Projects Yet another dumbass bought a Model A

How did you figure out the date of your motor?

 

Cut and pasted from: http://flatheaddrag.com/birthday.html

On late model flatheads without the bellhousing cast into the block, there is a code stamped on the right rear corner of the intake gasket face of the block which will give you the manufacturing date of your flathead Ford or Mercury. You can see it with the intake manifold and heads still on the engine.

It consists of a series of a letter, a one or two digit number, and a second letter. The first letter is the month. The number is the day, and the second letter is the last digit of the year.

The letter code is M=0, G=1, B=2, L=3, A=4, C=5, K=6, H=7, T=8, R=9, S=10, E=11, F=12.

G 20 B would be an engine manufactured on January 20, 1952.

 

Thanks for the info.

 

Hard seats or not you'll be OK with modern gas. If your valve seats are not worn out and your valves will grind without sinking them in the block just ad top oil to your fuel. Bardahl will cushion your valves well enough to keep them from hammering the seats out then when it comes time to replace stuff deal with it.

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The car sure looks solid. HRP

 

Ditto on the better than I brought home .

 

Did you check the surface for cracks? I only ask because I had a problem with a block I bought. Totally fixable, but I was able to scrounge up a runner by "working it off". Check right here on all four locations around the block. They are the most common areas seemingly. I just cropped your photo, wish I could have drawn circles on it instead...


Good luck! Btw, looks GREAT inside! Keep it up!

 

Neat car.

Don't chop it...

 

5" is the magic number for Model A chops

 

LOL I like 3.

If I were to chop mine I am actually thinking 2". But if I chop it I won't tell anyone just to screw with the populace.

 

So... quick update.

I found a guy to do some of the work on my 8CM. Ed Smith at Five Star... He seems pretty cool. My Dad and I went to Five Star on a Saturday and he gave us the royal tour. And I mean Royal with a capital R. He showed us around the facility and that place is a straight up engine rebuild factory. One guy does cranks all day, one guy rods, another guy disassembly... ugh. To be honest, I wasn't stoked about the "factory" aspect. Then, Ed showed us a V12 Lincoln flatty he was working on. Ed is 75 and takes on projects (like flatheads) because he likes doing them... meaning my engine wouldn't be part of the "factory" rebuild process. Awesome. At least I thought awesome - until Ed showed us HIS shop. That is awesome. We crossed an alley behind the business to Ed's warehouse of cool shit. His 36 hump back sedan street rod was torn apart. There was also decent 67ish Olds Cutlass convertible, a really nice 67 convertible Camaro (with a matching hard top on the other property), a dragster body mounted on the wall, a pretty sweet Anglia body and chassis (with magazine picture of that Anglia with his name on the back doing a wheel stand), a 60's custom rod, speed parts new and old.... too much eye candy to list!

I'm starting to think I'm the luckiest guy on earth with this flathead. Ed has baked and magnafluxed the block = no issues. And then he starts in, "Where did you get this? This is the nicest flathead I've seen..." And he quizzes me about how I got it. He's guessing that this flathead maybe had 10,000 miles on it! All the bearings and internals were original and it hadn't looked like anyone was inside of it. Then... he says there's no need for boring the cylinders. He mic'd the cylinders and, well... a light hone and that's it. Crankshaft? The crank does not need to be turned, it just needs a light polishing. If I hadn't dropped and cracked a piston, the pistons would be going right back in with a set of new rings.

He's drilling the block for adjustable lifters, honing what needs to be honed, cleaning the crank (including removal and replacement of the welch plugs) and might surface the head surface. The only thing I didn't have him do is the valve seats. I think I am going to try my hand at a little porting and polishing. Nothing major but I've always wanted to try it and an extra couple of horsepower wouldn't hurt.

And... since the engine isn't going to need a bunch of machining, I can spend that "extra" money on Navarro heads, Isky Max 1 cam, I guess I need to figure out an intake...

Hopefully I'll get the block back this week. I'll post up pictures soon.

 

That flathead definitely sounds like a winner. Looking forward to seeing the pics.

 

Congratulations. That Flattie is one in a million. I'm glad to hear someone found one like that, even if it wasn't me.

 

I'm not a trusting sort of guy.

I got the engine back from the machine shop but I had some doubts (see sentence above). So, I bought a cheap Fowler dial cylinder bore gage and micrometers on Amazon, cued up some YouTube videos and took a swing at measuring it. I wasn't happy with the numbers I was getting so I bought a second HF digital indicator to use with the lower half of the Fowler cylinder bore gage (I'm very sure they are made by the same company). All of the measurements are within decent range of each other considering my amateur status as an engine builder, cheap equipment used and variation in cylinder taper.

The machine shop guy told me many times that this is one of the best flatheads he's seen. He told me that he was only going to lightly hone the cylinders, get some new standard sized rings for the stock pistons and I was off and running. It seems that is exactly what happened. Nearly all of my measurements are in the range of 3.1875 to 3.1899 inches specified by Ford for standard sized cylinders. He gave it a light hone with un-honed smooth spots showing in a few places in the cylinders.

You're saying, "Dude, get to the point."

Every cylinder shows a significant open bell shape at the top of the cylinder. At the very top, within an inch of the top of the bore, each bore opens up a lot. I have no idea if this is stock (doubt it) or it's on purpose (rebuilding trick used by an old school guy that knows more about flatheads than I ever will?) or if this is a simple mistake by someone when honing the cylinders (kind of my thought).

I'd like some opinions but I'm leaning towards having the engine bored ten over. Here's my numbers:

 

On one hand, you have I think a max of three thou variation in your digital vs manual measurement. That being said, it is hard to believe that a bell out of more than 15 thou in a couple of cylinders is considered good.

I have just been working at a machine shop for a couple of months. Anything more than a thou or two off of print is not excepted. (Not machining engines though)

That being said, the guy sounds like he has done quite a few flatheads. Why not bring up your concerns???

 

I might... but any explanation wouldn't change my course.

I really like the guy and I would take work back to him. And, to be fair, I didn't measure the engine BEFORE I took it to him.

I had pretty much decided to take the engine to a second machine shop on the day I dropped it off. I need to try a few different machine shops anyway. So, with no ill will, I will take this engine to a second shop... and maybe have the rods reconditioned at a third shop... and keep working towards a running flatty.