Flame - Not (Tornado engine?)

[Greg Hermann]

>On Sun, 2 May 1999, Aaron Willis wrote:
>
>> At 10:37 PM 5/1/99 -0600, you wrote:
>> >
>> >There was also the not-so modern SOHC hemi Tornado. Quite the motor in its
>> >IKA (Argentinian) twelve port headed, triple DCEO Webered trim! (310 HP
>> >from 230 cid at only 5200 rpm!
>> >
>> 	Hey, cool, I've seen one but know nothing about them.  What did they come
>> in?  The one I saw was a Jeep military truck, and did NOT have three DCOE
>> Webers!!  What would be packing the hot version?
>>
>Jeep used the Continental 6-226 for years. A typical long stroke flathead
>engine. Jeep even called some models the 6-226. As an elcheapo way of
>modernizing this ancient engine, they came up with the OHC head. The long,
>spindly 6-226 connecting rods loved the higher RPM that came with the new
>head...NOT.
>
>Most of these engines [that I saw] were on auto wrecker core piles. The
>head always looked OK which is more than you could say about the sides of
>the block.
>
>Oh, yeah. Continental has an interesting policy on parts prices.

All true. The Argentinian Kaiser plant in Cordoba came up with some revised
rods along with the twelve port head. The car you would find such a beast
in was called a "Torino"--but not at all like a Ford by the same name. It
was based on the late sixties Rambler American body tub, but had an outer
skin done by Pinin Farina. It also had IRS, and about 8 inches of wheel
travel at each corner, and a five speed gear box which was built under
license from ZF.

The IKA Torinos absolutely dominated closed circuit AND over the road
racing in south america for a number of years, and one or two of them even
got entered in the endurance race at the Nurbergring one year, but they
were not very successful, mostly due to the rather long logistics line from
home.

Note the rather low engine speed for the peak power on the Torino version
of the Tornado engine--this speaks to Jim's comments about the Continental
block, even with far better rods installed. Scary to think how much power
they could have made with a stronger block and crank and some more revs and
48 mm in place of 45 mm Webers!

In this country--the Tornado engines only came with an eight port head
(individual exhausts, but two logged intakes), and obviously without the
good rods. It came in early sixties Gladiator pick-ups and Wagoneers. And,
as one might expect for a hemi head with a short duration cam with
aggressive valve lift rates, it got rather good mileage--about 17.5 mpg,
highway--- in a well tuned 4x4 Gladiator. But--no, it was not a high
revver.

Regards, Greg