Two flathead engines from 1936 are sitting on Ed Smith’s bench: a Dodge six and an early Ford V8. Same era, similar size (217 cu in vs 221 cu in), same basic side-valve/flathead/L-head, and two very different machines to work on.
Ed has rebuilt plenty of both, and in the newest episode of In the BTG Shop he walks me through what made one of them a whole lot easier to live with.
On the Dodge side, Ed shows where a little brass tube hides behind the water pump and sprays coolant right at the valves. The owner’s manual said to pull it and replace it every two years, and he once found a truck that didn’t have one at all. You’ll also see how Dodge expected you to adjust the valves with the engine running, and why the oil pump and the distributor turn on the same long shaft.
On the Ford side, things get complicated. The main bearings aren’t inserts. They’re Babbitt, poured right into the block, so you can’t even put the block through a cleaning oven without melting them. Then there are the floating rod bearings, two rods sharing one bearing, at about $600 a set today. And Ed points out the block drain that almost nobody knew was there, which is why so many of these blocks froze and cracked.
So which one wins? Ed doesn’t hedge: the Dodge six was “about as simple as you can get.”
Short on time? Eight quick clips from this episode run as YouTube Shorts every morning starting today, one engine detail at a time.
Got a Dodge or Ford flathead story of your own? Hit reply. I read every one, and the good questions go to Ed.
See you in the garage,
Barry T
Ed is retired and works on his own projects. He shares how he does things and what he likes; it is not advice.