Willys Mystery

[boatingbill]

The July Bulletin had a interesting article by the Historian about 226 aluminum heads a supercharging the Darrin F head. This adds to the lore of KF that I have mentioned several times over the years that I have encountered. Around 1970-71, I friend and I were Kaiser hunting in a northern Mn salvage and found a near perfect 55 Willys Burmuda hardtop. The Body was very clean with only a taillight broken and the interior was perfect. The weird thing why was it in the salvage yard? We opened the hood and the engine and trans were missing. We bought and towed it back to Mpls (the tires even had air). We found out it was a 226 ci car and were looking for a 54 Supercharged automatic to put in it. A willys dealer west of Mpls on Hwy 7 had lots of NOS parts including a taillight for the car. In his bsmt he had NOS sheet metal parts galore. My friend wanted to run it at the dragstrip on old hwy 8 in F stock class after we rebuilt the front suspension. I think the 226 was just too heavy for it. The dragstrip saw the blower and refused to allow us to run without proof of factory option for the blower. The Willys dealer claimed to have received paperwork of some kind that this was indeed available from KF (maybe dealer installed?). We asked to look through his boxes of paperwork in the bsmt, but he said no we couldn't and he did not have time to do it himself. So maybe Kaiser was looking into this as well as for the Darrin. Another mystery to ponder that I believe was true especially after the June Bulletin.

[Aeroman]

Many people have added the Paxton supercharger to the 226-engined Aeros, but as far as I've been able to tell, it was never an option by the factory. I am sure some were dealer installed. John Parker used tell about his Bermuda that he bought new and he installed a supercharger himself but, for some reason, could not install the fan for proper cooling. He said it ran well but he did not want to get stuck in traffic or climb mountains. There is an F-head automatic '53 Aero Eagle on the west coast with a supercharger that someone created that runs perfectly fine and includes a fan.

[kaiserfrazerlibrary]

Over the years, I've found a lot of factory documents on still-born plans for modifications to the 226 engine, the 161 cubic inch engine and cars themselves.  The particular item on supercharging the 161 in a Darrin is covered in a memo from J.W. Alexander, head of K-F and K-W's service departments to field service personnel.  It was a "just in case" item on an extended blower warranty supported by the supercharger maker.  The aluminum heads for the 226 is covered in inter-office memos dealing with how to price & market the heads on 1953 Kaisers.