Ok, we all know how cool flatheads are. My question is when did they start replacing them with OHV engines. I know that it is a kind of generic question but with they advent of the more modern V8's in the early 50's, I was wondering when they were starting to phase out. Seems like most early g***ers from the 60's had hemi's or Olds or small block Chevys. Just curious. It appears that it happened rather fast. Also, I believe that the muscle car era didn't help too much. I love 'em both but it seems that all the traditional cars being built now are using flatheads again when there had to be alot of 312 y-blocks, FE motors, Pontiacs etc. built back then too. Any thoughts would be cool. Thanks in advance.
The 303 olds OHV was introduced in 1949. I figure it took about 4-5 years before they started making it into hot rods....unless you had tons of money and could go get one out of a new car.
Big Hurt ..................... The ole Flathead is still popular because it is about the prettiest engine out there. The bigger, more powerful engines, are ugly, compared to the Ford Flathead. Whenever you see a flathead with aluminum heads and dual carbs., all you want to do is to just take it in. It just looks good ! MIKE
Wasn't the OHV Caddy introduced around the same time as the Olds Rocket? Funny, my dad and I were talking out at Hershey. The Olds Rocket was a fast car for it's day. Had they put that 303 into a lighter car, we think it would have been an overnight switch from flathead to OHV. For the m***es, it was the introduction of the 265 SBC that gave the OHV craze wings!
As soon as they hit the junkyards, the OHV V8 Olds, Cadillacs, Buick, Pontiac, Studebaker, Chrysler, DeSoto, Dodge all rang the bell for the demise of the racing flathead and hot street flathead. BUT the intro of the Chevy V8 in 1955 model year made a small quick easily and cheaply hopped modern engine available to the m***es in just a few short years. The flathead Ford V8 was still compe***ive in some arenas and still often raced well into the 60s but was already being cl***ified by some as "antique".
The Beloved Flathead was replaced with the overhead valve in America bult Ford's in 1954,,Flathead's remained in service in Canadian built Fords until 1955. HRP
was it cheaper to get the early chevy to perform compare to the flathead ( they knew the limitations of the flathead by then and what kind of reliable horses they could squeeze out of them) hotroders wanted to go fast i doubt they cared about the looks all that much? what is old is new again, so the flathead lives on.. and i think it looks great too. chris.
When I was just a kid, about 11 or 12 there was a man on the next street over that had the best looking 29 Highboy (Red in Color) I had ever seen. It had a Flathead painted white with 3 twos and it sounded like a million bucks. All of us kids would go over in the afternoons and watch him clean and wax that roadster. I'm guessing the year was 1955 or 56. One day when we stopped by he had a crusty looking overhead on the floor and said he was going to install it in the roadster. We were all sick watching the Flathead come out. After he rebuilt the overhead and painted it, he chromed the valve covers and a few other parts. He told us it was a Buick nail head. None of us guys could ever understand as good as the car looked and sounded with the flathead why he changed. Thats when I remember the changing of the guard.--TV
Not long after the SBC hit the streets, hot rodders started realizing that, even in stock form, they had enough guts to outpull all but the most radical flatheads. Getting blown off the street by a 283 was what inspired Tom McMullen to pull the full race flathead from his '32 and build a bored and stroked 283 (352) to put in its place. Although most of us drool at the cheap (by today's standards) prices for speed equipment in 50-60 year old HRMs, it's never been cheap to build a 200 hp flathead, only to be beaten by something with a 283 power pack engine in it. Hot rodders were lining up at junkyards in an attempt to score one for themselves.
Remember about 56-57 there were still alot of hot flathead cars around the central valley but there were also a good number of earlier cars with olds and cads in them that would run away from the flattys. Have a good friend here (he's 76) and an old car guy from way back. Has lot of pics of 32's he had around 54-56 with really hot flatheads( still had a beautiful 32 Sedan with a built 327 and Manafre setup). Had a coupe that was very fast and ran regularly at Fremont and Half Moon Bay.told me about the 1st time he ran up against a 56 Chevy with a duntov cam and dual quads and got beat by several cars lenghts-said it was the last time he ever raced any flathead again-went to Chevrolet power on his circle track car as well and did quite well at San Jose Speedway,etc.
As I recall we started reading and hearing about Fordillacs and Studillacs around 1953-55 ... the olds and caddy OHV's came out in '49 and it took a bit before they were being re-installed in other models.
I think a lot of the hot rodders back then were more concerned with going fast than looking the part. Junior Johnson had an OHV Cadillac motor in his '40 Ford moonshine hauler, I believe I read it was out of an early 50's Caddy ambulance. According to him his moonshine haulers were faster than any of his race cars ever were. The Y-block was Ford's answer to the OHV Chevrolet, as stated I think they were the available V8 by '55.
I think a lot of the hot rodders back then were more concerned with going fast than looking the part. Junior Johnson had an OHV Cadillac motor in his '40 Ford moonshine hauler, I believe I read it was out of an early 50's Caddy ambulance. According to him his moonshine haulers were faster than any of his race cars ever were. The Y-block was Ford's answer to the OHV Chevrolet, as stated I think they were the available V8 by '55.
I think there was an article in Popular Mechanics in 49 or 50 about dropping a new Caddy overhead in a 49 or 50 Ford coupe. What seems like really cheap prices for hot rod flathead pieces in those early adds in the little books wasn't so cheap when you figure that the wages for most working guys were under a dollar and hour. I think one job my dad had in the early 50's he said he maid .85 an hour. My stepfather made 3.00 an hour as a construction supervisor in 1956 and that was like being rich at the time.
I had a 37 Ford coupe back in high school, flathead merc, 3dueces, fenton headers. In my junior year (57) I pulled the flathead and replaced it with a 55 Pontiac/hydro combo, 46 Pontiac rear end, still had the traverse spring and some traction bars made from the Ford rear end stablizer bars. I went in the Army in 59 and came home from Okinawa in 61, got stationed at Fort Hood, Pulled the Poncho from the 37 and updated to a 50 Chev 2 door sedan. Used the whole powertrain from the 37,, did that in 2 weeks and drove to Ft Hood. I was born and raised in Astoria, Oregon. Pretty good test run for a novice gearhead at the time. Earl
X3 on 1949-1950. Cadillac sold a replacement engine for ambulances that came with a stick flywheel. Bucks up rodders and moonshiners bought them and replaced their boat anchors with a 331 caddy; ran faster,cooler and more reliably. death of the dinosaur escalated from there.
I remember my jr.year in high school, a friend had a 40 coupe with a nice flathead his name was Bart. We went on Easter week off, and he came back and wouldn't open the hood on the 40. It sounded much stronger and we prodded him with a few beers to let us see what he had. He popped it and there sat a 389 poncho with 3 twos hooked to a Cad- side shift. Talk about a sleeper. That was in 1960. O what fun.--TV PS... Zibo here on the Hamb now has the 40!
My two cents. There is no real "answer" to this question. Engine transplants in Hot Rods have always been ruled by economics more than anything else, When stuff gets cheapper, more guys buy it. 2o years later the first round of "nostalgia" takes over and everyone wants what they had or thought was cool when they were younger. Another 20 goes by and it happens again. If you are lucky enough you get up to another 20. Why else would I be daily driving a 31 Ford with a Merc flathead? It doesn't make any real sense. It is just lots of good times for me and way cheaper than the E-Type Jags I was driving in the 70's. That I can't afford now! The real point is that Going faster than stock is the definition of Hot Rodding. There was no "nostalgia" in the beginning. It only happens later when we get all excited about the stuff we had or wanted to have. As much as I love my flatty, If I live long enough or win the lottery, I want a 57 Chrysler 392 dual quad Hemi and a push****on Torque flyte auto to put in my car! It would change the Period Perfect time frame from 1950 to 1957, but it's what the kid who had my car in the 50's would have done if he had a rich dad! Just my $.02!
I like the way you wrote that,very right!,I was there and building rods,remember well how only a few,had Flatheads forever thinking,it was all about fining a V8 with some HP you could aford to put in your rod.
First modern OHV V8s were Cadillac and Olds in 1949. Flathead diehards Lincoln (1949) Hudson (1951) and Packard (1954) fought back with new flatheads in the OHV era but it was no use. By 1955 every car maker offered an OHV V8 engine. This was pretty much it for the hot flathead. You could buy a new Chev or Ford for $50 a month and your old trade in. If you could not afford that, a pickup truck with V8 and stick shift cost less than $1500. A lot of guys who wanted a new Bel Air hardtop settled for a pickup, including Ed Roth. Or, a junkyard V8 cost $200 or less. You couldn't build a decent flathead for that. By 1956 or 57 a flathead powered hot rod was something of a rarity. By 1958 you could buy a 55 Chev off a used car lot for $500.
Have you seen the amount of amazing flatheads out on the road and at shows in the past 10 years... It's like jurr***ic park out there.since 32 till this day you CANT and you WON'T kill the flathead. It's the icon of our hobby
I've been thru all the fast overhead engines and now i am going back to the beloved flathead. I have 2 in my garage a 1948 Ford and a 1950 merc.
id say in 53 when the hemi came out..in the hemi book garlits talked about breaking his flathead and putting the 331 out of his 40 ford coupe tow rig and went faster with a near stock hemi than the built flathead went...not sure what year that was....been a few years sence i read it..
Didn't the baby Hemi (DeSoto's FireDome and Dodge's Red Ram) come out in the early '50's and before the 331? Rumor is they stole the Ardun design. Only right for Ardun (Duntov and the engineer who drew up the plans- I forget his name) took the idea from European engines (Alfa Romeo for one) that were using hemispheric combustion chamber design pre-WWI. Miller got this idea for his engines from the Europeans as well.
In 1957 my sisters boyfriend traded his hot flathead coupe for a 1955 bone stock chevy 2 door because it was faster. My world ended then untill I rediscovered flatheads about 10 years ago.
Chrysler FirePower - 1951, DeSoto Firedome - 1952, Dodge Red Ram - 1953. Chrysler developed their own design of hemi head aircraft engines in WW2. Their hemi car designs came from extensive experiments with every type of engine. They settled on the hemi before the Ardun was on the market. Any similarity is coincidental.
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