Keith Black (June 25, 1926 – May 13, 1991) was an American producer of high performance drag racing engines, often used in

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 second ...

and

Tractor pulling Truck and tractor pulling, also known as power pulling, is a form of a motorsport competition in which antique or modified tractors pull a heavy drag or sled along an , track, with the winner being the tractor that pulls the drag the farthe ...

applications.

Racing

Black first made a name for himself in the mid-1940s in boat racing. He set a world record in his second time out at

Salton Sea The Salton Sea is a shallow, landlocked, highly saline body of water in Riverside and Imperial counties at the southern end of the U.S. state of California. It lies on the San Andreas Fault within the Salton Trough that stretches to the Gulf ...

. People liked his engines, and he quickly started a business out of his garage. He opened Keith Black Racing Engines in 1959. By 1961 his boat racing exploits included nearly 50 international and national records. Drag racing teams heard about his boat racing engines, and he was convinced by friend Tommy Greer to build a drag racing motor for the Greer-Black-Prudhomme Top Fuel dragster. In 1962 and 1963 the team won over 250 rounds to less than 25 losses. Black spent time in the late 1960s with Roland Leong's Hawaiian Top Fuel dragsters, and in the early 1970s with the Plymouth Barracuda Funny Car campaigned by "Big John" Mazmanian.

Engineer

Chrysler contracted Black to develop a marine racing program in 1965. Ed Donovan introduced the specialized aluminum engine block for nitro drag racing in 1971; the "Donovan 417" was based on a 1958 Chrysler 392 hemi. Black's aluminum engine blocks would dominate the market by the end of the decade. The engines Keith Black produced were based on the Chrysler 426 Hemi, Chevy Big Block, and Oldsmobile Big Block designs, but cut from virgin

aluminum Aluminium (aluminum in American and Canadian English) is a chemical element with the symbol Al and atomic number 13. Aluminium has a density lower than those of other common metals, at approximately one third that of steel. It ha ...

castings and built to the customer's specifications. Keith Black died from complications due to brain cancer in 1991.

Award

He was inducted in the

Motorsports Hall of Fame of America The Motorsports Hall of Fame of America (MSHFA) is hall of fame that honors motorsports competitors and contributors from the United States from all disciplines, with categories for Open Wheel, Stock Cars, Powerboats, Drag Racing, Motorcycles, ...

in 1995.Keith Black
at the

References

External links

Keith Black Racing Engines
{{DEFAULTSORT:Black, Keith 1926 births 1991 deaths Drag racing People from Huntington Park, California People from Downey, California Burials at Rose Hills Memorial Park