I did a search but came up with nothing but there used to be a guy up here in minnesota that had a small block that had carbs on the exhaust and exhaust out the intake not sure what you call this (other than stupid) but I was explaining this to my cousin and was trying to find a youtube video or something to show him but maybe I am not searching for the right name anybody got any ideas? Thanks
Why is it stupid? It was done in the 50's with flatheads so apparently there were stupid people way back then. Research reverse flow engines. According to this thread there were even race cars with it. http://performanceforums.com/forums/showthread.php?67222745-Reverse-Flow-V8 Yup,*****s all of them.
I believe Bruce Crower did some prototype work on a stock block Indy small block , it made the cover on one of the mags. Crower is not an idiot by any stretch. Oh yeah, does Gurney/Westlake sound familar?
There is nothing inherently wrong with having the ports somewhere other than "normal". There have been good V-8s with the intakes on the valley side, between the cams on DOHC engines, and on the outside of the engine. What's conventional/normal is based mostly on packaging. However, if you swap the ports on most engines made within the past 60+ years, without MAJOR modifications, it will result in decreased performance. Reversing the ports on a flathead Ford eliminates the problem of hot exhaust heating the coolant and cylinder walls.
Ya, guess I would call the Ford/Lotus Indy and Formula 1 cars of the sixties that stomped everything in their tracks dumb too. Or Mickey Thompson about the same time with his reverse flow aluminum Buick Indy stuff... Yep, those guys were just plain stupid...
While it may have been, sort of a thing to play with the flat heads, it's pretty difficult to swap intake and exhaust valves in most all wedge head engines....and the intake valve "does need" to be larger than the exhaust valves..! So...unless the heads are cast properly...it ain't gonna work..! Mike
I thought my boss was stupid when he told me he had six two's on a flat head and it ran pretty hard. I just walked away smiling at the idiot. 25 years later I read about his flathead in one of Al Drakes books. then again in Mike Bishops book. Now I have to wonder if I was the Idiot.
There was a project recently called Splinter (Joe Harmon Designs) that used a Cadillac Northstar engine. The heads are completley semetrical so they simply swapped sides and bolted them back on. They needed to get the exhaust heat away from the sides of the car and have it exit out the top.
They used to do this on Ford four bangers with a reverse cam to give them four intake and two exhaust ports. Other than that, I see no benefit, but what do I know.
I wouldn't really call the DOHC fords "reverse-flow" The heads were designed that way from the ground up, so they weren't inhaling through the exhaust ports, its just that they were layed out with exhaust ports in the valley. LOTS of european racing engines were designed the same way. Not REALLY the same thing...
Yea, and then you have this guy, didn't he realize that his engine was upside down. . . and running backwards? People have been amazing things to cars to make em go faster... reversing the flow in the engine is just one more thing that can be done on certain engines to improve performance. Takes some creative parts and know-how.
Na, I knew that. But I was talking more of the engineering concept that the O/P seemed to think was not a good idea. Turns out, done correctly it's a damn good idea.
THe OP was referring to a small-block Chevy with STOCK heads, and the carbs bolted on the exhaust side. From a performance standpoint, yes it IS a dumb idea... The quad cam Indy Fords were reversed to get the engine weight and body height lower, as well as simplify the use of 180 deg headers. Makes perfect sense IF the engine is designed that way...
Seems like guys did this alot more than one would think....old timers told me about the V/8 sixty midgets with that setup back in the sixties, and said they were called "Chinese Inverted" motors. Guys even did it to motorcycle engines as well.
Yep, guess I stepped in it when I piled on... But still, well proven that when executed properly, the design concept was far from dumb. Some one else had a thread going on this in relation to Buick engines not too long ago. i think he was questioning it's use in more stock head related kinda deal that some drag racers had tried. I don't remember who though. I remember he had not heard of Mickey Thompsons attempts wih this deal for Indy in '63 or '64.
Yes, way O/T, but it was a fairly common mod on Triumph drag bikes back in the early sixties both here in the staes and over in England. I too have heard of the V8 sixty midgets set up this way.
Valve size is just one issue. There is also port shape, valve angle, port flow, combustion chamber dynamics, etc, etc. When you say "it ain't gonna work", there's no question the engine will run with the ports switched. But, without major modification it's not going to work as well as it did before the change.
Actually if you look at Cad 12 and 16 cylinder engines they had both the intake and exhaust on the outboard side of the heads. If you look at Roline V8 gas engines they have both the intake and exhaust inboard like a flathead Cad V8. None of these have anything to do with the OPs question. The **** landy/Ron Main flathead reversed the intake and exhaust valves and was the first flathead to go 300mph at Bonneville. But they cut all new intake ports and did not use the stock exhaust ports at all.
I remember back in the 70s a show car that had a chevy small block that was reverse flow. I think the owners name was Pennington,maybe Jerry. It was in a Hot Rod mag. piece about a car show.I remember it because Iwas just learning how a engine worked and had to figure out how to change the cam around to make reverse flow work.
I think this is the car you are talking about. This car was at the OUTKASTS car show in Mitchell, South Dakota about five years ago.
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