1946 Ford Flathead V8. My newest toy.

[rayjd2]

Your engine is not a 1946 engine. That is a 1949-1953 "8RT" truck engine. 239 CID displacement, 100-110 HP depending on year and compression ratio.

Red paint means it is a 1949-1951 engine with 100 HP
Green paint means it is a 1952-1953 engine with 110 HP.

So someone put a "new" engine in the old beater of a wrecker?

[Junk Yard Dog]

Scrape the numbers, we changed the engine in our old 1948 Ford wrecker at least four times in the years we used it. The engines were also painted whatever color was on hand so don't go by colors when doing engine ID's, different rebuilders would also paint them whatever color they liked or the customer liked and engine rebuilds in commercial vehicles were common back then. Shit oils wore out engines much faster that anything we are used to today. I used to paint every engine I used MoPar blue, or Chevy orange, Someone looks under the hood and see's blue, thinks it's a 70's 400 but in fact it's a 60's 383. With small block Chevy's it gets worse because they used Chevy orange in to the early 70's then went to blue for a few years, then black. I painted them all Chevy orange and often used vintage valve covers or manifolds and other things that would mess up anyone not running the numbers.

http://flatheaddrag.com/birthday.html

http://www.vanpeltsales.com/FH_web/flat ... 25late.htm

[AMCHornet]

So someone put a "new" engine in the old beater of a wrecker?

Happened all the time. Hence why my 1934 has a 1939 engine.

[Junk Yard Dog]

Back in the day things weren't so casually tossed out as is common today. We didn't live in a disposable society were every year new flashy shit replaced last years flashy shit. People kept and repaired equipment, everything on the truck from it's engine, generator and starter, rear, trans, and body was made to be rebuildable, no sealed unit bullshit. If you blasted a rod through the block you replaced the engine not the truck. Back then a mechanic had to be the real deal, not a parts swapper. More populated areas had specialty shops that would rebuild the motor or the starter, whatever, rural areas had the local garage were if the starter crapped out in your '61 Dodge he pulled it and rebuilt the unit. Things like ring jobs and valve jobs were an everyday thing, carburetor rebuilds , fuel pump rebuilds, setting points and timing, honing out master cylinder and wheel cylinders. Most modern "tech's" I know today would not have been able to hack being a 1940's grease monkey.

[awalker1829]

True. When we fixed the motor on the 1960 GM Coach, we discovered that the header was cracked. One of the local shops had a spare head for that exact model. We have a spare, unmachined OEM engine block for the coach as well. Since we’re in mining country, we have a lot of shops that deal in fixing mining equipment and are able to rebuild pieces that we need.

[ffuries]

It's nice to have the later engine with a conventional distributor and insert bearings. Paying some like me to pour and line bore new Babbitt bearings is expensive.

I have a 1934 Ford Victoria with a 1939 24-stud 221 CID V8 that my grandfather bought around 1968 and had restored in the early 1990s. The engine is stock for 1939, but the rest of the car is stock for 1934. It's hard to find an early V8 that is not hot-rodded. It has surprisingly decent power, even at 5000 feet above sea level where it's down to about 77 horsepower from it's rating of 90 HP. It'll keep up with modern traffic so long as the speed limit is less than 65 MPH. 45-55 MPH is its happy range. Top speed is about 80 MPH.

This is my grandfather with the car around 1980.
vicky.jpg

This was at his graveside funeral in 2014. I drove there in it with his ashes in a box on the passenger's seat. Most of his other grandkids (my cousins) rode in the car there too.
11026381_1139317039434375_1558763662_n.jpg

Just me filling it with gas one night.
11047017_1139307932768619_1503539757_n.jpg

Awesome story and a gorgeous ride!

[entropy]

A car my Uncle Byron and a succession of his Auto Shop classes built over the years:

Byrons T bucket 460 Lincoln.jpg

460 Lincoln, fiberglass "T-bucket" body, handmade 2 Speed transmission. I got to run it on the dyno (They had a dynomometer at the high school!) , got to 110.

The 460 was out of a @ '72 Town Car. The driveshaft is about 18" long. He has wheelie bars for it, flipping it would be easy to do! That's him driving, and my aunt Barb riding with him.

[Brake Weight]

Too cool. 110mph?

[Junk Yard Dog]

The last intact V8, 1941 Ford, or some of the guys who play with these modern V8 Fords say it's a '39. Either way I am hoarding it until somebody tosses me a price I like.

[awalker1829]

Here’s what is currently in our 1946 Ford Transit Bus. I should note that this is not the original engine. According to the records of the Tucson Rapid Transit Company, No. 50 was one of twenty Ford Transit buses that they repowered with International engines because of the factory engines overheating regularly.





Now, for comparison, here is the engine in our Modesto Ford Transit Bus.





The volunteer who does most of the work on our engines was there this afternoon and we talked a bit about the Ford engines. He has done a great bit of research on them and confirmed that the small V8 was a standard option on the Fords. That said, most Ford Transit Buses were built with the small V8 and not the stock engine. While the stock engine had more horsepower, it produced less torque at low speed than the small V8 in operating conditions. Thus most operators preferred the small V8.

[rayjd2]

Now, for comparison, here is the engine in our Modesto Ford Transit Bus.

Is.. Is that a International flathead I-6? Ohhhh..... Ooooh.. ahhhh. Sweet!

[awalker1829]

Might be. The area it’s in doesn’t have great lighting.

It does run and might get rebuilt at some point in the future. That bus has all of the parts but needs a lot of work. The only reason we accepted it as a donation was that the owner could no longer work on it due to failing health and it had to be removed from the storage site immediately. Either we took it or it was going to the crusher.

We will be moving Tucson Rapid Transit No. 50 out of the way in the next week or so. That will allow us to get Old Pueblo Transit No. 135 out so that we can wash it and prepare it for painting in January. Exterior painting should be completed by the end of January. Interior work will have to wait until summer.

[Junk Yard Dog]

That's a Ford 226 or 254 engine, I just sold one from a 1948 Ford Fire truck.

[rayjd2]

(Even more ooh-ing and ahh-ing)

[awalker1829]

That's a Ford 226 or 254 engine, I just sold one from a 1948 Ford Fire truck.

If it’s the original motor, it should be a Ford 239. That’s what the buses were built with starting in 1939.

[Junk Yard Dog]

The first generation Ford 6 was introduced in 1941, technically the first Ford straight six was the 1906 Model K but the engine was too powerful for the car and destroyed transmissions. That's why Henry ended up with such a bias against the straight 6 for decades. The V8's had overheating issues, that was a problem with the very design of the engine, fleet users would have embraced the straight 6 as soon as it came along. The bus company must have swapped out the V8 for the 6 sometime in the 40's or early 50's. You will have to find and check the numbers on the block to know.

[awalker1829]

We can see when the 50 got changed out by referring to the corporate records as we have them in our archive.