Another legend has left us.
Stuart hilborn, a pioneer of hotrodding has died of age. Stu became 96 years.
If your unaware of what he brought to our world, his mechanical fuel injection system was introduced to hot rods by influence of aircraft he saw during his service in WWII.
Injection was already wide-spread on diesel motors, but Stu engineered and converted it for use in flatheads running on methanol in the early post-war years.
Hilborn explained: “Running carburetors with methanol was a constant problem.
The methanol reacted with the pot metal in the carburetor and turned into a white powder that clogged the jets; so there was no venturi effect, and you lost power.”
He used surplus military aircraft pumps and his own homemade nozzles to strike the perfect balance of fuel to air for each cylinder. While racing and developing his fuel system set ups to 140 mph in 1947, Stu rolled his minimal-protection streamliner, injuring his back badly.
He promised his mother he would give up racing, but the injection development continued.
To prove the systems efficiency, Stu had Howie Wilson run his repaired streamliner to 150 mph at the lakes in 1948, becoming the first to hit that benchmark with a one way pass of 150.5 miles per hour. By 1952 Hilborn injection was running at Indy, and the rest is history.
Rest in peace, Stu Hilborn.
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