On a flathead v8, both inlet and exhaust valves are inboard. How do the exhaust gases get from out the valves on the valley side of the cylinder's bank to the outside of the engine, to the headers? I've read how the middle ports are siamesed, but this fact alone doesn't really explain it. Just a question born from pure curiosity, I have nothing to do with flatheads, but I can't seem to find a diagram that explains this to me. Be gentle.
Hah good question, the exhaust ports are cast through the water jacket. The tricky question is how did they pour a exhaust port or basically a tube inside a water jacket cavity?
Exhaust ports go through the water jacket which probably gives flatheads some of their reputation for overheating
Yes. The outer exhaust ports squirm around the outside of the cylinders and down to the exhaust ports located on the down side of the block. One on each end. The center ports both go into one exhaust port that runs between the center cylinders to the lower block and out.
`Others such as Cadillac ran the exhaust ports out the top of the block, they had an elaborate exhaust manifold setup next to the intake manifold.
As mentioned, Cadillac, Lycoming, Continental, Packard, and American La-France flathead V motors often ran the exhaust out the top next to the intake, as depicted in this drawing.
Internal passage ways are cast using a polymerized sand that is formed in the shape of the internal passages in the mold. After the metal is poured and solidified, the raw cast part is put in a shaker that breaks up the internal passage way forms, and it falls out of the raw casting.
So, just whittle up a set of those and put a pot of iron on the stove...note that you will still need to make the ones for the outside, too! When Ford started making cast steel cranks during 1933, the process was entirely new; there weren't any cast auto cranks around. To mold the complex shape without heavy waste needing to be cut away, the job was done with a stack of 16 mold sections keyed together...then, since the crank tended to warp slightly on cooling, they made the thing curved so the warp made it straight. Everything was designed to make it as close as possible to the part needed right in the mold, so that there was minimum machine work needed to finish it. The patent is pretty amazing stuff!
WHAT THE HELL !! ?? Awesome picture ! Who owns that gorgeous little paper weight ? Wooooo-EEEE !! Sure don't see that every day. It's got some SHAZAM SHEEN going that's for damn sure.
Flowmeister and Bruce, those are amazing pics. I don't remember ever seeing either one posted on the '32-'53 FordBarn. Would you guys mind if I started a thread over there with those pics? Or, one of you please initiate it there and post the pics. I am sure the purists would love it.
For something that seems to be "stone-axe" simple, it's interesting to see the ingenuity and engineering that went into making them that way.
@36tbird , by all means, Not sure where on the interwebs I found that cutaway, I thought it may have been off Ford Barn, but I could be wrong.
Vergil on here posted some nice cutaways he did...no chromed parts. The pic of the molds has been around in various books, and I just stole it from an old post on here. The crankshaft mold stuff is in the patent description, and gives a good look at the astounding amount of work it took to tune the process of mass producing a sound crank.
there is some movies of the River Rouge casting line on you tube that show them making the molds and pouring the iron in the 1930's kind of neat as it show the whole process form steel making to the finished unit .
The Jalopy Journal
