1929-31 Viking — A Lost General Motors Brand

[Bob Riebe]

https://www.macsmotorcitygarage.com/1929-31-viking-a-lost-general-motors-brand/

While the 1932 Ford V8 is often described as the first American production V8 of monobloc constuction, that’s not really so, as Viking used a one-piece block casting from its introduction in 1929. (GM’s 1930 Oakland V8 was also a monobloc.) An ambitious design, the Viking V8 employed a compact, L-shaped combustion chamber and horizontal valve layout (a hybrid L-head configuration also used by Lycoming and Packard). The elaborate arched intake manifold was engineered to provide equal runner length and full fuel vaporization, while the 83-lb, two-plane crankshaft made the engine remarkably smooth, though it rode on only three babbit main bearings. A 3.375-in. bore and 3.625-in. stroke yielded 259.5 cubic inches, providing a rated output of 81 hp at 3000 rpm—considerably more than the 62 hp of the Oldsmobile inline six. Chief engineer of the V8 was Charles L. McCuen, who had only a fifth-grade formal education but eventually became a GM vice president.



Different from the 4 most common types.

[ironglows]

Looks like a complicated design, although I remember Willys Jeep coming out with an F head design, to follow the little Red Seal Continental 4-cyl they used during and after WW2.
     I don't recall hearing the Viking name applied to GM, except possibly some heavy duty Chevy trucks of the 60s and 70s..

[geezerbiker]

The F head was already obsolete back then.  The so called "modern" pent-roof combustion chamber goes back almost 100 years.  Side valve and F head engines were cheaper to make so they lasted a lot longer than they should have. 

When GM rolled out the small block Chevy over head valve engine back in the 1950's it was the end of the old designs.  It took a lot longer than it should have for over head cam engines to catch on in cars.  Now it's almost the standard.  All we have that's really new is engine management systems and better materials (for the most part and not including those stupid plastic intake manifolds.)

Tony

[ironglows]

  Have to admit it...Europe for the most part, showed the way with OHC engines, and FWD..

[geezerbiker]

  Have to admit it...Europe for the most part, showed the way with OHC engines, and FWD..

As did the Japanese.  One thing you have to hand to the Japanese is they're good businessmen.  They found a hole in the market and filled it and then every one else had to follow.  When I was a bike mechanic I every so often saw an old and discarded British or American idea come back to life on a Honda.

America had front wheel drive and over head cam engines long before everyone else but let them slip into obscurity.  Back in the 1950 & 60's GM had a German educated Russian immigrant working for them.  Zora Duntov was an automotive genius and I never use that word lightly.  I wonder what American cars would be like now if GM had listened to him more.

Tony

[ironglows]

Front wheel drive cars... starting in 1931 the Adler firm in Germany..forerunner of Audi, along with Horch, and Citroen in France were running FWD..   Saab was a latecomer, starting in1945.
  Nothing new under the sun?  Peugeot and Alfa Romeo were running hemispherical combustion chamber engines in the 1912 and 1914 grand prix races.  So, Chrysler didn't pioneer the "firedome" engine either.
  Yes Arkus Duntov was great...his cam was the "in" cam for years!

[Bob Riebe]

Front wheel drive cars... starting in 1931 the Adler firm in Germany..forerunner of Audi, along with Horch, and Citroen in France were running FWD..   Saab was a latecomer, starting in1945.
  Nothing new under the sun?  Peugeot and Alfa Romeo were running hemispherical combustion chamber engines in the 1912 and 1914 grand prix races.  So, Chrysler didn't pioneer the "firedome" engine either.
  Yes Arkus Duntov was great...his cam was the "in" cam for years!

Front wheel drive crap wagons, a curse that will not go away.

Detroit did not make them for reason of efficiency, which they are not, but they are CHEAPER to make than rear wheel, or true all wheel drive vehicles.
Front wheel assist which is what most supposed four wheel drive vehicles are,  are another scam.

If there is a repair with a fwd, or front wheel assist car, cost to fix is VERY  high, due to the crap ass way the drive train is constructed.
If one takes a hit, not even a hard one,  in the from, probablility the drive train is damaged is well above 50 percent, which means , car is TOTALED.

People who think fwd is so great in snow country, when one gets stuck, and they do, there is no coaxing them out as steering and drive are on the same set of wheels so the drive wheel cannot pull the car while steering wheel move the vehicle is a direction to get unstuck or back on the road.

I have seen fwd cars lose it on ice;  best imitation of a spinning top I have ever seen.

The push-rod engine is actually one of the last designs to come out of the birth age of 4 stroke engines.
It ruled as it produced enough horse power, with less mechanical complexity.

It has gone out of use mainly because it is easier, cheaper,  to integrate the latest technology, i.e. sophisticated cylinder fuel distribution and timing with an overhead cam than with a push-rod engine.
Oddly combustion chamber swirl, for two valve engines, was not fully understood  as to how much it improved engine performance until the 90s, after which high , low curve , horse  power production soared dramatically.

[Bob Riebe]

As did the Japanese.
Tony

The late Joe Honda, who ran Honda, was the driving genius and force behind the Japanese taking Euro/U.S. technology and pushing beyond level the originators were doing.
He was a mechanical genius.
When Italy, MV and Benelli were dominating GP motorcycle racing, Honda took the 4 cam bike engine and beat them at their own game.
Europe was the two-stroke leader so when Eastern Europe was showing how good two-strokes were, Japan, in this case Yamaha looked over what the Euros had  and pushed it farther.

Now Joe Honda had no love for two-strokes, and pushed 4 cycle engines as far as he could, his oval piston engine bike is still a marvel, but when he saw it was not going to work, he put his boys to making two strokes that were the best of the best.
As is usual, the rules makers, did more to destroy new and better ideas than mechanical problems.

Now Wankel engines, while Subaru did wonders with it, including winning at LeMans, it was Brits of all people, Norton, who put it in a motorcycle and won big time taking the classic at the Isle of Man.

[ironglows]

I live in a notorious snow belt...and very few debate the superiority of FWD in snow.  Especially noticeable, RWD is normally located under the light end of the vehicle.  Thus the light end has to push the heavier end.
  Best chance for the light end to push the heavier end out out of deep snow, is for the steering wheels to be in pointed straight ahead.
  With FWD, if straight ahead doesn't work well, a little rocking... a bit of steering, and a better route out, usually can be found.  There, heavier horses pulling, beats lighter horses pushing.
  The layout of most cars today, that is crosswise engines with FWD, was pioneered by a man named Alex Issigonis, who designed the first Mini Minor, now Mini Cooper.  The first of it's type.  The design does offer more interior cabin room.

[Bob Riebe]

You are wrong because people rarely, and I mean rarely get stuck with the front end pointing any where but down towards the ditch.
The front wheels cannot force the rest of the car out very, very, very often and I have driven down roads after a storm and seen plenty of fwd crap wagon stuck and abandoned.

With rwd you can rock the car and then your marvelous equivalent of fwd, the drive wheel are pulling (which is how fwd auto function ) the vehicle back.

Once moving you can direct  the car so it does not go into the traffic lane but to the least point of resistance. (There have been plenty close calls and even accidents when some one does not pay attention and pulls out into traffic.)
The rear of a fwd will go where ever it wants, no weight, differential are heave, beam axles weigh less than one tire, and I have seen enough slide to exactly where the driver does not want the to go and there is not one damn thing the driver can do about it unless, and I have been one of the pushers when there are others there to try to push the rear to stop it from sliding where things will only get worse, often into another car.

I have helped enough people get a car unstuck in my life the physics of not being able to direct a vehicle in the direction of least resistance is the failure of fwd.
With the myriad of vehicles spinning off of the road up here when it snows, and most cars are now fwd crap wagon,the so called superiority of fwd, is just a scam to sell cars.
At the same time morons in snow country who do not buy snow tires --" I have a fwd , I do not need snow tires" -- which I have heard so often I feel like punching them in the face, is stupidity having just rewards.

Now , and I have written this before but probably not on this site, twenty years ago, I was driving my '66 Plymouth with the old block tread bias snow tires. (Bias ply are far superior to radials in deep snow winter, although the  new Michelin and Bridgestone radial snow tires are incredibly good but still not as good in DEEP snow as the old block tire tread bias were. )
Back them roads did not get plowed as often, especially on week ends and we had over six inches of snow on unfrozen ground.
I was going home with the residential roads totally unplowed and unless I took a miles detour, had to go up a steep hill to get their.
This is is hundreds of feet not tens, no one had driven here yet.   I got three fourths up the hill and the deep unplowed snow built up in front of the  cars bumper and I stopped at about the same spot twice with still over an hundred feet to go.
SO, I backed down the hill again, did the old snow country spin the car around U turn, and hit the hill as fast as I could in reverse.
This time when I hit the dead spot she just kept on pulling me till I got to the flat intersection at the top , where I stopped, put it in drive and drove the half-block home.
THAT is how rwd is far, far, far superior to fwd; fwd doe not have that option and I have seen women in their fwd vans with others trying to push them out of the cock-eyed situation they got them selves into.
Even though I loath fwd, I have on occasion stopped to help .
The hard part is trying to get through their thick skulls where to steer to as all they do is get themselves stuck again, or worse, if there are other cars parked near into a spot that they simply will have to be towed as if you let them keep slip sliding side ways they will his another vehicle.

[geezerbiker]

The Austin Mini had the first transverse FWD set up but FWD goes way back.  In the US the Cord was an early example of a FWD car.  I'll stay out of the pissing contest about which is better.  I've been to some places and got back home in both front and rear wheel drive cars that I shouldn't have been. 

On the other hand I sank a FWD VW Dasher in sand up to the suspension next to a lake near Hawthorn, NV.  Some times you win and sometimes you need a 4x4 to pull your sorry rear out of the sand.

A long while back I had an all wheel drive Subaru wagon.  That car was amazing in snow and could climb snowy hills better than most 4x4 trucks.  I'd get another but with all my arthritis, I can't get in and out of small cars any more.  Now if the weather is that bad, I don't go out until I absolutely have to.  I haven't had my 4x4 Chevy long enough to try it in the snow but I can wait a long time for that...

Tony

[ironglows]

Geezer....  I won't join a P---ing contest either.  You will note, I didn't use any disparaging  or condescending language toward Bob.  Except for a couple instances, where I did slip, and regretted it.. I try to keep meaningless adjectives, superfluous quips and remarks out of even the religious discussions.
   There is no question that 4WD is better than either FWD or RWD..  One stroke of engineering that helps FWD in snow, is that the drive axles on FWD vehicles are of independent suspension design, allowing them to flex toward the contour of the ground.
  I recall a particular situation, where my wife was coming home from her 2nd shift job, driving her VW Rabbit.  She went into a skid on the outside of a sharp curve, and ended up backwards down a very sharp slope.  My drive at the time, was a Chevy Luv, compact pickup...so with her call, i tossed a chain in the back and went to help.
  I already had a couple hundred pounds of ballast over the rear wheels, as well as good snow tires.
  The front of the rabbit facing the road, I hooked on and told her not to rev up until i started to pull..since the oil was of course, all toward the rear of the engine.

  The fellow whose house she called from, figured I ought to give up, and call for a tow.
    As I started to pull, she engaged the clutch, revved up...and that rabbit, just came out as easy as pie !

  One thing for sure, no matter whether one has FWD, RWD or all wheel drive, imprudent speeds on a slippery road are foolish, since once into a skid, it wouldn't matter if one has 6 wheel drive..we are all in the same boat !

[Lloyd Smale]

want to really pucker your but bob? Try loosing it on icy roads with a jeep jk in 4x4. You might as well let go of the wheel and let it go where it wants.

Front wheel drive cars... starting in 1931 the Adler firm in Germany..forerunner of Audi, along with Horch, and Citroen in France were running FWD..   Saab was a latecomer, starting in1945.
  Nothing new under the sun?  Peugeot and Alfa Romeo were running hemispherical combustion chamber engines in the 1912 and 1914 grand prix races.  So, Chrysler didn't pioneer the "firedome" engine either.
  Yes Arkus Duntov was great...his cam was the "in" cam for years!

Front wheel drive crap wagons, a curse that will not go away.

Detroit did not make them for reason of efficiency, which they are not, but they are CHEAPER to make than rear wheel, or true all wheel drive vehicles.
Front wheel assist which is what most supposed four wheel drive vehicles are,  are another scam.

If there is a repair with a fwd, or front wheel assist car, cost to fix is VERY  high, due to the crap ass way the drive train is constructed.
If one takes a hit, not even a hard one,  in the from, probablility the drive train is damaged is well above 50 percent, which means , car is TOTALED.

People who think fwd is so great in snow country, when one gets stuck, and they do, there is no coaxing them out as steering and drive are on the same set of wheels so the drive wheel cannot pull the car while steering wheel move the vehicle is a direction to get unstuck or back on the road.

I have seen fwd cars lose it on ice;  best imitation of a spinning top I have ever seen.

The push-rod engine is actually one of the last designs to come out of the birth age of 4 stroke engines.
It ruled as it produced enough horse power, with less mechanical complexity.

It has gone out of use mainly because it is easier, cheaper,  to integrate the latest technology, i.e. sophisticated cylinder fuel distribution and timing with an overhead cam than with a push-rod engine.
Oddly combustion chamber swirl, for two valve engines, was not fully understood  as to how much it improved engine performance until the 90s, after which high , low curve , horse  power production soared dramatically.

[Bob Riebe]

want to really pucker your but bob? Try loosing it on icy roads with a jeep jk in 4x4. You might as well let go of the wheel and let it go where it wants.

That is some thing to think about; with fwd the way out of a car breaking loose is to accelerate pulling the rear inline with the front, with rwd you back-off and turn into your slide, now with four wheel drive if you do one you counter the other.

Catch 22

[ironglows]

  FWD is better in the snow than RWD..heavy end pulls lighter end and wheels point in direction one wants to go..

  Front engine, RWD is better if one wants to set up a four wheel drift in a corner..

  I have owned all five layouts...RWD, FWD, Rear engine RWD, front engine FWD..4WD and AWD.  Of course, 4WD and AWD are best in snow, followed by Front engine FWD, then rear engine RWD (IMO).

  One reason why the front engine FWD has come on strong is to provide inside room and comfort in today's smaller dimensioned cars.  With FWD, there is not the old, familiar 'transmission hump', or the 'drive shaft tunnel'.

   Now, for the best sports car...give me the old conventional layout..front engine rear drive.. simply handles best for sports car maneuvers.
 
    Rear engine, RWD tends to understeer..front engine FWD, ..tends to oversteer...has to be considered.

[Bob Riebe]

In fifty years of driving I have never had any more problems in snow with rwd than any fwd.
I now have a fwd loaner as my cars fender is fixed, and on ice it is no where near as good as a rwd.
It is a 2004 Impala and the sitting on ice and spinning is annoying as you cannot just put it in reverse and pull yourself .
On ice IF the rear end of a fwd does start to come and you slow down, you WILL spin without excetion and it is just a bar axel controlled by NOTHING, IF you have room and can accelerate you can accelerate out of a spin.
Back when there were a lot of the piece of dung fwd mini-vans, I saw more than one, on residential roads, go around a sharp corner on an icy road, the rear starts to come out and they back off the throttle so the rear-end just keep going around till loses velocity or the tires hit a dry spot.
OK , if there are no parked cars but if there are it will cost them.

I have seen , now more because there are more, just as many fwd get stuck or sitting at intersections and spinning their tires  rwd.
Approx. 7 years ago, at the intersection located where I am now, we had a snow winter and only main roads were plowed so there were large windrows where they crossed another street.
Some dude in a Chevy Impala, same style as my loaner,  tried to drive over the windrow, and got stuck, his passenger and one of the neighbors pushed him back off of the windrow.
He hit it again and got about three feet farther; they pushed him back off; he hit it again and got up to the rear axle, stuck they pushed him back as if they tried to push him forward he could have been stuck in a busy traffic lane.
I was watching from the top of the hill next to the intersection and yelled to them tell him to back up at least one hundred feet farther back, watch for traffic and tell him to hit it a  fast pace.
They listened and did this, he did finally just crawled out of the bad spot, pulled over to curb for his friend and   they were on their way.
I will say probably half of their problem is they are too stupid to buy snow tires.