Keith Black – The Man, The Legend

– Famous HEMI^® engine builder and slipper clutch pioneer
– Started with boat racing, moved on to drag racing
– Innovator of 426 GEN II aluminum KBRE racing engine block

The name Keith Black had been known to tens of thousands of drag racing enthusiasts as one of the sport’s finest engine designers and builders, ever! Keith Black Racing Engines excelled in a sport and profession that is fiercely competitive, and he had always remained uncompromising and forthrightly honest.

He was born in Lynwood, California, in 1926. Like many other teenagers in southern California, he became interested in hot rodding while in high school during the early ’40s. After graduating, he entered the Army Air Corps cadet program, but World War II ended before he was called to action.

Early on, he displayed an uncanny ability repairing and hot-rodding engines. His career actually started with boats, not cars. It all began when a friend asked him to fix the carburetor problems in his boat. A hobby became a career, and he started working out of his backyard.

“As I became successful at it,” Black says, “more people would come to me and ask, ‘Would you work on my engine?’ I worked on a few Cadillac and Oldsmobile engines because they were the first ones out [with V8s]. The first time I got into a race deal, where I had something that was of some size, I went into a Chrysler HEMI because I felt the engine was more of a race engine than the rest of the engines were. At that time, I did engines for boat racing that were 246 cubic inches, from the small Dodge HEMI Red Ram engine. We built those up fuel-injected – some of them methanol. We also did a 265-cubic-inch DeSoto HEMI.”

WAGON PEDDLER

In this early family photo, here’s Keith when he had a wholesale auto parts business on wheels, and spent time during the day selling to shops and at night making horsepower in his garage.

GEN I HEMI ENGINES FOR BOAT RACING

In Keith Black’s earliest days building early Chrysler HEMI race engines, it was for the unlimited class of inland lakes marathon boat racing community. KB’s HEMI engines dominated the hydro scenes at places like the Salton Sea, Parker Dam, Clear Lake and Lake Berryessa. His “Chrysler Fire Power” 392 HEMI engines are seen in these rare “Champion Spark Plugs” publicity photos. The “Salton City 500” race back in the day was considered the Indy 500 of endurance boat racing.

KEITH AND JANE AT THE BOAT RACES

Shown at a California boating event, Keith and wife Jane Black in a rare color family photo. HEMI boats is where he really got his start in gaining paying customers that wanted his expertise!

ON TO THE DRAGSTERS

In 1959, he opened Keith Black Racing Engines. By 1961, his boat racing exploits included nearly 50 national and international records. As his reputation grew, drag racers began to solicit his expertise.

Complete with “weedburner” exhaust headers, here’s the Gireth & Carpenter dragster as fitted with a Keith Black-built early HEMI engine.

The “Greer-Gireth-Black” car burning down Lion’s Drag Strip.

Tommy Greer, a longtime friend, then approached Keith with the idea of running a car together. It took more than a little convincing, but the final result was the famed Greer-Black-Prudhomme Top Fueler. During the 1962 and 1963 seasons, it won over 250 eliminator rounds and lost fewer than 25! Prudhomme was succinct in his assessment of Black’s abilities: “It was unbelievable how smart this Keith Black was.”

ORANGE CAR

The famous G-B-P car started out orange and became yellow when there was a chance for it to be created as a plastic model car kit. The chassis was built by Kent Fuller, the money was from Tommy Greer, the HEMI engine by Keith Black, the driving by Don Prudhomme. In 1964, this car ran a 7.77-second run at over 196 mph. Check out that shark nose injector scoop!

YOUNG DON PRUDHOMME

Checking out the injectors on an early HEMI engine, Don Prudhomme, who was painting cars at his dad’s body shop during this time frame.

NOVEMBER 1962 HOT ROD COVER

Staged on a grassy park setting and with Don Prudhomme in the Orange Black and Greer dragster, later repainted Yellow.

“Speed & Automotive Equipment Advertiser” on their May 1, 1963 edition, with Keith Black on the cover reviewing an aluminum head for the Chrysler GEN II HEMI engine.

Forgedtrue piston company recognized KB in this promotion, highlighting the 7.77-second record run at 196.30 mph.

CHRYSLER MARINE 

In 1965, Chrysler Corporation was so impressed with the precision engine building that Keith Black Racing Engines performed that they awarded the shop with a contract to develop their “Marine Racing Program” which would lead to a long and prosperous factory relationship. Black supplied early and late-model HEMI engines to Roland Leong and other fuel dragsters. By 1966, the Keith Black engine shop had become too small to handle all the business, so a larger facility (11120 Scott Ave, Southgate, CA) was obtained to deal with all the new activities! It proved good timing because his involvement with the HEMI engine was about to grow dramatically.

KRYPTONITE CRANK

In 1973, Keith Black added crankshafts to his product lineup, and they were so strong that the name “kryptonite” was used to describe them! Starting with a rough billet that measured 27 inches long with a diameter of 8 inches, and then turned into a 426 HEMI crankshaft when the 400-pound chunk of special aircraft alloy steel was reduced down to 86 pounds after some 22 separate machine operations.

COVER, COVER 4 CATALOG

On one of the vintage Keith Black Racing Engines catalogs, cover 4 featuring an assortment of historical images from over the years of glory!

FEATURED IN ADVERTISING

Keith Black had close ties with the Pennzoil Company and used and promoted their racing oil in his nitro race engines. Oftentimes, the top teams that ran KB engines were lubricated with Pennzoil Racing Oil, including the pictured Candies and Hughes team out of Houma, LA.

Keith in his wood-paneled office and in the shop,  always working to safely gather the maximum performance out of the HEMI engine!

JAMES IBUSUKI ART

In 1994, a talented automotive artist did this spectacular “First Strike” 14″ x 30″ rendering of the Greer-Black-Prudhomme HEMI engine-powered dragster doing its thing at the San Gabriel Dragstrip. Today, they are highly cherished by collectors. This short-wheelbased dragster won somewhere in the neighborhood of 250 matches while only losing a small amount, the car was nearly untouchable!

OFFICE WALL ART

Keith Black became so successful throughout the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s and beyond, that just his initials “KB” became a part of the language for anyone involved in the sport of drag racing.

Prior to Eddie Hill getting into rear-engined Top Fuel dragster racing, he was a top drag race boat racer and this shot, which was proudly displayed on the hall wall of Keith Black Racing Engines in South Gate, shows his boat with the blown and supercharged KB HEMI engine, which of course ran on nitromethane!

KB BLOCK

After Chrysler stopped producing the HEMI engines at the end of 1971, and with engineering assistance and development from Chrysler engineer Bob Tarozzi, Keith Black manufactured them from aluminum. With aluminum, racers gained several advantages, including that they saved 100 lbs (45 kg) in weight, and had an engine that was repairable in case of damage from thrown connecting rods, etc. They became very popular in the Top Fuel and Funny Car ranks!

KBRE worked with nearly every Top Fuel or Funny Car over the years, including Don Garlits, Don Prudhomme, Shirley Muldowney, Kenny Bernstein, Joe Amato, John Force, Tommy Ivo, John Mazmanian, Nelson Carter, Jim Dunn, Candies and Hughes, and the list goes on and on! It was 1974 when the release of the famed Keith Black Aluminum HEMI Block came, which without question was the “shot heard around the world” for the sport of drag racing!

Here’s what Don Garlits had to say regarding this revolutionary engine: “The aluminum 426 HEMI block was probably the biggest contribution to Top Fuel drag racing and that was all thanks to Keith Black. What a great man for drag racing.”

The business also became involved in other forms of racing, including NASCAR, SCCA Trans-Am, Indy Cars and SCORE off-road racing.

KB EYE CANDY

Be it on an old school nitro engine, a street rod, boat or 426 HEMI Mopar_® muscle car, the KB cast aluminum calve covers always provided the a serious appearance like no other!

A THANK YOU FROM DON PRUDHOMME

Hanging on the wall, this photo from 1975 with these words: “Thanks K.B. for helping to make the 5’s Happen, Don ‘The Snake’ Prudhomme 1975.”

FAMOUS BUILDING, ICONIC CAR

This building on Scott Avenue in South Gate, California, was where it all took place! Pictured is the restored 1969 Hawaiian Dodge Charger Funny Car of Roland Leong, which back in the day was a Keith Black “house car” and top performer.

Honesty, candor, lack of pretense and a cordial manner were his calling cards.

Keith Black
1926-1991

Author: James Maxwell