Have an original flathead in my 53 Ford, and need am looking for a cleaner to fit the theme of the car. Thanks!
my 51 has an oil bath style, 51 was the last year for the flattie in the states, 53 is an 8ba style just made in canada so my guess is it would be oil bath as well
Stock oil bath or none. OR some oil bath cleaners had a metal pre filter. kind of like steel wool with a fine screen inside and a course screen outside. you oiled the wool after cleaning in gas and drying. And made a simple filter out of that metal mesh, doing away with the oil bath part. I had a 56 265 4 barrel in the early 60's with a rusty chrome base and lid with the wool in between. only about an inch in height.
There were a lot of custom air cleaners available especially late in the decade. They were cheap. I never saw an oil bath on a hot rod. That was the first thing that got shit canned in my neighborhood. Even a box stock used shoebox would have a chrome air cleaner of some sort.
The most popular was the 8" tall 12"wide 'removable top', single butterfly nut held, unit like in the above photograph ( on single carbed units) the different manufactures used different colors on them depending on the application
Here is a 52 flatty with early air cleaners and dual carbs. Its a driver and a fun machine on the hiway with 3 speed OD. My first flatty was a 1949 with aluminum heads and dual carbs with a thicksun air cleaner which was the ideal set up back then. I wish I had ownes a camera back then so I would have some shots.
My 55 Ford with a Y block came with an oil bath filter . I still have it in the shed but changed that one with something else . I think just about everyone made a different size air cleaner for that carb ! The sky is the limit on what guys put on those carbs back then and today ! RetroJim
Tommy, as I was reading thru this thread, I was composing my reply in my head. When I got to your post, There were my almost exact words...right down to "shit canned" oil bath. Pretty funny. Like we said ten years ago, when we first met at york, Our lives pretty much parralled each others. I guess that was truer than we realized. HAHA.
That's because we were there. Young and dumb but we knew enough to dress up a daily driver with a chrome pot. The funny thing is that the chrome pots probably didn't flow as well as that big monstrosity oil bath that it came with. But we never learned that until the 70s when they came back from the dead. 1955 Edelbrock catalog. Check out Jive bombers 57 Edelbrock catalog.
Here are some Thickstuns. I really like them for looks and they allow lots of air in..Some in the air filters are very air restrictive. Buy good one and use K&N filters.. Duane.... MERRY CHRISTMAS
Who made the air cleaners with the v8 cut outs in the mesh? I would love to find a set for my flathead. thx Matt
I have a '50 Ford Custom Deluxe with the original flathead and oil bath air cleaner. How do you maintain it? Clean it out? Scrub it down? Change any filament material? It looks pretty crappy in there.
I don't know either I of you guys, but 3X on that sentiment. I got my '46 in '66...bone stock with 60k on the odometer. My summer job paid $1.76 hr, I think, so I didn't have much $ to spend, but The oil bath was the first thing to be "shitcanned"/replaced so I could feel like I was working on it. They had a few chromed "Mickey Mouse" hop up parts at the local auto store. Until I got rid of it, I washed it up in gasoline(leaded) with an old paint brush, to get the oily crud off, an dried it. A little scuff with some sandpaper, then rattlecanned it flat black. Poured a little fresh 30w or 40w init and away you go