Turin It Up [In Detroit]

"Seat Safety Switch" (seat-safety-switch)
12/17/2015 at 11:10 • Filed to: alfa romeo, detroit diesel, meyers manx

Wikipedia defines the 4-53T as the single most delectable engine to ever be devised by human hands. I’m not one to argue, though I will get a little bit salty once that jerk bot reverts my edit again. You could say I had a long running love of the Detroits, but that love was about to be put to the test.

I had been invited by a shadowy benefactor - in fact, someone who sat on the board of directors of Seat Safety Switch International, but I don’t really go to the board meetings, whatever dad - to attend his private exhibit of his car collection. Who could pass up such an offer?

As my rotary-swapped Meyers Manx rumbled to a stop, its metalflake no longer shimmering with the augmenting vibrations of the twin Paxton blowers strapped to its rear flanks, I was already unbuckling my six-point restraints. I climbed out, my carbon-fiber-imitation three piece suit taut, its perfectly pressed pleats throwing the impression of enormous success and vast wealth.

The trip to the hangar entrance was short, and I met my host there. Behind him, I could make out under the dim shop light a cavalcade of delicious high-dollar Italian patina-in-waiting. I salivated, naturally, because that’s what you do.

He led me down the rows, making brief note of the weather and other small talk, before at last we arrived at something he considered “quite special.” I tried to remember his name, struggled to match his blurry, unrecognizable face to an office memory. With a practiced flourish, he reached back and pulled the dust cover off of an Alfa. But not just any Alfa. No, this was a Montreal . And it got better from there.

Dear Penthouse Magazine, I never thought it would happen to me, but holy shit some asshole swapped a Detroit Diesel turbo engine into a goddamn Alfa Romeo Montreal. And I could touch it . It was real. I gaped at him in wide-jawed awe.

“Tell you what,” he said, laughing, “I’ll give you the keys in exchange for 51% of the company.”

A lot of people in the business press have called me irresponsible, made fun of my madness, compared me to Carly Fiorina. I fell from my lofty heights as a titan of industry, put thousands out of work, destroyed the American economy and was bankrupted for my troubles. But that’s not the whole truth. I have a really awesome vintage Alfa with a semi-truck engine.

DISCUSSION (53)

jimz > Seat Safety Switch
12/17/2015 at 11:33

4V53T

no such engine existed.

Skamanda > Seat Safety Switch
12/17/2015 at 11:33

Nice car pic and all, but I’m calling shenanigans on the claim of a Detroit Diesel engine in a car. The smallest series 50 is still bigger than the passenger compartment of that Montreal, and that’s about the smallest engine they make. So....Nicely written fiction and all, but it’s just too obviously bullshit. You should’ve picked an engine that wasn’t intended for buses and big rigs.

Source: My first IT gig was working in Detroit Diesel’s main factory on Outer Drive.

Gennaro > Seat Safety Switch
12/17/2015 at 11:34

If I ever find someone guilty of putting an abomination like that in an Alfa I kid you not he is not going to live to tell the tale. Or to repeat rate his barbaric ideas either. A diesel Montreal. No.

Voice of C. Montgomery Burns > jimz
12/17/2015 at 11:35

Yeah, 453T and I don’t see that fitting in a car.

Voice of C. Montgomery Burns > Seat Safety Switch
12/17/2015 at 11:36

This is weird Oppo.

Seat Safety Switch > jimz
12/17/2015 at 11:37

Cut a few cylinders off a 6. It’ll be fine .

Seat Safety Switch > Gennaro
12/17/2015 at 11:37

A two stroke diesel Montreal.

Seat Safety Switch > Skamanda
12/17/2015 at 11:38

It’s guys like you that tell me I can’t put an entire 454 on the back of my pedal bicycle.

I hoon, therefore I am > Seat Safety Switch
12/17/2015 at 11:38

I like you. This is actual good Kinja excellent gonzOppo.

El-Verde > Voice of C. Montgomery Burns
12/17/2015 at 11:42

I think this guy wrote it:

Kinja'd!!!

Seat Safety Switch > Skamanda
12/17/2015 at 11:45

Also I desperately want to hear stories about working for the green beast.

PNO TECH > Seat Safety Switch
12/17/2015 at 11:45

Eh, let the swine squeal: I, for one, look forward to further madness!

Tho uncomfortable, it is good to be jarred out of our comfy paradigms.

Skippy the McWaffle > Seat Safety Switch
12/17/2015 at 11:47

Now were talkin’

Skamanda > Seat Safety Switch
12/17/2015 at 11:53

What do you want to know? The plant is HUGE inside (like, 15 minutes to walk end to end at a brisk pace), but it had a Penske Indy car in it, even beofre GM completed the sale. I’ve got all sorts of funny stories about my time in IT. DD was fun, because it was so obviously built in so many phases. There were parts of the building from every decade as far back as at least the 50s, and they never updated any of them. Some of the bizarre colors in the cubicle walls, and some of the old steel desks...man...it was like walking into an old movie.

Seat Safety Switch > Skamanda
12/17/2015 at 11:57

I just hope they didn’t run Lotus Notes.

Leon711 > Seat Safety Switch
12/17/2015 at 11:59

I might have been at Goodwood on the day the pic was taken. I remember the white Montreal and Goodwood Breakfast Club but there were a few around that day.

Seat Safety Switch > Leon711
12/17/2015 at 12:00

I have wanted to go to either of the Goodwood events for a really long time. The Revival would be amazing even if it doesn’t include delicious 70s Alfas named after a city that they didn’t sell them in.

jimz > Voice of C. Montgomery Burns
12/17/2015 at 12:03

I’ve seen a few people drop a 4-53 into Chevy/GMC pickups (the old ‘73-’87 C/K series) with room to spare. I’ve also seen a couple with 6V53s and that is a tight fit.

jimz > Skamanda
12/17/2015 at 12:04

couldn’t you shoehorn an aluminum 3-53 into one? It might be tall but width and overall length should be doable.

Dr. Strangegun > jimz
12/17/2015 at 12:43

453t

Kinja'd!!!

3-53

Kinja'd!!!

A small engine, these are *not*.

And it’s 453 or 4-53. 4v53 would imply it’s a V4 engine, which they didn’t do.

You might wedge a 2-51 in there, if you could modify it like the 6L/6N series ‘pancake’ engines and use some kind of offset gearing to reach the crank. You’d have ~40 horses and a whoooooole lot of noise, -51’s are ‘true’ loop scavenged 2 strokes... no mechanical valves, just ports. Unfortunately they’re scarce and I don’t think they take well to turbocharging since backpressure of any kind is anathema.

longfalcon > jimz
12/17/2015 at 12:46

maybe he means a 4-51 ? though since this is clearly satire, who knows.

Skamanda > Seat Safety Switch
12/17/2015 at 12:50

I was too low on the totem pole back then to be an admin, so I’m not sure. I was there for their Windows 95 upgrade. I didn’t learn the steaming Hell of Lotus Notes until the turn of the century. They did have one of the Cray couch supercomputers, though! That, and Netware servers. Aaah Netware...good riddance!

Skamanda > jimz
12/17/2015 at 12:51

I mean....if you didn’t need to fit anyone in it, and could cut out some bodywork and structure...maybe? The 3-53 is still pretty hefty...

Seat Safety Switch > Skamanda
12/17/2015 at 12:55

Old Crays are awesome to look at. I’m glad there are people preserving them even though they’re really only useful as furniture nowadays.

Seat Safety Switch > jimz
12/17/2015 at 12:56

If the 3-53 blower on my workbench is any indication, the shortblock of a 3-53 must be pretty small.

Probably have to cut the hood off though. The sacrifices you make...

Seat Safety Switch > Gennaro
12/17/2015 at 13:03

Also I feel it’s important to point out that this story also contains a rotary-swapped twin-supercharged Meyers Manx replica.

Regardless of this, everyone is like HOLY SHIT DETROIT DIESELS, which verifies my belief that Detroits are pretty bitchin’.

jimz > longfalcon
12/17/2015 at 13:04

No, there’s a 4-53. the “V” in the model designation means it’s a vee engine. the -53s came in 3, 4, 6V, 8V,and 12V cylinder layouts.

the -71 family was enormous; they could be had in 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 6V, 8V, 12V, 16V, and 24V.

jimz > Seat Safety Switch
12/17/2015 at 13:11

I think it’s a bit humorous that O’Reilly Auto Parts still stocks Alpine Green engine paint. I should get a can while they have it; I’ve got a few heavy truck model kits to finish and that shade of green is a bitch to match.

Skamanda > Seat Safety Switch
12/17/2015 at 13:15

The couch was nice and warm to sit on when it was under heavy load, but it was surprisingly uncomfortable for its price. I really expected nicer cushions...

Seat Safety Switch > jimz
12/17/2015 at 13:16

Hmm, I do need to paint my wiper arms..

jimz > Skamanda
12/17/2015 at 13:20

kind of reminds me of when I was at PROC (Plymouth Road Office Complex, informally know as Jeep/Truck Engineering or JTE.) The front half of the building had been built in 1920-something by Kelvinator, complete with ornate mahogany walls and marble staircase in the lobby. Later, AMC built up the back half for engineering garages and test labs, and it didn’t even resemble the same building. You could get a good walk in going from one end of the building to the other.

This is what it looked like in 2005, well before Cerberus abandoned ship:

Kinja'd!!!

kmoney > Seat Safety Switch
12/17/2015 at 13:29

Someone has been playing with the online post-modern essay generator again. Good story, but my head hurts now and I’m still confused.

Skamanda > jimz
12/17/2015 at 13:32

A lot like that, actually. I think the facilities there were built in waves. The main plant, and one office building section like you described (mahogany walls, orange cubicle walls with tan frames), and maybe one of the engineering wings (which looked straight out of the 50s - a bit like the office scenes at the beginning of Monty Python’s “The meaning of life”). Then there were add-ons tacked onto the factory all over the place that were from the following decades - with construction continuing even through when I was there in 1996.

You could go on one service call, and walk through so many different types of places you’d swear you’d been in 10 different buildings - most of which connected one way or another through hallways or walkways.

And off on one side of the factory there was the Penske wing, and just chilling with no guard ropes around it or anything, was one of their Marlboro liveried Indy cars. That whole wing had, in retrospect, a kind of Umbrella Corporation feel to it. As much as I wanted to dally and ogle the race car, it just creeped me out too bad to stick around. There was never anybody around. It had one of those “the real part of this wing is underground” atmospheres.

monkeyracing > Seat Safety Switch
12/17/2015 at 13:35

“...some asshole swapped a Detroit Diesel turbo engine into a goddamn Alfa Romeo Montreal.”

I’ll be in the bathroom

Highlander-Datsuns are Forever > Seat Safety Switch
12/17/2015 at 13:50

Once again I am left speechless. I love these.

You can tell a Finn but you can't tell him much > Seat Safety Switch
12/17/2015 at 14:34

Everyone is arguing that you can’t fit a Detroit Diesel into an Alfa Montreal, and I’m sitting here like “rotary rumble?”

Laman's LeMans > Gennaro
12/17/2015 at 14:40

Seriously. Swapping a race derived, sweet singing, all aluminum Italian four cam V8 for this Michigan monstrosity is the equivalent of putting Sophia Loren on a supersize-me diet and a Juggalo makeover.

Leon711 > Seat Safety Switch
12/17/2015 at 15:34

There is many Goodwood events beside the Revival and Festival of Cheese. The Breakfast club is basically a cars and coffee, they have the members meeting too, just last weekend I went to Pistonheads Sunday Service parked up in the paddock and just chilled out looking at cars. I also met my first real life opponaut, RWS MOTORSPORT. If you ever find yourself over here, I will 100% go to a Goodwood event with you, I live 30 mins away.

Gennaro > Seat Safety Switch
12/17/2015 at 16:21

That came with a 4 cam 2.9 liter V8. 200 hp. Only 3200 made. That engine was a masterpiece. And it was swapped for a agricultural ornament? Is so wrong my head is exploding.

Gennaro > Laman's LeMans
12/17/2015 at 16:22

The montreal had a quadcam V8. Derived from the engine that powerrd the 33 stradale.

Seat Safety Switch > Gennaro
12/17/2015 at 16:25

Sure, but you can only put up with so much from SPICA.

Gennaro > Seat Safety Switch
12/17/2015 at 16:26

Back in the day a couple of tuners in Italy offered the carb conversion. 4 webers. You should listen to that thing.

Seat Safety Switch > Gennaro
12/17/2015 at 16:27

I can only imagine how good that must have sounded. Or with those old Dellorto slides with a massive trumpet.

DrJohannVegas > Seat Safety Switch
12/17/2015 at 18:35

Given the company’s market cap at the time, the trade seems legit to me.

Seat Safety Switch > DrJohannVegas
12/17/2015 at 18:41

I’m going to be really honest with you now that the SEC is busy bothering some other guy: I didn’t actually ‘get’ this whole company-running thing. At lunch I would just tell my secretary I was going to a meeting, go to the parkade, sit in my car and make vroom-vroom noises until it was time to go home.

DrJohannVegas > Seat Safety Switch
12/17/2015 at 18:49

Two points: First, as someone who has survived SEC investigations largely unscathed, their bark is much worse than their bite. Besides, the 9 months I did were the easiest time you could imagine. With the positions I took on my own case on those offshore betting markets, it was like a paid vacation. Second, I wouldn’t sell yourself short. Those management strategies are the same ones taught at HBS and Ross. (Although the engines sound different at each program.)

jimz > Seat Safety Switch
12/17/2015 at 20:50

and just so I don’t come off as a thread-shitting grumpy Gus, I do enjoy the sounds of the old Detroit Diesels. You kids don’t know what you’re missing, never having heard the scream of two-stroke 6- and 8- cylinder engines.

my city’s fire engines used to be all 8V-71 Detroits. There’s nothing which sounds like a 2-stroke, 60-degree V8.

Seat Safety Switch > jimz
12/17/2015 at 21:34

Hey, a little attention to detail never hurt anybody.

I’ve only had exposure to one 4-53 in my life but I desperately want to complete the set. I guess you could count the Detroits under the city buses of my youth but it’s not like I drove them.

deprecated account > Seat Safety Switch
12/17/2015 at 23:01

Supercharged rotary engine?!? Good Oppo.

LittleMonster > Seat Safety Switch
12/18/2015 at 00:16

So I wonder if there’s an old 105 or 116-series coupe running around with the original 2.6 V8 in it now...

Seat Safety Switch > LittleMonster
12/18/2015 at 08:48

Well the rotted out Spider I yanked out of the swamp behind my garage compound and is now mostly carbon fibre needed power too.

Vic788 > Seat Safety Switch
12/20/2015 at 00:35

Kinja'd!!!

fodder....................

Patrick George > Seat Safety Switch
12/26/2015 at 12:10

Hey SSS, you should email me. I’d like to chat. Patrick at Jalopnik dot com. Thanks!