Quick overhaul of 37 Ford Flathead 85HP
I doing a quick overhaul of the 37 Ford flathead v8 in my 36 woodie. I am putting in new rings and rod bearings with the motor in the car. the compression was pretty good at about 110 psi with no hole more than 5 psi different from the rest. It didn't smoke and started and ran pretty good. However, the engine was having excessive blowby of engine vapor out of the oil filler tube.
Here is my 36 woodie up on the lift. It has a 37 motor in it. Many pre-37 Fords have had the motor replaced with one 37 or newer because they have insert bearings while the earlier ones have poured babbit bearings more difficult to replace. Note the 40 Ford wheels, I've done many updates including putting in a Mitchell overdrive. I put those on so I could get front disc brakes. The rear brakes are MT Car Products bendix brakes with new drums. The car is in primer with most work done except final painting with the 36 Ford easter color, bambalino blue as seen on the firewall. It is a loud, wild color to me but this is supposed to be a fun car that makes you smile!
The lift is a MaxJax designed for lower ceilings. It can lift the car up about 4 feet, plenty of room for most work.
Here is my 36 woodie up on the lift. It has a 37 motor in it. Many pre-37 Fords have had the motor replaced with one 37 or newer because they have insert bearings while the earlier ones have poured babbit bearings more difficult to replace. Note the 40 Ford wheels, I've done many updates including putting in a Mitchell overdrive. I put those on so I could get front disc brakes. The rear brakes are MT Car Products bendix brakes with new drums. The car is in primer with most work done except final painting with the 36 Ford easter color, bambalino blue as seen on the firewall. It is a loud, wild color to me but this is supposed to be a fun car that makes you smile!
The lift is a MaxJax designed for lower ceilings. It can lift the car up about 4 feet, plenty of room for most work.
First step is to remove the heads and oil pan. The front of the motor had to be raised about 3 inches to get the pan out.
A ridge reamer is used to shave off the ridge at the top of the cylinder wall. The ridges were small. Once I got the pistons out I measured them and the rod journals. To my surprise both were standard. About half the valves look original with the Ford logo on them. I measured the ring end gap and it was more than the minimum of 0.012. The end gap at the bottom of the cylinder was about 0.025 which indicates about 0.003 cylinder wear. Oversize pistons are 0.010. The rings had some wear. Rings, rod bearings, and gasket set cost about $300.
I was careful to mark the front side of the rod and end cap with a file so I could put them back in the same hole, in pairs, and to the front.
These are the old rings
I took out the old rings and used a broken ring to clean the carbon out of the ring grooves, quite a tedious process but necessary.
Cleaned ring grooves and old rod bearings
New ring set
New oil rings installed. They are a different design than what I took out. You have to be careful to see both colors on the spacer for the oil rings.
A ring compressor allows the piston to be inserted into the cylinder wall.
I found a NORS set of standard rod bearing. The bearings had some small specs of hard material on them due to their age. They must be old as they are marked $2.20 per bearing pair! I took some 1500 grit sandpaper and polished the bearings smooth taking off very little bearing material. 1500 grit is a very fine grit. Also pictured is the engine assembly lube I put the motor together with.
I got a 240 grit flexhone to deglaze the cylinder walls along with some honing oil. Flexhones come in different sizes to fit different bores.
A piston with a ring compressor used to allow it to be inserted into the cylinder.
Here is one of the new rod bearings. In the 85hp Ford, two rods per rod bearing.
The rod end cap installed. The rod nuts I took out were castle nuts with cotter keys. The nuts were very tight and difficult to remove even with an impact wrench. I replaced them with modern self locking rod nuts torqued to 45 ft-lbs.
Head installed. The 37 motor has the water pumps low as part of the front motor mounts. A 36 motor has the water pumps as part of the head. Also shown is the electronic temperature sensor I installed.
Gasket set including head gasket