This is a 1952 flathead out of a car. I had never rebuilt a flathead before and hope to rebuild several more throughout my lifetime. I am only 19, but I think I gave it my best shot. Here is what I was starting with. Bare block, covered in rust, lots of work to do.
Here are the stainless steel valves installed. I used this book for the majority of my guidelines for building this engine.
Looking good. I'm in the same boat. First flathead (besides a Briggs lawnmower engine). I've got the same book.
I did mine many yrs ago and was always worried about low oil pressure. She ran will, but 20# was max pressure. Then a couple of yrs later I went with a mechanical gauge set because the temp gauge quit working, so i got a panel that had oil, temp, and volts. Well that's when I found out the electric gauge was also not correct, and the pressure was better then I could believe. Iceman
Here is a list of the torque specs that I used. These were all scattered around from different sources and also the book above from Frank Oddo. Hope this helps somebody out there. Main Bolts 105 ft-lbs Rod bolts 45 ft-lbs Cylinder Head bolts 60 ft-lbs (20,40,60) be sure to find a pattern Water pumps 23-28 ft-lbs Camshaft timing gear 15-20 ft-lbs Intake manifold bolts 12 ft-lbs followed by 24 ft-lbs be sure to follow the pattern Timing cover 13-18 ft-lbs Oil pump to block 12-15 ft-lbs Oil pump cover plate 7-10 ft-lbs Oil pump pickup 80 in-lbs Oil pan 15-18 ft-lbs Flywheel to crank 75-85 ft-lbs Balancer bolt 50 ft-lbs Exhaust manifold 25-30 ft-lbs Water outlet 12-15 ft-lbs Clutch pressure plate 17-20 ft-lbs Bell housing to block 37-42 ft-lbs Starter bolts 15-20 ft-lbs Gen/alternator bracket 55-70 ft-lbs Bell housing to block 37-42 ft-lbs Trans to bell housing 40-50 ft-lbs
The rear main seal is a rope seal that goes into an aluminum retainer. Work the rope seal into the retainer. I used a large socket to help work it in there. Trim the seal with about 1/8" to 3/16" **you be the judge** sticking out past the retainer. The book says to trim it flush, but when the crank gets torqued down this seal goes down farther into the retainer. Apply a thin layer of black rtv to the outside of the retainer and place it into the block. Install the rod bearings into the caps and the block. Apply a generous amount of lubriplate #105 engine assembly grease to all bearing surfaces before placing the crank into the block. The caps go on tang to tang. Once torqued down, I placed the balancer on temporarily and rotated the crank to make sure it would turn. Tight, yes, but it turns.
Installing the Pistons~~<O</O Before you install the piston assembly, wipe the cylinder clean to make sure there are no metal particles from previous machine work.<O</O <O</O We again used the lubriplate and put a generous about of it all along the inside of the cylinder wall surface.<O</O <O</O I used the four ring pistons for this project. I cant quite remember the ring pattern used, but I have it written down somewhere, I will add this later.<O</O <O</O The connecting rods should be stamped from the ford factory, these numbers face outward when being installed in the block.<O</O <O</O I went through and labeled each cylinder with a piece of tape just so confusion wouldnt occur later on. This usually goes much smoother when two people are doing this. One person on top placing the piston and connecting rod assembly down the cylinder, and the other person guiding the connecting rod down the cylinder from the bottom side making sure that there is no damage to the cylinder wall or the crankshaft. **Obviously a piston ring compressor of some sort will be used**<O</O
Once the connecting rods are torqued down. I suggest spinning the engine around by hand a few times to make sure nothing is stuck. A good engine will be tight, but not stuck.
Oil Pump~~ I just used the stock style oil pump and pickup. There are several options out there for aftermarket modern style oil systems and several modifications you can do. I just stuck with the stock style that ford intended the engine to run off of. The oil pump assembly is pretty self explanatory, place gaskets in the correct spot and lube the gear up before installing the assembly into the block. A small bolt goes through the pump and into the block to keep the oil pump in place.
The oil pump idler gear is then installed. This spins on a tiny busing, make sure that this spins freely before installing. I had one that was all jammed up, this one from another engine spun with ease. Lube it up, and tap it into place. The oil pump gear can slightly be seen in the picture on the far left, then the idler gear and then the crankshaft on the far right.
There is then a cover plate that goes over this area, it has a gasket. If that gasket doesn't go on, most of your oil leakage will probably come from here.
Next is the timing gear. This can only go on one way. Fortunately it has a weird bolt pattern that will only allow it to go on one way. A little retainer piece goes on behind the bolts, little tabs then get bent over once everything is torqued down. Some suggest to only bend one per bolt as they do break off after so many times, you may want to order one of these when ordering other parts for your engine just in case. This tabs keep the bolts from backing out at high velocities. Also there is a mark on the timing gear and a mark on the crankshaft, This takes several times to line up just right, plus the bolt pattern as previously mentioned. So there is a lot of spinning the crank over by hand to spin then cam around to get the pattern just right. May take a while, but you'll get there.
Now it's time for the rope seals. Rick showed me how he does them when we picked up the engine. He says to have the rope seal stick past the oil pan a little bit so once everything is assembled, the crank will smash it into place and there will be no gap. I used a large socket to work it into place. The other tip was to cut the oil pan gasket around the rope seal like shown in the pictures. Before installing the oil pan, I put some jb weld around where the dipstick is. When I had this engine running in the past, the rivets would leak oil. This should keep it from doing that again. Plus it won't hurt anything.
I used a rubber seal on the front of the crankshaft. Something that Rick does for his customers is make a bushing for the crankshaft that won't eat up the rubber seals. Then bolt on the timing cover with gasket and the whole nine yards. Then the oil pan goes up. Remember there is a plate that goes on the back that shares bolts with the oil pan. Water pumps~~ I got these from speedway, they seem to be working just fine. The did come with a cheap gasket so we got felpro gaskets instead from the local parts store. Reminder, the black parts are off of the engine that was in the car and then had to be taken off and put on this car, that is why the water pumps and such are scratched up. Out of the box from Speedway, they were fresh and nice looking.
Time for paint~~ I picked these up from lowes. They seem to be holding up just fine. No pealing or flaking so far. And it has a nice shine for a spray paint job. I wiped the whole engine down with wax and grease remover. Then I taped off where the heads and intake bolts on. I then placed the head and intake gaskets on and traced their shapes. this way I wouldn't have paint where I didn't want it and no bare metal would be exposed.
Pretty nice so far. When you say "tight to turn over" define tight? Put a beam type torq wrench on the snout, what does it take to turn over? You should be in the 35-50 lb range...
I'm using an Isky Max-1.. has a nice choppy sound at idle. Here she is complete. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSl4cQCxr7k
EDIT: Sounds NICE! I was typing the below info when you made your last post with the youtube video. Hopefully the rope seal is where it needs to be. The book says flush, but you chose to leave 1/4 inch sticking out past the retainer? Seems like an awful lot, especially if you did so on both sides. If the rope doesn't get pushed down into the retainer when you torque the main, do you know where it goes? If gets between the block and the main cap, it means you may have a slightly greater bearing clearance on that rear main bearing. It could also bunch up and put some extra pressure on the crank journal, which won't damage it but could be the reason you say "Tight, yes, but it turns." A crank installed in a block, with proper clearances and no pistons/rods installed, should turn quite easily. My only flathead experience is with a 346 Cadillac, but I have done plenty of engines with rope seals, and I don't recall ever having left that much rope hanging out of the retainer. I'll leave it to the Ford flathead gurus to weigh in and see what their take is.
I just kind of meant, it's not going to be easy to turn over with all of the parts rubbing on each other. But if a connecting rod is in wrong, the engine probably won't turn over. So this is a step to make sure that it does turn over before too many more parts get added into the equation. Thanks for the tip on the 35-50 lb.
I'm changing 1/4 to 1/8-3/16. The main thing is that it stick past a little, then when the oil pan gasket goes on, that takes up some of that overhang.
Still playing with the carbs a little to get rid of some of the soot on the passenger side. It seems to be getting better, but still running rich. Christmas vacation project. Look into different jet sizes.
Great job. Nice to see a young guy building a flathead. It sounds fantastic...you must be pretty pleased! One bit of advice from a cautious old man. It doesn't hurt to safety wire those 5/16 bolts that can't be accessed later, like Ford did originally. Have fun.
Thanks for the advice flthd31. I don't recall seeing holes in my bolts for the safety wire. Definitely something that would be good to have. Not seeing any holes, I just used the proper amount of thread-locker and tightened them down to specs.