The Plymouth Weslake DOHC Motor from the 60's

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Did your dad also help Bob Torozzi and Bruce Junor with the 1971 Questor Grand Prix motor. It was a special race at Ontario Speedway that put American Formula 5000 cars/drivers versus European F1 car/drivers

Swede Savage drove a Formula 5000 with a 305 Mopar motor, AAR Eagle chassis. He wrecked badly in practice with a stuck throttle. In hospital for days but survived. It bothered Bruce Junor and one of the reasons he left AAR.

Heard Tarozzi say once it had a trick injection system. It didn’t have Westlake heads. I don’t think those were legal in F5000.
 
autoxcuda said:
Did your dad also help Bob Torozzi and Bruce Junor with the 1971 Questor Grand Prix motor. It was a special race at Ontario Speedway that put American Formula 5000 cars/drivers versus European F1 car/drivers

Swede Savage drove a Formula 5000 with a 305 Mopar motor, AAR Eagle chassis. He wrecked badly in practice with a stuck throttle. In hospital for days but survived. It bothered Bruce Junor and one of the reasons he left AAR.

Heard Tarozzi say once it had a trick injection system. It didn’t have Westlake heads. I don’t think those were legal in F5000.
Click to expand...

I don’t know if dad had much to do with it... I honestly don’t know... I’d have to ask Bob.
Bob could have very well been working on it on his own at KBRE. It’s kind of a blank history for me after the Rossi NASCAR and with my dad retiring in mid 72... there was always something he was doing, be it the Hemi as well as a very successful slant six for hydroplane Racing, also SK boat racing using the 426 Hemi’s. Again I was very young and much into the nitro funny car thing with so many of them on KB’s premises at the time.
The 305 used Kinsler injection for the F5000 per Bob’s book is all I know. Sorry I can’t give a more definitive answer for you.
 
Great info Kenny!
Much Kudos to your wonderful father, doing all the work and only getting the credit 50 year later...
Its Weslake without the 'T' lol.
I'm not sure why, with 'KB', 'Pete H, your dad on board, why all the Oval-port and D5 heads were cast/sent to Weslake UK?
So who were the smallblock W2 development engineers?
Why was the oval-port bigblock head (W1 lol) never followed up, in conjunction with the smallblock W2.

Is anyone collecting this awesome engineering together so us Moparmen can see it all under 'one roof'?
Best wishes from Limey John

Bob Sykes and Pete.jpg
 
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We always thought the 1970 TA head was the only ones drilled for 'offset pushrods'.
But we now know that the 69 X-head had the same treatment the year before...
Hemi re-sized valves with 5/16 stems and raised stands, how TRICK!

How many were done like this???

X head with moved pushrod holes.JPG
 
STRorange said:
Great info Kenny!
Much Kudos to your wonderful father, doing all the work and only getting the credit 50 year later...
Its Weslake without the 'T' lol.
I'm not sure why with 'KB', 'Pete H, your dad on board, why all the Oval-port and D5 heads were sent to Weslake UK?
So who were the smallblock W2 development engineers?
Why was the oval-port bigblock head (W1 lol) never followed up, in conjunction with the smallblock W2.

Is anyone collecting this awesome engineering together so us Moparmen can see it all under 'one roof'?
Best wishes from Limey John

View attachment 1715562984
Click to expand...
 
A common misspell...sorry!
The W2 head came after my dad departed from KBRE in mid 1972 if I recall. The D5 head was a twin plug Hemi head that Chrysler had trouble with the guides so Tom Hoover of Chrysler had dad and Bob Tarozzi made them work. I just saw a set pop up on Ebay for 4000.00 USD. Thanks for posting the photo of my dad and Hutch!
 
STRorange said:
We always thought the 1970 TA head was the only ones drilled for 'offset pushrods'.
But we now know that the 69 X-head had the same treatment the year before...
Hemi re-sized valves with 5/16 stems and raised stands, how TRICK!

How many were done like this???
really , never seen 69 X heads with offset pushrods . Never even heard of them , thought the six pac heads were the only ones .
thanks for posting
View attachment 1715562985
Click to expand...
 

IMHO, this is all race and development stuff. Not for general public.

If you can get the production floor to not drill the pushrod holes, you can offset rocker any head. Or get a raw casted head. I believe the only gain you get is AFTER you port the head and remove the pushrod bump.

I believe an untouched production T/A head will flow the same as a 1970 340 U/O head.
 
From what I can gather, the D5 heads were cast by Weslake's to improve on the iron heads in 1970 for the PS guys?
So a radical re-think was done to 'totally change' the design and it was a complete 'white elephant'...
Tiny round ports with re-angled valve alignment making the heads sit wider on a recast iron block!
Yep, the once fabled 'Lucky all my life' Harry Weslake, shot himself in the foot this time.:realcrazy:
Harry's idea that ports worked better by being 'smaller and straighter' was blown completely outta the water with the Mighty Hemi...:rofl:

Oh well, you can't be right every time and as we all know, hemi's like BIG, SQUARE ports...:thumbsup:

And wedge motors like OVAL ports, we think???

ovalport weslake Nascar heads.jpg


porting-custom-race-head-intake-flange.jpg
 
Good article on Art Pollard!
What a crazy year 1969 turned out to bee with the Petty-Ford story.
Shame the 320ci Weslake engine wasn't more successful then Mother Mopar may have carried on with the Indy cars?
The 305ci engine was just a crazy in 71 and just a bit more luck and smallblock Nascar would have been 'the Norm'...
Now its smallblock all the way and Hemi-Bigblocks are stuff of legend.

R5-P7 is the new (old) way to go now...

R5-P7 heads ex nascar.jpg
 
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Ive only seen three sets of Westlake heads, if you want to count the set on John Buttera’s 32 coupe that he built in the late 70’s. He had to fabricate a water pump for the street, but it worked. He drove it from California to the Street Rod Nationals, I believe it was the last one in Memphis. And then Gary Ostrich had a couple of Westlake dual overhead came sets in the early 70’s. He was doing something to see if they could be made streetable to replace, I think he said, the Hemi for 1974. Needless to say, it didn’t come to be, as the Oil embargo, and insurance companies killed muscle cars for awhile.
 
Anyone here have any additional info on what is mentioned here?

3FFBFE20-54E2-4217-AC6B-E206BDB9EE03.jpeg


F8CD8E7E-24CD-42F7-8C88-8E3279165414.jpeg
 
I considered an R5P7 but found it wasn't the way to go... very limited parts, no room for added cubes, etc. They're space age engines in many ways but also leave something to be desired in other ways
 
gregcon said:
I considered an R5P7 but found it wasn't the way to go... very limited parts, no room for added cubes, etc. They're space age engines in many ways but also leave something to be desired in other ways
Click to expand...

I saw a crazy setup at Carlise this year. R5P7 with a big turbo setup. If I could have found a complete motor for what the owner said he paid, that's what would be in my car now.

IMG_20200711_125355.jpg
 
There's a car called 4 Speed Swede that runs hard on the strip with an R5P7
 
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