Chrysler hemi and air pollution

I was looking at EPA figures for mileage for the 300C (trying to convince my
spouse to consider the Dodge Charger despite rising oil prices) and noticed
that the hemi is a much cleaner engine than the engine in the Avalon and
Ford 500.

 

gee go figure a hipo engine and it's cleaner burning!!! isn't efficient
combustion
a cool thing

 

Dual spark plugs and a LOT of computer simulation into combustion
chamber and induction/exhaust design- a very cool thing indeed! One of
the big issues with bringing back the Hemi head was keeping emissions
under control. The original Hemi had a lot of trouble both with NOx
(from high compression) and HC (from the fact that parts of the chamber
tended to be shrouded until the piston had moved down a significant
distance). The new Hemi head addressed both of those issues very well.

 

However be prepared for really terrible fuel economy. The 300C combines
the performance of a rocket with the fuel economy of a rocket. I bought a
300C AWD a few weeks ago, I'm getting 15MPG. I agonized over the lousy gas
mileage before I bought it but decided that with the number of miles that
I drive, I've consistently averaged 12,000/year for the last 30 years,
that I could afford to feed it. The fuel cost difference between a 300C
and an Acura TL (which is the other car that I was considering) is only
$600/year at todays prices. Even if gas goes to $5 a gallon it's still
only $1250 a year more. If you can afford the extra $1000/year (and anyone
who can afford $40K for a car, which is what a 300C AWD goes for, can
afford the extra $10,000 in gas that the car will burn over it's life)
then go for it. You would have to spend $75K for a big Mercedes before you
found a comparable driving experience. I tested most everything below
$50K, Acura TL and RL, Infinity M35, Cadillac CRX, Lexus ES330, Lincoln
LS, Toyota Avalon and the Hybrid Honda Accord (a truely awful car). All of
the others were boring, most were competent especially the Acura TL, but
none stood out. The 300C feels like an incredibly powerful extension of
your body. It has incredible handling and of course it accelerates like it
has afterburners. One other thing that I noticed after I got it, it has a
very small turning radius for a car it's size, you point it somewhere and
it's there immediately.

 

Which version?

I haven't seen the 6.1 out yet; limited supply?

I've seen the R/T but no Daytona yet. I also noticed that some came equipped
with racing stripes (several in cool vanilla, I believe) but when you build
and price them on the Dodge web site, there are no photos with the car like
this. Is this a dealer add on? I also noticed that one of the models even
had a little emblem on the side that said 340HP. Another add-on or factory?

I really like this car.

--
"Now Phoebe Snow direct can go
from thirty-third to Buffalo.
From Broadway bright the tubes run right
Into the Road of Anthracite"
Erie - Lackawanna

 

turn off the traction control and it radius gets smaller going sideways

 

Hmmm. There has been periodic discussion on the 300M Club forums over
the years in which it was convincingly claimed that many engines,
including the LH engines (3.2, 3.5, possibly the 2.7), are no less
hemi-head engines than ones that are "officially" designated by DC as
Hemi's. (Kind of reminds me of the Oldsmobile "Rocket V-8" debacle
wherein Oldsmobile got in legal trouble for substituting non-"Rocket"
engines in their cars when they temporarily ran out of them on the assy.
line, and the only difference between them and the non-"Rocket" GM
engines was a larger oil filter and a "Rocket V-8" decal. But I digress...)

What say you (and others in the know) on that claim?

Bill Putney
(To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my
adddress with the letter 'x')

 

Actually in the case of GM, they were accused of putting Chevrolet engines
in Oldsmobiles and if you got one of those cars, you couldn't even get your
oil filter changed at the Oldsmobile dealer. Oldsmobile didn't even make
the size engine that was in their cars. Really ticked customers off.

 

Hmmm - It's been a few years since I read the details, but my
recollection is that the "Rocket" engines were identical to the Cheby
engines except for the oil filter and the "Rocket" decal on the air
filter - and - oh yeah - I think the engine was painted a different
color. My strong recollection is that they really were the same engine
other than those things. I could be wrong - probably a Google search
would resolve our differing recollections.

Bill Putney
(To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my
adddress with the letter 'x')

 

Er...*NO*, Bill.

The Olds engines were completely different -- down to every nut, bolt and
screw -- from the Chev engines, even though certain of them (e.g. the 350)
had the same piston displacement.

Your strong recollection is strongly incorrect. Perhaps you're
misremembering that starting in 1977, GM began installing various
divisions' engines in various divisions' cars without informing customers.
Had I ordered a '77 Olds with a 350 engine and received not the Olds
engine but the grossly inferior Chevrolet item, I'd've been pissed enough
to sue, too.

 

OK, yeah, this clears up your misrecollection. That's not how it happened
at all. The Chevrolet 350 engines that were installed in Oldsmobiles
starting in 1977 were not equipped with "Rocket" decals, and had a VIN
engine code corresponding to the Chevrolet engine. Their installation was
not as a result of having "run out" of Oldsmobile engines at all, it was a
result of GM restructuring such that all vehicles, regardless of brand,
were officially built by GMAD. That stands for "General Motors Assembly
Division", and GMAD became the operator of all GM assembly plants (no more
"Buick plant", "Oldsmobile plant", "Chevrolet plant", etc.). The
installation of Chev engines in Oldsmobiles (and other engine/car brand
mismatches) was one of many implementations of a plan to commonize parts
across similar-size different-brand vehicles. The engine mismatches were
the most widely publicized due to the resultant lawsuits, but the policy
caused all manner of other mechanical mayhem, too. The cheapest (=lightest
duty) engine mounts were commonized. Ditto engine mounts. Ditto universal
joints, suspension components, and so forth, right through the car. This
certainly made the cars less expensive to build, but the customer never
saw the savings (an Olds Delta 88 still cost more than a comparable Chev
Caprice), and the cheapest-common-denominator parts policy caused or
accelerated many failures that otherwise wouldn't have happened -- a
simple matter of part duty margin.

DS (You may find John DeLorean's "On A Clear Day, You Can See General
Motors" an interesting hour's read).

 

I must have fallen victim to the news media publicity notices of the day
released by GM. The sense that I had of it at the time was that people
were making a big deal over nothin' - lawyers seeing a big pockets
opportunity. Obviously from what you and Art have posted, there was a
true deception by GM.

Bill Putney
(To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my
adddress with the letter 'x')

 

Any comments on whether such engines as the 3.2 and 3.5 are technically
hemis without the Hemi™ designation?

Bill Putney
(To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my
adddress with the letter 'x')

 

For what its worth, Consumer Reports says that lots of engines these days by
various manufacturers are hemi type designs. On the other hand, this is
apparently a powerful engine, with reasonable mileage, and excellent
emissions. And it is cheap to build, especially since it is made in Mexico.
If you want a V8 and willing to pay for the gas, its a good choice no matter
what you call it. Interesting article about why it is called a "Hemi":

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05168/523358.stm

I wonder how it would run if they chopped two cylinders off of it. Isn't
that how GM used to design its V6's?

 

Except for the fact that by long tradition, only 2-valve heads have been
called "hemi" heads. 4-valve heads have been called "pent-roof" heads.
They're functionally very similar.

The new Hemi head isn't really a hemisphere either- its more of a
modified hemi-ellipse:
http://popularhotrodding.com/tech/0403phr_hemi_04_s.jpg

Note the quench areas to the left and right in the picture, and the
added indentations for the spark plugs. If Marketing hadn't been such a
major contributor, they could more correctly have called the new engines
a "Polyshperic" head like the old 318 was until 1967- the chamber is the
intersection of multiple spherical (or ellipsoidal) shapes, rather than
a single hemisphere.

 

As it should have, because back then there was as much true ENGINEERING
difference between an Olds and a Chevy v8 as there was between a Ford
and a Chrysler. Maybe more.

 

Not even close. Not a single part will interchange between a Chevy 350
and an Olds 350 and a Buick 350. Except maybe the distributor cap.

If you look at the internal engine architecture, there are huge
diffeerences there as well. Just as the briefest example, both the
Buick and Olds engines used shaft-mounted rocker arms ala Chrysler,
while Chevy used stud-mounted rockers. The bore/stroke ratios were
different- EVERYTHING was different. Even the block alloy was slightly
different (Chevy used a low-nickel iron alloy that was softer than the
alloy Olds and Buick used.) They wont even bolt up to the same
transmissions- the bellhousing pattern on a Chevy is different from
Buick, Olds, and Pantycrack.

 

Condemner Retards says a LOT of things....

 

In the twenty yearys I spent as a GM tech, In Canada Olds and
Chevrolet where sold at the same dealership, if you sold Chev you sold
Olds also, some customer PREFERED the chevy 350 as performance add ons
are everywhere, some of the OLDer cust wanted Olds engine, no big deal
either way from my stand point, tell the customer and let them decide

Scott

 

So is it possible that a Hemi™ (two valves per cyclinder) is actually
inferior to a four-valve engine of similar design that can't be called a
Hemi™ because it is four-valved? Or is the new Hemi™ actually a
four-valve per cylinder (i.e., is the "2-valve" rule a "Street" rule, r
is it a strict DC marketing rule?

Bill Putney
(To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my
adddress with the letter 'x')