Bill Baka wrote:
Geary Morton wrote:
In article ,
wrote:
Side valve/flathead engines for cars went out of favor in the 1950s.You
can buy an old Rolls Royce/Bentley car in UK for about 5,000 British
pounds money.It will cost that much money, or more, each year just to
keep the thing going.
Ask the Brits about that if you don't believe me.
I need to yank the circuit breakers and get back to working in my
attic.I need to remove a couple of junction boxes in my attic so I can
put down some plywood in those areas.
cuhulin
Studebaker had a flathead six in 1960. I know because there was one
in my 1960 Lark.
--Geary
Rambler made a flathead six until about 1963 or 1964. We bought a house
in 1963 and the neighbor was showing us his shiny new Rambler with a
very obvious flathead six. It ran good and he was perfectly happy with
it. One of the reasons flatheads got a bad rap was they would not wind
One of the reasons flatheads had a bad rap was they had one hell of a
bad combustion chamber shape. Way too much surface area hence too much
heat loss. Smooth they were, efficient they weren't. If you want
combustion efficiency, then a hemispherical (hemi) chamber is the way to
go with at least 4 valves per cylinder and the spark plug as central as
it can get. Minimise flame propagation distance so avoiding detonation
at higher compression ratios. Throw a good bit of swirl into the
combustion chamber to get that fuel well and truly mixed with air and
properly vapourised. Then you have yourself a powerhouse.
like an overhead. They all had over 4" strokes, so duh..., no 7K RPM.
It turns out that high RPM is good for power but sucks for mileage.
High RPM is good for BHP at the expense of torque. The poor fuel mileage
is purely due to inefficiencies.
Ramblers in the 60's were actually good cars, but economy was not the
priority in the 60's.
Now we have over-winding 4 bangers trying to make up the power gap.
So explain to me how these "overwinding 4 bangers" crap all over the
"old" detroit iron in the performance stakes!
Bill Baka
Piston speed is THE defining factor in all of the above. Higher RPM
equals more power strokes in a given time frame. Long stroke engines
have a piston speed that is far too high when wound up around 7k RPM.
Remember, that piston is reciprocating, not just going in the one
direction. Usually this results in catastrophic engine failure when
piston speed exceeds sensible limits. Cut down the stroke and you keep
the piston speed reasonable at the expense of torque. Appropriate
gearing and more gear ratios compensates for the lack of torque. My
current daily drive is a five speed and its fifth gear is NOT an
overdrive. It's high revving 1800 cc 4 banger that pumps out 100KW and
it's as stock as the day it came out of the factory. The sports models
get 50% better power and still remain street drivable.
Sure isn't like my younger days when we were into street rods that were
barely street drivable. Sounded good though! ;-)
Left all that behind in the 70's and got into shortwave for the first
time. This was mainly because I was in and out of the country so much in
that era that I didn't have time for cars any more.
Krypsis