Thanks for the info. Just goes to prove, you can
learn something new every day, no matter how far
over the hill you get.
Dick J
--- John Linville <bellytk@nh.ultranet.com>
wrote:
> No, there is a guy here in New Hampshire, Reg
> Bernier, who built a 3 1/2 by
> 4 1/2 flathead a couple of years ago. I
> believe that was 346" if I remember
> correctly. He bought the 1/2" stroker crank
> off the west coast and used
> sleeves to achieve the bore. He unfortunately
> used a Devcon aluminum
> product, which incidently the factory
> recommended, to fill the block and
> had some nasty thermal expansion differences
> that led to a meltdown! He was
> running Kong heads and only carried water in
> the heads. I was there at New
> England Dragway when he fired it for the first
> time running the push truck
> for him. It was a 130" FED. He staged the car
> and took off but it began to
> slow down through the quarter mile as,
> unbeknownst to him, the bore was
> decreasing due to jacket filler expansion.
> Actually melted some of the
> piston lands on the Ross pistons! Talk about a
> guy whose world collapsed.
> Reg is a retired house painter who has been
> running FEDs since the days of
> Charleston, RI and Orange, MA in the fifties.
> He and his brother, Ed along
> with Roger Bacon used to run a top fuel car in
> New England. Anyway that is
> the biggest flathead I have ever seen up close
> and personal. He had a spare
> set of Ross pistons and sold the whole shebang
> to Dick Kinsalis out on Cape
> Cod who purchased our FED, sans flathead, two
> years ago when we got our
> Anglia and plans to rebuild this big motor
> with another block and the right
> block filler and run it. Should be
> interesting. Another popular
> combination was a 4 1/8 stroker which was an
> offset welded/ground factory
> crank that took the 59AB connecting rod
> bearings with a 3 7/16 bore. You
> could get blocks to go that far but certainly
> not for street use. This is a
> 306" motor. There was an early car from Rhode
> Island running this size
> motor on the nostalgia circuit with us a few
> years ago.
>
> regards, John (flatheads are kool)
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Dick J <lsr_man@yahoo.com>
> To: land-speed@autox.team.net
> <land-speed@autox.team.net>
> Date: Monday, February 21, 2000 9:14 AM
> Subject: Flathead question
>
>
> >For years I thought that the 286 and 296
> >configurations were the biggest you could go
> with
> >a flathead, then this weekend, re-reading
> through
> >last year's Bonneville program, I noticed that
> >the Pappas/Stevens XF roadsster is running a
> 314
> >flathead. How'd they do that? I though that
> >would get into the water jacket.
> >
> >=====
> >.............................
> >..........Dick J.............
> >......(In East Texas)........
> >....FX/GMR SC/P250-2........
> >.....Shelby 427 Cobra.......
> >.Hemis and Flatheads Forever.
> >.............................
> >Do You Yahoo!?
> >
> >
>
>
Do You Yahoo!?
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