50 Years of the Small Block

A hands-on manager, Cole was always interested in what each of his engineers was doing to cut costs and make the engine competitive. Test engineer Bob Clift describes Harry Barr as "one of the nicest guys of the bunch. Very friendly, helpful. He always had the best interests of GM and the people at heart." Jack Golding worked in design layout under the meticulous and fastidious Al Kolbe and remembers the period as one of incredible intensity. "We worked 60 hours a week at times--all day Saturday plus long hours the rest of the week. There was a lot of personal camaraderie and respect." But, Papenguth recalls, "We didn't get to go out for beers together. Hell, we worked all the time!"

There was a sea change happening within Chevrolet at tsunami speed in 1952. "The organization had become ingrown," as Papenguth remembers it. "The engineering department was being run by the manufacturing organization. Their idea of new product was to do the same thing they'd done before." Fortunately, Ed Cole was also well acquainted with the manufacturing side of the house. He set up and ran GM's Bulldog tank plant in Cleveland, which earned him a job offer as Chevy's manufacturing manager. He turned down that job, and when he accepted the chief engineer post, he did so on condition that his predecessor, Crankshaft Kelley, become the manufacturing manager. As a result, the two men forged an alliance that transformed the dysfunctional relationship between their disciplines. "Releases were being made as soon as possible and updated as often as necessary," says Papenguth. "They laid out the new engine facility based on the direction they knew the program was taking. Ed Cole understood what the manufacturing guys needed, and he made it happen."

Cole sought to broaden his team's horizons and keep them up on the state of the art. He acquired a fleet of competitive cars for his folks to drive, with the most interesting vehicles being torn down and studied. Papenguth remembers being bemused but nonplussed by French cars while intrigued and impressed by the best Italian and German technology of the day.

An Italian design inspired one of the innovations Papenguth worked on developing the small-block: the stamped-steel rocker arm. Mounting stamped rockers to their own ball studs instead of casting and machining rockers to ride on a common shaft saved a lot of money. The stamped rockers also weighed considerably less, so they were capable of operating at much higher speeds (Bob remembers running the original small-block at 7500 rpm for brief periods to test for valve float and lifter function).

Papenguth employed the radical idea of a valve on top of a hydraulic lifter that can meter oil up through a hollow pushrod to lubricate the overhead valvetrain. This eliminated costly and leak-prone external oil lines favored by the designs of the day and delivered cylinder-head lubrication precisely where it's needed most. All together, the system saved enough money to pay for expensive hydraulic lifters.