Mickey Thompson is a name that transcends automotive niches. Baja racing in the desert? Yep. Drag racing on the quarter-mile strip? You bet. Bonneville land speed racing? Of course. Indy, even. If it went fast, Mickey Thompson wanted to drive it. Today, his name lives on with a line of tires, valve covers, and probably a bunch of other stuff that I'm forgetting about. Not only did he race, but he also created ways to go faster. Why race a single competitor when you can try and race the record, right? I could go on for days about all of the accomplishments of Mickey Thompson, but I know I'd only be re-telling things that were said long ago. Instead, I'll focus on one of his lesser-known, unsuccessful, totally obscure projects. It's so bizarre, and outside the box that I don't even know what it's called, so I'll call it the 'complicated wide one.'
The Complicated Wide One
When you open the hood on a modern vehicle, there's no room for anything. If you drop something, it's either staying on top where you can grab it, or falling into the abyss and not onto the floor. In some cases, the engine isn't installed into the vehicle, but rather the vehicle around the engine, and there's no other way around it.
In this case, the engine in question is in an open front-engine dragster, so there's no worry about how it fits. If it were installed in anything else, well, it wouldn't be. Picture a pickup from the sixties or seventies where you can sit under the hood with the engine to work on it. With this setup, the hood would fit but the fenders might not. Typically a V8 engine has intake ports on the inside of the cylinder heads and exhaust ports on the outside. This allows for one central carburetor or throttle body to feed all eight cylinders, and exhaust to be spent out both sides in a naturally downward direction so it can exit at the rear. In this case, both the intake and exhaust ports are on the outside of the cylinder heads, meaning two carburetors, a cluttered mess of pipes, and in this particular setup, two superchargers with really long belts. The reason for this setup is actually pretty ingenious, as it allows shorter, straighter intake ports that avoid cylinder head fasteners. The problem with this situation, aside from being obnoxiously large and complicated, is the heat of the exhaust being right there, and the limited space for a large runner. Also, for those of us who have experimented with two-carb, cross-ram intake manifolds, V8's generally don't like being treated and tuned like a pair of four-cylinder engines tied together in the middle. Was this successful? I'm going to say no, as it never caught on, and it never achieved the fame of some of his other creations. It sure is cool to look at, though and would make a great piece of garage art, provided you have a big garage.
