Projects FlatCab: 1932 Cabriolet, Hot 1941/42 Merc Flathead Build

patiently waiting

 

Well bad ass....this one is cooking for sure. '41 Merc' engine is to be bad..is it ? I like it !! That car is guaranteed fun.

 

Update on the Engine:

Went down to Fowler Engines today and checked out the work, validated valve lengths, etc.. The block has been square decked and the bores done to 3 5/16, he's getting ready to put it in the milling machine to cut out the old valve seats and install the new ones - as well as cut the valves seats. He does all of this in a big milling machine - as he can set the valve angle correctly and there is room for the block. It is a really nice way to do it.

Just seeing all the nicely machined surfaces gets me excited - can't wait to put this sucker together and hear how the dang roller cam sounds (I just want to hear it - if it sounds good, maybe it will run well???)

Here are a couple pictures - before the block gets put onto the mill:

 

Full Floating Rods - Old School, With Correct Balance Procedures:
Seems that just about everybody these days either runs late 49-53 style rods or new H-Beams with insert bearings. Well, these didn't exist in 1942 and even in the 50's a LOT of racers still ran the full-floater 91A/21A rods from 39-42. These rods were part of the 'hot combo' that you hear about - where you take a 4" late Merc crankshaft and offset grind the rods to the early 2.00" 221 Ford flathead size and then run the 221 rods (91A/21A) and that gets you a 3/8" stroke increase ( 4 1/8" stroke). Also a lot of the guys building top-end race motors swore by the full-floater bearings - they are a bit harder to setup, but they have a lot bigger bearing surface and can take a heck of a lot of abuse. The key is getting the bearing shells to correctly fit the rod bores and to ensure you have the correct clearances on both the journal as well as the rod side (along with enough side clearances to get the oil out!). I prefer to run them 'loose' - and keep a lot of oil in them. This is a very proven setup, just not that many guys doing it today.

I found a NOS set of 21A rods - packed in cosmoline from Ford - in a nice sticky ass box. Man, I love the look of a new set of these rods - such nice workmanship from Ford, wonderful steel, highly polished big-end bores (remember, these are bearing surfaces).


Correct Way to Balance Flathead Rods - Like Henry Did! (Important!):
These rods do not have big lumps of steel (known as 'balance pads') like modern rods - see below:



So, what most machine shops do is just grind away on the bottom of the caps for the big ends and the tops of the pin areas for the pin ends. Yes - it gets them balanced, but this is the WRONG way to do it! Ford balanced their rods by cutting away material in a lathe of some sort - around the big ends on both sides and on both side of the pin ends. This is NOT what most machine shops have a clue about. If they just grind away on the bottoms and tops like they plan to, then you weaken the rod - don't let them do it!

Notice these two pictures - I've denoted the areas where material is removed to correctly balance the rods - notice how on this complete set that you can easily see the machine work and differences. This is how you need to instruct your machine shop to balance the rods - if they won't do it, then find another machine shop!

 

Time For Some Bling - Flathead Metal Jewelry!
Picked up my vintage Eddie Meyer manifold today from the polisher - and boy does it look nice! It was the first piece he's done for me and I instructed him to do the best job he could and if it cost a bit more, what the hell . . . I guess he listened to me!

This manifold was NOT made before WWII, was made just after the war . . . BUT, it is by far the most beautiful manifold that Eddie Meyer made - and I think the most stylist of ANY manifold ever made for the flathead. Yeah, I know - maybe I'm biased, but I do have a lot of manifolds to pick from, but I can't beat this. This is probably why places like Speedway make reproductions (though they don't match the originals!).

Enjoy the eye candy . . . makes you want to fondle aluminum now doesn't it!

Okay - tell me who doesn't want one of these suckers . . .

 

DAMN................Dale............. thas Nice!!!

 

Jesus christ that manifold..

 

Pure Flathead Sex!

 

I see Creeping Elegance is rearing its head in your build...$$$

 

Damn dude. That shop is ridiculous. Has a flathead anything ever seen such mechanisms ??? Wooo-E. The block is beautiful in of itself. I always wondered what modern tech' could do to an old flatty. This is gonna' be good.

 

Yowza; pass the sunglasses!

Good to see a FULL Service machine shop still exists today.. (great tech tips too)

 

That is the way us Men work -- constant re-justification for why we need to spend 2X more than we 'budgeted' because something became "necessary"!

Truth be told, I've gone back and forth on the engine -- as it is completely new (but pre-war style), do I try to 'mimic' the rest of the car and deliberately make the motor look old, crusty and from 'a barn'? (was my original plan) . . . or do I go ahead and really build a beautiful, clean, painted, polished and impressive looking engine? I've gone back and forth on this in my mind's eye.

I decided that to try to 'fake' old age and authenticity is just that - a damn fake, so lets not play that game. I've left the original engine in the 'as-is' condition (and had fun driving as found), but decided to make the new engine something really nice. The car will be running fenders and a hood and it will look like the old relic it is, but it will sound bad-ass and should haul ass (for what it is) and I guess it is okay that when I do lift the hood, that you see a piece of flathead art. Right or wrong - that is the current plan!

 

Yes - and Fowler Racing does some amazing work on engines of all types. Hell, the other day I saw him helping a guy with a new crank for a single cylinder nitro burning competition flathead, helping a guy with a road-race MG engine - right along side some $75,000 blown alcohol tractor hemis. I love that a single place can handle damn near anything I need and isn't scared of making fixtures, figuring out how to solve a problem and will make new parts in CNC from scratch. I'm fortunate to have Fowler and crew as friends and professionals for what I do.

 

This is what I hoped you would do...good on you.

 

Hey B&S thanks for the lessons, sure did learn a lot. Good luck with the car.

 

No problem - just trying to pass on information gathered over the years, otherwise some of it just gets lost. I'll be posting everything as I put the engine together.

 

Love the car! Engine is coming along nicely! Very pretty.

 

Thanks Tim! It is not a Y-block, but it held it's own until Ford got into OHVs!

 

Looking forward to engine assembly and narrative....

 

Very impressive build, love the manifold. can't wait to hear it run.

 

Thanks! I'm in the not-so-patiently waiting phase for the machine shop. Should be moving forward in early January.

In the meantime I've bought/begged and found everything necessary to build a completely original and correct 1932 V8. It has been a heck of a parts hunting journey and an expensive one (the whole engine is a one-year only deal). BUT - I think it is really cool to be able to recreate the first Ford Flathead V8 with all it's one-year specific nuances and correct parts . . . just to hear it run and have it for a future generation. It is getting extremely hard to find the parts to even build a 100% correct original engine. I'll document that project after this one . . .

 

Great thread. Going to be a killer motor when it is done.

--louis

 

Hey Gang - just got back in town, went down to Fowler's today to checkout the valve work. To refresh your memory, had 1.75" hard seats put in the intakes (using 1.72" valves) and then had all the seat and valve work done. I'm using the stock exhaust hard seats and 1.6" valves. The valves are all Manley severe duty stuff.

Time and Money: Everything was done in a big milling machine - using a crankshaft saddle fixture that guarantees the correct block placement and angle in the mill. There is a lot of time consuming and complex work in setup/fixturing - as you have to setup each side of the block, get the valve angles correct, etc.. This is an expensive way to do it - but results in a really precision job as mandrels are used to pickup the guide bores and high quality multi-angle cutters are used - with the mill DRO electronics giving consistent cut dimensions (and depths) from one seat to the next. The new intake seats were about .250 in depth, but we only put them in about .1875 deep - as they are quite a bit larger than stock, we were worried about hitting water! The carbide cutters trimmed them down to the correct height to match my relief work.

Anyway, was really happy with the work today - really done well. All the valves look consistent, same seat widths and margins, etc.. All in all, he put over 2 solid days into the work . . . yikes!

Can't wait to get the engine back and start putting it together . . . though I have a lot of 'head work' to do!

Here are some pictures:

 

Dale any thoughts on expansion of the valves at temp?? clearances ect?

 

Hey Carl: I've never really measured it (too lazy to take the intake off!) - so I'm not really sure what would be an accurate statement that we can go on. More importantly, the lash needs to match the ramp designs of the CAM manufacturer - hopefully we know the right settings for any given cam.

 

na Dale I mean I mean the valves kissing themselves............

 

I'm not exactly sure, but I've seen some overhead setups where they are really close (like .020 or so). I haven't measure these as of yet, but there is more than enough clearance. I'm sure it also depends on the type of material the guides are in - in this case cast iron (versus and aluminum SBC head). I'll ask Fowler's valve dude what the minimum is in his mind.

 

Was just looking at your relief again and damn Dale what a beautiful job, looks like jewelry!!

 

Balancing Rods - Decided I Better Get Into It Myself (Building a Scale for Home Use):

Given my previous post about my desire to balance the 21A rods the way that Henry did . . . and not like all the shops that I've ever seen, I decided to not wait for Fowler to do it (as it is a pain in their rear to setup for). Since I plan to run more Ford rods in the future (21A or 8BA), I kind of need a setup to handle it myself.

So - the first thing I needed to do was create a rod scale to be able to determine the actual weight differences between the big and small ends. I built this last night - it currently uses a 'kitchen' scale I had laying around (only 1 gram resolution - not quite accurate enough for the long haul, . . . so ordered a .1 gram resolution scale tonight).

Basically you have to measure each end of the rod and balance the ends to match the lightest of the set of rods. I found the following (keep in mind this is a matched set from Ford, packed in cosmoline and already balanced):

Big Ends: There was a 10 gram difference between the heaviest and lightest
Pin Ends: There was a 7 gram difference between the heaviest and lightest

Note: My measurements matched Fowlers (as we did it on his scale while I was there a few days ago). It is kind of 'tricky' weighing rods - and the slightest movement of the rod will cause the grams to move around a bit. Even on the super precision one that Fowler has - one has to know how to use it and be comfortable with how to accomplish 'repeatability'. You learn to do the same exact thing - over and over and really pay attention to alignment. Also, any little piece of dirt or a burr on the centering plug (or the rod) can screw up a reading.

Here is my 'fixture' I made:



Next I plan to make a fixture to allow me to machine the Big-End Caps in my lathe - might as well make it for myself, so I can use it in the future.

Stay tuned - this engine is getting close to coming home!

B&S

 

Nice Dale