denverslim
Senior Member
I've had a weak place in my heart for old Fords and flat motors most of my 62 years now--it seemed for a long time like I was the young guy in an older mans club. Many of my older friends loved that I could (and would) still crawl under a car and lay on the front seat with my head upside down working on their under dash wiring and laugh at their bad jokes. I'm finding it harder and harder to do this these days and now I'm actually looking into buying or leasing agarage that has a lift so that I can keep my old iron on the road. It's funny, but I'm also finding friends in their 20's and 30's who like to work on old Fords for the pleasure of hearing them run and driving them once in a while. Lol.
I guess what I'm saying is that as much as I love the old Fords I've learned to love the old guys that drove them in their prime, hotrodded them, raced them and sometimes hung on to them even more.
An older buddy here in Denver (in his mid 80's now) still works on flatties in his garage, has an engine stand and boxes of parts. He grew up around these things built race engines in the day but now has such a great respect for the Flathead Ford engine that he just rebuilds them stock--old school. No damned adustable lifters, he says they are made to be adusted. He fit all the valves exactly to length, fits all the rod bearings and crank bearings by "feel", rebuilds the waterpumps, carburetors and distributers, balances everything then runs them on the stand long enough to torque the head bolts down three or four times to get them to spec and stop the leaking. I've watched him do many this way.
The last couple of years, I have been finding old blocks taking him parts and letting him go at them as much to give him something to do as any other real reason. I'm not much of a salesman.
Guess what. I now have a couple of flatties that I will be posting in the "for sale" area. I'm not even looking at making any $$, I will be happy to just get my money back from buying the blocks, testing and cleaning them new parts when necessary and paying him for his rebuilding time. I'll be listing them for around 1600-1800 bucks. Fresh 8BAs, I have pictures and videos of them running. I'm in Denver...slim
I guess what I'm saying is that as much as I love the old Fords I've learned to love the old guys that drove them in their prime, hotrodded them, raced them and sometimes hung on to them even more.
An older buddy here in Denver (in his mid 80's now) still works on flatties in his garage, has an engine stand and boxes of parts. He grew up around these things built race engines in the day but now has such a great respect for the Flathead Ford engine that he just rebuilds them stock--old school. No damned adustable lifters, he says they are made to be adusted. He fit all the valves exactly to length, fits all the rod bearings and crank bearings by "feel", rebuilds the waterpumps, carburetors and distributers, balances everything then runs them on the stand long enough to torque the head bolts down three or four times to get them to spec and stop the leaking. I've watched him do many this way.
The last couple of years, I have been finding old blocks taking him parts and letting him go at them as much to give him something to do as any other real reason. I'm not much of a salesman.
Guess what. I now have a couple of flatties that I will be posting in the "for sale" area. I'm not even looking at making any $$, I will be happy to just get my money back from buying the blocks, testing and cleaning them new parts when necessary and paying him for his rebuilding time. I'll be listing them for around 1600-1800 bucks. Fresh 8BAs, I have pictures and videos of them running. I'm in Denver...slim
