Casting Numbers REPUBLIC B140 Flywheel cover

[Terry NJ]

Just acquired a new (Sorta) Flywheel cover with these numbers and no visible cracks. It's rusty as hell and requires a lot of wire brushing. Who is/was REPUBLIC? Was Ford using this name for some reason ? Or was Ford subbing out some of the casting work?
Also, should I pay someone with a Blanchard or a Blanchard type grinder to kiss off the mating surfaces ? As I said, this thing is is rusty as hell and the mating, surfaces are are distorted. And parallelism ????????. How much can you take off a F W. cover safely ? Thanks in advance!
Terry

 

[Flathead]

Consider getting it blasted and be sure there are no cracks, especially around bolt holes for back of block. Be too bad to machine up a cracked housing, and they are prone to being cracked.

 

[JayJay]

Consider getting it blasted and be sure there are no cracks, especially around bolt holes for back of block. Be too bad to machine up a cracked housing, and they are prone to being cracked.

Yup. I have three flywheel housings and the two that are presently off of cars are both cracked at the mounting holes. I don’t know about the one currently on the car. I do need two good ones for the two cars so I keep looking. In the meantime, the two bad ones make good practice for stamping numbers in engine blocks.

 

[Big hammer]

Synder’s have in their online catalog a cast iron and aluminum flywheel housing 525 $ for either one. Most original housing are cracked, the latter ones are better as they have been beefed up as the new housing