Reply To: engine

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David,

It’s clear,that without Studebaker,Pierce-Arrow wouldn’t have had

the money to develope/produce the straight eight.Development must

have been collaborative as the end products had interchangeable

components(some)and yet were not the same.The P-A block was poured

in a South Bend foundary of harder material and the rest of the

manufacturing was in Buffalo to the highest of standards.

Studebaker went on to break scores of records with their straight

eight.Ab Jenkins drove to set some of the score of records

Studebaker set in 1929.

Hydraullic lifters first came out Nov. ’32 on 1933 models.I own

a 1934 P-A 836A with non-hydraullic lifters.This was done as a

cost-cutting maneuver to compete in a lower price bracket.You

could buy a Pierce for about the same price as a Chrysler

Airflow Custom Imperial(their mid sized offering)or a Buick

98C convertible phaeton(top of the line).Very good condition

price today is $70K for the Buick,$136K for the Chrysler(they

made 106 of them)and $66K for the Pierce(500 ’34s,300 ’35s

est.).

I don’t know about the drilled crankshaft,but my 1912 Marmon

32 has one.Also attempts at hydrallic lifters go back to the

earliest times of the twentieth century. Tony Costa