The Donovan hemi is an American
Top Fuel
Top Fuel is a type of drag racing whose dragsters are the quickest accelerating racing cars in the world and the fastest sanctioned category of drag racing, with the fastest competitors reaching speeds of and finishing the runs in 3.62 seconds ...
drag racing
Drag racing is a type of motor racing in which automobiles or motorcycles compete, usually two at a time, to be first to cross a set finish line. The race follows a short, straight course from a standing start over a measured distance, most c ...
engine, designed and built by
Ed Donovan and first appearing in 1971. In the 1970s, it was the most popular engine in Top Fuel dragsters.
History
Donovan developed the
hemi-
head V8 to overcome the tendency of
Chrysler
Stellantis North America (officially FCA US and formerly Chrysler ()) is one of the " Big Three" automobile manufacturers in the United States, headquartered in Auburn Hills, Michigan. It is the American subsidiary of the multinational automoti ...
s, then used by Top Fuel racers (many of them friends and customers of his), to crack their iron
block
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Arts, entertainment and media Broadcasting
* Block programming, the result of a programming strategy in broadcasting
* W242BX, a radio station licensed to Greenville, South Carolina, United States known as ''96.3 ...
s.
He copied the , which he admired, but tried to eliminate its deficiencies.
Donovan milled all the internal oil and water passages, and (unlike the stock 392) sleeved the block with
chrome-
moly cylinder
A cylinder (from ) has traditionally been a three-dimensional solid, one of the most basic of curvilinear geometric shapes. In elementary geometry, it is considered a prism with a circle as its base.
A cylinder may also be defined as an infin ...
liners, which were stronger as well as easy to replace.
Donovan also enlarged the supports for the
main bearing
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* Main River (disambiguation)
**Most commonly the Main (river) in Germany
* Main, Iran, a village in Fars Province
*"Spanish Main", the Caribbean coasts of mainland Spanish territories in the 16th and 17th centuries
...
s, which Chrysler would do with the
B-block.
Cast from aluminium rather than iron, the engine weighed under bare,
compared to for the Chrysler.
Hughes Engines
(retrieved 24 November 2018) Because it closely followed the Chrysler's specification, many hot rodding parts would fit it; only the bore was different, being larger,Chevrolet
Chevrolet ( ), colloquially referred to as Chevy and formally the Chevrolet Motor Division of General Motors Company, is an American automobile division of the American manufacturer General Motors (GM). Louis Chevrolet (1878–1941) and ous ...
.
Donovan completed work on the engine in 1970, and first sold it in 1971;
(retrieved 24 November 2018) In 1977, Donovan persuaded "Big Daddy" Don Garlits to switch from the 426 hemi he had been using for the last thirteen years to the , offering (in Garlits' words), “an engine deal I couldn’t refuse”.NHRA.com
(retrieved 24 November 2018)
References
External links
Donovan Engines
website
Jalopy Journal
discussion of the Donovan
{{DEFAULTSORT:Donovan hemi
V8 engines
Drag racing