Some years ago I took my stock (rebuilt, repainted and re-chromed) 55 Kaiser to the old car drag races held annually at Portland International Raceway in Portland, Oregon. Our first outing in stock tuning resulted in a rather poor quarter mile time of 20.55 seconds and 68 MPH. (This was about the same performance that Motor Trend magazine got when they tested the 54 Kaiser Manhattan). The next year we "prepared the car" for racing and turned the quarter in 19.54 seconds with a speed of 73 MPH. By advancing the timing, adjusting the supercharger so it turned at maximum rpm in relation to the crankshaft, dropping the header pipe from the exhaust manifold and using the highest octane fuel available we were able to beat a 52 Chev, 54 Chev, 54 Dodge V8, 54 Packard Clipper, 56 Studebaker and surprisingly a 55 Chev V8 two barrel, automatic. (In a second run against the 54 Dodge, the restored Dodge's engine let go about half way down the track).
One of the the keys to the Kaiser's success turned out to be the hydramatic transmission. In the case of the 55 Chev, the four speed hydramatic allowed the Kaiser to jump about 300 feet ahead of the Chev off the line, due to the slow reaction of the two speed Powerglide. By the end of the quarter mile the Chev was filling my rear window. If the race had gone another 200 feet I would have lost.
After returning the recently rebuilt engine to stock specifications we prepared to drive home. When we started the engine, the temperature gauge I added was in the red and I noticed a slight knock that was rapidly turning into a very loud knock . Blue smoke was billowing out of the tailpipe and the idle suddenly became very rough. We ended up trailering it to the garage. After pulling the head I realized that I was going to have an opportunity to completely rebuild the engine a second time.
As near as I can remember, one or two pistons had holes in their tops, at least three valves were burned, a connecting rod bearing had rotated, some main bearings were scored, the rear seal and head gasket leaked, the oil pump was only producing about 10 pounds of pressure and on and on. We replaced all of the pistons, valves and springs, oil pump, main and rod bearings etc and the crank was back in the machine ship. The machinist said he had never seen that much damage in a Continental engine with less that 2000 miles on it. Fred Walker asked me why I was ordering roughly the same engine parts for the same car after so few miles. I didn't have a good answer.
Racing seemed like a good idea at the time.
I have posted some pictures of the expensive dragstrip ordeal below. (Use "right click", "open link" instead of double clicking the second picture down to have it display correctly).
