Stuart Hilborn
Stuart Hilborn, more commonly known as Stu Hilborn, started his career in racing in 1940 when he purchased a Model A roadster with no engine in it from a used car lot. His next move was to buy a 239 cubic inch Ford flathead engine and start converting it into a real powerplant. It was about this time he met former Indy car driver Eddie Miller, and the two became longtime friends. It was Eddie who tutored Stu in the art of building a high-performance engine including grinding their own cams using a bench grinder. The roadster was okay, but wanted to go faster, Stu located the streamliner that was up for sale, and on December 7 (before he heard the news about Pearl Harbor), took possession of it. Stu was able to finish the car in time for the June event at Harper Dry Lake, and on his first run in the new car, he clocked 134.73 MPH, which was top speed at the event. With the war on and wanting to do his part, Stu stored the car and joined the Air Force. While STU was born in Canada and was not a US citizen, because of wartime regulations the normal citizenship process was greatly modified, so he was able to become an official US citizen in record time. Stu trained in the Air Force as an aerial gunner, but the closest to active duty he came was being one of the actors in a training film.
Stu designed his first fuel injector while in the Air Force but wasn’t able to start working on it until after he was discharged. Back home in Southern California, Stu immediately started working on the streamliner to get ready for the first race of the season. In order to compete that season he was forced to use carburetors; with work on his fuel injector being done in in his spare time. Since there were no dynamometers or fuel flow meters readily available at the time, he had to rely on his background as a chemist to try to formulate nozzles size, pressure, etc. necessary to make his injector work properly.
The first runs on the new injector system were during the 1946 dry lakes season, but it wasn’t until the 1947 season that Stu was able to really try them out. The injectors and engine work fine, but a wheel on the car dug into a soft spot in the salt and caused the car to flip end over, so it was 1948 before the car was rebuilt and the new system was able to be run and proven. At the first event of the 1948 season, Stu’s car became the first car to break the 150 MPH barrier and prove the superiority of the new injection system over carburetors. After the success of the injectors on the Ford flathead engine, Stu designed a system for the Offenhouser engine that was so popular with the midget crowd. The first test on the Offenhouser proved the value of the injection system on that engine as well, and before long it was a system ready for the 270 Offy engine. In 1951 of Stu’s fuel injectors was on the car driven by Mauri Rose in the Indy 500 that came in third. After that, Stu Hilborn and his fuel injectors became a very common sight around the Indy 500. Also, about this time, Stu began developing injector systems for the drag racers and other forms of racing that had previously use carburetors.
While Stu spent over 40 years of his life involved in racing at Indianapolis, and his injectors have been used on every engine configuration that has been used in the race, he was also instrumental in designing and rebuilding injectors for nearly all other forms of racing as well, including multiple designs for various drag race uses. Cars running Hilborn Injectors have set records in just about every class from un-blown gas and fuel cars to blown gas and fuel dragsters. While other many companies have developed fuel injection systems for use in racing and on the street, Stu Hilborn was the first person to make injection a “must-have” piece of equipment for the serious racer.