The Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, MI recently raised the hoods for its “Engines Exposed” exhibit, and among its many exhibitions was this unmachined Flathead Ford engine block. The flathead’s architecture has been discussed here before, and every time, Henry Ford’s decision making skills are mentioned.
The old story goes that the engineers ran the exhaust port right through the V8’s water jacket at Ford’s behest; therefore, flatheads anecdotally need a hell of a radiator to keep cool in the summer. Of course, the flip side is that flatheads also have among the mellowest of exhaust notes, perhaps as a result of gallons of liquid muffling before said notes even enter the exhaust manifolds.
This Cadillac V8, which is appropriately powering a Ford, shows one alternative–running the exhaust manifolds adjacent to the intake manifold. Of course, this could have created packaging problems in Ford’s smaller bodies. Therefore, we’ll pose this question: If you were Henry Ford, designing an engine that would become a hot rod legend, how would you have (or would you have?) designed it differently?
A few period aftermarket alternative designs. The Elco twin plug….
The Kong twin plug….
The Riley OHV conversion….
The most well known: the Ardun OHV conversion designed by latter day Corvette guru Zora Arkus-Duntov….
And this completely over-the-top Riley SOHC race motor….
Are there any Ford parts in that one?
You know Pete, probably not. As you can see here, I was mistaken about that. I blame the early hour of my post. 😉 Apparently it was a bolt-in conversion, though.
This one, equipped with a centrifugal supercharger, was reportedly installed in a 1939 Lincoln.
It had the same bore and stroke as the Ford V8 and used a Ford crankshaft. The rest of the parts were from other sources.
Well, considering it was laid out around 1930 for a low priced volume car, I would have been proud to have my name on those blueprints. Certainly wasn’t ideal but the design wouldn’t have been produced over 20 years if it hadn’t been sound.
As Gene has pointed out above the limitations of the design were overcome by the aftermarket, wan’t the Ardun head designed for trucks originally to give them a bit more oomph and relieve the cooling problems?
Nice shot of the block blank too, very cool.
The engine did last for over 20 years, but it was heavily revised for the 1949 Ford by Harold Youngren, who had been recruited from Oldsmobile by Henry Ford II. Youngren improved the cooling and drastically reduced the engine’s oil consumption. Those improvements kept the engine competitive in the early 1950s.
“How would you have designed the flathead Ford?”
I would have employed engineers, given them a fairly non-restrictive set of parameters, and stayed the heck out of their way. Let them amaze me with their creativity.
That is a recipe for failure, never give the engineers a long rope because they will hang themselves and you in the process. Now if they are the engineers doing pure research then it is OK. But for something you want to put in production in a reasonable time period and at a price that leaves room for profit then the engineers must be given a pretty restrictive set of parameters and a hard deadline.
Ha, that is true enough.
I worked for an auto industry supplier that was partially killed by the engineering manager. His goal was to build the best equipment possible, whereas the correct goal is to build the least expensive equipment that will fulfill the terms of the contract.
What I was trying to say was that Uncle Henry meddled too much, he had no more business dictating the exhaust routing than I do.
I got my first Ford flathead V8 in 1974. I have had 2 more since then. I have been a student of the design of this engine for a really long time. It is an amazing feat that they were able to pull it off so successfully, considering the state of the art at the time. It’s success and “coolness factor” are remarkable considering the fact that it was such a compromised design.
Anyway, to answer the question, personally I would have gone with an OHV inline six, and gone directly head to head against Chevrolet, or possibly spent the extra tooling money and gone with an F head V8. I imagine that an OHV V8 would have been just too costly for the (depression era) time.
Henry Ford I hated inline sixes, so that was out of the question. Plus, he didn’t want to look like he was imitating Chevrolet. Leapfrogging Chevrolet was okay, but Ford wasn’t about to be accused of imitating his chief rival.
Old Hank wanted an “X8” at first. that… didn’t work out.
I have heard that. He thought that the I6 design “wasted power”. I don’t know what he meant by that. Perhaps someone here could inform us.
Probably because a V8 fired every 90 degrees while a inline six fires every 120 degrees. But then again who could figure out ‘ol Hank.
the longer an inline engine gets, the more you have problems with both fuel-air distribution and crankshaft torsion. The first means the inner and outer cylinders can run richer or leaner than each other unless you spend the money on multiple carburetors (a la the first Corvette.) the second means the ignition timing can wander from the front of the engine to the back.
I would change nothing. Please remember when it was designed, for which car and what other manufacturers were doing at the time.
I heard if they’re ported and relieved and stroked and bored they’ll do a hundred and forty with the top end floored….Or maybe I’m thinking of some old song 🙂
She’s fine just the way Hank built her! I mean a Model T had a top speed of maybe 40 mph on a good day and was also tempermental about overheating and for only $60 more 5 years later you could buy a V8 powered car that did 0-60 in 16.8 seconds and had a top speed of 78 mph. Three years after that, 0-60 was down to 15 seconds and top speed had gone up to 84 mph. It really must have been something. If course Hudson’s six cylinder Essexes were faster and not much more expensive , but Henry’s heap was easily upgraded.
I wouldn’t do anything – I’d just wait until the small block Chevy appeared and all would be well.
End of story.
Seriously, though, I’ve had no experience with a Ford flathead V8 and know little about them, but wish I did! I’ve heard from those who did experience one and they remarked they were fine engines, and like comments above, easily upgraded.
That unmachined block must be an early prototype, as the intake ports are different from production ports.
Wow, the size of the valves relative to the size of the pistons was huge. I have never seen one of these with the heads off.
The exhaust coming out on the inside of the V is a fascinating possiblity. A crossover pipe from one bank to the other and the exhaust dropping down between the engine and the firewall before going under the car would have been worth trying out. But Henry probably did. Perhaps all of that heat up near the carb and intake manifold would make that layout a problem.
Most of the early non-Ford V8s had both the intake manifolds and the exhaust manifolds located in the valley between the cylinder banks, just like that Caddy engine shown in the article. Henry Ford thought it would be much too complicated, from a cost standpoint, to have a built up manifold like that, and a one-piece integrated intake/exhaust manifold would have been a casting nightmare. That’s what I have read in Petersen’s “Ford in the 30s” book. It has fascinating stories on the thinking that went into the Ford flathead V8 engine design.
Design it with two separate camshafts, each one outboard of the its respective bank of cylinders. That would position the intake and exhaust valves on the other side of the head. Then, instead of having the exhaust running through the block, he could have had the intake charge running through the block. That way, Ford could have retained the inexpensive flat head design, and there would be no need for the complex intake/exhaust manifolding associated with other flathead V8s, such as the Cadillac V8 shown above and the late 1920s Lincoln V8. The downsides would be the cost of the extra camshaft and the need for a wider (although not necessarily heavier) engine block. I’m assuming a 90 degree V-angle is a given for smooth engine balance.
Another possibility is a T-head V-8 with three camshafts: one in the valley and two outboard the cylinder banks. That way, there would be no need for either intake or exhaust passages between the cylinders, thus making it possible to make the block so much shorter. Ford had a terrible time with casting the very early V8 blocks because of core shifting associated with all the passages inside the blocks. (That is why Ford continued to push 4-cylinder Model Bs at the beginning of the 1932 model year). A T-head design would have eliminated much of that problem.
Note that, with a T-head, valve sizes are unrestricted in theory. That’s why early racing cars, like the old Mercers used T-heads.
What engine is that T-head V8?
That picture of the T-head V8 is a photoshopped Ford flathead V8. Fresh from my computer! I don’t know of any T-head V8s other than this imaginary one!
Wow! Well played, sir!
Now comes the hard part…building it for real! You’d raise some eyebrows at car shows and in the wild. 🙂
I don’t know of any either, which is why i asked. You had me stumped there, because it sure looked like a Ford except for the second set of cams and valves. It did strike me that those outside cams didn’t seem to be properly located with enough block material around them.
Nice work, and it’s something worth speculating about. Hmmmm….
The simplest option would be a reverse flow layout with intake on the outside and exhaust through the valley. This means the water jacket gets cool intake charge instead of cold exhaust. Racers and hot rodders started trying this back in the 40s
On a higher level, cut Henry and his prejudices out of the loop which would have avoided some of the cooling system wtfery. My recollection is that most of the technical issues with the flathead Ford are the result of Henry Ford dictating to the engineers.
and we’ve come back to that, with BMW using the “hot vee” concept as well as Ford on the 6.7 liter Powerstroke.
I remember those times from the POV of a brain dead teenager. I owned three or four 49-53 Ford V8s and one 53 Merc. During the time I owned them (early sixties) they were fine as a used car and I probably would have killed myself with anything much faster. I know very little about the 32-48 engines except that they were just a little weird IMO for the aforementioned reasons. I think Ford’s flathead was fine for the time but they should have had the 1954 model ready in 49 . If Ardun could make an ohv for the flathead and others even earlier could do the same for the 4 cylinder it’s hard to believe they couldn’t.
In 1949 Olds, Caddie, and IIRC Studebaker made everyone else’s design obsolete. For the low price three I preferred the Ford followed by Plymouth, with chev dragging behind. I thought Chev made a vast improvement in 54 and jumped to the head of the low priced pack with their new oiling system and bearings in the 235. Anecdotal, I know but that engine would put it on a 54 Ford and I saw it several times. 1955 changed everything.
IIRC the 54 Ford ohv V8 was the same size as the preceding flathead. Seems as though it wouldn’t have been much of a stretch to have done it earlier. Probably had more to do with not wanting to. I had a 55 -272cid and a 57 -312cid. Can’t see much difference in stock performance between them, the chevy or Dodge engines of that time. Speed parts are another story.
I tend to believe the delay in Ford’s release of the OHV V8 had much to do with the company’s recovery from years of mismanagement at the hands of old Henry.
The “Whiz Kids” saw the need to get a new body into production once the post-war seller’s market cooled off, and then focus on a more modern six, which shared some development with the OHV V8.
An interesting (if perhaps slightly suspect) viewpoint of this is in Chase Morsey’s The Man Who Saved the V8, which Paul reviewed a couple of years ago: https://www.curbsideclassic.com/blog/book-blog/book-review-the-man-who-saved-the-v8-sort-of/
The experience I had with Flatheads was the one in my grandpa’s ’50 Ford pickup. It was kind of fun to drive, ran pretty good, sounded good, and did a good job of putting up with my brother’s and my abuse.
In high school I had a ’55 Ford with the 272. To me it seemed to be pretty fast. However, I was probably comparing it to the ’51 Chevy with a “two in the glue” Powerglide. Of course, when I drove my dad’s ’62 Olds wagon, the Ford seemed like a real pig.
The Lycomimg Flathead has the pipes going in the right direction…. And sounds good.
This one by Powertech. Brazil.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=m7TlZ21_i3Q
The flathead is a classic, so I wouldn’t change anything! There’s still a few I see running around our town regularly. In our coastal climate, combined with the fact that these regular runners have no hood side panels, cooling may be OK. Though I suspect radiators and perhaps water pumps on these rigs are modern high capacity units.
Those Ford exhaust ports just look nightmarish–it makes an OHV looks easy by comparison.
I’ve read that Henry harbored an intense dislike of the straight 6 format from his experience with the (’06 – ’07) Model K. The K was a much more upmarket offering than what Ford had been producing up until then. It was not a financial success and soured Henry on the configuration.
Put a decent distributor on the damn thing! Not that abortion that was on the front of the block. And give the enginners some guidelines and leave them to it.
And if it were a GM engine it would be the either a deadly sin or greatest hit here.