I just watched a sped-up Facebook video of one of these being rebuilt yesterday. With only 3 main bearings you can't really get a lot of power out of them, but in '32 I doubt they were much over 6.5:1 CR, if that, and developed maybe 80hp, so anything was a major improvement LOL.

Back when I worked at a forklift dealership we used to get quite a few older (maybe up to mid 80s or so) machines with Continental flathead 4s & 6s. Easiest head gasket jobs you'll ever do.

Dad had a 49 Merc with a flat head V8 that was not much different He had a buddy with a 36 Ford Coupe

My grandfather on my dad's side bought a calf from the grandfather on my mother's side. Dad and his 2 brothers went to pick up the calf. On the way back, ~30mi, the younger brother held the calf in the rumble seat of the Ford.

Shortly after WWII my father and some buddies, after a Saturday in Rosman North Carolina drinking, headed back to South Carolina down the mountains in a Model A Ford. The throttle linkage broke and my father spent most of the trip riding on the running board / front fender working the throttle by hand.

the 5L FI was the best motor in the world other than the Toy 22R

Thanks for posting this, I really enjoyed it.

Love the 289 4BBL in my 65 Fairlane and the 390 FE 4BBL in my 62 Thunderbirds. The new Coyote engines are heads and tails better than the 5L Moulders talks about (Ford 302 Windsor block) but for the day there was little better.

no way.. ill take a pushrod 5L anyday... can get into it and mod/fix in a matter of a few hours and a hoist.. plus the R/D and options for power adders/HP gains are mountains in front of the Coyote.

One thing people who've never driven one don't know - the low end torque! The flathead Ford V8 was certainly no "revver", let alone by modern standards, but compared to a tractor it certainly was! Yet it had almost TRACTOR torque down low!

People who've never driven tractors probably won't know what I'm talking about here either lol!

Don't get me wrong. I love the Windsor blocks. My 289 (an earlier version of the 302 that W-Molder's is talking about-for those that don't know American engines) is a great engine but modern engines produce more power and are more reliable than the old 221/260/289/302/351 blocks. I can probably get 550hp out of a stroked 347 but a supercharged 5.0 coyote can push 700hp easy. I would never drop that much power in a 65 Fairlane, it is flat out dangerous but if I had to drive a car every day the modern engines produce better power at base and are much more reliable. In the old days you would start thinking about rebuilding at around 80 thousand miles and you would start seeing blue smoke at 100K. Today you can get 150-200K easily from modern engines.

I'm nostalgic for sure and love my old pushrod but I have to admit that engine technology has advanced significantly from the 1962 vintage Windsor block.

It's a Windsor 4.6 MOD motor that is in my MG, it is my second V8 powered Rover, first one was the Buick derived 3.5l in a Rover SD1, a good quick car for it's day, cruised effortlessly at 110mph and in good comfort. The MG ZT is a sporty spin off of the Rover 75 and then MG-Rover done a deal with Ford to put the 16valve 4.6l V8s in the MG ZT but also they put the 32valve 4.6 and 5.0l in to the MG-SV, they also offered those engines with superchargers but MG-Rover went bust after making only 2 of the supercharged MG ZTs.

Originally I was waiting for one of those supercharged ZTs but it was taking too long to be brought out so I bought non supercharged one and took it to Dreadnought Garage and they fitted a Kenne Bell supercharger to my car, Dreadnought fitted about 42 superchargers to MG ZTs and the last one was to an estate car.

The American Ford V8s had to be modified to run properly on UK petrol as the additives used and the methods of measuring the quality here are different than what is used in the US, the DOHC engines had to have new valve seats put in as they would burn through quickly with the UK petrol, the UK's 95 Octane petrol is similar to the US's 90.

Over here in Europe Ford and Landrover shared their designs for engines and as part of that we got a 3.6l V8 twin turbo diesel engine, which was later increased to 4.4l for the Range Rover, Jaguar also used these engines in some of their cars alas you cannot get the 3.6l or 4.4l any more as they have replaced it with a 3.0l V6

My Range Rover Sport has a 3.6l twin Turbo V8 diesel, when it came out the factory it was 276bhp, just after I bought my RRS, Landrover made some improvements to the software for the ECU and that upped the bhp by another 10% to around 300bhp, the new software and map was put in my car when it was about a month old

Running up a modified DOHC 5.0l Ford V8 at Dreadnought Garage which will be shipped off to MG-Rover to be put in a new MG-SVR, Dreadnought did all the modifications to the Ford engines for MG-Rover. While I was there I helped rebuild and test this particular engine



My little 4.6l Ford V8 with forced air induction

Don't forget the legendary Ford V8 DFV, the only engine to win F1, Le Mans, F3000, and in its DFX form, Cart and the Indy 500.

I can build a turbo fox body 5L that will run low 9's for half the price of a new 5.0 with a coyote in it.

is Ken still alive? I remember talking to him about 15 or so years ago about fox body 5L stuff here near where I live... his shop was only about 20 min away from me

Don't know if he is or not, never spoke to him, just a few emails way back in the day.

I had my supercharger put on in 2009, Brian and Claire from Dreadnought were over in Canada with Ken putting together the package for the MG ZT 260 as the tuning is a bit different from what is used in the US. Here we can sit for hours with wide open throttle and with a standard off the shelf tune for the Ford mod motor you would melt the pistons very quickly - as it has happened to a few folk (almost all of them!) that imported kits for the 2004 Mustang GT and fitted them to the MG,

Claire was also involved with a project to let a blind british person drive a Saleen at over 200mph, it was filmed for TV over here and broadcast on Channel 4 (I think). Clair's brother Paul raced a MG ZT V8 in the Brit Car Championship but it was a bit of a barge, he now races the small MG under the Paul Luti Racing banner.

I do have a copy of the fueling for my car and after a period at large throttle openings then the mixture is enriched and that helps keep the temps down, that is why the 40+ of us paid a little bit more for our installations than those that did a DIY install.

With the unrestricted German Autobahn only a few miles from here and the car being capable of hitting 180mph cruising at warp speed is quite common , I've been sitting cruising at 130 - 140mph and still have been overtaken like I was sitting still, the only downside with the MG is it's ability to turn expensive petrol into noise at a very high rate. Pushing the car hard she struggles to reach 3mpg, even before being supercharged I could get down to about 7mpg quite easily and still be within the speed limits, for sedate cruising before the supercharger she did about 26-28mpg after the supercharger she is doing 30 -31mpg.


Paul's ZT520 race car:



Brian is the bearded guy with glasses standing in the garage door and Claire, his daughter, is beside him.

I'm still partial to the old FE engines. They power my two favorite cars. The 427 version powered the 1964 Ford Fairlane Thunderbolt, a monster of a car. If I ever win the lottery I WILL own one of these. Not a replica, but an actual car.

http://www.hotrod.com/articles/see-...cted-barn-find-to-show-quality-drag-car/

The 390 powers my two Thunderbirds. Both can scoot pretty well too. Rated at 300hp but ford under reported the power on these cars, just like all car companies did in the 60s due to insurance reasons.

Here's my Ford V8 - It's a replica of my dad's old Mk1 Cortina racing car, with a 302 Windsor in the middle where the old gearbox used to go. The original engine that he built made about 330 hp - he always reckoned 450 but he was not quite right - but this one really does make 450 hp. The new old car also has 25 metres of roll cage tube in it, so it's a hell of a lot stiffer than the original uncaged car ever was.
His 87'th birthday is on the 28th of this month, I'm working hard to get to get it running for that day. I'll get an unregistered vehicle permit and take him for a ride in it.

My aunt who used to live in Buffalo had a Ford Thunderbird, other than it was a Thunderbird I don't know anything about it, other than it came from one of the local mob, she posted over a newspaper clipping showing the guy when he got arrested with having a body in the trunk of his car - not the car my aunt had mind you