Technical ? Of Old 6 Cylinder Engine Reliability

Thanx, No vacuum leaks, nice steady reading of 19 inches, accelerator pump nice stream, vacuum advance is working great, timing is set at 4 BTDC.
3.23 gears, and 100 hp engine, = slow and steady to 60 mph and beyond.
It won't be like my off topic 4 dr hemi ram, she did 0-60 mph tonight in less than 7 seconds.....

 

Appreciate it for what it is...for a driver with the flat six. not hauling anything, 373/410 would make you feel better, V8 might make you feel better yet........t 323 gears and 100 hp on a good day, in a truck is gonna be slugggggish lol They used flat heads in forklifts for years after they were common in cars and trucks, because they are reliable as an anvil,,,,,,,,.high performance without mods they are not

 

Yup, got a set of dual exhaust and dual intakes ordered for this ole girl, gonna shave an extra head I have, and see if I can wake her up.
Would like to go with an A833 4spd OD trans too..

 

Biggest favor you can do to that truck is drop the gearing down unless your going with a 200+ hp V8

Do the mods your talking about and the od trans but go with 410 or 456 gearing....

Or spend 300.00 on a used 440 and 727 trans out of a motor home. keep your gearing, save your money for rear tires....

 

Don't need no stinkin V8....LOL Gonna model my engine after my pals engine in his 49. Well if I can get 3/4 of what he has, would be very happy. This ain't no average 265 flathead 6, have a look.

 

I used to drive airport tugs that had Chrysler flathead 6's or the later ones used Ford 170 or 200 c.i. 6's- could not kill them, ran the water dry, revved the crap out of them.

 

When I was about 16 3 of us built a 54 chevy to run the 1\4 mile dirt track at Mcgregor farms in Deland FL. It had a pressure oil 235 that was bone stock.We did a valve job on it and put rings and rod bearings in it.That car ran the whole season-every Saturday night flat out in second gear.Partway through the second season the car got pretty well destroyed.We pulled the engine and put it in a street car.The engine never had the head off after we put it back together the first time.Dont know where it went after that.I have run lots of chevy sixes since and I can tell you they are hard to kill!

 

I watch Turner Classic Movies a lot (I'M and old fart ) and it has occurred to me that Manhattan N.Y. taxi cabs were Mopar almost exclusively from the '20's thru the '50 and maybe the '60'. They were obviously rugged enough for them.

 

When I was a young buck, my friends and I bought old cars to race in the bush. We would rip the bodies off first, put a 5 gallon gas can behind the seat and go. We called them buckboards and they were always full throttle, drifting around corners, often bouncing off trees. One of the guys took his off the trail and stuck a rock on the gas pedal and started her up. We all sat back and waited for her to blow. She lasted a good 5 minutes before slowing down. She never let go, she just slowed down , red hot and finally just stopped. It was a Plymouth flathead 6. Try that with your Honda civic

 

DeSotos were very popular as cabs because they were the biggest cars in their price class, or the cheapest cars in their size class, depending how you looked at it. They offered special taxicab and limousines with stretched bodies and jump seats in the back, important in New York because you were allowed to carry 5 passengers. The DeSoto cabs were developed with the San Francisco and New York markets in mind but were used in other places.

They were also very rugged, reliable, and easy to maintain and reasonably economical on gas and oil. During WW2 when cabs were in big demand and new cars not available, some DeSotos racked up 500,000 miles or more in taxi service.