Fred's Page

  

Hello one and all,

Last month, at the end of my page, I mentioned the Flat Head powered nostalgia drag car. I will describe it here so that when I mention it in the future you will have an idea what I’m talking about. When I got the ’32, I started rounding up parts to build a hot Flatty. My long time friend in Oregon put me in touch with a man & his grown son in Bend, Or. They had lots of F/H stuff and wanted some G.T.O. parts that I had. We did a deal and I learned they had a fiberglass ’23 T Roadster that they had built in 1987 and were competing at the nostalgia drag races on the West Coast. They told me they would be racing it at Sacramento the next month. and maybe I would be interested to come see the race. I was and I did. To make a long story short, I ended up buying that car in 1991 and have been racing it ever since.

I have changed a number of things and about year 2000 built a whole new engine for it. I started with a good 8-BA (‘49-’53 block). Poured 45 lbs. Of aluminum in the water jackets. This was to mainly strengthen the block and allow the head studs to go right through the deck (surface under head gasket) and into the aluminum. The thinking here is that when the heads are tightened down it’s not distorting the deck surface. Sounds good in theory and seems to work. Also it allows better angles to be ground on the intake & exhaust ports. The block then went to the machine shop where it got bored to 3 3/8” and deck surface trued up. With my valve working tools I opened up the intakes from stock 1.5 to 1.75 and exhaust from stock 1.5 to 1.6, they almost touch each other. I kept the same Potvin eliminator cam shaft with .425 lift. Ported out the exhaust quite extensively, but didn’t go overboard on the intake runners, as I wanted some metal there to work with in the future. Dropped in $2200 worth of Billet steel crank shaft with 4.5” stroke. This gives 322 cubic inches. Custom built rods that are ¼” longer than the stock 7”. Arias custom made pistons that have the same dome profile as a hemi-engine. I didn’t relieve the block as the heads have a relief channel in them. The rest of the engine is pretty straight up with Harmon Collins magneto--early Hillborn fuel injection—burns alcohol.

Car weighs 1500 lbs. And uses a Ford C-4 (Mustang) automatic trans.(manually shifted) and a 8” narrowed & locked rear end. Right now I’m running a 4.62 rear end ratio with 31” x 10.5 inch slicks. This car goes through the quarter mile from a standing start in about 11 seconds flat. About the same as a Dodge Viper would. As far as I can find out it is the quickest non-supercharged F/H Roadster in the nation.

Well this has turned into more than most of you probably wanted to know, but on the other hand if I were reading this, I would want more info. We are strange animals aren’t we? Oh and by the way, Lynda has made 15 passes in it now and I’m real proud of her spunk.

It turns out that Dan Schwartz is building a new rear end for his ’32 5 window coupe, and so am I. I think for a technical subject to write about this might be interesting to concentrate on. Enough for now as this might have turned into 2 pages.