I have heard about old flat head V8s.Can you guys explain them to me and maybe tell me the drawbacks/advantages.Thanks.Also what about nail head buicks? :cheers:

 

Very inefficient.

The valves were located in the block rather then in the head 'facing' toward the block. Meant the mixture had to travel sideways to get to the piston...heads are flat because they have no valvetrain making bumps in them...

Nailhead Buick...someone mentioned that the valves in buicks looked like large nails...but I don't know anything about those engines...I do remember seeing a picture and the valvecovers were like verticle compared to a slight angle for small block chevies... :confused:

 

Thanks.Anybody got any pics.Maybe with the heads off?

 

For a first hand look, up close and personal, pull the head off of your Briggs & Stratton powered lawnmower. That is what a flat head engine looks like. Have fun, and...

RACE ON!!!

 

Do you mean Polaroids? :lol: :lol: :lol:

 

Besides the in-block valves and the resulting bad flow characteristics that No Go mentioned, they only had 3 main bearings and that made their bottom ends very weak. That didn't stop racers and rodders from doubling or tripleing their power though. They broke a lot but, back then, they were cheap to fix. Our hero, Zora Arkus Duntov, designed and marketed an OHV conversion head (called Ardun) for them before he came to GM.

Because they were V8's, and sounded like a V8, Ford had no problem selling them against GM's OHV 6's or Dodge/Plymouth 6 banger's, which were also flatheads.


[Modified by Vetterodder, 8:17 PM 3/2/2003]

 

O.K. for nostalgia rods, but they are both antiquated designs. No reason to build them for a modern car. Parts are also expensive.

 

I was just wondering.Not trying to build one.I would much rather build a nostalgia 327 or 283.

 

Interesting as to why you want to know. The flathead design was primarily out of nessesity for the technological disadvantage of the era. I worked for a company called F & R Cranshft in Burbank Ca about 25 years ago. The owner's father was in his 70's and a real buff of flat heads. We worked on everything they made. He knew it all.

The castings were primative, the blocks and heads would constantly crack. In almost every rebuild pinning was required to repair a boken area. Welding tends to heat up the affected portion and weakens another, causing another break.

The folks who designed and built these enigines did what they could with what they had. Expensive stuff too maintain.

In modern times when you have a valve job, they resurface your heads to true up the matting surface to the block on a very expensive milling machine. I used to run one... This was know in the 50's as milling your heads. When the first flatheads came out there was no milling machine. In order to resurface a head the head was bolted to a chain via one of the casting holes and the other end of the chain tied to the bumper of a car. The machinist with hands on the truck of the car stood on top of the head while the driver drove down the street to grind away the high surfaces of the metal. There were no milling machines yet invented. The father where I worked used to do this, I was stuck with drilling, tapping and inserting the pins of the cracks.

 

In order to resurface a head the head was bolted to a chain via one of the casting holes and the other end of the chain tied to the bumper of a car. The machinist with hands on the truck of the car stood on top of the head while the driver drove down the street to grind away the high surfaces of the metal.


:lolg: :lolg: :lolg: :lolg: Surfing on a head, wow the sparks that made.