11-23-2015, 02:16 PM
(This post was last modified: 11-23-2015, 02:26 PM by Tugboatcap.)
Yeah, I know about machine shops screwing up a flatheads. That's what caused the first one in my '49 to fail. This is my 4th 8BA powered vehicle (2nd '48-early 50 generation F-1), I restore old Ford Iron.
The original engine for the '49 F-1 this is going in had a good block, just needed punching out. The machine shop I found was building a Model A engine at the time and had good credentials. The machinist told me I needed to deck the block. I told him under NO circumstances deck the block, the decks are thin enough without surfacing them needlessly. When I went to pick it up, it had been decked. A LOT!
Fast forward 12 years and 10,000 miles and it started loosing a little water from the radiator, about 1/2" a month at most, never affected the way it ran. I suspected a very small crack but about half of the flatheads out there running have at least one. It had never been overheated, not once.
I was driving it to work one morning and it started missing on one cylinder about a block from work. Got it to the parking lot and let it idle a few minutes with the hood open so I could see if I could find which cylinder it was and all of a sudden, as quickly as it started, it quit and started idling fine.
On the way home that evening, it started it again and didn't stop.
A few weeks later, I finally got time to pull the head and found that one of the cylinders cracked between the exhaust valve and the cylinder bore so badly that the valve seat jumped completely out of the bore.
The original engine for the '49 F-1 this is going in had a good block, just needed punching out. The machine shop I found was building a Model A engine at the time and had good credentials. The machinist told me I needed to deck the block. I told him under NO circumstances deck the block, the decks are thin enough without surfacing them needlessly. When I went to pick it up, it had been decked. A LOT!
Fast forward 12 years and 10,000 miles and it started loosing a little water from the radiator, about 1/2" a month at most, never affected the way it ran. I suspected a very small crack but about half of the flatheads out there running have at least one. It had never been overheated, not once.
I was driving it to work one morning and it started missing on one cylinder about a block from work. Got it to the parking lot and let it idle a few minutes with the hood open so I could see if I could find which cylinder it was and all of a sudden, as quickly as it started, it quit and started idling fine.
On the way home that evening, it started it again and didn't stop.
A few weeks later, I finally got time to pull the head and found that one of the cylinders cracked between the exhaust valve and the cylinder bore so badly that the valve seat jumped completely out of the bore.
[b][i]"It's always funny until someone loses an eye!"[/i][/b]
