[GOSFAST]

Maybe I can help a bit with some numbers. The following info is from the ride in my signature below here. Also placed 2 shots below!

My very good friend Ron House, owner of this ride, a '50 Merc convertible, recently passed away. I first met him when I belonged to the Ford/Merc club in my avatar! He was the president of the club at the time, probably around 1975?

At the time we did the dyno testing back in August 2010 Ronnie hadn't recieved his tri-power setup yet from Clive at Stromberg but wanted to get the ride going. I wasn't aware who Clive was back then or that he was connected to the Stromberg carb company! So he decided to supply us with an Offenhauser 4-brl intake and a Holley 390 CFM carb for the test. The build dynoed at 154+ HP @ 4300 and 264# Torque @ 2200 at the flywheel.

After having the ride and enjoying it for a couple months he finally received the intake/carb setup and had his guy install it and set it all up. Up to that point he was extremely happy with the power and couldn't believe how the ride felt? He was an excellent judge of power and although this was just his own estimate he felt as though he had picked up about another 15/20 HP from the new tri-power carb setup! Remember, this just being an estimate, if correct, this would have put him around 170/175 HP. And down the road from these gains there was still a bit more to come thanks to Clive once again. Ronnie had Clive build him another center carb, a bit larger, and Ronnie said he again felt the difference in power, although not quite the same amount, but still more.

Over the years all the N/A Flatheads we've tested end up between 140 and 175 HP depending largely on the cubic-inch AND the other chosen components.

I will add this, just about every one had Ross pistons with some lighter ring packs, originally 1/16"-1/16"-3/16" and now today all get the metric rings, 1.5, 1.5, and 3.0 on the oil rings! All are "moly" top rings!

(Add) Ronnie couldn't praise Clive enough, they became very close over the past few years! I have all the info here on this build, every part we used and every "mod" we did!

Thanks, Gary in N.Y.

P.S. Just a little side note connected to this story. This all began with another of Ronnie's friends (Ray) around mid 2009 initially asking me to build Ronnie's Flathead, I told him I just couldn't fit in any Flatheads at that time, I believed that was the end of the story at least for me doing Ronnies build! Well, low and behold I get a phone call in October 2009 from Ronnie. He was at Kennedy Airport and was coming by just to say "hello". He had just flown in from California, rented a ride at the airport, and wanted to stop by. Had no clue what was coming?? He informed me he wanted us to do the build for certain, one way or another. He explained he had flown out to another (major) builder on the west coast to see about his build, was totally "turned-off" after a rather lengthy discussion with them. He didn't really say why, only that they would never build him a Flathead, period. The rest is now history and the ride has over 40,000 miles on at this stage! Have no idea what will become of the ride now, it's all up to his family??