Flathead and Nostalgia Drag Racing Links and Resources

 

My favorite places for flathead questions and discussion:

• Ford Flathead 1932 to 1953 This forum requires a simple signup to post messages, but anyone can read it. There are also links to a ton of really useful stuff.
• Ford Barn This link takes you to Ford Barn’s main page from which you can navigate to the forum and “Swap Meet.” There are sections for Model T, Model A, Early V8 (flatheads), and Late V8 (overhead valve) as well as a link to the H.A.M.B. for hot rodders.
• Flathead Ford Yahoo Discussion List Sign up and flathead discussions come right to your E-mail.

Flatheads on the Web

• Techno Source for the 1932 thru 1953 Flathead Ford A technical advice archive from the several flathead entities on the web. It keeps you from having to plow through all those issues that don't really have anything to do with whatever you are looking for.
• Ford Flathead V-8 History This site by Ed Mulligan is one of the first flathead sites and is still one of the most extensive. Good history of the motor despite a few errors. (I think I just felt the glass house rattle.) Definitely worth a visit.
• The Ford Flathead V-8 Bill Boogaart's flathead page is full of useful historical stuff like what color engines were painted in which years.
• The Early Ford V-8 Club of America Lots of folks prefer them stock.
• Roadsters Flathead Engines A section of a whole big hot rod, nostalgia, and so on site.
• Tom Teixeira's '35 pickup This site has grown a lot since I first listed it. Tom is hosting Ed Mulligan's site as well.
• Photos of cars belonging to some of the regulars at the Ford Flathead 1932 to 1953 forum 32tom maintains this frequently updated photo album.
• Lars Brandow's Web Page Lars is a Swedish flatheader who had an amazing collection of links to flathead info.  His links appear to be missing from his current page, but he does have some interesting projects, not all of which are flatheads.
• Flatlanders Hot Rod Club This is a Swedish car club that is flathead intensive. There is an interesting links page that includes many American web sites.
• Ford Flathead V8 Engine Homepage Mac VanPelt has done us all an amazing favor. This is a must visit site for drawings of flathead parts and assemblies, and IDs of vehicles.
• The H.A.M.B. The subject of this message board is traditional hot rods and that includes many flathead posts. It is part of the Jalopy Journal ezine.

Sources for Flathead Parts and Services on the Web

(Disclaimer - listing here does not necessarily imply my endorsement.)

• Red's Headers & Early Ford Speed Equipment A very good source for Ford flathead and Y-block stuff with an excellent reputation. Also a source for French flathead blocks.
• Roadrunner Engineering Joe Abbin quite literally wrote the book on blown flatheads. His excellent supercharger kit is no longer being made, but as of January 2011, he is still selling out his last run. His book "Blown Flathead" is still in print and is a wealth of information, especially for supercharged flatheads.
• Flat Attack Racing Products Flat Attack makes flathead tools and parts, featuring electronic fuel injection for the old girl.
• Speedway Motors An old established name that never quit selling flathead parts. Also home to Speedway Bill Smith's Flathead Museum.
• Motor City Speed Equipment Mark Kirby is back. No longer building engines for folks, he is supplying inovative parts, including a soon to be produced new block.
• Flat-O-Products Noted for their C4 to flathead transmission adaptor and other drive line parts.
• Tatom Custom Engines Pretty impressive engine building service and some custom made parts. Maybe you saw the article about flatheads and his shop in American Rodder. Not cheap. The website is mostly his telephone number these days.
• Capanna Co. Source for Sharp heads, transmission adaptors and other parts, including Wilcap main bearing caps.
• Vern Tardel Parts & Repair Been building flatheads and hot rods for years and years. With coauthor Mike Bishop, quite literally wrote the book on putting a flathead V8 in a Model A.
• Vintage Carburetion Technologies Inc.
• Vintage Speed Carburetors, manifolds, ignitions, and other stuff.
• Joe Smith Early Ford & Hot Rod
• Mac's Antique Auto Parts
• Patrick's Antique Cars They have been at it for a long time. Best known for Mallory products and recast Fenton headers.
• Dennis Carpenter Reproductions
• Vintage Auto Parts, Inc.
• Edelbrock Heads and intakes mostly.
• Schneider Racing Cams Still making them for flatheads.
• Isky On-Line A parts finder will take you to flathead cams with specs. Of course, Isky never quit making flathead cams either.
• Cunningham Rods (link no longer works) If you don't trust those skinny little flathead rods to take the beating from your very serious blower motor.
• Flatlander Racing Nestled among all the overhead stuff are flathead stroker kits and other parts.
• Midwest Early Ford Mostly restoration parts for 1928-1956 with a few speed parts thrown in. Been around since 1970 and show up at car shows with trailers full of parts.
• Where to Buy Parts for Your Flathead In the USA Bill Boogaart put together a pretty impressive list of links and suppliers.
• Where to Buy Parts for Your Flathead in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the British Isles Bill Boogaart's other list of links and suppliers. Both of these are pages from Bill's The Ford Flathead V8 web site (see Flatheads on the Web above)

Nostalgia Drag Racing Organizations

• Vintage Drag Racing Association Formerly The Flatheaders of Denver and Vintage Timing Association, this is the group that puts on the High Altitude Flathead/Inline Nationals and are the only association I know of that has a points series of flathead and inline drag races.
• ANRA That's the American Nostalgia Racing Association. A change of hands and some planning have brought this organization back to active status. At present it is strictly a West Coast thing, but there has been an attempt to get something going on the other side of the continent.
• Australian Nostalgia Drag Racers You think we only do nostalgia in North America? See what's going on in the other Oz.
• Inliners International Not strictly drag racing, but they do have drag races and classes. If you like your cylinders all lined up, overhead or flat, this group is for you.
• Mid-Atlantic Nostalgia Drag Racing Association This is a group to promote and participate in nostalgia racing in the Mid-Atlantic states.
• North East Timing Organization Just what you might think - nostalgia drag racing in the North East.
• Nostalgia Pro Comp Association A Midwestern and East Coast association of nostalgia cars running on indexes ranging from 7.00 through 11.00.

Nostalgia Drag Racing and High Performance Web Sites

• Drag Racing As I Did It and As I Saw It Norb Locke is a drag racing pioneer who raced flatheads from 1959 until 1965. There are some great photos of early cars here.
• Mart's Real Hot Rods Street rods and competition vehicles with the emphasis on flatheads and historic dry lakes and drag racing.
• The Kansas Badman Steve DeTar put this site together to share pictures and information about his dad, Funny Car pioneer Ted DeTar.
• Drag Racing Photos - Fuel Dragsters "We Did It For Love" Set aside a day or two to tour this huge historic drag racing site. To see the whole site you have to subscribe and it costs a little money.
• Standard 1320 The real deal for nostalgia drag racing.
• U.K. Drag Racing Nostalgia Website Another large UK nostalgia site.

Other Drag Racing and High Performance

• Kansas International Dragway You didn't think I'd leave off the ol' home track, did you? This is the former Wichita International Raceway.
• Automotive Calculations by Bowling & Grippo This is a very useful site for the racer or any other kind of automotive tinkerer. Want to figure the best gear ratio from your horsepower peak, tire diameter, and desired mile per hour?

Land Speed Racing

• Southern California Timing Association
• Utah Salt Flats Racing Association
• East Coast Timing Association
• Dry Lakes Racers of Australia Lake Gairdner, Australia

Other

• History of Automobile Racing, Cowley County Fairgrounds It isn't drag racing, but this history of a Kansas oval track is flathead intensive and really interesting.

Things in Print

Despite the online resources available these days, it is pretty hard to beat the published word as a source of information. What follows is a list of books, booklets, magazines and newsletters that might be of interest to flatheaders.

 

Flathead Facts

John Lawson

© 2008

Available from the author: John Lawson, 134 Flamingo Rd., Fitzgerald, GA 31750

John Lawson has been building high performance engines from Top Fuel to street rods for a lot of years. This is his comprehensive look at engine dynamics with fact-filled pages highlighting 400+ dyno tests. It features an in depth review of engines and components with what works, why it works, and how it works. If John wrote it, I believe it. No guesswork here. All tested.

Here is a link to the book’s electronic flyer.

Ford Flathead V-8 Builder's Handbook

Frank Oddo

© 1997

ISBN 1-55561-119-2

Published by Fisher Books, 4239 W. Ina Road, Suite 101, Tucson, AZ 85741

A comprehensive overview featuring stock and high-performance rebuilds. Includes much of a series of articles from a Street Rodder magazine series by the same author featuring Motor City Flathead. This is one of the few flathead books I regularly see in the automotive section of large chain bookstores.

 

The Complete Ford Flathead V8 Engine Manual

Ron Ceridono

© 1995

ISBN 1-884089-11-9

Co-published by CarTech, Inc., 11481 Kost Dam Rd., North Branch, MN 55056

and by Tex Smith Publishing, P.O. Box 726, Driggs, ID 83422

A comprehensive overview featuring stock and high-performance rebuilds. Several interviews with and articles by the greats of flathead high performance.

 

How to Build a Flathead Ford V-8

George McNicholl

© 2003

ISBN 0-7603-1493-4

MBI Publishing Company, 380 Jackson Street, Suite 200, St. Paul, MN 55101-3885

The author shows three basic styles of flathead engines and features Luke's Custom Machine & Design in North Vancouver, BC, Canada. This book has some information I haven't seen in other books, like how to build an Ardun, and has an interesting slant to it.

Flathead Fever

Mike Davidson

First Edition © 1995, Second Edition © 1996

ISBN 0 949398 96 9

Published by Graffiti Publications Pty. Lit., 69 Forest Street, Castlemain, Victoria, Australia

This book is about hot rodding the flathead, although it does have a certain amount of basic information. Contains reports of Mike's flow bench testing.

 

Street Flathead

Mike Davidson

© 1998

ISBN 0 949398 95 9

Published by Graffiti Publications Pty. Lit., 69 Forest Street, Castlemain, Victoria, Australia

Mike's second book about hot rodding the flathead. Don't let the title fool you - lots of information of interest to the competition oriented flatheader, too. Contains some very interesting flow measurements for various heads. Also features a number of aftermarket products.

 

Flathead Tuning Manual

Mike Davidson

© 2004

ISBN 0 949398 03 9

Mike’s third book featuring some of his newer parts and dyno tests. I like hard data.

 

Nostalgia

Ron Holleran

© 1992

No ISBN number

Self published by the Author, Ron Holleran, RR2, Box 241, Chester VT 05143

Ron spent a lot of years building flatheads for circle track racing. Then he built a flow bench and discovered lots of interesting things. Loaded with hot rodding techniques and opinions for street and competition engines. Having reached out of print status, a recent reprint with some updates has been available through the MSN flathead message board. I don’t know if these are still available, but try here for info.

 

Blown Flathead

Joseph P. Abbin, P.E.

© 1998, 2^nd Edition © 2000

ISBN 1-8800047-64-0, 2^nd Edition ISBN 1-880047-81-0

Published by Creative Designs, Inc., 11024 Montgomery NE, Suite 311, Albuquerque, NM 87111

Roadrunner Engineering

Reports on flow work and other aspects of flathead performance make this book useful even if you never intend to add a blower. You can see Joe's car at the top of this linked page.

 

Rebuilding the Famous Ford Flathead

Ron Bishop

© 1981

ISBN 0-8306-2066-4 for the paperback version.

Published by TAB Books, a division of McGraw-Hill, Inc.

Primarily a stock rebuild guide, but with lots and lots of good "how to" information.

 

Thunder Road Flathead

Bill Sinclair

Original Edition © 1989, but revised several times since.

ISBN 09631350 2 3

Published by Thunder Road Motor Works Inc., P.O. Box 1242, Hudson, NY 12534

Besides the engine itself, this book goes a little further beyond with subjects like 12 volt conversion, PCV valves, electric windshield wiper conversion and the like. I don't have the latest revision (shame on me), but I understand it is expanded over the 1993 edition I have.

 

Thunder Road Electrical Guide

Bill Sinclair

I don't have this one (shame on me again), but it is by the author of Thunder Road Flathead. I understand it answers those nagging questions about converting from 6 Volt to 12 Volt systems and more.

 

How to Build a Traditional Ford Hot Rod

Mike Bishop & Vern Tardel

© 1998

ISBN (couldn't find one)

Published by Mike Bishop Communications, 921 Saracen Road, Santa Rosa, CA 95401

This book tells how the authors built a Model A-V8 street rod. There is a chapter on the flathead engine with some helpful suggestions.

 

Flathead Doctrine

Ray Seidel

No copyright notice, but I estimate it being assembled in about 1997 or 1998

No ISBN number

Published by the author as loose sheets in a binder. Ray Seidel, Vintage Motor Works, 7050 6th Street, White City, OR 97503

This is a thought provoking piece. Notions on coatings (which the author sells), porting, heads, spark plug location, rod ratios, and more. I don't agree with everything he puts forth, but I certainly haven't put the time in on my notions that he has on his. You can see his car at the bottom of this linked page.

 

Souping the Stock Engine

Roger Huntington

© 1950

How to Hop Up Ford and Mercury V8 Engines

Roger Huntington

© 1951

Ford Speed Manual

Fred W. "Bill" Fisher

© 1952

All three of the books listed above have been republished by Fisher Books, 4239 W. Ina Road, Suite 101, Tucson, AZ 85741

These are the classics of flathead speed. Although advances in technology have made some of the information presented obsolete, there is still a wealth of knowledge in them. If nothing else, they chronicle the reign of flatheads at their height of popularity. Bill Fisher's book is the only one I have ever seen that covers the Ford flathead six in any kind of detail. I recommend getting all three.

 

Full Race Flathead V8

Hot Ignition Tips

Gear-Torque

Jerry Hagens

© 1981

All three of the booklets are published by the author, produced and distributed through Midnight Graphics Advertising Agency which is a division of Speedway Motors, Inc., 300 Speedway Circle, P.O. Box 81906, Lincoln, NE 68501-9896. I have never seen them offered outside of the Speedway catalog.

These booklets contain some really good information, but you wouldn't want them as your only flathead guides. The Gear-Torque booklet deals with the '32-'48 rear ends and any of the transmissions with the early bolt pattern.

 

How To Build A Flathead Ford V-8

George McNicholl

© 2003

ISBN 0-7603-1493-4

Published by MBI Publishing Company, 380 Jackson Street, Suite 200, St. Paul, MN 55101-3885 USA

This book and another title by the same author that I have not seen are among the more recent flathead books written. It takes the reader through a rebuild of three styles of flatheads, including an Ardun overhead valve conversion. There is emphasis on Luke’s Custom Machine & Design in North Vancouver, BC, Canada.

 

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