Flatheads in Strange Places

My thoughts exactly!

 

two years back i got a tip on a 71 mustang mach 1 so me and two friends went to go see the guy who had it.
When we arrived at his place, we were welcomed buy four deer hanging gutted from the trees and an old man with grease and blood on his overalls we asked him about the car and he said yup a rare one.
we were thinking maybe 429 super cobra jet. So took use to the back of the property to a old tobacco hut and there in side it was! rotten to the bone, LOL sank up to the fenders in the soft dirt floor. But still hoping not all was lost,
we quickly opened the hood only to find a bone stock flathead V8 LOL where we stunned And asked him where the origanl motor was and he said it was the origanl motor they only made a hand full of them, and he would like to get 20 grand.
We kindly thanked the man and headed back home.

 

How about the Nissan 240sx that runs at Bonneville with flathead power?

 

I just pulled a 42 Merc block from a generator, it was perpose built, only ran at 1500 revs, got it from a soon to close engine reco workshop. picked it up for a song..........I think it was the dirtiest I have ever been, it was covered in like 5mm of soot and grease.

 

Junkyard I still go to sometimes used to have a wrecked Henry J with no front clip. Flathead powered. Too bad they scrapped the best oldies in like 1995.

I could probably take and post pictures of this, but a friend picked up this goofy tractor - it's either home-made, or home-rebuilt, the frame is two I-beams, and the motor is a flathead. They even cut out a chunk of the dash from the '49 or '50 it came from, to hang the speedo/cluster on the cowl. It sits low in the back, on the wrong wheels, makes it look like a low-rider tractor.

 

There wa an article in this months CC (british mag) about a railcar. Flat head powered car that runs on a railway. Obvious really....

P.

 

...and some were built by General motors with flat head running gear.They weren't a tank but a light weapons carrier. I've driven quite few in my younger days.They had a V8 truck running gear and will run to over 40MPH. across country!
The engines were the factory Ported and relieved units.
The gun on top is a Bren .Quite a neat sort of weapon to use actaully,very smooth and accurate and originally from Brno in cz.

http://www.diggerhistory.info/pages-armour/allied/bren_carrier.htm

 

I've seen it in R&C in the mid 70's ,a red one,I thought it was pretty cool at the time and have often thought of doing a similar thing.

 

In New Zealand the colonial Motor company ( Fords Assembly plant) built a lot of Flat head powered welders,Fire pumps and generators for use by various government organisations in case of attack by the japanese.
I had to do a tune up on a Flattie powered Fire pump as an Apprentice. Got it running really well (as an almost new Ford engine could be.. in 1974 ) and did a tert by pumping water from a coolant tank ( 20,000 gals) .I was holding the nozzle and at idle I was really hanging on...until my mate opened her up!! I went backwards ,lifted off my feet and the water busted a window in a machine shop 40 feet away!

 

I was tossing up between 'light tank' and 'armoured personnel carrier' to describe them as I figured 'bren gun carrier' was not spoken here! They've got a beauty in the Canberra War memorial museum.

And you're right about the bren itself, fun to fire, no kickback, and accurate as can be, which was their downfall, as a machine gun is supposed to 'spray' a pattern, not drop every round through the same hole!

Cheers, Glen.

 

I was at a Maori Battalion Reunion ( a long time ago..) speaking with some old boys about bren carriers they had in the Desert.They rearmed them with guns from downed aircraft,German and British,what ever would still fire. They had 2 browning Canons on the front and reckoned they could cut an Italian tank in half with them ...LOL!
Great machines, until they went over the top of sand dunes and the Germans or Italians( who ever they were chasing ),would fill the open topped vehicle with lead as it dropped over the top of the Dune.

 

Seeing as how the discussion has "swung" around to military vehicles.
The now what has become the most controversial "flat head" - the FRENCH one - is becoming the "hot tip" for a good quality block.

They apparently continued manufacturing the engine well into the 1980's.
In most cases they were used in "Bren gun carriers" and light tanks.

 

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=250180947725&ssPageName=STRK:MEWA:IT&ih=015

not mine, but interesting.

 

In the late 60s in N. California we used to ski at a little place west of Susanville called Copper Mt. it had a flathead V/8 powered "rope-tow" rig that took you to the top..the flathead powered a rearend with a bare wheel that spun a 1000 ft. rope loop up to the top that went around another wheel and looped it back down..everybody showed up with a pair of leather gloves, you stood there and gripped the rope going by till it started to pull you up the hill..kinda dangerous now that I think about..lawsuits probably took care of that rig..sure was fun, especially on inner tubes....

 

Somewhere there is a picture of the late model Ford Ranger P/U with a flathead. I think it is from PA.

 

What a waste ...

I think that flathead '57 Chevy is cool though.

 

I saw an old French made LAV (light armored vehicle) in Iraq that still had the flathead in it as well as a mobile AA gun. I understsand the French used the flatheads until somwhere around 1985. The base I was at in iraq was built by the Yugoslavs in the late 70s and early 80s.

Also Ford made combines and other pieces of stationary machinery in 29-30 with 4 cylinder flatheads. The radiators from these are nice because they have a bigger core and a factory fan shroud. I got one for my '27 Coupe.

 

Jive-Bomber posted this in Christmas of 2003.

It's a flathead powered SNOW MAKER from the Glacier Ice company! Too funny!

http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=6402

View attachment 10837

 

that ebay machine shop dodge is awesome I want to become a roaming gypsy machinist now.

 

Under glass in a living room. Actually I only saw a pic of this, not in person.

Just today at an aircraft museum I saw a four-banger A engine that was once installed in a plane in the 30's. Periot, or something like that? Said they sold them as kits later on (40's-50's) and guys still like to use A engines in them. This one in particular had a Weiand head, stubby zoomie header, and a Case magneto out the front (now the back).

 

The Model A powered plane is a "Pietenpol Air Camper".

 

Well you caught me.

My project is a Chrysler 265" flathead 6 in a '79 Volvo Bertone Coupe (model 262c). Photo's in a year and a half or so. I started building the Volvo and lost interest in Turbo 4 bangers real quick as 95% of all the high performance Volvos from'70s to the '90s have, you guesssed it, Turbo 4 bangers.

Like some of the Fords in previous posts my motor came from an Irrigation pump, 50 Lb. flywheel and all.

The '57 Chevy with the Flathead is a nice touch and get's my vote.

N B R

 

Crummy pictures, but they're wedged between the fence and a trailer, and movin' that trailer isn't gonna happen today.

A couple truely hillbilly hot rods

 

THAT IS SO COOL!

 

-In the next town over (Beardmore, Ontario) they have a WWII bren carrier they want to restore for their Legion that has a flathead.
- At a scrapyard just out of town here (Geraldton, Ontario) there is a Ford truck with a flathead that has been hacked up and converted into a sawmill. The blade is sideways between the back frame rails (above where the back axle would be) sitting on a shaft and pillow blocks with a drive connected to it)...this sawmill has three forward gears and reverse! It's still used to make lumber sometimes
- A common use for flatheads back then was in boats...I have a '48 blocks that has weird-looking manifolds with water jackets on it.
- One of my former neighbors in Longlac, Ontario has a large welder on a trailer with run by an 8BA flathead that he uses for his logging trucks and equipment.
- Just last week, two generators were removed from living quarters at a forest fire fighting base about 100 miles north of here....1 was apparently scrapped and one sent to a nearby museum....apparently they each had about 200 hours on their hourmeters, and were are still running......don't ask, I didn't hear about it till after the fact.

 

My brother has one in the bottom of a well on his property. We pushed it into there as fill. I wonder if anyone 200 years fom now will ever try and pull it out?

 

In the early 60s a friend of mine put a 60 hp flattie V8 in a MG roadster.

This summer I was at a small town car show in Wisconsin and saw a early 50s Ford tractor with a V8 flattie - it was stock, could order a banger or the V8.

 

There was an 80s vette with one on ebay a couple of months ago?

 

Wierdest place I ever saw one was in a cool running and FAST hot rod!!!!

Danny

 

I thought this was an Oliver but it's something older...Cletrac Maybe?
Probably had Reins instead of that T steering wheel originally.

i forgot about Boats,it was real common in New Zealand to have Ford V8's inBoats and the coolest WW2 Flathead thing I've seen was a Caddillac Powered Generator . The later Flattie not the alloy block earlier one. It ran well but the owner wants $5000 for it...