I got the itch to put a 471 blower on the nailhead I'm running in my 1932 studebaker. It runs great with a good amount of power but I'm currently running a pair of strombergs on a homemade intake which looks rather nice but is definitely limiting it's potential. A local guy offered up a 471 for a reasonable price that he had purchased "rebuilt" so I took it home for inspection, turns out it was pretty mangled internally and well beyond repair, a week later I'm walking around the Pomona swap and come across a completely rebuilt and polished blower. The price was right, and it was functionally perfect "and the polishing was already take care of, phew!" My initial research dug up a few problems: nobody makes a 471 to a 364 nailhead intake, the v belt drive system from Walden is way out of my price range and top intake options are slightly limited. Luckily the intake ports on a nailhead are flat so making the bottom intake is pretty straight forward, I made the intake currently on the car so this process was already pretty familiar to me. I started with a couple pieces of 1/4" plate, milled out the ports to matched the heads on the bottom and the intake on the top, made up some bungs to bridge the gap and bolt the whole thing down. I then webbed in the perimeter with some odd shaped 1/8" wall tubing I had. I also put a handmade aluminum pop off plate on the front. After it was all welded up I surfaced it on the mill Now that the blower was bolted down, I had to figure out a drive system. I didn't want to use a gilmer belt, and as I said before the v-belt drive was too expensive. I started looking at walden had to offer and met a guy in town who had built his own drive system for a 371 on a flatty I opted to try and make my own. Long story short, the pulleys started as a 6"x3" cylinder for the upper 5"x3" for the bottom 3"x3" for the idler. The drive snout is made from 3/8" wall tubing, interference pressed into a hourglass shaped base. The idler arm is a 1" plate welded up to another cylinder that was bored, cross drilled, tapped then split to make a clamping collar. The inner drive shaft, and oil seal are also handmade. The end is a tapered key way made in conjunction with a steel flange to mount the top pulley. The sight gauge is also homemade from 3/8" plate I had a few ideas for the carb intake including 4 strombergs or a pair of wcfb's both of which posed space issues. 2 strombergs would have been easy but I feel like I'm already under carbureted as it is. I opted for a pair of higher cfm carter WCD's. They're cheap and look pretty great in my opinion. I started with 12"x7"x2" aluminum remnants. I made a small channel on the underside for cross flow, which probably wasn't necessary. I used a ball end-mill on the corners to make it look like an old cast piece (thoroughly attempting to keep everything from looking like billet). Finally I made a throttle adapter to branch from my passenger side throttle shaft up to the driver side WCD throttle linkage I'm currently waiting for the intake to get back from chrome then I'll be bolting it all together. Wish me luck Posted using the Full Custom H.A.M.B. App!
Damn nice work. I don't need to wish you luck. If you need any, you can just whittle some up out in the shop!
Man that is awesome. Walden has some nice snout pieces ... but your triple V-groove is perfect. Missed a recent 4-71 M/T intake for a 215 Buick ... damn it ! And so it goes ... my lust for 3-71/4-71 stuff.
Beautiful work man! This is true hot rodding at it's best. When people ask where you got the blower pieces for a nailhead, you can proudly say "I made them". Job well done! Hopefully, you are going to lower the compression in the Buick to accommodate the boost.
Oops, not anytime soon, unless I get a 671 for a future olds projects. Posted using the Full Custom H.A.M.B. App!
Thank you! Luckily the engine was already rebuilt with lower compression .040 pistons and I'm under-driving the blower by 20%. With a low revving nailhead I hope I'll be fine. Haha really hope Posted using the Full Custom H.A.M.B. App!
Very impressive to say the least. Nice work, cool combo, plus in a Stude! I tip my hat to you. Posted using the Full Custom H.A.M.B. App!
Great job! Have you figured out a rough idea of what the drive ratio is? Without doing the hard math, I would think somewhere 10-15% under driven? Actual compression on most factory Nailheads is around 9.8/1 as opposed to the 10.2 advertised. But some of the head gaskets now available are a little thicker and can drop the ratio to abouit 9.6/1 or so. Not too bad with a small displacement supercharger if the unit is under driven and minimal boost is used, but the cast pistons would be my biggest concern. But if you keep it mellow it will give plenty of power with all the 'WOW' factor. Nicely done.
Thank you! Yes, it's actually a 20% under drive so with my low rpm, high torque motor, the blower shouldn't get spinning too fast, I'm expecting it to put out about 5-7ft lbs of boost on the top end, which is where Im Currently running out of power. I know the compression is far below the 10.2 or actually 9.8/1 compression ratio especially with the significantly thicker head gaskets I'm currently using. This initial set up is mostly to test the waters and in the future I'll be able to make a smaller diameter upper pulley, possibly get some new pistons, o-ring the heads...... just got this back from the platers so I'll be getting everything together in the next coupe weeks. I'll keep this updated Posted using the Full Custom H.A.M.B. App!
[ATTACH it's been a long time coming but I finally have the time to tear into the '32 stude. Last week I took the front end off and did a quick mock up of the blower. Turns out it's a really tight fit. I luckily accommodated for my radiator spacing and knew that I was not going to be able to run the stock mechanical fan. Luckily a friend offered up a very nice electronic unit that I guarantee no one will ever see. i.e. No photo. I also picked up a 1962 mopar alternator assuming I was going to mount it like my shop mate, V8, did on his 401 nailhead powered, 1934 ford pickup "the coffee truck". Of course plans fell through and I opted to mount my original generator which then required a belt tensioner to avoid clearance interference with the blower v-belt tensioner. The generator is mounted off of two, bolt together, brackets that branch between the coolant crossover and the forward intake bolt, and the idler mounts on the bolts that hold the two together (more photos to come). In the meantime I've had to relocate my upper coolant passage on my radiator, modify the throttle linkage relocate the valley pan snorkel, get rid of my fan shroud......luckily everything is slowly falling and luckily fitting into place . Also does anybody know of a good boost gauge that reads from 0-15 or less (no vacuum) and Hopeully relatively classic in style. Posted using the Full Custom H.A.M.B. App!
Awesome! You're an inspiration to the rest of us. That's exactly the set up I'm working on. How does it run? Belt slip?
Dean The 364 was a 9.5:1 engine for the length of its production. If it were me I may want 8:1 and an O-ringed block just because I know that huffing is an addiction and it always take more boost to get off but, with the 471 as long as its not overdriven the mill should survive @ 9.5:1. Part of the reason that the 471 was so popular with the street crowd in the later '50s and earlier '60s is that a stock motor could do well with the boost that they made. One problem with an overdriven 471 is that the air charge becomes very hot so you are not only fighting the added air shoved onto the combustion chamber but also heat. @realsteel Nice job man. One thing to consider is that if you are having a pre-detonation problem is a water or methanol spray to cool your incoming charge. You may not have a problem though depends on your drive and how much boost you are making. Anyway Nice job man. I really appreciate a good machinist who knows he can make about anything you can buy.
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