Well done Nath,first win of the Meltdown,a bit of a different story to last year mate! I bet Pete cant wait to get his motor back lol! With the winners trophy...
Chris with any luck the Drags in september should provide some interesting times!! As for the Hayride mate, you have to go mate be a shame not to see you there.
I simply cant afford the Hayride Nath,plus im working that weekend,lame excuse but times are real hard at the mo. I'll be at the drags if it kills me!
Well with all the rain we've been having it seems like summer is all but gone Lucky for me that I managed a few shows and the Nostalgia Nats in the coupe thanks to the loan of a French block from Pete. A couple of weeks ago we pulled that French motor and whisked the water pumps and and complete inlet down to Jim at Royal Kustoms. Here are a couple of shots of the painted block sexy or what? ....and not just one, I think Jim is cultivating them or something
Today I missed a call from Jim so I called him back and he immediately put me on hold Boy do I smile when instead of Greensleeves the only music I could hear was the sound of my motor firing up. I couldn't stop grinning, Mondays aren't all bad. When I got home Jim had emailed a few photos showing the porting work that the Thickstun PM7 intake had to undergo. It's going to flow fuel a lot better and with the amount of material that Jim had to remove I'm guessing the power to weight ratio has been greatly improved too!! <!-- google_ad_section_end -->
Jim has a fair few motors that he's building up for customers from mild to very wild. Fuel injected, supercharged, bored, stroked you name it. Have a look at www.royalkustoms.co.uk
Pomey`s in hot rods,was unheard of when i left Tyneside in 63 .Take a look at them now. Fantastic coupe,fantastic build,fantastic workmanship,can`t get any better than this
Sorry guys for not having finished the write up. The engine is in and running like strong, having a load of fun with it and it's probably the reason I haven't updated the thread. So here you go, picking up where we left off sometime last summer..... "I went down to Jim's yesterday, sold my soul to the man in the metalflake 32 and collected my motor. WOW. Jim had left it on the test bench for me, allowing me to not only admire it's subtle and purposeful looks but listen to the sweet sounding burble on tick over, the quick pick up and the engine rasp at higher revs. I love it. It isn't a show stopping engine to look at and that's exactly what I was after and Jim delivered in spades. I have to say it's been a genuine pleasure to deal with Jim and Jules, great people who made the whole process a lot of fun. Very highly recommended for anyone thinking of having Flathead V8 work undertaken. Hopefully the last thing left to do was fit the Toyota thrust bearing to the gearbox. What should have been a simple opperation wasn't all plain sailing. Both Pete and myself decided that we should use the Toyota pressure plate as well as clutch, cheap and readily available. This meant the thrust bearing needed to be mounted to a modified carrier to get the correct spacing and clutch fork movement. Again my thanks goes to Pete, not only did he see a clear way through the problem but with the aid of the lathe and welder (and half of Pete's bank holiday sunday!!) we reckon it's now just a question of bolting it all back together. Cheers mate "
<!-- google_ad_section_start -->OK sorry, sorry sorry, I videod the fire up using my camera phone tilted on it's side and I've no idea how to rotate the vid! What a plonker! Crane your necks, turn your laptops to the side or lay your head on the pillow. Click the image and then curse, praying to God that I never take any video footage of anything ever again
Haha cheers Mart, this is all old news for you matey but good to know you're keeping an eye on things
Wow! Insane!! I'm not a flathead guy at all. I know very little about them other than they have a high cool factor, sound incredible, and is the epitome of traditional V8 Ford engines... I have a couple questions (sorry if it's been covered and I missed it) What kind of bHP are you seeing from this engine or did your motor guy actually dyno it? Also, and hopefully I don't get beat up for this, what is the purpose of the red extensions on the plug wires? I LOVE the "all-business" look of that engine!! Well done!
We haven't actually dyno'd the car, but would like to think it's in the region of 180Hp. I have taken it down the strip and got a 15.4 second pass at 85mph. For a Flatty powered coupe isn't too shabby. The red things on the end of the HT leads are the NGK plug caps, bakelite type material. I didn't want anything to look to modern or out of place (mini starter is tucked out of the way and the MSD dizzy will dull down in time). Thanks for the compliments on the motor, there's a lot of dressed flatties and I wanted this one to look a little more understated.
So on 30th of August last year the engine was in and running sweet. I was gently breaking her in cruising round the local towns and villages and enjoying the countryside. I picked a mate up and took him for a spin and then things took a turn for the worse...... Here's Pete's synopsis.. "Nathan was putting on some miles to run the motor in for the drags it developed a misfire and strange noise. So after talking with Jim and running a few tests at Jims request it was found that a valve had hit a spark plug. Jim being a good all round chap who stands by his work arrived at Rich's shed this morning with tools and parts to dismantle the motor to find out what had happened. Removal of the head reveiled a broken valve. Bit of a strange one (I think J.P. has pics, hint hint) as it didn't appear to have hit anything and also didn't look like it had bent, but just broke in two just below the point where it gets wideat the base of the valve. Jim fitted a new valve, checked all the clearences and removed the other head to check that as well. Left Rich's shed at 7pm with the motor running sweet. Big up to Jim, having looked at the break I think it was a duff valve and nothing that was Jims fault, yet he still drove the 2 hours up this morning and spent all day on the motor and has prob only just gotten home now. Nathan has just gotta put some miles on it and ramp the shit outta it at the drags, bring it on. Pete"
A rare shot of Mr Turnbull praying to the Flathead gods..... He kept repeating the same mantra over & over again. Sounded something like "Chew-Bar-Stad-Star"........
In my laymans terms this is what had happened "Pete pretty much summed up what happened. The engine was running sweet as a nut last wednesday, cruising at about 60-65 in top occasionally bringing the revs up and with no warning started to misfire. On tick over the engine sounded like pidgeons stuck in your loft (that's the only way I can think to discribe the fluttering noise coming from the head). It wasn't until thursday after work I could get back to the car and have a closer look, removing the plugs revealed that No7 inlet valve had flattened the plug's electrode. When I spoke to Jim and relayed the information he sounded quite relieved having spent a day worrying as to what the issue with the engine might be. Without any hesitation he said he'd be up on sunday with everything required to rectify the problem. As mentioned the valve appears to have broken fairly cleanly, with no twisting and can only be down to a bad quality batch. (Jim has said that the valve will go back to the maunfacturer for annalysis) I have to say that I'm totally amazed by Jim's commitment to providing the best service and high standard of work, he does go way beyond what anyone could ask. Top guy. Unfortunately we were so busy all day I didn't even get to buy him a pub lunch Have to be JD and Dr Pepper next weekend instead Having got the engine back in it's hole (had to unbolt it from it's mounts and pull her out to get to the passenger side head) we tried to fire her up. No joy After what seemed like an eternity trying to fault find we found that not only had the main fuse blown and the ignition circuit fuse but that the relay I use for the push button start was fried to! We bypassed all the electrical shite and eventually fired the motor into life . Sounds superb. Heads torqued down and Jim could finally make his way back home. 20mins later I get a call from Jim asking if I had a spare fuel pump!! He'd only found a stranded boat tailed Fraser Nash on the side of the road. I'll be honest I don't know if Jim's made it back to Dorset yet. Once again a massive thanks to Jim for all his efforts, I can't thank him enough and highly recommend him and Jules to anyone thinking of having any Flathead work done. http://www.royalkustoms.co.uk/ Also to Roy, Pete and JP for turning up making the tea and eating all the chocolate brownies and to Rich (KFC) for letting me store the coupe in his workshop over the weekend (nice and dry, complete with kettle and flushing toilet ) All I have to do know is finish sorting the wiring and get Lucky No7 run in by friday " The motor incident happened on the wednesday and on the sunday Jim drove the 3hours to my place to check it over and sort everything out. The following friday was the drag meet at Shakey and we were booked to run!
and here's the culprit, the bugger that gave us all grief on that sunday <!-- google_ad_section_end -->
So now the motor was back together and running sweet as a nut and I'm again trying to put a few miles on it during the week before the weekends drag meet when hopefully I'd have a chance to wring it's neck up the 1/4 mile. Yep you've guessed it the car still hasn't stopped fucking with me. This was written on the night before I was leaving for the racing... "As of yesterday it appears as though the new Powergen alternator isn't charging, so Miles is sending one down (arriving in the morning). Driving back from Pete's tonight it also looks like one of the thermostats has taken a dump aswell (luckily on the head that has the temp gauge fitted)..... I strongly advise anyone running a flathead V8 to run 2 temp gauges!!! I wouldn't have spotted anything wrong until it was too late if the guage had been on the other head. Plan now is to finish work tomorrow, swap the alternator out and check it's working and remove suspect thermostat and do a quick boiling water check. If the stat has failed I'll have to run up to the drags without a stat and rectify when I get there. Will anyone be selling stats to fit or are there a modern alternative that I can pick up from a motor factors? If I have to run the car without the stat should I drop both out or run one bank with and one straight through? I'm seriously considering naming the car Cursed or Death Wish! Hopefully catch up with you guys on friday at the drags or bloody early saturday morning"
Luckily while I was at work on the friday my mate Rich (KFC) took pity on me and did a little work on the car. He drained the water system enough to remove the offending stats and topped her back up. The idea was that I'd run the car up to the drags without the stats and pickup some at the meet. No problem! However we still hadn't sorted out the charging issue, Rich had also swapped out the Powergen for me but it appeared as that one wasn't charging either! Bollocks. Nothing else for it but to set out to the drags and pray to the hotrod Gods we make it. I drove up solo, dusk is setting in and I'm reluctant to turn the lights on knowing full well that the battery will get sucked dry and if for any reason I have to stop and kill the motor I won't get her cranked again. With the last 4 miles to the strip I was tailgating cars in the dark with no lights on and the adrenalin was pumping. Boy did I feel alive. Suffice to say I made it much to everyones surprise and was awarded with a cold beer thrust into my hand! Saturday morning of the drags, I dropped in some new stats and then a bunch of us checked out the charging issues. After an scratching our heads for a bit someone pointed out that the painted surface of the casing was preventing it earthing!! In the past I had hooked up the throttle return spring onto the bare ali part of the alternator and that had worked as the earth until the day I snapped the spring and had used a plastic zip tie as a repair! So repairs sorted and car behaving itself, I turned to Jim and said " I've put about 150 miles on the motor and don't one to break it by taking a chance on the strip". His reply... it's sounding good, give it plenty of right foot and if we break anything we can fix it! That weekend by best was 15.4 seconds at 85mph. Jim reckons there's a 14 in there somewhere and who am I to disagree. Well it's been an adventure in the build and I've made a whole load of new friends. Special thanks goes to Pete for all of his hardwork and expertise in building the car, Jim for the awesome Flathead engine and dedication to customer service, Peck, Rich and JP for consuming the tea and chocolate muffins! Cheers Guys
Blimey Limey , I've just read the entire thread . Top work by all involved - now go drive i till its worn out ! .
Check out the sunshine and country roads thread and you'll get the idea that this coupe isn't afraid to be driven
The Jalopy Journal
