I Have a question about the european v8 flathead engines that run in the ford keulen trucks from the 50's These are German trucks so my question is if this is the same v8 flathead that are used in the USA? is it hot rod worthy?
The German flathead used in the 1950's was based on the wartime G29, a 1942 spec 239 V8. By the '50's it had picked up a rear mount (over the oil pump shaft) conventional distributor and modified cylinder heads different from both early and late USA ones. It would be considered very hotrod worthy...there are some oil pan and starter issues, but in general about anything for any '39-48 USA Ford will work in there, parts or speed equipment.
And it's Koln, with an umlaut over the O...don't know how to do an umlaut. Don't want to know how to make an umlaut.
"Keulen" is Dutch for German "Köln" or English "Cologne" .... There are some other minor differences like sealed, ball bearing water pumps. The blocks are quite good, due to their improved casting quality (like the late French blocks). Not sure whether they were 12 or 24 Volts. A lot of the "Keulen" Ford ambulances were exported to the Belgian army and a lot of them a still around (the NWF body was made in aluminium to my knowledge). Here's a pic: http://www.fomcc.de/fordsetzung/04_2/nwf06.html
Like this? Köln You can find all sorts of odd, foreign and other characters in the character map, under Windows accessories > system tools > Character map
I have enough trouble with the regular keyboard...my German has gone lame, and when I see the marks in my Danish parts book my head starts to hurt... Here are some sideways umlauts, all I can manage now....:::::: Almost forgot...here are the gaskets needed for installing the umlauts on the Words: 88888
All the puncutation jokes aside, I am really enjoying reading this thread and another about the European engines. I think this history is very interesting. Thanks guys.
It's hard to track but VERY interesting stuff...Ford Germany and England both kept their wartime engines in production after the war, fortunately, as little survived after 1945. According to my books, Germany requisitioned nearly all existing prewar V8's to join tha many purpose built Ford army trucks and tracks, so very little remains of early German Ford history. I have a postwar German G29 and G28 manual, and some ragged bits of a wartime parts manual... There is some history available, a moderately common Ford at War book on German army and a somewhat scarcer book, same or similar title, from Ford England. It is hard to follow the geographic flow of the iron, too...Ford USA, Canada, Germany, and England were all players in various parts of prewar Europe, and there were mixed sources at the production level as well...and of course during the war the Russians, Germans, Canadians, and British mixed the gene pool even more with thousands of captured vehicles, as they all shared various Ford based vehicles with interchangeable parts. The huge, sweeping disasters both sides had in Africa and Russia sometimes put whole armies of vehicles in the other side's hands...
Being off-road vehicles both the post-war German and French 4x4 flathead powered army trucks shared locally sourced Zenith NDIX four bolt carbs.
My WWII Canadian manifolds all have extra metal in the carb flange to allow them to be drilled and machined for 4-bolt carbs instead of their normal 3 bolt Fords, probably to make them usable for some British Solex or something.
The German Solex FFIK used on the pre-war Cologne flatheads is a three-bolt design and interchangeable with the Stromberg 97. The Zenith NDIX four bolt and throat pattern ist different to the Mercury "tea pot", those can't be swapped. But there were adaptor flanges around to solve this issue.
I remember my father saying that every time he looked at my '38 Ford pickup, it made him think of how many '38-'39 Ford trucks the German army had.
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