With all the great discussion on this site regarding flathead FEDs, I thought I might as well post a couple of pictures of mine that may be of interest. If you look carefully, the engines in the two pictures are not quite identical.
The engine in the first photo was our first flathead we started racing in 2001. When we first turned up at national race meetings with this engine, younger guys could not work out whether it was a 6 or 8 cylinder. 6 exhausts and 8 spark plugs, how does that work ? It was a reasonably traditional engine, running a merc crank, centre bearing gridle etc. It died at 140mhp when the crank turned from 1 piece to 3. The second photo is our "reverse port" engine that we had built. This has some less traditional items. Starting from the bottom, it has a 5 main bearing crank shaft (made by a manufacturer of top fuel crank shafts) which sits in a girdle that supports all 5 main bearings. A "v" was cut in the top of the block and the inlet and exhaust ports were reversed to improve engine flow. Hence the 4 exhaust pipes coming out under the inlet manifold. The heads were custom made, as were the front mag/fuel pump drive, manifold etc. Although this engine produced some good horsepower, for various reasons it has been retired. We have our next flathead engine about half built that is based on a French block with the 5 main bearing crank setup but not reverse ports. I will dig out some photos of the internals of the reverse port engine as some of the bits are probably interesting to see.
Hey, timewr; I'd sure like to see what you guys did w/the reverse port mill. & I'm curious: what did you guys use to seal the port tubes? Was the block completely filled? How well/long did the seal/weld on the tubes last? Reason I ask is, in one of Tex Smiths' magazines, Tom Medley did an article on Kong Jacksons' "calopie" flathead ford v8. But only mentioned, Quote: " used some sealing stuff on the pipes". Never mentioned just what it was that was used. I had asked Tex about that, but he didn't know. & Tom wasn't handy... , & Kong isn't around either... . If you would share info, that'd be appreciated. . Marcus...
Hi Marcus Attached is a photo of the valley showing the finished ports. As the new exhaust ports use the old inlets, these did not require tubes or sealing as the original casting was used up to the face you can see in the photo. The new inlets used steel tubes that where mostly welded then sealed using one of the commercially available block fillers. The block was completely filled. This worked ok as the exhausts ran mostly outside the block. By mistake, we actually completely filled one of the earlier flathead blocks with traditional ports. This did not work so well as it seem to really hold the heat in the block around where the exhausts travels close to the cylinders. In the end, that motor expired with cylinder cracks. It would also start to burn the block filler where it was against the exhaust, making a weird dead fish smell that actually got us accused of using a fuel additive hahahaha. More photos to follow. Steven
Wow, thats using your head for something besides a hat rack......... love to see what you are doing now and where you are headed......
Steven, reverse ports is a vey old trick, some of the old timers really swore by it. Tell me did you flow the block and see if there is really much difference in the way that it breaths?
No, we did not flow the block. Based on the track performance we got from the block, it was not a huge overall improvement but the performance limitations seemed more to do with the inlet manifold. With the inlet ports moving to the old exhaust ports, the inlets for the two front cylinders and the two back cylinders move a long way from the centre of the motor. With the exhausts tubes coming out the top of the block, the plenum must be above these tubes and connecting to block with tubes, making the base of the plenum very high. There were concerns that adding too much internal height to the plenum would also cause issues with blower rigidity etc. The fuel distribution amount is easily sorted with nozzles in each runner, between the plenum and the block, but the air distribution is a different story. With the long plenum under the blower, getting a reasonably even air flow did not seem possible. This was one of the reasons we retired this engine and are going back to normal ports.
Ratty_aussie, I'm in Perth. Here's another photo that may be of interest. This is how the 5 mains are oiled. All this machine work was done by a craftsman called Bob St Lawrence who, unfortunately, passed away two years ago. Bob was never scared of a challenge, hence the machine work that has gone into this flathead. In the early 80s Bob was racing top fuel over here and got sick of destroying aluminium donovan blocks. So he made a copy of a donovan block out of steel, from scratch, by welding steel pipe together and building it up from there. The cool thing is that it worked well and was very competitive over here at that time. A few months before Bob passed away, the boys put the steel block engine back in a dragster and did a few runs down the track on nitro so Bob could see it once more before he left. Very cool ! Steven
Sreven thanks so much for sharing the pictures, modifications and why you are building another engine. A true gentleman .... thanks again. Vergil
Joseph, I look forward to racing again on the east coast but, realistically, it is a few years away. A few personal challenges over the last couple of years means Flathead Express has not been raced for a while. I am currently building a 57 Chev pickup as a tow vehicle for the racecar, then it will be time to get back into building flatheads for the existing FED and maybe even Flathead Express II .
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