What? Do you mean your firing order would be different? Could you deal with that by moving plug wires? It's really 8 single cylinder engines conected togeather
Because of the three small exhaust ports with the center two being siamesed, Flatheads have a hard time getting the exhaust out fast enough to make room for the next combustion cycle and when operating at high RPM the intake charge can be diluted with this leftover exhaust hanging around on it's way out the door. By reversing flow you're using the exhaust ports as intakes, which are plenty suitable for this purpose, and you get to use an individual intake port for each cylinder as an exhaust. It's arguably a more efficient flow pattern....
Flathead Ford V8s have a really awful exhaust port system. Long, convlouted and through the water jacket. heats the motor more than it should. If you reverse this you solve the heat issue but now you have really awful intake ports. Long, convluted, uphill, and no way to get in there to do a proper port job. On the Ron Main/**** Landy 300mph blown flatmotor the stock exhaust ports were used as exhaust because they had cut and welded new ports replacing the old exhaust and felt the weldment might not stand up to the heat and pressure of the exhaust g***es. On the Stevens 280mph unblown flathead the new ports were cut and welded into the block but remain as exhaust ports. Seems to run quite well that way. So far what I have seen of reverse flow engines indicates the theroy is right in there with looking for gold at the end of rainbows.
As bad as the exhaust ports are on a flatty, they still flow about 75% of the intake, which is about the right ratio for most street applications because you've got the piston pushing it out. A blower fixes all the problems!
The Jalopy Journal
