Quote:
Originally Posted by Hops
Really don't get the fixation on engine, and how it generates somewhat heated conversation, they're both ... great.
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That wasn't always the case, and unfortunately the image of 6-cylinders equaling poor performance didn't die out with the old pushrod inline sixxes.
When these cars (yours and mine both) first came out, the 6-cylinder engines fitted to them were inline engines fed through a single one-barrel carburetor on a not-very-flow-efficient rake manifold (and a few other low-performance choices as well) that made roughly 35 HP/liter, maybe 40 HP/L tops.
Oh yeah, that's if I use the old gross HP numbers that were advertised. In today's net-HP context, that'd be more like 30 - 33 HP/L. And with only 2.8 - 3.8 liters (170 - 231-ish CID) worth of it in most cases (there were a couple all the way out to 4.1L/250 CID) there just wasn't much power available at any rpm. Think 90 - 125 at the crank . . . or what takes only about two cylinders of today's 6.2 to make.
I guess you could rev them a bit past 4000 rpm, if you were feeling particularly mean that day.
Not that all inline sixxes were like that; the Jaguar 3.8 and 4.6 sixxes were DOHC and Pontiac toyed with SOHC versions that were significantly stronger than the pushrod sixxes and were happier to considerably higher rpms.
Norm