When Bunkie Knudsen took over Pontiac, the brand was dying. Old people were the prime clientele for Poncho. Their cars were bland and poorly suited to appeal to younger people and the engines in the cars were not all that exciting either. Following the adage that horsepower fixes all things, Knudsen put engineers to work on exciting ways to spruce up the performance reputation of Pontiac. One of them was going with an expensive fuel injection system which made a bunch of power but cost a bunch of money and the other was going with three two-bbl carbs on top of the engine and calling it Tri-Power. This was a cheap solution as compared to fuel injection and as luck would have it, the public was in love.
Running on the center carb when regular driving was needed and sucking fuel and air from the end carbs when the gas pedal hit the carpet, this initial version of the vaunted system was vacuum operated. Down the road a progressive linkage would operate the outboard carbs but this first go around was vacuum-centric. The Rochester carbs on the ends of the intake did not have choke provisions it should be noted.
This is a complete and turning engine according to the seller. He is asking $2,500 and we think that is pretty good. Why? Unless you decided to get stupid you could go ahead and have this thing cleaned up at the machine shop, plugged into a hot rod, and making 300+ horsepower like falling out of bed for short money. Swap a cam, maybe steal a little compression ratio, and tune the carbs just right for snappy response and an engine that would not only be awesome and period correct in a Model A or something but would also likely be the only one at the local cruise night.
Stand out, cruise hard, and enjoy the feeling of those end carbs opening up and gulping air and fuel as hard and fast as they can.
eBay find: This tri-power equipped 347ci Pontiac engine was the hot ticket in ’57
Your parents are old people . Don’t you have any respect ? You are nothing more than an young punk Lohnes , and you suck on NHRA . What happened, they couldn’t find a talking monkey ?
Well listen to the key board bully! Donny Chops why don’t you shut your pie hole!
Apparently, they did, and his name is Donny. Isn’t he cute?!?