Pondering about flathead potentials

[Ratu]

Circlotron

Yes. What an interesting engine. I reckon that'd just be calling out for a decent turbo-charger. Have you a picture of the underside of the head?

[Nikolas Ojala]

For those interested there is a new Flathead Ford V8 block on the way. Basically it is a service replacement for the 8BA style engine.

I know the porting has been improved. There is some actual short side radius put in there and I think a baffle in the center exhaust port chamber.

I’m almost certain this will be a bigger bore than stock. They were talking about an 1/8” over at 3 5/16” which is really cool.

The person developing this block is Tod Buttermore. An excellent individual with vast skills.

Is this the same block & engine Mark Kirby has been doing?

[MichaelThompson]

No Nikolas, this is a separate project from the Mark Kirby engine.

The Tod Buttermore block I believe will be cast in iron and be completely interchangeable with standard Ford Flathead parts.

Like I said there will be some realistic improvements and they will not detract from a factory stock outward appearance.

Like I said some of the problem areas will be changed. I think the center main will be beefed up. The port improvements I mentioned before. Larger bores and way more beef in the deck area.

As I understand it the block will be sold in semi-finished form. I think you put in your valve job and cylinder wall finish.

The talk was around $2500 - $3000.

I think that will be awesome if they can do it at that price point.

Conceivably there is a real possibility of Flathead Ford crate engines in the future.

Virtually everything but the block is either reproduced or very plentiful.

[Ratu]

That could be a nice piece with a turbo-charger or two.

Is anyone doing recreations of other famous flat head engines? -like the Hudson, Pontiac, Packard, Dodge, Lincoln, Cadillac etc. Would there be much of a market for those?

[MichaelThompson]

That could be a nice piece with a turbo-charger or two.

Is anyone doing recreations of other famous flat head engines? -like the Hudson, Pontiac, Packard, Dodge, Lincoln, Cadillac etc. Would there be much of a market for those?

I doubt seriously that you will see any of those engines you mentioned being recreated to the extent of casting a new block.

There is however renewed interest in just about all of those engines.

I believe there are at least a couple serious flathead Caddy powered Bonneville Cars.

The Mopar sixes have a loyal and healthy following.

Even the Lincoln 337 is finally getting it’s just due. Look at this baby.

https://youtu.be/JjW_Z3r5rDg

[Nikolas Ojala]

No Nikolas, this is a separate project from the Mark Kirby engine.

It was about six months ago when I heard news about the aluminium flathead V8 last time. I wonder do they make the engine in secrecy by purpose?

[Ratu]

Michael

Nice!

[pdq67]

Are the French flathead blocks/engines still available?

Didn't somebody find a warehouse full of NOS a while back?

pdq67

[pdq67]

Back in the early '60's when I was at Moberly, MO Jr College, I worked a summer taking engines apart at a couple of brothers junk-yard.

One of them laid claim to a junk V-8 60 that I would have loved to have gotten my hands on!! It was a, "CUTE", little engine, imho...

I think years later it too got scarped?? Earlier, the guy also laid claim to a '36 or so V-8, 60 Coupe that his brother got tired of walking around so it too got scraped!!

Their engine pile was as big as a 3 car garage and had all sorts of junk engines in it that had to be parted out to sell for metal.. Steel, cast-iron, and aluminum.. Sheet-metal was thrown up on the sheet-metal pile that was just as big... They ended up baling the sheet-metal way later.

pdq67

[peejay]

I see that Hitler made the right choice for the VW when they went with the ohv flat four, just about anything is better than a flat head when you want more hp per cuin. These days even your avg. lawn mower is ohv. I'm sure you can make it the best it can be with all the modern "tricks", but what would you have when your do, just an over priced flathead.

You mean Ferdinand Porsche.

Porsche was just a figurehead, an idea man.

Read the book "Small Wonder". They spitballed a whole lot of weird stuff before settling for what they did.

[Nikolas Ojala]

Are the French flathead blocks/engines still available?

Didn't somebody find a warehouse full of NOS a while back?

I think this is it: http://www.sfflatheads.com/about-us-tru ... the-stuff/

[Nikolas Ojala]

I revisited my message on March 2018:

Sorry about the recent drawing. There was an error. The voltage source may not be the car's battery, because higher voltage is required. In this case approximately 600 volts. I corrected the drawing so that instead of a battery there is a voltage source V1.

I found an improved ignition system patented by Robert Bosch GmbH and published three years ago.

https://patents.google.com/patent/US20150219062A1/en

Look at the schematic drawing in Fig. 5.

Although there is the shunt resistor (component number 19) that could be left out, there are generally less components in the high current loop: capacitor 10, shunt resistor 19, diode 33, and the spark plug. Compare that to the previous and simplified patent, there is also one SCR in the high current loop.

Okay, that looks fine, but I still prefer the method that removes all semiconductors and other extra components from the high current loop, leaving there only one capacitor and the spark gap, pretty much the way that has been done in the Pulstar plug.

Filling the roof of the combustion chamber with plasma plugs would be interesting, but even more interesting would be to make every plug illuminate the combustion chamber with ultra-violet light exactly simultaneously during one nanosecond pulse. I think that could not be achieved by fine-tuning the power circuits of the ignition system, but by creating an automatically self-adjusting ignition control electronics that advances the trigger pulses of the slowest plugs.

[Nikolas Ojala]

I read news about microwave ignition that would be superior to plasma ignition, laser ignition, multiple spark ignition, etc. Due to the problematic shape of the flathead's combustion chamber, a superior ignition would be a must have. Possibility to use higher supercharged compression (without detonation) would follow. The only thing I am worried about microwave ignition is the question about magnetron. A magnetron is essentially kind of a vacuum tube. Vacuum tubes are expensive and they wear out. If the microwave ignition may be produced without magnetrons or other vacuum tubes, then I guess the ignition may be durable enough.

[Nikolas Ojala]

I got an idea from another thread: The combustion chamber should be filled with sparks. The number of spark plugs should be as high as practically possible to achieve rapid combustion. This is actually a low-tech substitute for microwave ignition.

The maximum distance from any spot inside the combustion chamber to the nearest spark should be as small as possible.

[gruntguru]

HCCI