I reported last week on the development of a tap in my '39 sedan. This past weekend, I had a couple of buddies over and we set out to get rid of said tap. Reggie, Blake, Silva, and I met up and quickl... <BR><BR>To read the rest of this blog entry from The Jalopy Journal, click here.
Nice detective work. You could have "panicked" too easy and tore the whole thing out. Good work with good pals.
Lucky Duck, glad you found the problem and it wasn't nearly as bad as expected. It's good to have a few helping hands that know their way around a flathead.
Cool beans man, It's great to have gearhead buds to help out on occasion. Glad to see you back on the road. Doc.
I wonder whats in my flathead? I'll find out soon enough and know what to look for thanks to posts like this. Great story, topped with a cool shot of Miller there!
I built a few Flatheads that way for stockcar racers,H C Willcocks show me how in the late 50's,he was the best flathead man in Fla.
Interesting learning experience, fer sure. Once all the pre-disassembly guesses were on the record, we went thru the process of measuring and recording lash on all the valves as a logical start on a real diagnosis.... 12 thousandths... 14 thousandths... 12 thousandths... 65 thousandths... hey, wait a minute!??!!
Thanks for the update - I've been wondering. Glad you found it, and really glad that little piece didn't go cause mayhem somewhere else...
Dude, that's what I'm thinking, he even has like a little Zen warrior pose going on there, I can only imagine the little guy going after you like Yoda.
Great to see it was nothing to serious. A lot of sport bikes or "crotch rockets" use shims to adjust valve lash like that.
Nice to see you guys got it figured out Ryan. I would have thrown a SBC in it by now (right Chris) for sure hahahah!!! It's nice to find these tidbits out because this is a good reason why we see so many early ford's powered by SBC's. Sometimes it's a type of frustration that puts a man over the edge which is why it's nice to have some good friends to keep your sanity in check and keep that ol' flathead where it should be.....right in the engine bay of that early ford car.
Ferrari engines set lash in a similar fashion although the shims are a bit bigger, and aren't brazed.
It's nice to see you back up and running. The asset to this deal, and the story, is friendship! I would not want to do this deal without my friends. The one to thank the most in my case is El Polacko. Without him I would have been burned down and by the side of the road way to many times in life! I see Reggie in your mix there too - I've met him a couple of times now, and he seems like one of the nicest people in the world! Glad to see your back to commuting.
There isn't necessarily a lot of fitting involved with the olde lightweight lifter plus a shim technique. A traditional shop equipped with period tools would have had the special valve seat-to-lifter mikes made for this sort of thing...just measure that distance vs. same on valve with the specialty mikes, braze or weld slab onto lifters, cut down welded slab to the measured and calculated thickness required in the lifter fixture on your valve grinder. I'd bet an old school auto machinest could measure and cut each assembly faster than I could find the right blade in my feeler gauge, and that all 16 would be right on first assembly. I believe the factory did this in a parallel way...seat heights were measured, and the block went down the line with the measurement scribbled by each valve seat. Next guy selected suitable valve from a rack of pre-measured ones within the small size range needed on new work. Gotta find that picture...in a 1930's article on Ford procedures. Using the valve grinder to cut the lifter lump also assured lifter top exactly parallel with end of valve stem, eliminating a possible smaller tap-tap from skewed contact there.
The Jalopy Journal
