HEMI MYTH

[dreemz]

Interesting article in this months' (August) Hot Rod magazine paying tribute to the hemi. Some of the people interviewed include Jay Leno and Don Garlits. It gets interesting when they interview Marty Schorr. He states that when he would receive a hemi press car to test drive they would almost never run right. He says a good running 440 would take it. It gets even better in the article when he says that to get the hemi running right he would take the car to Joel Rosen at Motion Performance! Although they would not put on headers(as that would alter the stock appearance) he would rejet the carbs and recurve the ignition amongst other things. Very cool how JR was the go-to guy at the time. He obviously knew how to set up a car. It would lead one to think that just about the most brutal street machines of the time were coming out of Baldwin Chev

[Mr70]

You mean <font color="red">MOTiON</font> Performance.

[njsteve]

I wouldn't doubt the tune up story. Hemi's are (and where) the "Paris Hiltons" of their day (very high maintenance but good for a night of fun if you could get them warmed up). Even the factory back then put out a rejetting diagram to help people get the things running right. (they use 8 different size jets in the eight different positions in the 2 carbs based on intake runner length.)

[NCGuy68]

Yep, the street Hemis were a bit 'touchy' from the factory. However, when dialed in and tuned properly they were hard to beat even on the street. Just ask Richard Petty or Ronnie Sox.

[olredalert]

-----Street Hemis needed more compression and more cam. The few guys who did that correctly were very hard to get by with any other street-used car back in the day..........Bill S

[kwhizz]

One of my friends had a new 66 Coronet Hemi car.....we didn't think much of it at the time because it burned oil, smoked,fouled plugs, and more importantly my L-79 car was much faster......the best running Hemi car around was Austin Coil's car.........those were the day's......if you didn't like what you had .......just go to the dealer and order something else.......talk about kids who "Didn't" know they were in a Candy Store........Crazy Times....Take me back......I'd buy all the candy in the store before Charley got there...

Ken