Flathead in a Chevy ... sacreligious?

now that, i could understand

 

Doesnt that airplane have a normal stromberg on it???
Scares me.

 

at the webster swap meet in fl. theres a 64 el camino with a flathead in it.its there every month in the car show.
whats funny is it has offie heads on it,and all the young guys say "wow,look,an offie engine" hahaaa!
i tell them "its a flathead ford"
they just stare at me..
randy

 

Thanks for the pics and info dudes. It seems kinda odd to me, but "the sheer mess-with-people factor" sounds like it would be a riot. I was curious why there were so few examples of flatheads in no-ford applications ... and now I know.
As far as dressing up a SBC with fltahead valve covers ... I'll do that right about the time I start wearing tight skirts and swishing around town.

 

There was a 34 Chevy coupe running around Oz with a Y block in it, coolest Chev in the country!! Go for it, some revenge for all those POS SBC in Fords!

On the flattie in an airplane? That WAS FACTORY!! Yup, 'ol Henry was building airplanes too. Everyone knows the Tri-Motor, he also built one called the Flivver, using a T motor! Later variants used the flattie. Henry canceled Fords aircraft building when a good friend, his test pilot was killed in a Flivver

 

Yeah but that was prolly back in the day when they worked well. I heard it was a Tuesday.

 

Model A engines were popular in homebuilt airplanes along with flathead eights.Putting a lower performance flathead vs a better choice in a Chevy is a waste of a flathead and the shock value would open you to ridicule.Give the flatty a good home or sell it please. -Strat.

 

I'd like to put a big block Ford in a 55 Chevy just to piss-off my Chevy buddys. Hey, Ed Roth did it, so its traditional!

 

Hell - this was just hypothetical Strat. I don't have a flatehead to my name, much less to sell. Thanks for your concern for the remaining flatheads.

 

There was a article in HRM years ago about a guy who did a reverse swap,and put a Model A engine in a Pinto.

There also used to be a guy whose name I never knew who had a 36 Chevy humpback tudor sedan with a 351 Cleveland engine that he used to drive to the weekend shopping center shows in Va Beach,Va. It drove the Chevy guys nuts.

 

My opinion is that if it's a 30's Chevy sure, but I sure as hell wouldn't replace a 235 I-6 with one and wouldn't ever replace an OHV V-8 with one. They're weak and fragile comparitively....

 

If it's got a Ford motor, it'll only be messing with taillights...

 

It might make a lot more sense in the future, as follows...........

Unless I was dreaming, I thought I heard on the news recently that GM and Ford are actually thinking about an "aliance" , aka merger.

Pretty wierd huh............

Guess with Toyota at the #1 slot now, Chrysler being hooked up with Dr. Z, and both GM and Ford in bad shape. it might make sense.

If anybody can set me straight on this I sure would appreciate it.

 

How about a Caddy Flatty? I had a 41 caddy flathead V8 and LeSalle tranny I was going to put in my 39 Chevy pickup. But then someone decided they wanted it even more then I did.

 

Yes, it's been done but beats me why. April 1953 Hop Up magazine has an article on a 59A Merc .100 over/stock stroke in a '50 Chevy Club Coupe.
Final paragraph in the article "As to the advantages of this type of conversion they are the same as any other type of customizing or engine alteration work and that is the personnel satisfaction that is gained through planning and completing a project of this type."

 

Funny you should bring this up, havent thought about it in years. When I was in H.S my buddies grandfather gave me a 53 chevy convert that had a tree growing through the fkoorboards. When I went to dig it outta the woods I noticed a 39 chevy coupe sitting under the trees, first thing I notice was buick portholes on the sides of the fenders, so I hadda check it out...next thing I notice it has 5 bolt wheels on the rearend, finally opened the hood and there was a flatty, 3 speed overdrive and prolly a 49-50 ford rearend. Got to talking to the old guy and says his kid built it in the mid fifties cause it was what they had laying around. Turns out it was "pretty much the fastest thing around till them damn 57 chevies came out". Dumb as we were we hacked it off at the firewall and subframed it with a hopped up 283. By the way that flatty fit in there pretty nice...

 

my uncle kenny had a 35 chevy standard 2 dr sedan(looked like 34chevy)
he put a 50 ford flathead and complete F1 rear end and front axle under it(the leaf springs lined up with the F1 axle!)

he sold it to some folks in las vegas who finished it up and did a lot more work to it ,completey went thorught the flathead and dressed it all up,,( i think they pulled the F1 axle out though)
anybody in vegas know the car?

 

I may be hallucinating, but I think I recall seing a photo of a first-gen Camaro with a flat-head at Bonneville many years ago. Anyone else remember seeing that ?

 

I saw a Nissan 240SX with a flatty in it in Hot Rod Magazine last year. The pic was taken at bonneville.
I've thought of takin' the 216 out of my Fleetline and puttin' a flatty in it.
Didn't think about it long though.

 

flattie in a chevy ... it would have to be early 30's or older and a bare minimum type of car. no fenders, chopped that type of thing. otherwise it would just be a joke.

saw a 426 hemi in a 55 chevy. very nicely built, and everybody likes 426 Hemi's, but to put one in a 55 was just plain wrong.

saw a flattie in a 64 or so ranchero... that was pretty cool.

 

i wanna put a flatty in my 53 chevy, it would look badass, and not quiet wrong, they did have the flatty untill 53

 

I was going to use a 27 stud lincoln flathead in my '32 chevy but decided to run a sbc 327 instead because of the ease to find parts. I know if im somewhere and breakdown I can stop and buy just about any part at the parts house. You also have to throw a ton of money in a flathead to make them produce power. They look great but would rather have it painted nice on the engine stand in my garage till a later date................

 

Hypothetically speaking, if I had a flatty in one hand and a Chevy in the other, I would sell the chevy to buy a model A and show that flatty off with open hood sides.

 

and then after you throw in all that money you still have NO power