Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Little Deuce Coupe

No one mentioned a line out of Springsteen's song Ram Rod...

Gotta Road Runner Motor in a 32 Ford....

thinking about a 426 Hemi.. or a 392 Hemi in a 32 Ford... that'd be kinda cool...

I could see that be kinda hard to steer....too much power and too little traction, along with being nose heavy as hell...

also kinda liked those old 413s, they were still using those as boat motors up into the mid 80s

Every time I hear the Beach Boys doing "Little Deuce Coupe" I can't help but recall sitting at the breakfast table one morning before school back in 1963 with my sisters and brother. We had a table radio on; that song came on, and my mother, who was over by the kitchen sink thought they were singing " Little Miss Kook".....

Back to the Beach Boys!

"My fuel injected Sting Ray is a 'starting to spin
And the 413s really digging in
Tach it up, tach it up, Buddy, gonna shut you down...."

Thanks - knew George a bit - drove that coupe one time - nice with the Chevy mill.

Somebody should take me out and kick my ass for all the great cars i ruined in my youth. One in particular was a really nice 5 window 32 coup. Thought I get a little more HP out of the 283 by not running a air cleaner. It had too much cam and carb and backfired though the carb catching fire. I tried to shut it down but the electric fuel pump just kept running, burnt to the ground. Dumb ass. wish I had it today. BTY broke my heart when they canceled Hot August Nights here in Reno due too the Coronavirus. Lots of stunning cars at the event but most are pro built costing $100,000 or more. Not like the old days!

[quote=Old_Toot][quote=Hotrod_Lincoln]"Flathead" Ford engines had the valves in the block, not the cylinder heads. "Relieving" the surface of the block between the valves and the edge of the cylinder by grinding away a little metal increased gas flow. So did "porting and polishing"- - - -grinding the intake and exhaust ports bigger and polishing the surface of the cast iron to make it slicker and reduce turbulence. I did all of that to my first car, a 1947 Mercury convertible with a bored and stroked and ported and relieved flathead V8 engine with tubular steel headers and Offenhauser finned aluminum cylinder heads.
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Flat heads are way coo!!

My family had a car on the first race track in Nashville Tennessee in 1948- - - - -a 34 Ford 3-window coupe with a flathead V8 running on a mixture of alcohol and Hydrogen Peroxide. The 47 Merc I built in the early 1960's was running a bunch of Dad's leftover dirt track parts after he got out of the racing business and decided raising a family was more important than following some of his peers to Daytona and elsewhere when Bill France started NASCAR. Our driver chased Coo Coo Marlin under the grandstands at Columbia Tennessee one night and threatened to cut his throat with a big hawkbill knife because he had spun our car out in the main event that night. That was in 1954, Coo Coo's rookie year.

I am telling my age with this one. Has anyone else ever seen or heard of the Arkun conversion that made the flathead valve in block engines into an overhead valve engine? I have only seen one in an actual auto and that was many years ago, it was a neat idea and it worked out fairly well.
It was designed and made by Arkus Duntov - yep, the same Duntov of Corvette engine fame.

Here is a link to a short read and some pictures of it.
https://www.museumofamericanspeed.com/ardunohvconversion.html

drover

My first car was a 1953 ford. About 110 hp stock. You could add a lot of extras and still not have the hp of a 283 Chev.
Hasbeen

A 4" + stroker in a flathead could still out-torque a 265 or a 283, especially with a little extra compression.

The Ardun conversion had the same lower end problems as the flatheads- - - -only three main bearings. It was not uncommon to twist a crankshaft in two at the center main bearing, especially with a 4 1/4" welded stroker" from "Crankshaft Company" that a lot of the racers ran.

Anyone else remember a three carb set up on Ford flatheads? Stromberg 97s,

One of my hillbilly cousins ran that in a modified 34 Ford two door sedan body. Short dirt track ovals, early 1950s. When the SB Chevy motors became popular in the mid 50s, most of the flat heads were replaced.

Sometime in the mid to late 60s, a local lad fetched a Simca back from overseas, when he came home from the service. We had it on the farm for a jalopy, after he got rid ot it. Fugger had an aluminum flat head V8 in it.

Dad had a '55 chevy 1500 Big window, 283 and the 3 speed with overdrive transmission. About 1965 he rebuilt the 283 adding a 30-30 Duntov solid lifter cam. With the exhaust he was running, I could hear him pulling a small hill before coming down our street, and if I was in the house would tell mom "dad's almost home" and she would put dinner on the table before he walked in the front door.I used to help him,starting at age 6 , holding the feeler gauge as he adjusted the valves. Mufflers had to be glasspacks, later Cherry bombs when I was of hotrod age, lol. Had the period Corvette finned valve covers also.

Manual linkage tri-power carbs ( pontiac) or Sixpacks for us Mopar folks, are a bear to set up, but once done right, sure sound and feel good. My 440 Cuda came with a 1974- STR intake with 70-AAR sixpack setup, got it to perform properly once and it hooked, surprised the hell out of me and my son. Switched to a Nyutten 930 Holly, bolt it on and go. The STR is a cool, long runner intake that fits well in the space under the hood of the Cuda without having to add a scoop or cut the hood.

I used to work with a bloke who had two '46 Fords, a Coupe and a Coupe Utility (Australian production). The one had a worked flathead V8, the other a 351 Windsor with a similar level of work. There really was no comparison in the performance.