posted at the Cohort by Canadiancatgreen
This ’66 Coronet looks familiar, as I used to drive a taxicab just like it. It even had a V8 in it, the last year for the “poly” 318. And they also had a new ’67, with the new LA 318 with wedge heads. It gave me a chance to compare them.
Of course this was on the sly, as I was only fifteen.
My first job was at that age, opening and running a little two-pump Sunoco station on York Road in Towson. The guy that owned the station also owned the cab company, Adams Cab, which had white cars in comparison to Jimmy’s cab, whose were all blue. Jimmy’s is still going, Adams not.
Anyway, it was a small outfit, with about 7 or 8 ’65 Coronet sedans, all with slant sixes, the one ’66 V8 and the one ’67 V8. I was to open the station at eight in the morning on Saturday, meaning it was dead in town back then. I’d get up extra early, walk over and get there at about 7:30, and exercise one of the cabs a bit. Yes, I’m a risk taker.
The ’65’s were all-too familiar to me, given their resemblance to our ’65 wagon. But the ’66 was of course significantly restyled, in the new boxy, scalloped style of the times at Chrysler, thanks to Elwood Engel. Worked pretty nicely on the coupes and convertibles and the Charger, but it still didn’t exactly elevate the Coronet sedan from terminal dullness.
Anyway, after the ’67 showed up, I was curious as to how it ran compared to the ’66, since both were 318s and advertised to have 230hp. I assumed the ’67 318 was a totally new engine. It was actually the same block but with new wedge combustion chamber heads, a la Chevy small block. It made the engine look a lot more compact and modern.
And yes, it really did run stronger. The 318 poly ran out of breath sooner; I doubt it revved barely past 4,000 in actual operation. The LA pulled harder and longer before the Torqueflite shifted. That stripped ’67 was a pretty strong running car, for mat the times. As in the fastest car I’d driven yet.
Great article, thanks Paul, I believe the block was around 50 lbs lighter too. I understand the blocks are otherwise nearly the same. I want to pull out my hair when I see someone make a reference to the “old wide-block 318”
+1, and I’ve got precious little hair left to pull! ‘Wide-head’ would probably be more accurate.
” I want to pull out my hair when I see someone make a reference to the “old wide-block 318””
Guilty. I had always assumed (without knowing) that there were different block dimensions. I owned two of the old ones but had no direct experience with the newer LAs. Maybe we should start a campaign to change the popular name to “fat head 318” 🙂
Hmm, prices seem rather reasonable at the Little Lot in Edmonton. That Coronet is a nice car for a brown paper bag classic, wasn’t I looking for a 318 Poly and dog dish hubcaps in our MM program this week?
Very tempting, looks like they even had a 62 Plymouth for you Paul.
$999 for this fine looking Olds, a bit over $7 grand for that 60s era Rambler beside it. Not sure how recent the photos are.
Maybe not too compelling for our Western friends, but for us Ontario guys these are nice cars at great prices!
Really got my attention until I saw it said $5999. Had my hopes up there. (Maybe he’ll take 4 grand off for that missing piece of grill?) Somebody save it before it is jacked up and given 22″ rims!
Agreed, prices for many of their cars are reasonable. They do good business considering they don’t use social media. Now that spring is here the lot will soon have more interesting cars. I stop by once in a while to check out what they have.
Yes, the 273, ’67-up 318, 340 and 360 are known as the ‘LA’, or ‘Lightweight A’ series, as opposed to the earlier ‘A’ series ‘poly-head’ engines. The blocks were very similar but the L.A.’s were some 50 lbs. lighter due to more modern thin-wall casting techniques. One strange characteristic the L.A.’s inherited from the Poly-Heads was the valve lifter angle. Due to the difference in intake and exhaust pushrod angles required by the staggered valve semi-hemi cylinder heads of the ‘A’ engine, the lifter bores were drilled on the same plane at an angle 1/2 between the pushrod angles. The ‘right’ solution would have been to drill each lifter bores at the same angle of the corresponding pushrod, but that likely would have made the machining of the block more complex. When the ‘L.A.’ 273 came out, it kept the odd lifter bore angle even though it was not necessary due to the pushrods all being on the same angle thanks to the wedge cylinder heads. This results in a slight side-to-side movement of the pushrod caused by the lifter and pushrod being on different angles, but is of no consequence as the cam profile takes into account the lost vertical motion.
My understanding is that the weight reduction is all in the new heads, which are much more compact and lighter. And that the LA block is essentially the same as the A block, with some very minor details changed, but not any lighter.
Visually the block designs are nearly identical, but when you try to move an A engine block the difference is very apparent!
https://www.allpar.com/mopar/a-engines.html
Willem Weertman was in charge of the ‘A’ to ‘LA’ redesign, and weight reduction was a design objective along with size to fit the engines in the A body cars. Weertman’s book ‘Chrysler Engines’ is a wonderful look at Chrysler engine design from the beginning.
Yes, I’ve read that too, some years ago. The part that really stuck in my memory was this:
I’ve had an A engine and a late LA 318 upside down; except for the core plugs and the engine mount tabs, they are virtually identical.
And it was heavily based on the original 331 Chrysler hemi. Chrysler didn’t really ever design a new small block block, until recent years with the neo-hemi and 4.7. That LA in the form of the 360 went on for decades.
Update: I found a forum where raw blocks were weighed and compared. The poly block weighed 192 lbs (with main caps and and bearing shells; the LA weighed 168 lbs. That’s 24lbs lighter. The additional difference in weight came from the heads, intake manifold, and the fact that the LA simplified mounting brackets and such.
Very true about the A/LA stemming from the early Hemi. The new generation Hemi blocks also have some similarities to the A/LA, so I guess they have come full circle.
The fact that 24 pounds of iron went missing from the LA block confirms a redesign of the casting made possible with more modern casting techniques. It is understandable that most dimensions were unchanged for maximum production efficiencies.
It would not be surprising if the A block’s displacement limit was artificially low due to the old-tech casting design, something resolved by the redesigned LA. And nobody had cared that 318 was the old maximum (326, actually, as used in the 59 Dodge) given that the early B block picked up at 350 cid
The Studebaker block suffered from this problem in that there was metal enough between cylinders for a bigger bore but for the water passage locations. When they shut down there were a couple of prototype engines made with a redesigned casting which allowed larger bores and a displacement of somewhere around 340 cid. The larger bore LAs were probably made possible in much the same way.
That’s precisely what happened to almost all blocks as casting technology improved: cores became more accurately located, and there was less shift, making bigger bores possible. That’s how Chevy expanded their 265 into the 283 and then the 327. Guys would take the risk and overbore their 265s into 283s, and 283s, into 301s, but sometimes it didn’t work out.
That’s certainly also the case with the A block. Casting technology kept getting better. And I would expect that to be the case with the Studebaker block too.
According to Allpar’s engine histories:
The A-engines were replaced by the lighter LA series, which weighed 55 pounds less, partly due to a lightweight casting process but also because the LA engines switched to wedge heads. Willem Weertman, the legendary engine designer, said.
Good points, it was likely there was no way Chrysler could have got away with a 4″ bore A block considering 50’s casting technology. BTW, the ‘LA’ 360 was an excellent truck engine, particularly with the Holley 2210 2bbl. carburetor.
Excellent? NO! It was a slug. One of the first things I did to my ’77 Power Wagon’s 360 was to dump the 2 barrel and cast iron intake and put an Edelbrock aluminum intake on it with a Carter AFB, and later a Thermoquad. Headers came later on, along with a conservative cam, huge turbomuffler dual exhaust (LOUD), and some porting and polishing heads and doing some grinding on the intake manifold. After that, it was an excellent truck engine. The rest of the truck? A POS. I had it 4 years and it constantly broke stuff that just shouldn’t brake. Or short out, or leak, or split, or fail suddenly and without warning. When it got past 48K, it finally broke something, I don’t remember what, and it pushed me to the point I finally had enough and a few days later, it was gone, replaced by a ’79 Trans Am that was one of the most reliable cars I’ve ever had. And until 2010, the quickest car I had owned (After lots of mods, described in an article here;
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/blog/comment-classic/comment-classic-how-to-make-a-79-olds-403-powered-trans-am-fly/
Now I drive a Challenger Scatpack that will run 12 second 1/4’s at will.
I always loved the little pentastar emblems on the bottom of the right fender panel ahead of the passenger door. My Dad had one on his 66 Plymouth. I believe Chryco stopped using them in the late 60s or early 70s. Update: on line research indicates the badges were used from 1963 to 1972.
I can’t say though, that Dodge did much to style these with any flair. Just a plain rectangular box will do fine thank you.
Our ’96 New Yorker has the Pentastar cast into the moldings on both sides. But yes, at one time they were little gold emblems. Our ’67 Coronet had them.
Driver’s side
I also fondly recall the gold ChryCo penstar emblems.
I bought 2 off Evilbay to add to the front fender bottoms of my ’85 Dodge 318 pick up. It just didn’t look complete (to me) without the fender emblems.
…and now it looks completer-than-complete, for Chrysler only ever put that Pentastar emblem on the passenger side fender—the right one on left-hand-drive vehicles; the left one on right-hookers. 🙂
I’ve always been into symmetry. 🙂
There was an updated version of that emblem on the ’93 Intrepid. About the same size, but chrome with striations. Pretty nice-lookin’. Peel/stick, no drilling required. Part № 4630238; see it here.
Thank you Daniel, I am going to check in to that Tasca parts link you sent.
That Coronet sedan would just need an upgrade of the front end with the 1966-67 Charger hidden headlights to add a bit more “pizzazz” just like that Mexican Coronet who was once mentionned in the past on Curbside Classic..
http://moparblog.com/mexican-market-1967-dodge-coronet-440-on-craigslist/
I like that Mexican Dodge for the way the front grille styling is repeated for the back of the car. Most designs avoid the “coming or going” look. The only other car I can think of off the top of my head that even comes close is also a 67. The 67-68 Cougar sort of repeats that look of vertical lines “hiding” the lights front and back.
Every “LA” powered Mopar I owned (273, 318, 340, 360) had a distinctive “Whirrrrrrrrrring” sound that came from the front the engine.
The combination of the alternator, fan clutch, fan belts, water pump……?
Age or accumulated mileage made no difference in this unique noise.
Perhaps LT Dan might know?
So, are the A and LA blocks actually interchangeable?
Apparently yes, with a bit of work to block off a couple of small passages in the LA heads. That’s putting poly heads on an LA block. The other way around? Maybe, but those passages wouldn’t be there.
But why would you?
Good Point, Paul,
To install ’67 and newer LA wedge cylinder heads on a ’66 and older A engine block.
Maybe someone had a built LA with good heads but a cracked block and had access to a cheap but otherwise good LA block.
No, they were into poly heads but wanted the bigger displacement 360 block. But nowadays there are stroker kits for polys that can take them well above that displacement, meaning there’s no need.
A very clean example of the type. I would drive it proudly. Hopefully with power steering.
My parents bought a 1966 Coronet 440 two-door hardtop new and kept it for thirteen years. They gave it to my cousin, who put 265,000 miles on it before learning that the engine we told him was a 318 was actually a 273 LA. I’m guessing we always received the right parts for it because parts counter workers in the day before computers probably just thought it was a 318 LA.
In Canada, 1967, not ’66, was the swan song for the 318 Poly. It got one more year,
although curiously, the LA 273 was available here starting in ’66.
This is what I call a geek classic.
I would love this car color and all
I would love to find a genuine Taxi package Dodge. Those in NYC had badges that read “Dodge Taxi” instead of Coronet.