Hey I wanna stand up. I had to ask Wilbur about it to make sure I wasn't just imagining things. I've seen flatty heads turned around or swapped from side to side. Someone said they ran better that way. I probably would have done it myself but I couldn't see that it made any difference. After market parts for flatties were dirt cheap when I was a kid, that was back when SBCs were not traditional. Oh sorry for the side trip there. Anyway for my '46 truck we went to the wrecking yard and picked up offy heads, intake complete with carbs and a front cover that lost finger getter dizzy for 25 bucks so there was no reason to mess with the stock parts. That said, the old timers did a lot of things that we would consider bizzar. Some of them worked and some did not. But they were all touted as a performance mod none the less.
Not 8ba, but the 1935 ford miller Indy cars had the engine mounted back to front for the front wheel drive and the heads on the block with the water outlets to the front of the car for the radiator. Have a photo from the one at the Smith collection, but will have to dig it out. Posted using the Full Custom H.A.M.B. App!
Compression, timing, fuel mixture, condition of radiator, efficiency of fan, condition of passages in heads and block, and of course design by production year are variables you would need to take in consideration even before deciding on a control engine to experiment with, to see if any of what has been discussed would improve anything. Anecdotal evidence is meaningless. And, even in an experiment to quantify the evidence of changing the location of the water outlets, unless you determine the parameters of what you are trying to find out, by defining 'running cooler' as a factor of manifold heat, water temperature in general, or combustion chamber temperature, etc., even the results would need to be interpreted and I am sure conclusions would vary from person to person. Early flathead technology has come a long way, given a boost by salt flat racers, and building a street motor is no longer as much a 'black science' as it once was; when you can select parts that haven't been stressed beyond critical tolerances. It would be nice, if someone would volunteer to study this in more depth, and such a thread would be followed closely by those of us who are now bystanders but once foamed at the mouth because of blown head gasket and gurgling radiators, and all the other maladies that are inflicted on Henry's best engine.
T D Howten machined those engines for Round man. He is still in busisness with his son running the shop.. Many years ago when installing a 49 up engine in a model T the hoses would be to close to the radiator. You were unable to route with out kinks . To take care of this problem the heads were swaped from side to side.. I myself use 47 canadan heads on a late block. this looks more tradiational
I remember many, many years ago seeing a hot 8BA in an old racing boat with the heads on back to front to clear the supercharger setup. I don't know what was done with cooling hole sizes within the heads etc but it sure did look way cool though. Wish I'd taken some photos. Also seen small size supplimentary water pipes running to bypass from the pumps etc - mainly old boats again. Engines are often put in boats backwards for vee drive setups and water flowing into the exhausts for cooling so I guess that is part of the reasoning too? So it has been done for sure.
The Jalopy Journal
