Hi, i recently buy this flathead engine in France (Le Mans town). the two v8 cylinder heads are engrave EAC mercury usa with 24 studs (8 lower studs) . so it's for me a Mercury 1951 - 1953, ......but: the flathead date code is not describe like in the www.vanpeltsales.com pages : - near the right cylinder head with the number 3 , letters B & E ...no line up and a 8 in a circle square. - near the left cylinder head, the complete number: 68001PSCAL and a little far the number 7.. ?... in a circle square. At the rear of the engine, near the bellhousing: B1891. The carburator is a ZENITH 32 NDXIR like on the french army flathead, perhaps a repair change; what's the original carburator. this engine was on a vintage coca-cola business car ..destroyed since!! if somebody can help me to confirme the idenfification of this engine and what is exactly is the manufacturing date. what clutch & transmission can i adapt on it. thanks in advance for your answer. sincerelly. Jean Phi http://i207.photobucket.com/albums/bb56/jeanphispectrex/specificationsEAC4.jpg http://i207.photobucket.com/albums/bb56/jeanphispectrex/specificationsEAC3.jpg http://i207.photobucket.com/albums/bb56/jeanphispectrex/specificationsEAC6.jpg http://i207.photobucket.com/albums/bb56/jeanphispectrex/specificationsEAC1.jpg http://i207.photobucket.com/albums/bb56/jeanphispectrex/specificationsEAC2.jpg http://i207.photobucket.com/albums/bb56/jeanphispectrex/specificationsEAC5.jpg
Externally it looks like a Merc. Don't know about the carb but the heads and water pumps are definitely Merc. Here is a site I found with info on the date code, I don't think what you have is readable for the date code: http://flatheaddrag.com/birthday.html
Yeah, other than the carb, it looks to me like any other late flathead to me...Is the bellhousing similar to other flatheads?
Hi MN Falcon & The Press thanks for your help & the flathead link. effectily the birthday code is not the same. it's seems regulary with Mercury engine, which have ID number give by the california D.M.V. (68 001 PSCAL) for a replacement engine as Ford didn't have serial number engine on them. My engine seems to be a 1CM from 1951, but why it have EAC cylinder heads 1952-1953? that what i don't found For the carburator it's a french repair change (it's the classic carburator of the french army flathead, 356 porsche other some other french cars). anyway, i tried to find now what are the original bellhousing, clutche & transmission, cause i don't have them. Can you give my some informations about? thanks again, sincerelly yours Jean Phi
Now that you have the motor, and have narrowed down the year to 49 to 53,and you know it is a Merc, the exact year makes no difference. Bell housings, flywheels, clutches are easy to find, and there are several choices for transmissions.
I guess the first thing to remind you is that on those flatheads almost all of the parts are interchangeable. The EAC heads could either be just what was available during a rebuild or intentional as the owner was looking for that little more compression that those heads had over the 1CM (of course looking at the heads they would have been better off with the EAB heads if it was a performance thing). As you said the owner put other things on the motor to make it run better with less problems. Note it has an alternator and not a generator. Over all the Merc and Ford blocks are identical. There were a couple of bolt on differences, intake, heads and water pumps, but the main thing that people want is the Merc crank. Ford has a 3-3/4" stroke and Merc has a 4" stroke. Since Ford wanted the compression to be similar between the engines the Mercs had a greater head volume (and the last major difference then is the pistons, the wrist pin location was higher on the Merc). You will not know for sure if it is a Merc until you pull the heads off and measure the stroke. Since the actual Ford and Merc blocks are the same, I can say for sure that any Ford or Merc V8 bell housing and transmission from '49-'53 (I guess overseas you might find '54 flatheads also and they will work) car or truck (the '48 trucks used the same block so you can use that setup also). I don't have the experience to know if other bell housings can be adapted to the flathead, hopefully someone else with that experience will chime in, but I know that people are putting the Ford C4 auto behind the flatheads. Ultimately, your choice for bell and trans will need to be based on what you want to do with the motor. By mixing different flathead parts you can put the motor in front of almost any flathead V8 trans. As I said with the right bell you can adapt the C4 auto or a number of other manual transmissions like the the modern T5 (that is a popular adaptation so parts and info are readily available. Any flathead V8 flywheel will bolt on. Again the flywheel choice should be made on the application, I think the big differences there are that the cars generally used a 10" clutch disk and the trucks used an 11" disk so the holes for the pressure plate are different. Do you have plans for the motor yet?
Can someone help me identify my engine as well? (hope it's ok that i borrow your thread Jean!) Sorry for the crappy pictures, but this is what they say: The serial number is *2111804* I also found "H1" on the block At the rear end of the block it says "54 48 and H2" I was told this is a french flathead but after searching the web i'm not sure.. Thanks!
That looks more like a german flathead than french based solely on the rear-mounted distributor & big timing pointer on the front (water pumps look different than the one I saw a while ago & probably were changed to mount in car)
OK, thanks Ernie! Do you have more information on the german flatheads? Is it built the same way so i can use american flathead parts? I've never even heard about german flatheads, but i think it comes from a german truck so your probably right...
For sure!? Or is that a Germans point of view? Do anyone have links to good sites regarding german flatheads? It's more than welcome... Could not find much in my two minutes of "google'ing"... Edit: who need google? http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/search.php?searchid=2657984 Thank u guys!
Take it from a guy who has German, French and American Flathead blocks. German block : Good casting and big ports already(french have small ports) All American Flathead (speed) parts fit. Michael
Yes, been up all night reading about german flatheads on the web so now i know a little bit more about them! First i studied the american version, then the french and last but not least since i ended up with a german engine i had to go through all of it again Thank God the engines are so similiar to eachother! Do anyone of you "german flatheaders" have a good tip of books regarding only german engines? I want to restore it as original as possible, and also i have the gearbox from the same car, but it's stuck so some litterature regarding theese as well is more than welcome! Thanks again!
O.K. I´m not gonna tell the whole story because it´s too long.The Ford company in Germany was found in 1925 in Berlin, later they moved to cologne. You could also buy a german manufactured 1932 3wd Coupe at the Ford Dealer.Those were the same as the US Fords. Unfortunateley there are no books about this great german flathead engine but you can get owners manuals,shop manuals or repair books from the trucks they were built in. There´s a good website about the ford history in germany and of course a lot of informations and specs about the engines. http://website.webcenter.lycos.de/www.fomcc.de/start.htm The G398SAM Truck was used in the military after ww2. There were also the civilian trucks like "Ruhr" and "Rhein" the official name was FK (Ford Köln) 3500 The german Flathead V8 was built until summer 1961 ! this is mine
That's a real beauty!!! Thanks I guess i was lucky buying this engine after all. I also have the original truck-tranny but it's stuck. Hopefully i can find parts for restoring but that's my secound project. Please keep posting good links and litterature tips about restoration of both engine and tranny.
The Rocketeer mounted American 39-48 heads on his Flathead. You see the original ones in the background(8BA style) Engine looks great Chris !!!!
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