Hot Rods crank driven flathead blower

Found this picture on the interweb, never seen one before. Was this blower and crank drive a one of or a commercial offering? Sure makes a pretty package!

 

Wow, cool set up. You should post this on "The Ford Barn" too. Someone has to know......

 

That’s a cool set up and love that it’s a finned as well

 

Made by Italmechanica (SCoT ) It was the grandfather of the blower seen in my avatar. It is located at the Speedway Motors Museum.

 

That’s a really cool piece. I’m assuming it was pre Potvin

 

Looks like the OEM oil filter was good enough to do the job too.

 

Doesn't Clark have one of those?

 

You'd need a hellaciously long frame and throttle linkage to run that bad boy in that configuration! Cool looking though.

 

That's for a dragster or a Bonneville car.

 

Few things I noticed. It has a cooling fan mounted to the supercharger. The water pump pulleys look like they are flipped to move the belt forward. Also looks like the generator is also moved forward with a second bracket.

 

The crank pulley is in view , so I doubt it's crank driven.
I would guess the cam runs a planetary gear set in that special timing cover?

 

@lostmind maybe its a chain setup in there?

 

The drive was off the cam shaft. Many years ago at Hershey in the area behind the race track where most of the racers sell there parts one vendor had a partial front drive assembly. The front cover and ScOT blower were there however the inlet and outlet were missing as well as the drive connection to the cam.
This is an extremely rare set up no doubt made to be used in a dragster frame. Some of the items on the engine shown were actually never part of the front drive assembly. Things like the fan driven off the end of the blower rotor and the generator mount which was a part supplied with the ScOT and ITAL blower kits made for your 1949 and latter flathead powered Ford car in the early to mid fifty's. Its certainly an interesting mock up of parts and done nicely at that.
Ronnieroadster

 

Good thought, maybe double row timing gear with a chain to blower.
It's possible it's direct drive off cam , somehow they have to control blower speed.
Interesting piece , must be info out there somewhere.
I'm just speculating.
Thanks to the OP ,

 

Lipstick on a pig.

 

Of course Speedy Bill would have one…

 

About four years ago there was two complete setups for sale at LARS, one was being sold by Mike Spacek and I forgot who had the other one but was only about three rows from Mike. What are the chances of two being at one swap meet?

 

I did have one of these. Only 2 known to exist. They were built for a car Italmeccanica made. I think only 11 cars were built.
I had the one Ronny was talking about. I offered it to Speedy Bill at a reasonable price. Lower than what a regular one cost at the time. He declined.
It is crank driven. There is a sprocket inside the timing chain cover.
At the time I posted on here there where a lot of guys that didnt believe it was real. If you look close in the Rodders Journal article on Italmeccanica there is a drawing of the different size superchargers. You can see the special rear mount on the back of one

 

The Potvin setups with a single Hilborn 2-port hanging off the blower were problematic to start. Once the engine started to crank, if it didn't fire, the blower would fill with fuel. You could imagine what could potentially (and did on occasion) happen if the fuel wasn't drained and the process restarted.

Don't see that happening with the Strombergs, but seeing this only makes me wonder what kind of nightmare it might be to get the thing to fire and what it might be like once running. Turbo lag? How about three foot of plenum lag!