Ford Flathead Manual Cooling Tip

[Flathead Fever]

I was going through some of my Early Ford literature and I ran across this Flathead rebuilding manual. This is a great little factory shop manual for rebuilding the Ford flathead, lots of good photos. I see these on ebay all the time, if you don't have one I would pick one up.

One of the things it mentions is having to modify earlier heads to fit a 59A block and modifying earlier heads for better cooling (see photos).

[19Fordy]

That is very interesting. Thanks.

[Bruce Lancaster]

If you read that, you will note that the old trapezoid-hole gakets, still sold by some places even for later engines

[Bruce Lancaster]

...are utterly obsolete fro even the prewar applications, which are to be redrilled for the 59 type. People are still buying them, and catalogs are offering them without application info.

[Coupe35]

Can not make out the pictures very well, but if it talks about enlargeing the 2 middle holes, I tried that and I could not tell any difference in the cooling.

[ken ct]

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Ford also put out a red cover one on fuel systems and one on electrical componants yellow cover and a black cover one on trany an rear ends.I have them all. ken ct. I think the fuel one is the hardest to find.Ive never seen another one but the one i have.

[Old Henry]

The difference would not show up on the tempreature gauge. I just cools the heads better.

[Bruce Lancaster]

Fuel System, Generator and Starter, transmissions and overdrives, 4, 6, 8, and 12 cylinder engine overhaul books (4 is N type), 8 cylinder is around in 3 or 4 updates I have not really compared.
One of the books lists and gives form numbers for ignition, passenger rear axle, and front end and steering books...but I have never seen those in 40 years of hunting and neither has any other collector I have met, and I do not believe they were ever actually released.
They go nicely with '46 Service manuals. I have found Canadian versions of several of these books.
I also found a small roughly 4 inch thick Ford binder, marked in gold "Ford manuals, operator, service repair" over oval logos...it holds the whole bunch, a stack of '40's owner manuals, and the service volumes nicely and was probably made for this set. Ford didn't publish much else in this size.

[Flathead Fever]

Originally Posted by Coupe35

Can not make out the pictures very well, but if it talks about enlargeing the 2 middle holes, I tried that and I could not tell any difference in the cooling.

I tried scanning just the picture of the heads and gaskets at 800X600 dpi so the pictures should show up bigger for you.

[bobscogin]

I'll soon be installing the heads on my '42 Merc "99" with 29A heads. This block has the trapezoidal upper and lower holes in the deck, but the center one is round. What mods do I have to do to these heads to work with the later head gaskets? Drilled as shown in this thread, or different?

Bob

[jerry grayson]

Originally Posted by Bruce Lancaster

Fuel System, Generator and Starter, transmissions and overdrives, 4, 6, 8, and 12 cylinder engine overhaul books (4 is N type), 8 cylinder is around in 3 or 4 updates I have not really compared.
One of the books lists and gives form numbers for ignition, passenger rear axle, and front end and steering books...but I have never seen those in 40 years of hunting and neither has any other collector I have met, and I do not believe they were ever actually released.
They go nicely with '46 Service manuals. I have found Canadian versions of several of these books.
I also found a small roughly 4 inch thick Ford binder, marked in gold "Ford manuals, operator, service repair" over oval logos...it holds the whole bunch, a stack of '40's owner manuals, and the service volumes nicely and was probably made for this set. Ford didn't publish much else in this size.

Bruce
I have some of these books also and the one that covers "repair manual Ford and Mercury V8 engines" says on the inside second page that "this book is one of a series of eleven illustrated repair manuals etc". I do not have all eleven and have never seen all of them. I do have a thick binder like you describe that has same size books for 1958 through 1960.
I have never seen the fuel system manual.

[Bruce Lancaster]

Fuel system manual (I have Canadian and USA) gives you nothing much that isn't in the Service Bulletin overhaul pages, so you are missing a collectible but not actual information.
I am well nigh certain the the books I don't have were never published...I've talked with Ford paper nuts even crazier than myself, and all agree they are not around.
The others were quite common 20 years ago. I think V8, V12, and transmission ones are the only ones reproduced.

[jdl]

Larger size.......jdl