New block

[Yoyodyne]

Originally Posted by aonemarine

So a guy looking to build a hot rod goes out and buys himself an 8ba core motor complete carb to pan for $800.00. Tears it down and sends it to the machine shop where it is cleaned and maged only to find out it is cracked. OK so at this point he is down about 1k.
What to do now? Buy another core and repeat process with fingers crossed? find a good used block if lucky enough for 700.00 and still have to invest into reconditioning it?? Or buy a new machined block and take the guessing out of the equation? Pretty simple answer. By offering a new fully machined block you take the guess work out of what it would cost to build one and remove the risk of getting buried in a pile of junk cracked blocks.

Here's a real world example, mine. I needed a block for my 36 PU when the one in it lost a babbit main bearing. I don't want to swap a later style engine in, I really want to keep the water pumps in the heads to keep it relatively stock looking. So I started searching for the holy grail of blocks, the 36LB 21 stud block which was the last year of pump in head blocks and the first of insert bearings, used in late 36 models. I bought 6 engines looking for good blocks and finally had to settle for a 37-38 block and use block off plates for the water pump holes in order to use my pump heads. Each engine cost a few hundred dollars, varying length trips to acquire, then each required a full day or more of hard messy work to get apart, some worse than others, then a trip out of town to get it cleaned and magnafluxed. some even require a torch to get apart, and usually it takes a half day to clean the shop up afterward. The bill for hot tanking and magnafluxing can be from $250 to $400 depending on the condition of the greasy POS that I drop off. And another trip to inspect and retrieve it afterward. All 6 were junk for one reason or another. I have WAY over $4K in scrap cast iron for 2 years of scrounging. I finally bought a good 37-38 block from a Ford Barner for $500 and added $200 to ship it to me. Then had it magnafluxed again here just to be sure. Then lots of time to pull the head studs out of the block, and remove the broken pieces of the studs that didn't come out in one piece. Now I go on to cleaning the waterjackets, digging out the foundry sand left from the Rouge plant, and removing the scale and rust from years of straight water and sitting empty in the winter with acid, all the while hoping I don't find a water leak that didn't show up in magnafluxing as a crack, so then go on to pressure testing. Now I'm ready to convert the oil passages to 95% filtering - After getting that %^^&* oil passage plug out of the rear of the main galley.

NOW I'm ready to bore, hone, grind seats, scrub, check head gasket surfaces for flatness, the mains for straightness, etc, etc,etc.
I'm relatively new to flatheads but I've been building restoring and racing since the late '60s. I own a machine shop that mfgs. driveline parts and does job shop work, so I'm able to do a lot of my own work. All that time spent on junk blocks was time I could have been charging customers or making product. $2500 for a block I could use with a bit of machine work would have been the biggest bargain I've had in years.


As the supply of old junk engines dwindles further and the cost of rebuilding them increases your block will only get more valuable and desirable.

On the subject of what to make, it seems to me the 59A blocks are more desired for rodders, because they fit better in pre-49 cars, including model A swaps.

When It seemed I'd never find a good 21 stud block I considered using a 59A style block and adapting the early heads somehow. Poking around in a 24 stud block revealed that the stud holes have a cast boss on the underside of the block deck to provide longer threads for the studs, so that meant I couldn't just redrill a block. If it did have the thickness where it was needed, it would have been doable, there were no water holes that conflicted IIRC. I considered building 24 stud heads that accepted water pumps, during that time I found that Willy Glass had in fact done that by modifying Edelbrock heads. About then I found the good block I have now so I didn't go any further.

So - if you build a 59a block and leave material in the deck to allow drilling for the 21 stud pattern, that would expand your potential market to the earlier car folks who want to drive their early cars. it would give them a block that could be bored much larger than the 3.188" that the 37 is limited to, and would accept a longer 4"+ stroke crank all in new insert bearings instead of scrounging for NOS bearing shells for the early cranks.