The Novi

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The Novi

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The Novi
First, I must say that I’m not the author of most of this but, I failed to add their names when I copied the material. I had started this in 2018, researching for myself and didn’t feel the need then, to add their names at that time but, I wish I would have, to give them credit for their research.
After Mike added this Vintage/Classic/Historical Engine Tech section, I recently got to thinking that many “Motor Heads”, under 50, may not know anything about this very historical engine so, here is what I know about it.
I have a distant connection to this car and engine, through my father that worked for Meyer and Welch, The Authorized Ford Rebuilder, for at least the LA area, In Vernon, CA. He started there after WWII and we lived in Bell Gardens at that time.
My dad worked as a engine rebuilder but, his close friend, that I only remember by his nick name of “Heavy” was the guy that did the dyno testing of the Novi engine. His last visit with my dad, that I can remember, was in 1957, when I was 12.
Sometime after the Duke Nalon fiery crash, in 1949, my dad got to meet him, before the burns were totally healed, around his googles. He had told my dad, that you could spin the front (drive) tires, anywhere on the track, at Indy.
That crash can be seen in the 1949, Mickey Rooney movie, The Big Wheel. The Indy race starts at 1:12 and the crash at 1:24. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_OFRxh5D2Q
I can remember my dad, when I was 6 years old (1950), talking to me about racing. This was what started my interest in racing, that has lasted, all my life.

You will see a connection to the Novi, in this research, with many people first, Henry Ford. He could have bank rolled, the whole project but, didn’t want a direct connection to it (note the Ford V8 type emblem on the nose). The first engine, went into Ford’s failed 1935, Indy project (steering box failure).
Next, Harry Miller. No direct connection to the Novi but, He design the 1935 Miller/Ford Indy car and his draftsman, Leo Goossen, did the actual design work.
Fred Offenhauser, Miller’s former machine shop supervisor, directed Leo to do the design work.
Bud Winfield (Ed’s brother) and Lew Welch, asked Fred to built it and it was first called a Winfield V8 engine. Welch rebadged it the Novi, after WWII, in 1946. Named after his home town in MI.


Louis Meyer Biography
Louis Meyer was born on July 21,1904, in lower Manhattan. His father had been a bicycle racer in France and became a barber after coming to the United States. But he moved his family to Los Angeles, where Louis spent most of his youth.
Louis' older brother, Eddie, loved cars and speed and introduced the younger Meyer to racing. The two traveled the racing circuits together until at last, Louis took his chance at driving himself. It was at Ascot Speedway, in Los Angeles in 1924 where Louis climbed into his brother's Model T Special. When the starter's flag waved, he hit the accelerator and was off.
He lasted just three laps, spinning right in front of the rest of the competition, which scattered to avoid the whirling Model T. Eddie brought his brother into the pits and took over the driving chores.
So Meyer pressed on as a mechanic, something at which he was already adept. He had been an established competition mechanic since he was 18 and by the time he was 22, he was recognized as one of the country's best. It was that reputation which led Frank Elliott (odd coincidence but, no relation to me) to sign him to maintain a Miller on the board circuit in 1926.
Meyer would test the cars and even though he didn't run at full speed, it allowed him to learn the characteristics of the premier racing cars of the day. Meyer first went to Indianapolis with Elliott in 1926 but returned in 1927 hoping to convince someone he was good enough to drive.
Meyer hung around the pits of the Jynx Special where another rookie, Wilbur Shaw, had the ride. When the car needed a new gas strap and a relief driver, Meyer got the nod. He maintained position for 41 laps before turning the car back. Shaw finished fourth and Meyer had his baptism at the Brickyard.
Meyer's first turn as a regular driver at Indy came in 1928. He lined up a Dusenburg Special to drive, and he worked on it until qualifying day. But then he was told the car was going to be sold and the new owners already had a driver. Alden Simpson, whom Meyer had helped in previous years, came to the rescue. He had bought a Miller 91 and asked Meyer to drive it not only in the Indianapolis 500 but for the entire 1928 AAA Circuit season as well.
Meyer won the Indianapolis 500 in his first try and at the tender age of 23. Additionally, he went on to win the AAA season
championship, which included four victories at the Altoona board track. In 1929, Meyer finished second in the Indy 500 but won a second consecutive AAA season title.
In 1933, Meyer returned to Indy with another Miller and won again easily, finishing four laps ahead of Shaw. He also won his third AAA crown.
By this time, Meyer was the part owner of a garage and an expert at making close tolerance parts for racing engines. Harry Miller had sold his engine plant to Fred Offenhauser in 1933, and Meyer and Offenhauser did business. In 1936, Meyer returned to Indianapolis in a Miller 4 tied into a Ford. Fuel allotment had been cut to 37.5 gallons, but that hardly bothered him. His car averaged 14.46 miles per gallon despite the fact he set a race record 109.69 mph in another easy victory. Meyer thus became part of immortality, becoming the first man to win the Indianapolis 500 three times.
In 1939, he went all out to win his fourth Indy. He had an engine he built himself but it blew in final practice laps. He flew in a new engine block from Los Angeles, working all night on the car. He was so tired he had to take a nap shortly before the start of the race.
His crew woke him up and he climbed into the car. Unlike his usual style, he jumped right into the lead and set a torrid pace. With 17 laps to go, Meyer found himself in a scrap with Shaw, the only driver who could keep up. Shaw took the lead in the first turn and as Meyer moved outside to dive down off the banking and force his rival out of the groove, his car spun and smacked the wall before coming to a halt at the lower end of the track.
The damage was superficial and Meyer got back into the race. Miraculously, he fought his way back into contention. He was second behind Shaw on lap 197 when he went through an oil slick in the second turn. The car spun wildly toward the wall, hit some wood bracing beams and flipped. Meyer was thrown from the car and taken to the first aid building, where it was determined he was virtually unscathed. His brother rushed to his side, whereupon Meyer said, "Eddie that's it. I'll never drive a race car again."
That same year, Ford offered Meyer the opportunity to rebuild passenger car engines. With Lou Welch as his partner, Meyer opened his plant in Los Angeles. In 1946, he sold out to Welch and bought out Offenhauser's shop and, along with long time friend Dale Drake, opened the Meyer and Drake Corporation. Meyer continued to build the Offy engine and let it evolve in the Midget, Sprint and Championship racing division.

Fuel injection, greatly improved materials, better cooling and other improvements all came under the Meyer-Drake banner. The engine came to dominate USAC racing. In 1964, Meyer sold the business to Drake and assumed responsibility for Ford's 4-cam Indy engine.
In 1972, Meyer retired and then moved to Searchlight, NV with wife June to relax, enjoy the fishing and the sun. His wife died in 1990 after 65 years of marriage, but Meyer kept tinkering with cars until he "returned" to competition in 1992, at the age of 87. He drove a Ford that had been modified to electric power by one of 10 competing high school teams in the Solar and Electric 500. He averaged 60 mph for 40 laps and won his portion of the race, thrilling youngsters who had only heard or read about his fabulous racing career.
This is part one, with more to follow.
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Re: The Novi

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The Novi front-wheel-drive chassis was designed by Leo Goosen and constructed by Frank Kurtis in Glendale, California.

Again, I didn't record the author of this following article and because it list's the HP at 550+, I don't know what other things may be off. I know, that the HP, between '46/'48 and '51/'52, was 450 hp @ 8000. I did a tern paper in in my HS auto shop class on the Novi, with my dad supplying the info.


A distant, onrushing speck loomed on the expanse of deep crimson, and the supercharger’s diabolical howl climaxed in a concussive thunderclap of exhaust as the projectile flashed past. In the grandstand of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, the crowd was immobilized by its enraged shriek. In its cockpit, brave men choked back surges of fear.

This was the storied, terrifying Novi, all at once one of the most spectacular, intimidating and ill-starred cars in American racing history. With its fragile, but immensely powerful, supercharged V-8, it mesmerized those who heard it and grievously punished many who drove it. Indisputably, it was the most memorable loser in Indianapolis 500 history. The Novi project brought together several of Harry A. Miller’s disciples in an attempted return to greatness, and many historians believe that the car’s ultimate backer was none other than Henry Ford, hoping for credibility after being stung by failure at the Brickyard.

That calamity came in 1935, just three years after Ford had introduced its production flathead V-8. Miller, in deep financial woe, was drafted to design front-drive race cars with Ford V-8 power after Preston Tucker persuaded Henry Ford to back a factory team for the 1935 500. A design flaw resulted in their steering boxes’ failures after exhaust heat cooked out their lubricants. Ford, who was infuriated, withdrew his support for racing on the spot-or perhaps, he didn’t.

“In those days, Ford really wanted to claim success,” said Robert “Buck” Boudeman, who owns this tragically historic 1946 front-drive Novi Governor Special. “Henry really wanted a V-8 to win Indianapolis, but if it wasn’t successful, he didn’t want to have anything to do with it. They were casting about for a way to do it, and this man Lew Welch had excelled in every assignment Ford had given him.”

The exact relationship between Lewis A. Welch and Henry Ford remains uncertain to this day, but it’s clear that Ford respected him as a man who got things done. Having started with Ford as a machinist while still a teen-ager, Welch was a sycophant of the company’s founder, and when he left Ford in 1935 to found the Novi Equipment Co. in Novi, Michigan, he did it with a $25,000 personal loan from Ford. Novi supplied Ford with a variety of components, most notably governors for Ferguson tractors. In 1939, Ford jointly awarded Welch and Indianapolis 500 winner Louis Meyer with an engine-reconditioning plant outside Los Angeles. By then, Welch was already active at Indy as a car owner.

In their two-volume history, Novi: The Legendary Indianapolis Race Car, authors George Peters and Henri Greuter asserted that Ford took great notice of a supercharged straight-eight that fell out of the 1938 race, which was based heavily on the fabled 91- and 183-cu.in. Miller eights of the 1920s, and was tuned in great measure by designer Bud Winfield. Welch and Winfield were already friends, and at some point, possibly with back-channel support from Ford, began to develop a supercharged V-8 for the 1941 race. This engine, originally called the Winfield V-8, would come to be known as the Novi and would sprout from the fertile minds of the very best in racing engineering.

Bud Winfield was a carburetion specialist, and the Novi would use carburetors and camshafts designed by his brother Ed, one of the geniuses of early American performance. The basic layout of the Novi V-8 came from Leo Goossen, with Fred Offenhauser handling the machine work and assembly. These were Miller’s most distinguished alumni. When completed, the Novi was a 181-cu.in., 90-degree V-8 with an aluminum-alloy crankcase and cast-iron integral cylinder heads and walls. Though four overhead camshafts were used, just two-valves per cylinder were used, anticipating the boost of the gear-driven centrifugal supercharger. For 1941, it was fitted into a modified 1935 Miller-Ford front-driver. Ralph Hepburn, whose Indy career dated back to the Twenties, brought the car home fourth.

When racing resumed after World War II, Welch commissioned Frank Kurtis to design a new front-drive chassis for the Novi. With its elongated cigar shape, this would become the most immediately recognized Novi of all. Boudeman’s car was again assigned to Hepburn. By now, it was running a sky-high 5:1 supercharger-overdrive ratio, and probably generating 60 psi of boost, and at least 550hp. With a very Ford-looking “V8” logo on the Novi’s nose, Hepburn shattered the one- and four-lap records in qualifying for the 1946 race but fell out after 141 laps. The culprit may have been a broken crankshaft, the final domino in a series of Novi idiosyncrasies that plagued it frequently.

Kurtis designed the 1946 Novi with an 85-gallon fuel tank. As it emptied, the front end became increasingly light, making the car prone to sudden traction loss. When that happened, the wildly supercharged car could backfire with enough force to blow its intercooler loose, or shock the crankshaft enough to shear it. It also made the car dangerously unstable when traction was lost. In 1948, Cliff Bergere declared the Novi unsafe and refused to drive it. Hepburn was recruited once more, but was killed when warming up for his time-trial laps. Marv Jenkins set Bonneville records with the car in 1947, and it raced at Indy until 1953, when veteran Chet Miller died in a crash nearly identical to Hepburn’s. A young Boudeman was watching the proceedings that very day.

“It was like a siren, with the air rushing through the supercharger,” he remembered. “When that shock wave hit you as it passed, it would froth the beer in the can you were holding.”
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Re: The Novi

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Specifications:
450hp, 181 cu. in. 90' dual overhead cam V8 engine with supercharger, two-speed transaxle, front and rear transverse leaf springs.

The genius of Harry Miller was again evident in the design and execution of the magnificent 1935 Miller Ford race cars. Beautifully styled and with streamlined independent suspension, they were unlike anything previously seen on American speedways. Unfortunately their creation was part of a Preston Tucker-orchestrated fiasco. When they failed to perform well in the Indy 500, an angry Henry Ford locked them away in Detroit. Who knows how successful they could have been if Ford had allowed further development? By 1938 Ford's anger must have subsided, as several Miller Fords had since made their way into private hands.

Lew Welch acquired a Miller Ford and, with a 270 cubic inch Offenhauser powerplant replacing the Ford V8 engine, it finished sixth in 1938 and fourth in 1939 at Indy. The 1940 race was a disappointment and Welch was looking for a new, more powerful engine to power his Miller Ford for 1941.

Lew Welch began his career at the Ford Motor Co. where Henry Ford apparently took a liking to him. In 1935 he left Ford to establish an auto parts manufacturing plant in Novi, Michigan. Four years later, he established the Meyer-Welch Co. with Louis Meyer in Vernon, California for the purpose of reconditioning factory parts for Ford dealers. Welch had also become friends at Indianapolis with William 'Bud' Winfield, who was the brother of camshaft and carburetor genius Ed Winfield and, like Ed, was self-taught and extremely knowledgeable about racing engines. Bud's idea for a V8 racing powerplant was perfect for Welch's needs. In fact, some speculate that Henry Ford's confidence in Welch may have prompted clandestine financial support for the Winfield V8 project from Ford, although this has never been proven with absolute certainty. After all, a V8 engine win at Indy would have been a public relations boon for the Ford Motor Co.

Winfield and Welch approached Fred Offenhauser about building the engine at his Gage Avenue Plant. Fred accepted and was joined by Leo Goossen, who came on board to do the drawings. Bud gave Leo basic specifications of what he wanted and the rest of the design was left in Goossen's capable hands. With this free reign, Leo departed from standard Miller practice, with the cylinder bores extending past the base of the block and into the barrel-type crankcase. Furthermore, the blocks were mounted to the crankcase by flanges that passed over 20 3/8-inch studs in the crankcase. A 180-degree single plane crankshaft spun in three main bearings that were 2.375 inches in diameter and 2.60 inches wide. Bronze main bearing bulkheads were used as well.

The over square bore and stroke meant the engine revved freely to 8,000 rpm producing 450 horsepower. The 10-inch supercharger had a 5.35 blower drive ratio and at maximum engine rpm was turning 43,000 rpm. Fuel entered the supercharger through three Winfield carburetors and was then forced through an intercooler mounted on the top of the engine. The completed engine was adapted to the Miller Ford chassis in the Offenhauser plant. An oil tank took the place of the riding mechanic's seat and the body was modified with a new hood, nose and grille.

For the 1941 Indianapolis 500, Bud Winfield brought Robert Bowes along as a sponsor. The car was consequently painted in a cream and black Bowes Seal Fast livery and had a very Ford-like V8 emblem painted on each side of the nose. Ralph Hepburn signed on as driver, although he quickly discovered that he was brought on to tame a real beast. The power and torque of the Winfield V8 overwhelmed the grip of the tires, making them simply spin, burn and smoke if too much power was applied. Adding to his problems was the fact that the heavier Winfield engine upset the balance of the front wheel drive Miller Ford chassis, making the car impossible to drive full out and negatively affecting its handling ability. The seasoned driver wisely placed a wooden block on the firewall to limit the travel of the throttle. He ran a rather conservative race keeping the leaders in sight and finished fourth. The 1941 Indy 500 will forever be remembered as the beginning of a glorious era that the fans looked forward to and never forgot. The Winfield, pre-war Novi engine at speed produced the best and most recognizable throaty booming roar ever heard at the Speedway. It drowned out the Offys and could be heard going around the entire track!
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Re: The Novi

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To those that don't know about this car and engine and think 450 hp, isn't that great. It would be comparable to, today's Indy cars having 1050+ hp but, weighing 250 to 300 lb more that the rest of the field.

In the pictures, the red car, is the last version, it's the Ferguson 4WD, the other cars are the Kurtis 500F chassis.

This is the next thing I have on the Novi again, not by me.

Equal parts legend, myth, and fable, the awesome Novi V8 is one of the great stories of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Here’s a look back at 25 years of fascinating Novi lore.


Few race cars in the history of the Indianapolis 500, if any, possess the mystique of the mighty Novi—despite the fact that it never won a race. It never came close, to be honest about it, yet the Novi holds a beloved place in Indy racing lore. This is by no means a complete history, only an assortment of interesting facts about the fearsome Novi V8.


The Novi story starts approximately here. For the 1941 Indy 500, businessman and racer Lew Welch (standing in the center in the photo above) entered this ungainly race car, which was in fact one of the 10 ill-fated 1935 Miller-Tucker Ford racers with redesigned sheet metal. The real news was under the hood: a scratch-built, highly advanced V8 racing engine. Equipped with a screaming centrifugal supercharger, the exotic 183 CID mill was said to be good for 450 hp at 8000 rpm—a good 50 percent more power than a standard Offy four-banger in those days.
At this point the name Novi was not yet part of the enterprise. The entry was known as the Winfield Special after the engine’s co-creator, Bud Winfield, the tall man in the photo above. An Indy veteran, he was the younger brother of machine shop genius Ed Winfield, who no doubt lent his expertise to this project as well.
Installed in an obsolete Miller-Ford front-wheel drive chassis that was originally designed for 160 hp, the Winfield V8 proved nearly impossible to control. Indy journeyman Ralph Hepburn, with miles of experience jockeying the old Miller front-drive racers back in the ’20s, was recruited to drive. With a wood block installed under the Winfield’s throttle pedal to make the beast more manageable, the crafty veteran qualified 10th at 120.653 mph and finished a quite respectable fourth in the race. The Novi legend was off and running.

As much as any single image, this photo of the Winfield V8 in its original Miller-Ford chassis tells the Novi creation story. From left: Leo Goosen, the brilliant Miller/Offy draftsman and engineer who designed the new V8 to Winfield’s specifications; Fred Offenhauser, whose Los Angeles shop manufactured the engine’s components; and Bud Winfield, who served as midwife and chief mechanic for the project until he was tragically killed in a highway accident in 1950.
Since the Winfield V8, soon to be known as the Novi, was originally designed for a front-drive installation, its packaging was rather novel. The gear drive for the double-overhead camshafts is located at the flywheel end of the engine—here, toward the front of the chassis. (Decades later, the Ilmor-Chevy Indy engine employed a rear cam drive.) Meanwhile, the centrifugal supercharger is mounted behind the engine, and the three Winfield racing carbs are installed on the driver’s side of the firewall, protected from engine heat and track grime. Winfield’s hand is resting on the giant air-to-air intercooler on top of the engine, which fed the fresh intake charge from the supercharger to the eight cylinders.


Following the standard racing practice of the day, from Offy to Bugatti, the Novi’s cylinder block and head were cast in one unit to avoid the need for a head gasket. As a V8, naturally, the engine employed a pair of iron four-cylinder block/head assemblies, one for each bank, which bolted to the aluminum crankcase. The combustion chambers were of classic hemispherical configuration with two valves per cylinder splayed at 84 degrees. Note the staggered cylinder bore spacing, which allowed the intake manifold plumbing for the supercharger and intercooler to pass up through the middle of the engine between the cylinder pairs.
Like the Ford flathead V8, the engine employed only three main bearings, but following Peugeot/Miller practice, the main caps were large-diameter, 360-degree bronze bulkheads that bolted into a barrel-type crankcase. The single-plane crankshaft was machined from a 4130 steel billet, while the bore and stroke were 3.185 inches by 2.84 inches, respectively. The remarkably oversquare dimensions yielded a a displacement of 181 cubic inches, just under the 183 CID (3.0 liters) capacity limit for supercharged engines at the time.


Here’s a key element in the Novi mystique: the big 10-inch centrifugal supercharger. Turning at 5.35 times engine speed through a torsion shaft and a series of straight-cut drive gears, the blower was effectively a siren, piercing the air with a 43,000-rpm Doppler scream that could be heard anywhere around the 2.5-mile Speedway. Fans who experienced the Novi remember the unique sound as much as the sights. But while the blower was loud, it surely wasn’t very efficient, as the tip speed of the plate-sized impeller exceeded 1,800 feet per second.


With World War II ended and competition resumed at Indianapolis, Welch and crew returned in 1946 with a new chassis to house their mighty supercharged V8 and a new name: Novi, after Welch’s hometown in Southeast Michigan (and his company of the same name). The Novi front-wheel-drive chassis, designed by Goosen and constructed by Frank Kurtis of Glendale, California, was a runner right out of the box.
Though not ready for pole day, the Novi set a qualifying record of 133.944 mph, and on race day Hepburn carved through the field from 19th place and led 44 laps before mechanical failures ended their race on lap 122. Welch (in hunting cap above, next to big Bud Winfield in the fedora) was so thrilled he ordered a second Kurtis Novi chassis for 1947.
It was in these years that the Novis began to develop their reputation: fast but jinxed. In any given year they were the quickest cars on the track, and the loudest as well. But they were fragile and temperamental and seldom finished. The best final result for a Novi in the Indy 500 was fourth in 1947 with Herb Ardinger aboard. And with their brutish power and tricky handling, the Novi’s soon became known as widow makers. Hepburn lost his life in a practice accident in 1948, while Chet Miller was killed in an oddly similar crash in 1953, and Duke Nalon received serious burns in a 1949 smashup. In those days, to be a Novi fan—and Novi fans were many—meant spending your time at the Speedway on the edge of your seat. With your fingers crossed.


With their front-drive chassis growing increasingly obsolete in the early ’50s as the roadster era took over the Speedway, the Novis failed to qualify in 1954 and 1955. For 1956, Welch commissioned two roadster-style, rear-drive chassis from Frank Kurtis. Carrying the Kurtis model designation 500F, these cars were noted for their flamboyant tail fins, which grew taller in successive years.


This construction photo shows how the Novi V8 was turned around to fit a rear-wheel drive layout: the cam drive and distributor are now at the rear and the supercharger is at the front, fed by a single Bendix aircraft-type carburetor. The big intercooler atop the engine had been ditched a few years earlier to reduce weight. While the lighter and more modern rear-drive Kurtis chassis restored the Novi to the front of the field for several more years, the poor reliability and lousy racing luck continued. In 1959 and 1960, the Novis failed to make the race.


By 1961, Welch had gotten his bellyful of the Novis, and he sold the entire operation to Andy Granatelli, veteran Indy team owner and master STP salesman. In Indy lore, Granatelli paid $10,000 for everything, including the boxes of worn and broken pieces.
With the help of his brothers, world-class racing wrenches Vince and Joe Granatelli, Mr. STP launched an extensive dyno program for the Novi V8, now 20 years old. With revised camshafts and followers, modernized intake and exhaust porting, and an up-to-date blower (based on the Granatellis’ supercharger expertise as owners of Paxton Products), the Novi now produced a reported 742 hp at 8,200 rpm. However, the vastly improved performance came at a cost: With a smaller, more efficient blower impeller, the engine’s sound was noticeably more docile.
For 1962, Granatelli also ordered two more new Kurtis chassis. Designated model 500K, they were among the last Indy cars produced by Frank Kurtis, and at 1,740 lbs., the new piece was the lightest Novi ever. In 1963, Bobby Unser (above) qualified sixth at 149+ mph but crashed out of the race on Lap 2. Notable Novi drivers of the Granatelli era included Unser, Art Malone, and Jim Hurtubise.


The Novi’s swan song was the Ferguson 104 project of 1964-1966. To cope with the supercharged V8’s excessive power, Granatelli commissioned Ferguson Research in Britain to build a chassis incorporating its advanced four-wheel drive system. Unser qualified fifth fastest in the Novi-Ferguson in 1964 at 154 mph and change, but was caught up in the horrible MacDonald/Sachs crash on the second lap and was scored 32nd.
Although the four-wheel drive system improved traction off the corners, it also introduced a significant weight penalty: all up, the car scaled at over 2,400 lbs. A second, lightweight chassis was constructed, but it was damaged in a practice crash by Unser and parked. In 1966, the car was crashed in practice again with a young Greg Weld at the wheel and failed to qualify for the race. And with that, the Novi’s 25-year run at Indy was over.
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Re: The Novi

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I'm also a bit of a rose tinted buff of 'classic engines', but in the grand scheme of things the Novi V8 was an abject failure
...... that don't know about this car and engine and think 450 hp, isn't that great ......
It isn't

A contemporary of the Novi vee eight was the Alfa Romeo straight eight, also supercharged, that kicked out ~445 hp in it's ultimate guise, from all of half the capacity ...... apples to pears maybe, but they breathed the same air

And the 'coat hanger' crank did it few favours either

I genuinely love all this nostalgic stuff but the Novi V8 was a dog that, despite the not inconsiderable amount of money that was ploughed into it, never met it's design objectives
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Re: The Novi

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Johnny, I don't know if you missed this:
With revised camshafts and followers, modernized intake and exhaust porting, and an up-to-date blower (based on the Granatellis’ supercharger expertise as owners of Paxton Products), the Novi now produced a reported 742 hp at 8,200 rpm.
As far as race engine, it was very reliable, I think the hard parts of the engine, only failed twice, a broken crank and a broken or burnt piston. There was also one magneto failure. Pretty good over a 23 year period, running 2 cars, most of it. Most all it's DNF's were because handling problem.

As I see it, the problem for the Novi engine was, first the FWD chassis AND the engine being designed for it, next the weight of the engine @ 575 lb, it was way to heavy for a race engine. The block/head combo, being cast iron, was the main problem there but, it could have saved more weight, with a more compact design for it's bore and stroke. The 3 main, 180 crank, isn't as much a disadvantage as one might think, in this modern 5 main era.

The Novi engine, is very close to the Cosworth FVA, in bore and stroke and it only weights 265 lb, I think and produced the same hp as the Novi, only NA but, it came 20 years after the Novi.
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Re: The Novi

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This is the last information that I have on it, some is redundant but, it's probably the best read, with great pictures.
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Re: The Novi

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Thanks for the history of the Novi. Heard of it but knew nothing of the history and the problems encountered.

Those old boys deserve my respect!
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Re: The Novi

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I've just read this post on the Novi with great interest because the Hepburns are distant relatives of mine. There was a neat cottage in our little fishing village called Chance Harbour NB Canada and us kids were always told that a race car driver lived there in the summers .Later I found out that he was a test rider for Harley Davidson and was talked into trying his hand at Indy cars and was killed during practice. All the old folks from that time period have passed and I can't verify all of it but it sure sounds like the same person. Ironically, my neighbor here is Will Power the 2022 Indy Car Champion.
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