Flathead water jackets question...

John Kennedy

John Kennedy

Senior Member
So I've always been told that flats sometimes come with genuine Ford casting sand stuck in the bottom of the water jackets.
I cleaned mine out last week (real basic at the pressure car wash) and can see down through the large passages clear to a clean bottom.
Am I just lucky, or not seeing it all? I can see both sides to the lower parts of the jackets. Still no obvious cracks, continuing ahead..........

Thoughts? Ideas?
 
I have rebuild over the years a dozen of V12 Lincoln Zephyr engines and soon I will be doing a Flathead V8. I know that in the past I have notice that at the bottom of the blocks there are some small pieces of rods stuck at the bottom from the sand casting. Check this area real good if you leave any of these rods they may find themselves in the water pump impellers. You can also use pool acid pour in the water pump opening and power flush with garden hose. If you have any questions feel free to call me.

Frenchy
( 602 ) 7231047
 
The deposits are mostly to the very back and are hard deposits. You need to use anything sharp and stiff enough to chip out the deposits. Start in the back and work your way to the front. A pressure washer will not get the solidified stuff out. Do it with the water jackets dry. Turn the block over and used compressed air to blow the loosened stuff out.
 
A good method is to get a big old sheet of scrap plywood, sit it on a hard surface (concrete) and tumble the bare block around on it, you will be amazed at the sand and rust that gets jolted out of it just doing this, and how exhausting it is to do for longer than ten minutes!
 
when i had my motor on the engine stand, i used a wire cote hanger that i shoved into the water jackets and i got a lot of junk out
 
I actually did what Frenchy described, I'll probe it dry with a long screwdriver. Just seemed it was too clean, too easily.
 
Engines that have been overhauled one or more times usually have more of the core wire and sand removed from previous cleanings. I took a block to a readi-strip shop years ago that I knew had never been overhauled before and the readi-strip guy pulled near a coffey can full of core wire & sand out of it. He didn't believe me when I told him that was normal for a first run motor.

FoMoCo probably put them in shaker boxes after casting was completed. That usually just gets most of the casting sand out. A lot of the core wire was still in there. It usually corroded out with time and FoMoCo only took out what they could get out easily.

Kerby
 
Core wire is iron wire that a foundry would use to hold cores in place. When the core sand is shaken out after the casting is made, the core wire(s) would sometimes be entrapped in the new casting. In the last flathead block I built ('50 8BA), i found core wire in each of the rear exhaust ports as well as in the water jacket.
 
I like the sand blasting idea . Acids have some down sides to it ,I had a freshy machined block cleaned once it came out real shiny but there was a deep hole in one of the bores ,
 
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