History Flathead V8 in old farm equipment

Just imagine! ...Right in my own back yard...

 

Yes I grabbed the radiator - My son even grabbed the instrument gauges... He said take anything you want so we did.

 

What were the gauges? They might be more valuable than the flathead.

 

Hey All, here are some pics of the gauges we pulled from the old forklift. They almost remind me of some old Stewart Warners. Not sure if they even work anymore but they are still a really cool piece to hang in the house.

 

I don't know about the other two, but the ammeter and temp gauge look real good. I think the panel is the real gem here. I'd like to have something like that for my "T".

 

Not a flat head but story from around 1951. A man named Tritton from around the Kansas area owned roadster race cars that raced on dirt, He had 3 they had straight 8 Buick engines of 320 plus cubic inch. He used his race engine on his portable grain milling machines. He said that way they were broken in by race time. His cars were fast and one is still around. I guess his farm machines were fast also...

 

Great find and the dash looks cool.

 

That gauge panel is Stewart Warner. Classic hot rod stuff. Good find.

 

Cool. I'll be sure to watch.

For some reason that is way beyond my comprehension I have always been a fan of the V-8 60. If I was a rich man I would have one just to play with.

I got an SW tach that would work real well in that center hole. Now if I just had the panel.

Cool find for sure

 

Years ago I tried to buy a running 348 that was in a hay chopper. Figured I could pay a max of 650 for it and come out OK.
He would not give me a price & would not take 700 for it. He sold it to the scrappers some time later for likely 150-200 bucks & I know the buyer came out pretty sweet when they sold that mill.
Ya win some & loose some...

 

I used to work at a wood yard that bought pulpwood in 5" lengths. We had some old cable loaders built by Taylor in Louisville MS that were based on Ford truck parts. Flathead 6's and 8's, 4 speed truck transmissions, 1.5 ton truck rear axles. Some of them even had hoods that looked like they might have been reworked F1 or larger truck hoods, narrowed to fit the loaders. These things were purely mechanical, no hydraulics at all except for the steering. Had two huge winches, one to raise and lower the load, the other to raise and lower the boom, both driven off a pto on the trans. The newer ones had OHV Ford sixes and Y blocks in them.
Taylor is still in business, everything they build now is hydraulic as far as I know, and diesel powered.
Another company that built forklifts from Ford truck parts was Windham. Most of theirs were either flathead 6 or OHV 6, but I saw one or two of those with Y blocks in them, too. All the Windham's I have seen were full hydraulic.

 

At least they knew not to scrap it


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Going to antique engine and tractor meets in rural florida I have seen quite a few old tractors sitting in fence rows with flathead fords and occasionally mopar flat sixes in them.It was always a case of whatever anyone had laying around that could be made to work.

 

yep taylor lift makes some of the biggest lift trucks in the world , we used them to move 45K coils of steel in the shipyard .and had a few that could lift 100K containers or equipment flats

my grandfather who was a farmer and grew up during the depression , remotored farm equipment with car engines if needed , if the car or truck wouldn't pass the safety check and cost too much to make roadable he would part it and use the parts in other things . nice thing aboug some of the older motors was the removable bellhousings so he would redrill them , but he had a couple of hay rakes and movers that were pick up trucks with the beds and cabs removed and you drove them backwards ,

 

Went to a local car show yesterday, and ran into this, a flathead powered Ford tractor:



And it had this hooked to it, an A banger converted to an Air Compressor:

 

30 years ago a friend had a compressor/ sandblaster he picked up that was used in mining. The compressor looked like a small Caterpillar, Kinda like the tractor above but smaller, towed the sandblaster behind it. Had a flathead V8 in it, the front four cylinders ran the motor, the back 4 pumped the air. Had 2 air motors that would drive the tracks. Other then some odd manifolds it sure looked like a standard Ford V8 to me. I seem to recall it even had a V8 distributor, just missing 4 plug wires.

 

I have heard of Hemis 30 ft in the air in orchards for wind machines. Is this true ?

 

...here's a couple more 8n's...one with a turbine..

 

Yes. And the 331 was used in the oilfields to run pumps 27/7. Low compression, low rpm.

https://books.google.com/books?id=D...TAhVFfiYKHWdNBfUQ6AEISjAH#v=onepage&q&f=false

 

I seem to remember that someone posted some pictures of hemi-powered wind machines or maybe air raid sirens on here. I do remember that they were mounted on towers. A search should find some examples. (I'm too lazy.)

 

Wish i had taken a photo of it. But there was a rock crusher in a junkyard in my area that had an 8RT flathead in it and it looked like a factory job. It had a grille surround on the radiator that was the same style as the 48-50 F1, but it was a purpose made radiator surround, not a modified truck frontend.

I wanted to get the engine and grille surround out of it, but i made the mistake of assuming it would be there forever since its been there this long.....now gone....

 

Yup, industrial ones. The Garlits museum has one. photo in the Hemi threads

 

That crawler aint no ford,its a Cletrac HG42..they came with Hercules bangers from the factory...a common hack on those was to stick a model a trans between the clutch and final drive to gear them down

 

Cletrac was bought by Oliver..Cletracs HG42 design was marketed by Oliver as the OC-3...the track frames,final drives and steering levers are Cletrac,basically everything but the engine and hood is Cletrac..they had an SAE bell housing,lashing up a V8 wouldnt be hard,you'd have to modify the front frame some,and extend it to mount the radiator...I restored an HG42 and owned an OC-3..I know abit about them..

 

That right there is on my list of completely unnecessary things to own/build some day.

 

Ah the Gerlinger aka Yellowbird, by the time I started working at the local foundry, the flatty had been replaced by a Y-block running thru a glasspack. Spent some time behind the wheel (not fast but reliable). Did you notice the exposed chains driving the front wheels? Yikes! Nice score.