Oh baby , old school flattie hot rod that is going to be a wicked ride, and in an old LaSalle you are one lucky stiff. Rob
Ok, back to the build! These engines have a cam idler gear, between the cam gear, and the dizzy gear. It is a bronze, 'sacrificial' gear, that is designed to fail before the cam or dizzy gear. They are not offered in the original metal, only in a harder, aluminum bronze. I sent an original gear in for composition testing, then had a small run of gears made, to original specs and composition(leaded tin bronze).
38FLATTIE, I can not wait to see what you get done in 2010 with this project. Keep up the great work and updates my friend. Joe
FLATTIE...well that old boy found the right home. man your going to have a very expensive old hotrod. be careful BARRET JACKSON will be calling soon! HA! good luck on your VERY FINE build...POP.
Thanks guys, I really appreciate. I've had a lot of help, advice, and guidance from members here! Expensive is a relative term. Have you seen the price of new vehicles lately? Thanks for the kind words!
First off, if I bore you with the mundane details, let me know! Ok, Since the quickest, easiest horsepower available is usually a cam swap, and solid lifters really help on this kind of setup, solid lifters was my goal. Keeper and I had emailed a few times about these motors, and swapped ideas. I occasionally have a good idea, but Keeper.. Well, Keeper has a huge machine shop! So, presto, we had lifters. I had some Winfield solid lifter SU-1A, and SU-1R cams ground. That was fine, but when I decided to go to a blower, I wanted a true blower grind, with very little valve overlap. I had a custom grind, 114 lsa, Winfield SU-1A grind cam made, with 26 deg. overlap. Should be a great blower cam!
I want to lighten the rotating ***embly. The crank weighs 90lbs, and the flywheel 48lbs. I decided to use a Ford Fe 427 flywheel, that is only 1/8 smaller in diameter, but weighs 20lbs less. I'll use the Ford 11" pressure plate, and an International Scout 11" clutch plate. It has the same 1.25', 10 spline setup as the 37 Lasalle. This should allow me to take additional weght off of the crank, when it is balanced, I need to get a new starter gear made, as the tooth count differs on the two flywheels. Bored yet?
There are three ways that I know to get relatively cheap duals on the engines. 1.) is you use a p***enger side exhaust off of a 75-85 series car, it is a mirror image of the normal drivers side. You then can take the duals out of the crossover ports. 2) the 75-85 series dumped out the drivers side front, so you can use the drivers side, and have duals out of the front of the motor. 3) the 1936 322 exhaust came out the p***enger rear side. Use that, and use your normal p***enger side on the drivers side. It's very easy, you only have to move, or remove an alignment pin. Works good if you have room enough next to your steering. I'm using option 1. Since I took these pics, I have sent them off and had them Cermakromed. Of course, if you're really cool, like Zibo here on the HAMB, you make your own. (last 2 pics)
Almost everything on this engine is custom. On a stock engine, the holddowns for the intake and exhaust manifolds set at the same height, and are held down by common keepers (pic 1), on a stud. the new blower intake sets far lower than the stock one, so I had to make new keepers.
None of the pulleys would work with the blower. I had the local machine shop make a new aluminum crank hub/alternater pulley and adapted the blower pulley to it. I hope I don't bore anyone. I'm simply stating all the steps for someone who wants to do something similar. When I started, there was very little info, so it took a lot of time. Hopefully, I can help someone along, and it will go more quickly for them
Great stuff....those 37-38 GM products with big eight cylinder engines had great lines...Looooong hoods and fenders gave them a muscular look. I had a 37 Pontiac with the straight 8....had a longer front end than the 6 banger models. Using the modified flathead V/8 is a nice touch...a very interesting build IMHO. BTW, I wouldn't use the later caddy fins and tailights myself.nor would I use 39 ford units. Why not french in the stockers? I used a pair of 48 Pontiac tailights on the back of my 41 Pontiac coupe....had the correct angle built in. Might be something to consider for the LaSalle.
Buddy this work is a credit to you and I guess none of us will really know how many hours of planning and sourcing stuff has actually gone into getting you this far. All the flat caddy guys know how little we start off with just doing a basic engine without all the extra's you have built into your engine/project. I will be over for an inspection soon. Well done my friend.
Thanks guys! Rocky, here is a pic if the stock taillights. Pretty cool, but not what I'm after. All door handles will be shaved, along with the trunk handle, and the windows one piece, and I'll keep the single chrome strip to break thing up. No bumbers or stops. I want to keep the rear sleek, so some type of tail lights frenched in flush. I'll keep the stock head lights. Jeff is good ( read great!), so I'll be checking on his thoughts!
When I started asking questions about flathead blowers and cams, I turned to the Ford flathead guys. Several here on the board were very helpful, as they had blown flatheads. Flatroy has built several aluminum intakes, and other parts for other motors. He sent me a pic of a Ford fuel injected intake he had done, and I was impressed. After several emails, and a couple of phone calls, we decided to do one for the Cadflat. I found a core block, and it was delivered to Roy by a HAMB member. I then sent him my blower. He also made block off plates for the heat risers. I still need to make a heat shield between the exhaust and intake The last two pics are of Roy's FI Ford flathead intake. Here is the FI blower intake Flatroy built for me. Helluva job he did!
I picked the B&m 144 blower. I don't need a ton of boost, and this will give plenty. Dimension wise, it's a good fit, and the drive is offset, so the alternator mounting is easier. I'm going to replace the front bearing plate, with a custom made one, replace all the bolts, and polish it. Now I need to finish the aluminum alternator bracket.
That dual plug flattie in your pic. I think is a Brothers built out of Detroit. I is in a coupe that was on display a the 09 Detroit autorama. Good luck on Your build.
The shop is Brothers Custom Automotive. here is a you-tube video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Ak9ck7IvrY
Here is why I call the build the Medusa- that Nash Twin dizzy, with 16 plug wires, looks like Medusa!
This is a great build. One of the reasons I'm following it is my boss's similar car - a stock '39 caddy series '61
He's keepin' this one stock I manage to get him to a cruise-in sometimes. We went to one where we came home by the beach road at night. Not many streetlights in some sections of A1A. He was following my '37 truck. I kept lookin' in the mirror. The mellow yellow of the six-volt glow globe headlights washes over the waterfall grilles and off the sides of the vertical center section and the big round fenders and looks a bit like a photo negative in the mirror. Gave me a whole new respect for Harley Earl.
That's crazy. How does that work? Does it fire one plug, then the other for a single cylinder? What about the charge time for a coil, or are there 2?
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