Hot Rods Anyone heard of this conversion?

New Zealand stock car racer Gary Wike used this special Ford sidevalve V-8 in 1960. The engine has "Hogan" cylinder heads fitted with twin plugs per cylinder, fired by twin ignition systems, and fuelled by four carbureters standing on "twisted-leg" intake runners. The distributor was possibly a Nash, as Nash used twin-plug heads on their straight-8-cylinder engines in the 1930's. The Hogans, father and son, were NZ engineers who made their own custom finned alloy cylinder heads.

 

I’ve seen pics posted of two plugs per cylinder head, flatheads.
About all I got

 

Yes, I've heard of it and seen pictures.
Currently for sale locally:

Seller's description:

Hogan twin plug:


Kong:


Another Elco

 

I know where there is one of those distributor's.

 

The pictured engine is a 24 stud "big" flathead, not a 17 stud 60.

 

He didn't say it was a V8 60, he said it was used in 1960.

 

Amazing , hard to look away ,the plug wires alon the rest of the ignition , WOW!!

 

A friend of mine in VT rigged his own double plug flathead using two 8 cylinder distributors at right angles. Amazed the stuff out of me when I first saw it and learned he had engineered the distributor set up himself.

 

I thought it originally stated V8 60, but if not, my bad!

 

Dang, I’d hate to have to wire one of those! Just thinking about trying to find a couple of swapped wires makes my head hurt!

 

Garth Hogan is probably NZ’s best known drag racer.
Recently a book was released about his exploits - “Go Fast or Go Home”
I think that his father - Ron Hogan, did the earlier castings and in recent years some of the heads have been reproduced, I think by Garth.
I had a twin carb ‘Hogan’ manifold and even back in the early ‘80’s it was a desirable piece.

https://www.nzigp.co.nz/legends/garth-hogan/

Others will know more………….bttt

 

Dual spark plugs makes very good sense in a flathead. It takes a long time for the flame to spread all the way to the distant ends of the chamber, giving a slow burn with a number of drawbacks.

Initiating the burn in two places makes the burn complete in a shorter amount of time. You can use less ignition advance to have the pressure peak at the ideal time when the pistons have begun moving down. The fuel/air mix at the far ends of the chamber have less time to heat up and self ignite, i.e. the engine will be slightly less prone to detonating on the same octane fuel. A bit more power as you don't need to waste power compressing a already burning fuel charge as long.

Other large cylinder diameter engines with overhead valves can get the same type of benefits, I think it has been common on Hemi V8s? Unfortunately not all 2 valve cylinder heads have room for an extra plug on the opposite side, if they dit it would probably benefit just about all large V8s.

 

bttt