THICKSTUN HEADS, cast iron and aluminum

heres my aluminum ones setting on my motor

 

Anybody running Thickstun aluminum heads with covers on the street? Any overheating problems?

 

The Thickstun aluminum head covers were originally designed for marine use, to keep water from splashing around the heads and fouling out the plugs. I have seen a couple of cars using the Thickstun head covers on aluminum heads and everything worked just fine, without any excessive heat issues. Both cars were running without hoods and would have plenty of air flowing around the engine. I have the history of the Thickstun cast iron heads if anyone is interested and I can post on here. This is an 8 year old thread that has been brought back to life and may just go back to being dormant again after this post.

 

We would love to see the official history of the cast iron heads.

 

I'd appreciate seeing the history re-posted. I have a complete set of aluminum heads, pm-7 intake, repro head covers and air cleaner to go on my '35 5w (my first car-owned for 54 years!). Hood top is punched with 66 louvers as well as stock hood side louvers, but 140 degrees in marine use isn't 160-185 degrees in a car. That was my only concern as to whether the head covers might restrict adequate cooling for the street.

 

Tommy Thickstun was a brilliant engineer and was the head of Thickstun Manufacturing Co. His pre war high rise intake was very popular and was installed on many cars at Frank Baron's repair shop and Vic Edelbrock's hot rod shop as well. A lot of the early dry lakes racers had work done on their cars at these two shops. He was really good friends with Vic Edelbrock and spent many weekends at Frank Baron's cottage with Frank Baron and Bob Tattersfield. From what I can gather the Thickstun cast iron heads appeared shortly after the war ended. Tommy Thickstun had a heart condition and didn't go into the armed forces as he couldn't pass the medical examination. He spent the war years at the Tattersfield factory and also worked at an aviation company as well. I'm sure he was working on patterns for his heads and the PM-7 intake during the war years as the heads and PM-7 intake didn't take all that long to make an appearance after the war ended. This is just speculation on my part but I am assuming there were at least a dozen sets of cast iron heads that were cast and sold. You would have to make a run of at least that many heads to be profitable. I am also assuming that these cast iron heads met the same fate as the Kogel heads and were subject to cracking and were soon replaced by the Thickstun aluminum heads. That is probably why you see only 2 or 3 sets of cast iron Thickstun heads around today, as they were the ones that survived. The PM-7 intake stands for Pattern Model # 7. It looks like there were a few failures and changes were made in all the previous patterns and Thickstun finally ended up marketing the # 7 intake manifold. All kinds were sold. Just look at how many you still see today and how many are still offered up for sale. I intently study the history of these early speed parts manufacturers and have been doing so for quite some time now. I think I am reasonably accurate in the assumptions that I have made in some of the previous statements, and hope this has been helpful to anyone reading this post.

 

Thanks for the re-post!