Flatheads,nature,time and effort

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partsdawg

Junior Member
I will begin by saying I am in no way a flathead expert.Not even half smart on them.
I ran across a guy who has 30 or more Ford/Mercury flatheads laying around his farmstead.Most are complete with transmissions.Some are from large trucks.There is also a large quantity of heads and iron intakes laying about.
These all have been laying on the ground and exposed to the Minnesota weather for years. I believe I can get them for scrap weight.
My question is this. Is it worth the time(2 hours one way to the property) and effort to gather all the parts up? I would prefer not to haul back everything just to scrap it.
Open to opinions.
 
Adding some kind of lousy pics
 

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Absolutely worth the effort to at least get the engines for scrap value if you have the place to store them & time to “process “ them.
Have fun
 
If you're young and ambitious? Yep, go get 'em. As for me, I'll open a cold one and watch.
 
tubman said:
If you're young and ambitious? Yep, go get 'em. As for me, I'll open a cold one and watch.
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61 years old,2 fractured vertebrae. Think I need to find a younger helper if I decide to do this.
Not buying them and cracking a cold one is starting to sound like a pretty good option.;)
 
“ I believe I can get them for scrap weight.“.....if it was me, and I’m cleaning up the property for the owner, I would want them very inexpensive so if there was nothing usable, I wouldn’t be doing for free or cost me money to clean his property.....hope this makes sense.......makes me wonder why someone would pull and save 30 engine/trannys....Mark
 
flatford8 said:
“ I believe I can get them for scrap weight.“.....if it was me, and I’m cleaning up the property for the owner, I would want them very inexpensive so if there was nothing usable, I wouldn’t be doing for free or cost me money to clean his property.....hope this makes sense.......makes me wonder why someone would pull and save 30 engine/trannys....Mark
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So what you are saying is the owner should pay me to haul away his iron so it can be saved as opposed to him hauling it in,it disappears,and he gets paid?
 
No Junkman would dig metal out of the ground for free...if it was a nice pile you can load with a crane scrapvalue after cost for trucking is what owner would get....
So i would think with the amount of work involved in this project atleast for free comes to mind...
 
partsdawg said:
So what you are saying is the owner should pay me to haul away his iron so it can be saved as opposed to him hauling it in,it disappears,and he gets paid?
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No...if your statement “getting it for scrape weight”....means your paying scrap price.....then selling for scrap price....you get nothing for your labor, time and fuel....if the owner is getting his property cleaned up then you ought to have the chance to get something for your labor, time fuel....and yes, I’d take them home just to see what kind of mess I could get myself into....LOL....keep us posted on what you find.....Mark
 
I figure the HAS to be enough good stuff to cover my expenses.
My wife says I wear rose colored glasses. Been wrong before,it's a adventure.
 
Cool 33 said:
Remember, there might be good crankshafts in some of them, maybe even Mercs... Just sayin'.
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Chances of this are slim to none, and in my experience, 3 3/4 cranks are hard to even give away. I have heard the same from many others. Just a couple of good blocks would make the whole thing worthwhile (for you young whippersnappers). Us old guys already have a spare or two.:)
 
Hi; You've see my recent posts on 'Barn cleanouts' It has to be FREE, even to hope to make fuel costs. the sorting and cleanup can take days. I just hauled the last load from barn#2 and scheduled barn #3 a week from now. meanwhile my own jobs are sitting. The fun is a 'find'. It cost $200 usd to ship a pair of iron heads to Finland, and $22 to ship the same package in the USA USPS. Newc
 
Being next door in Wisconsin what i see is a lot of work with no payout. If they had been indoors, a maybe of some usable parts. Scrap weight only I.M.O. where they lay.
 
What do you have to work with? Big truck, enough for all in one trip? And, some sort of 'pick-um-up & load 'em'? If I was working alone, with a pickup, and not much else, I'd say forget it. I'm 20+ years older than you, and I'll sit with the other guys and watch.
 
I've seen this movie. The least demaged surfaces are exposed everything else is embedded in dirt and grass. Nothing good happens to metal. Let it finish its return to the earth.
 
Like so many others, I have torched off my last connecting rod and beaten out my last piston from a rust encrusted, dirt entombed outdoor flathead V8. It is miserable work. Last year I bought an excellent 8ba block and a std merc crank. Had the crank machined and was still under the price of a wooden bench I made for some summerfolk out of reclaimed wood. It's taken a lot of years to find that just buying something known good is often better than 30 in the bush. I still love the adventure of a find, but it needs to be better these days.
 
Hate to say it but, even if those were FREE it's not worth the effort or time.
Sometimes you gotta just let things rust in place. "Rust to dust".
 
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