Karamesines and Maynard used a supercharged, stroked 392 Chrysler Hemi equipped with stock rods, a ½ inch CT Stroker crank and cylinder heads. The half inch stroker made the Hemi a 442 cubic inch piece. They got the cranks from Ron Leek who had used them in the hemi-powered dragsters he was racing at the time with Al Thompson and driver Fred J. Smith. According to Ron Leek who was at Alton and racing that day. “We blew our engines with the ½ inch cranks up and I gave the cranks to Don Maynard. He was working at Young’s Auto Supply on the South Side of Chicago at the time and he fixed the cranks and put them in the engine that got a 204 time slip.”
The pistons were a .0150 out of the hole (cylinder) and they had either Grant or Perfect Circle rings. The supercharger was a GMC 6.71 out of a Chicago city bus, topped with a Hilborn four-port injector and Maynard used a Hilborn “175” fuel pump.
There has always been a lot of speculation that tuner Don Maynard put hydrazine in the nitro and that accounted for the then unheard of speed of 204.54.
In an interview Karamesines did with Petersen Publishing’s Lee Kelly for a 1968 Hot Rod Magazine feature, he said that although he and Maynard had used hydrazine during the 1958 and ’59 seasons, they decided it was dangerous and quit using it after 1959.
The chassis also came by way of Ron Leek. At that time I was a dealer for Chassis Research Chassis and both of my cars were Chassis Research. Garlits and Maynard bought a kit 440 chassis kit from me and Maynard welded it together.”
According to Karamesines, “We had 100 percent nitro in the tank. The only time Maynard used hydrazine was when the air was bad. We used to run it on tracks like Tucson and Denver.
“The real reason the car charged so hard that day was the Isky cam and Vasco Jet valve springs we used that day,” Karamesines explained. “Ed Iskenderian and Maynard designed the cam and, according to Richard Iskenderian, we got the first set of those valve springs.”
Isky still sells that cam to this day. It is a hard-faced, steel billet cam with .340 degrees of duration and .595 of lift on the intake and exhaust. Maynard installed it on a 108 centerline. The springs were installed with 200 lbs of static seat pressure and showed 500 lbs with the valve open.
So there you have the story of how the Greek ran an 8.87/204.54…at least as Karamesines remembers it.
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