ultimate flathead

Boy am I glad the guy never raced at Bonneville with so much horsepower and RPM's from that 239 cube flathead the records would be REALLY high and no one would be able to touch them. LMAO
 
Getting that kind of RPM's is easy; just use a tachometer for a 4 cylinder engine.:D

Or with a cable drive tach, use a 1 to 2 drive unit.
Here is a pic of that setup with the tattletale at 9300. Really gets the fans talking after the race. This was a fairly stock 4 banger.
 

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This is the part of the whimsical story that got my eyes rolling...

"This is a steep hill which goes from sea level to 1500-feet elevation in less than seven miles. I punched the throttle and away we went: 50 mph, then 70 mph, then 90 mph. The numbers stopped at 90 mph but the needle kept climbing around back to 0 again, then 10, 20, and finally 30 mph on the second time around."
 
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Sometime after that I was out to Barger-Mattson wrecking yard and found a blown 350-cid Corvette engine in the inventory. I bought the camshaft, heads, distributor, intake manifold and carburetor and commenced to put them on my engine. What a difference in power that made. It still didn’t match up to the flathead I used to have, but it was about 50 percent better than the stock 283. The only problem was that the carburetor was a 750-cfm Quadrajet and while a 350 might handle that, the 283 would not. I ultimately pulled off the intake manifold and carburetor and put a 4GC Rochester in its place, then everything worked like it was supposed to. Later on, I pulled the manifold off again and put a 2GC Rochester carburetor on it as the 2GC was easier to work on than the 4GC. Since I only drive the ’32 about once a year and I don’t do much hot rodding anymore, that is about all I need. When I put the Chevrolet motor in the ’32, I found that, while the flathead with its high revolutions handled the 4.44 differential OK, the 283 did not so, again, I changed differentials and went back to the 3.78 ratio, which the 283 handles OK.

This story is like a car wreck. I can't stop looking at it. This passage is just too good to not share. Even includes the mandatory bench racing equivalent of the cherry on top: The Corvette SBC. Nothing else will do.
 
I have known guys like this. I was trying to buy a 392 Hemi from a guy once. After listening to his BS for about 15 minutes ("the driveshaft was twisted like a barber pole"), I gave up and went home.
 
I have known guys like this. I was trying to buy a 392 Hemi from a guy once. After listening to his BS for about 15 minutes ("the driveshaft was twisted like a barber pole"), I gave up and went home.

We have a local guy that we call Shades. He is always wearing Richard Petty type shades. I mean always.

One of my favorite Shades stories is when he was driving his '72 SBC powered Chevelle down Rt. 22 in Easton, PA in a race. At 120, he realized he wasn't in fourth. Once he "slammed it" into fourth, he estimates he topped out at 160.

I guess this BS works on some folks, but to have such a bullsh*t story published in a magazine is a bit surprising.
 
Haters gonna hate, I guess.

To the youth reading this, always remember that anything is possible.

Heck we even put a man in space only a few years later.
 
Our strictly strip flathead hit 6,000 on a good day, but made me nervous. 350hp at 10,000rpm ain't gonna happen with that engine.
 
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