My buddy has had this sitting in his garage for about 45 years. I recently sold it for him to a friend. I can't remember ever seeing this set up before. Does anyone know about this? He's always said it was out of a dirt track car and was to improve the cooling.
That's part of a Martas or similar style cooling system with a crank mounted water pump. They are more common on V8-60 engines.
I've never seen anything like this on a non V8 60. I looked at the front of the cam for any grind numbers, there were none. It doesn't have adjustable lifters either. The welds on the pan were very nice looking too. Looks like it was gas welded, I was hoping someone would have more info on the water manifolds too.
So after cleaning all the acorns and junk out of the lifter valley it looks like it has keyed hollow lifters in it! I bet it's got some fancy shmancy radius lifter cam in it. Pretty cool!
The first time I saw a that type of cooling system was back in the late '80s while working out of Bill Stroppe's shop. Bill was restoring one of his old flathead powered race car, (I think a Kurtis) and said many circle track flatheads used these systems.
The go to radius lifter cam back then was Isky's 404A grind, billed as "constant acceleration " model. Hopefully that's what it is. They are stamped as such, though. A very interesting mill , you've got there!
This is from Roger Huntingtons 1951 book How to hop up Ford & Mercury V8 engines. (Originally posted by Bob Clark on the Flatspot)
I must not have looked close enough I sure didn't see that on the cam when I looked (although I don't honk I had my cheaters on at the time either) keep me posted what you find when you get it apart.
I don't know what dirt track class that engine ran in initially, but I'll bet there was some cheating going on! 404A and "stock" iron heads?
They would weld metal biscuits inside stock heads to increase compression. Timing cover and gear had to be removed to see the cam markings.
The Jalopy Journal
