Bob Janowski was already an accomplished plumber when WW2 broke out. His plumbing experience would be invaluable working on hot rods in later years. Bob, as many DTA members have done, served a stint in the military. He joined the Army Air Corp in October 1942 and served as an aircraft mechanic. He was discharged October 1945. This was an important period in his life in that he was exposed first hand to superchargers or blowers as hot rodders call them. They intrigued Bob because of the tremendous horsepower increase when applied to an internal combustion engine.< SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> Consequently he read everything the military had about them and studied their application and results on the Pratt and Whitney R2800 aircraft engines. These were in the B-26 bomber aircraft he worked on. Bob had an ulterior motive... he wanted to try one on a hot rod once the war was over!
In the spring of 1950 Bob joined the newly formed DTA. On November 5, 1950 Bob purchased the ‘32 three window fenderless coupe he still has today. At the time it was pretty rough in that it was channeled 7", came with a heavily torched and butchered firewall and didn’t have any floor. The low-boy body was held to the frame with only 4 quarter inch diameter stove bolts! Safety wasn’t the previous owners strong suit! Typical of that period in time, it had a stock ‘40 Ford 221 inch engine. Over that first winter, it sat outside under a tarp. We all know what a young man’s thoughts turn to in the spring don’t we? That’s right.... cars! When spring finally arrived, he began working on his hot rod. Bob extended the front part of the frame 3-1/2". This was done partly so the engine would not be tilted like most of the V8's were in those days, but mainly to provide room for a blower drive on the crankshaft. Bob’s good friend, Ed Votaw, helped Bob during these informative years and he credits much of his mechanical education to Ed. Bob, using the wealth of blower information he’d garnered in the service, determined a 371 blower would be the right size for a 221 inch engine. In those days the blower was tur ned via fan belts and he still uses them to this day. He and John Bandimere were close friends and John used his lathe to make various sized pulleys for the multi-fan belts. He eventually settled on pulleys that overdrive the blower by a 1.6 ratio. Remember that during that period of time, no one made any hot rod parts and the builder had to make everything. Bob used a rear axle from a ‘34 Ford and machined it for use as the blower’s drive. The tapered part of the Ford axle and accompanying keyway along with the axle nut can easily be seen protruding from the front of the blower today. He also used the U-joint bell from the front of a ‘34 driveshaft to enclose his blower drive. Longevity? They’re both still in use today! At first he ran two carbs on top of the blower on the stock ‘40 engine, but it wasn’t long until he began experimenting with different combinations in search of more horsepower. He even tried a couple sets of finned aluminum heads, Edelbrock and Thickstun, with compression ratios of 10.0:1 and 12.0:1! As his engine began making more horsepower he regularly tore up transmissions coming off the line or when shifting. After studying the consistent types of breaks on the gears, he determined running straight through the transmission (not transmitting power through the cluster gear) would make the transmission a lot stronger. The power would be using the heavy main shaft, the large front and rear bearings, and have a positive solid lock up through the synchronizer drum. He’d pull up to the line and shift the transmission in high gear. Then he’d take the engine to “shriek” rpm (about 5000 rpm) and literally dump the clutch! And he never blew a transmission! Amazing in my book.
In 1953-54 he used a 50-50 mix of 100 octane pump gas (remember those days?) and methyl alcohol with some additives. In 1955 he began experimenting with nitro-methane. At first he only used 10% nitro and 90% alcohol, but he soon discovered any fuel left over would go bad before the next scheduled drag race. To keep the fuel from deteriorating he began running 100% nitro! This really woke the 221 inch flathead engine up. Four Stromberg 97 carbs were now being used. The rear end ratio he finally settled on? After trying all ratios common at the time, Bob went with 3.54:1 gears! And on a high gear start!
During 1955 Bob was trying hard to get into the elite 100 mph club in the area. At Colorado Springs he was within ½ mph (99.+) of going 100 mph for 9 straight runs! Pretty impressive.
Later that summer he and his wife towed the hot little coupe to the town of Great Bend , Kansas for the NHRA National Drags. In 1955 coupes running fuel with blowers were put in the hottest coupe class there was.... “A” Fuel Coupe. Bob’s coupe was running very good when disaster struck on the last race... his engine started getting sour as it approached the finish line. It went up in smoke just before he crossed the finish line. This was the day before finals and he had but one competitor left to race the next day for the trophy. He pulled it down to find the block and head on the driver’s side had troughs burned deeply between tw o adjoining cylinders by the potent nitro fuel and blower. The trough in the block was about 1/2" deep (you could easily put a finger in it!) and the one in the aluminum head was slightly deeper. Bob is a very resourceful person and set about making what repairs he could with what he had. He had an egg beater type drill. He used it to drill holes down into the burned trough of the block. In these holes, he put screws and chiseled off the heads. Then he pounded brazing rods down into openings between the screws. Then he filed them off so they were level with the top of the rest of the block. He finished these and went into town t o locate someone to aluminum arc weld the aluminum head. Now this was 1955 and welding aluminum was pretty much unheard of and no one in town had even heard of arc welding aluminum let alone had any rod. Bob found a role of aluminum clothesline wire at a hardware store. At a grocery store he purchased Borax and Baking Soda. He mixed these two ingredients for use a welding flux. John Bandimere had brought his oxygen/acetylene gas welder with him. This presented a couple more problems. One being John had forgotten the welding tips and had only the cutting torch with him. The second being the welding cart had tipped over on the way down and had broken the gas hose off where it went into the gauge. NO choice but to plunge ahead. While Bob’s wife pressed and held the hose against the broken hose fitting Bob welded on the aluminum head using the cutting torch! Bob is an excellent plumber and understands heat and metals and how they react. He ran very low gas pressure to heat the aluminum and to weld it. Without his plumbing background, excessive heat would have been applied and quickly melted the head into a pile of junk aluminum (like when I weld aluminum). He finished repairs late in the morning of the finals. He poured water in the radiator and dumped in a can of Barr’s Stop Leak. Wonder of wonders... no leaks! Bob fired the repaired engine. It sounded good.
He got it ready for the final race for the class trophy. His competition was a ‘32 coupe from Texas running a big bored and stroked flathead on fuel. It was in the same class as Bob even though it wasn’t blown simply because it had so many cubic inches. Bob poured in fresh nitro, fired it, and came up to the line. The two hot coupes lined up at the start line. Bob put it into high gear and took it to shriek rpm and came off the clutch at the start. The two rods lunged forward together.... at least for a short ways. Then Bob started pulling a way.... really hard. At about the 100' mark, Bob could see in his rear view mirror his coupe was rapidly extending his lead over the Texas coupe! He was so far ahead that he wondered if the Texas coupe had blown up. But Bob kept his foot in it just to be sure. Hind sight showed he should have back pedaled a little since his coupe had such a huge lead, but he kept his foot in it. About 60 yards from the finish line, his tired flathead let loose..... BIG TIME! An immense cloud of very intense blue smoke engulfed the drag strip. Bob kept his foot in it and crossed the finish line.... not knowing where the Texas coupe was because of the intense smoke. He clutched it and pulled over to the side of the strip. He was nearly out of his coupe when the Texas rod came screaming through the smoke. In retrospect Bob says it’s a wonder he didn’t get run over! The smoke was so intense the fire truck came racing down to the finish line expecting his coupe to be a ball of fire! After the smoke cleared the NHRA officials gave the win to the Texas car since they hadn’t seen Bob cross the finish line first! Bob protested and asked his competitor to verify that he’d won, but the Texas entry said Bob had blown up and had crossed the finish line behind him! So the decision stood. Later, when Bob tore the engine down, h e found the jury rigged repairs to the left side of the engine had held! It was the right side that blew up!
Bob had never broken a rod, destroyed any rod bearings, or broke a crank all the while he’d been running his flathead on straight nitro and a blower! He can’t say the same for the pistons though. These failed often and most of them had holes burned through their crowns from the intense heat!
Then in 1957 Bob put his blower on a new ‘57 Chevy motor. It’s still in the coupe today. He’s about finished converting the little red coupe to an automatic trans with a later model rear end. It’ll be on the road soon.... at least we all hope so. That way he can get started building his blown hemi powered “T” roadster!