Re: storied small-block

On Aug 4, 7:50 am, "Florence Denison" <florence.thie...@xxxxxxx>
wrote:
Hi all,

I am currently translating an article about the new Corvette model and I am
struggling with the expression in subject. The sentence in which it appears
is the following : This new iteration of the storied small-block family
features a revised, larger-bore cylinder block.. If anyone of you knows what
is a storied small block engine, I would be grateful if you could explain in
English and more grateful if you could provide me with the French
equivalent.

Thanks a lot in advance,

Best Regards

Florence

Florence:

Good luck with this one. The easy part of your problem is knowing that
"storied" means "legendary" or
a thing about which there are many famous stories.

A block is a housing containing the cylinders, being one of the main
components of a car engine along with the heads and the intake
manifold. "Big" and "small" blocks are mainly comparative American
terms within an engine series made by a particular manufacturer. This
distinction arose sometime in the middle of the last century when the
V8s replaced the straight 6s and "muscle car" era bloomed across the
Atlantic.

If one had to advance further qualifications, the first would be that
big blocks are simply dimensionally larger than small blocks of the
same fabricator. It would be foolhardy to trust you could swap a Ford
big block of the same displacement into the engine compartment of a
Ford which previously held a stock small block of the same
displacement.

That said, big blocks are often additionally distinguished by a
displacement of 6L or 360 cubic inches or more while small blocks tend
to fall below that. Again, overall size is important here. Because big
blocks are larger, they obviously have more room for bigger cylinders
than small blocks as there is a certain minimum wall distance that
must be maintained between cylinders. Because of compositional factors
and their common use as engines designed to supply the low-end power
necessary to smoothly
bring bigger cars up to a comfortable cruising speed, big blocks often
were designed with thicker cylinder walls than any critical limit
dictated, leaving them with a lower power-to-weight performance ratio
than smaller blocks. Understanding this, racers often bore the big-
block cylinders out to larger diameters, dramatically increasing p/w
performance of these engines from their original specifications.

Regards,

Edward Hennessey

.

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