos/32951704@N05/3077340277/in/photostream/

In particular look at this image:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/32951704@N05/3983458289/
Looks like a 226 block, but I would like to see the distributor.
The automatic looks like a BW Type 10, but air cooled(!). Notice the slots in the bellhousing and the plug in the side where cooling lines would attach.

[HJ-ETEX]

gordie: Rover didn't use the Buick V6, they used the aluminum Buick V8 for a number of years. (The V6 was sort of based on the aluminum V8). One of the problems of the aluminum V8 was it reacted badly to ethylene glycol antifreeze. You were supposed to use methyl alcohol antifreeze or the block would clog from corrosion. Buick had an iron block/aluminum head version for 1964 (300 c.i.) and then a iron block/head version for 1965 (330 c.i.) At some time the aluminum alloy used in engine castings got changed to tolerate ethylene glycol.

[kaiserfrazerlibrary]

In the mid-1950's American Motors dropped the Hydra-Matic in favor of the Chrysler Torque-Flite transmissions.  That's why in the late 1950's AMC had push-button shifting of the transmission like the Chrysler Corporation cars.  Kaiser-Jeep purchased AMC engines and transmissions for use in the Wagoneer and Gladiator during the 1960's.  K-J bought the tooling for the Buick V-6 because they got it at a good price & the Kaiser Aluminum engineers (along with people from Kaiser Engineers) figured out how to smooth out the quirks the engine exhibited while a Buick product.  I was also told by a former K-J engineer that they had to re do the flywheel on the V-6 to accomidate the existing automatic transmission in use on other K-J offerings.

The engineers I knew from AMC were the ones who told me about the switchover in the 1950's as they had to accomodate the linkage and dimensional changes from GM to Chrysler units.  It also made sense as Borg-Warner (who made automatics for Studebaker) did not have the push-button solenoid system of Chrysler Corporation products and AMC vehicles (Ford did their own engineering for push buttons on the Edsel, but abandoned the system after only 1 year).   

It is too bad that these people have died over the last 14 or so years....It would be interesting to ask them not only about some of this, but to see if they still had any drawings, notes, etc from those days.  Estate sales in recent years involving engineers who worked at K-F have yielded some interesting documents including the original hand drawings of electrical systems and good stuff for various 1949 model K-F products.