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!?
>
>
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