Thread: Bill Jenkins
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madcorgi
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Originally Posted by John Rogers View Post
In 1963 and 1964 myself and two brothers raced a D-Gas 1955 Chevy with an engine, 283 that was built by Bill Jenkins. He said to make sure and leave the body all steel since with the engine he had sold us the ETs would be way lower that other cars and this way we would only be "slightly" faster! So we sold the cool one piece fiberglass front end and made the hood and both front fenders removable so the engine could be worked on.

It was the only engine that idled at 2500 RPM, had an experimental Crower roller tappet cam that used triple springs on the valves, springs on the rollers and 14.5 (or about that) compression. We used Sunoco leaded racing gas fed through two Carter AFB carbs he had tricked out. We had to replace main and rod bearings after each race weekend which was a pain as we used a 55# flywheel! We had home made headers that came out the side like a top fueler and they would really shoot fire when leaving the line. Don't know what happened to the car and such as I went into the US Navy in 1965?
Cool story, John! Wasn't that about the time the Christmas Tree first came into use? Those were the golden days of drag racing.

Like Denis, I grew up reading and re-reading Hot Rod Magazine cover to cover, and followed Grumpy and all the other drag racers. Used to actually check it out from the library before I could afford a subscription. I am still a subscriber today.
Old 10-09-2019, 01:19 PM
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