23 Jun 09 09:24, Roger Nelson wrote to Roy Witt:


 RW>> After the 'nail head' Buick V8, they modernized it. The late 60s
 RW>> engines had the distributor up front on their big V8s and V6s.
 RW>> Cadillac had it that way for a long time.

 RN> I'm still trying to figure out why GM put out an ad about 7 years ago
 RN> with an actor playing the late Harley Earl.  Surely people didn't
 RN> think that GM had found a way to resurrect the dead.

Advertising hoopla...

 RN> His outstanding achievements, as far as I'm comcerned, are the
 RN> LaSalle, the tail fins and, of course, the Corvette. I think they
 RN> were trying to pump up Buick sales, which was on the endangered list.

Not nearly as much as the Olds.

 RN>  If it came to a choice between a Buick and an Oldsmobile, I'd take
 RN> the Olds, but we know it's gone.

That was a bone of contention between my dad and my uncle. Dad owned
Oldsmobiles and my uncle owned Buicks (except in the days when they owned
Chevys and Fords)...My dad said if you want to work on cars all the time,
buy a Ford, my uncle said if you want a fast car, buy a Ford (that was in
the days of the flathead). I bought a Ford and found out that they were
both right. I never did buy into their hype between the Olds and Buicks,
sticking to Chevys after I had worked on too many Fords.

 RW>> RN> My engine has a coil for each bank and they are mounted forward
 RW>> of RN> the heads.

 RW>> Which reminds me. The LT-1 V8s of the 91-96 Corvette and 92-97
 RW>> Camaro and Firebirds had a distributor mounted on the front of the
 RW>> engine like the early Ford flathead V8s. They suffered the same fate
 RW>> of ozone destruction inside the cap and the early ones had no
 RW>> ventilation, so water condensed on the inside too. They had one coil
 RW>> for all 8 cylinders, just like days of old. Not to mention, reverse
 RW>> coolant circulation so that the heads got the coolest water and the
 RW>> block came after.

 RN> Have you ever done a valve job on a flat head Ford V-8?

Yeup. c1959, right after I graduated from high school.

 RN>  I did.  The suction-cup-on-a-stick with grinding compound routine
 RN> was extremely tiresome. After we finished, one of us held the valve
 RN> tight against the valve seat and the other poured a small amount of
 RN> gasoline into the head to see if the valve leaked.  It it did, back
 RN> to more grinding until it didn't leak.

You did it the hard way. I had the advantage of a valve and seat grinder
(my girlfriend's father owned a parts store with an automotive machine
shop). I bored the block .100 over, put it together, only to find that the
pistons and rods weren't compatable. I had used Mercury rods with Ford
pistons, which made the pistons stick out of the block by 1/8 inch. To
correc that, I bought Ford rods and everything worked just fine. That
little flathead could beat a 55 chevy I was familiar with.

 RN>   I guess that reverse coolant system was based on the fact that heat
 RN> rises?

No, it was based on the fact that the radiator was mounted lower than the
engine and to help keep the engine cooler in the head area. The LT-1 is a
fantastic performance engine, but the reverse flow killed most of the
cars it was in. I've owned two, but I'd never buy another one.

 RW>> Suffice to say that everything there, is controlled by an OBD-I
 RW>> computer.

 RN> Which annoys me from time to time.

Not me. I think cars and computers go together like milk and chocolate
cake.

i.e. there's no other way to have your cake and eat it too, as in 325 rear
wheel HP and 25 mpg all in one package...

 RN> I yearn for the old days and my 1957 Bel Air, after I finished making
 RN> many changes to the engine.

Just think how much better that would have been with a computer to control
the air fuel ratio at all engine speeds.

 RN> That was a lot of work using hand tools.  I was surprised to learn
 RN> recently that Engle is still in business (I used their 3/4-race
 RN> camshaft).

3/4 race! Today they don't use such terms...they talk about duration,
lift, seperation degrees, etc.. I used a 3/4 race cam in the flathead I
built (above)... Don't ask me about the particulars though.

 RW>> That's there to hide the fact that the car was underpowered with
 RW>> such a small engine. :o) Or should I say, tiny.

 RN> Any engine that is over 250 HP is okay in my book.

HP is over-rated. Look at the torque specs and you can get a better idea
of how any given engine will perform. My Z28 engine makes 305hp to the
back wheels (that's about 345hp at the flywheel), but it also makes 325ft
lbs (about 375 at the flywheel) of torque at the back wheels. Meanwhile,
your factory rated 250hp 4.6L engine makes only 280ft lbs of torque at
the flywheel. Torque moves objects, HP keeps them moving.

 RW>> RN> I had a heck of a time finding the transmission dipstick.  It
 RW>> was a
 RW>> RN> couple of inches forward of the cowl on the right bank and tiny!

 RW>> Those are supposed to be color coded, so they stick out like a sore
 RW>> thumb.

 RN> It is, but it's about half the length of my little finger.  I think
 RN> it's yellow.

Yes, it's supposed to be yellow...and so should your engine oil dipstick.


                R\%/itt

Joy lives in the fight, in the attempt, in the suffering involved, not in
the victory itself.

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