German engine?

It seems that this is an engine from a 1941 - 1943 Ford G917T. This was a german WW2 truck.
 
The German Flathead. A wonderful piece of machinery. I ran a stock one in my 40 coupe. 239 cu in. The sweetest smoothest flathead I have ever ran. It does have an aluminium sump, but the bosch starter is not particularly swap friendly with the solenoid sticking out like that. The mounting is not compatible with normal flathead starters. I used the flywheel, sump and starter from a 59A.

Mart.
 
German for sure ("EB" Eisenwerke Brühl logo). Can't spot on the photos whether the distributor is front or rear mounted though. The rear monted distributor was introduced in 1943.
 
Now I look again, I can see the engine is earlier than my engine. The heads are early style, centre outlet, mine were 8BA style. The water pump pulleys are closer to the block too, which might indicate front mounted distributor. Mine had rear mount distributor, but I was able to fit a front mount distributor using the original German timing cover, which was a three bolt fixing. This would imply the cam is a long nose type.

Mart.
 
Photos make it look like the rear half of the cylinder heads behind the water outlets are "taller" than the front half. Is that true? Better cooling?
 
During the war copyright laws were of little concern. I remember reading where Russia copied one of our bombers bolt for bolt.
 
That may be so Shadetree but I don't know why sence we gave them most anything they wanted and called it "lendlease".
 
It is a little known fact that mr ford did a bunch for Germany during the time before the war. He was given a award from mr hitler that was a pretty big award for the German army. He all so refused to give it back when urged by or government. Look at how much the Volkswagen shares with the fords if that time.
 
Lots of loose history running around here. The National Socialist Government of Germany took over Ford's operations in Germany in 1934. Anything produced from then on until the return of Ford's property to it after the war had nothing to do with Ford Motor Company or Henry Ford (who was no longer head of the Company from 1943 on).

As for a link with Volkwagen, the U.S. Government approached Ford after the war to take over and resurrect Volkwagen from the rubble. Ford studied the idea and it got as far as a Board of Directors meeting where the offer was turned down. A similar request was made with regard to Toyota, which was also declined by Ford. I've read both files and they made for very interesting reading 30 years after the fact. No doubt GM was also approached before or after Ford, but they also declined both propositions.
 
I suppose it would be easy to google it, but wasn't the British military involved in getting the VW factory up and running again?

Need to keep the topic on track re the German flathead - No need to start any political/racist ********.

I had one of these motors and thought it was great.

Mart
 
Picture shows what appears to be a rag or sumthin stuck in where a rear mounted distributor would have been. What did the rear mounted distributors look like?
 
This has been posted before, but there was a prewar connection between Ford and VW. Briggs was closely aligned with Ford and in 1933 presented a "dream car" designed by Tjarda (sp?) that featured Ford running gear including rear mounted flathead. Shortly after, Briggs became involved with Chrysler and Ford totally severed any connection with the car. But, Porsche incorporated many of the design features in the "Peoples Car."
 

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There are lots of conflueces in radiacal designs by Ford/LZ and Porsce/vw, and others as well.

I've posted a bunch of Ford patents on here, including one I labeled "Ford invents the VW!
(2065065)

Ford was interested in rear engine, radical uses of sheetmetal structure, and torsion bars...
VW plant was in the British zone of occupation...I lived in Hamburg as a child there, not too far away, and went on a tour of VW when their line had reopened. I got really neat toys, which I managed to destroy as a child.
Very loosely, British and US occupation worked at getting the ruins of Germany running again, in the French zone they were busy unbolting any machinery that still worked and hauling it off as reparations for the destruction in France!
 
There is a Mercedes starter you can use on this engine. The starter ring gear and starter interface are special on these compared to the USA ones.
 
I was told the VW was based on this a 1929 design
 

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I think some kind of Auto union .Check republic .The guy was adamant that the Vw was based on the 29 model of this .possibly the rear wheel drive ,The VW body is typical of the time ,maybe some LZ inspiration .
 
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