Story by Phil “Murilee Martin” Greden • Photography Courtesy the 24 Hours of Lemons
Many racers believe (incorrectly) that you need lots of fancy overhead cams on your engine to compete properly in road racing. Somewhat wiser racers prefer overhead-valve engines, with the cam located safely inside the block, but what about those complicated rockers and other failure-prone gadgetry bulking …
Right, they were so restricted that you could drive them flat out for a long time without hurting anything.
Ask me how I Know.
I've been dreaming of a flathead Ford project recently. Probably because so many model cars came with them, in various forms.
Has a flathead ever appeared at the Challenge? If not, who is going to be the first? Where the heck can I find one for Challenge money?
I looked at them for the challenge. It would be do-able but I didn't see a way to make them competitive.
When Bad Decisions acquired that '48 Plymouth since I had helped them with their earlier builds and did so with this one. Some day you may see that engine again at a Lemons race but in a different vehicle. The '48 currently sports a supercharged 3.8L Buick V6.
Some info on the Chrysler flathead engine. It was used in some versions of the Sherman tank of WWII. The engine was called the "Chrysler Multibank".
Five I6 engines sharing a common crankcase. It made 450 HP and weighed nearly 5,000 lbs! Most of the tanks so equipped were given to the British as the US Army had the radial engine version and knew that the Ford GAA V8 version was coming soon so it didn't want to complicate it parts & repair problems with still another tank engine.
YouTube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4sUbtEE8I-g
The French military actually continued building brand-new Ford Flathead V8s, with some improvements like stronger blocks and a better oiling system, up into the '90s for use in generators and vehicles due to the reduced amount of parts to fail during continuous operation.
In reply to NickD :
Not all flatheads came in American cars.
my beloved Jaguar V12 is the true definition of a flat head. No combustion chamber in the head. Not even a trace of one. 
In reply to frenchyd :
A flathead engine, also known as a sidevalve engine[1][2] or valve-in-block engine is an internal combustion engine with its poppet valves contained within the engine block, instead of in the cylinder head, as in an overhead valve engine.
In reply to frenchyd :
That's a "plank head", like a Chevy 348/309 or a GMC big V6 or a Ford MEL engine, not a flathead. A flathead has the valves in the block, with a slight combustion chamber and a pathway to feed from the valves to the cylinders.
Also, I wasn't saying that all flatheads were American. I was just saying that the French loved the Ford flathead design so much, that they reverse-engineered it from equipment that we left over there during WWII and then continued to build a near carbon coby some 40 years after Ford turned the last one out.
In reply to NickD :
We can have a fun but worthless debate about what a true Flathead is. But I'm reasonably sure a Chevy 348/409 has a combustion chamber in the head. Let me see if I can find a picture of one.
oK I found one and the valves are slightly recessed into the heads. With a relief around them. I guess I'll give you that.
This isn't really a debate, you just wanted to talk about Jaguar again.
In reply to pres589 (djronnebaum) :and what do you know I learned something. Americans call flatheads planked heads ( British call them Hurron heads) And flatheads have combustion chambers ( well, I knew that)
so flatheads aren't flat. Hurron heads are called planked. And we are all doing this for fun
The overall height of a Flathead head is very short (2-3" or so ), especially compared to any overhead valve engine. They have a relatively flat appearance on the outside,especially when they are compared side by side to OHV engines. Most people never see the inside so why would you use combustion chamber as the name, except for the Hemi engines of course, and maybe a few others.
Two Stroke.........the ultimate flat head engine.
I always wanted to work on one. Now that I have, I am happy that I wont.
Tom1200 said:Two Stroke.........the ultimate flat head engine.
Except for the ones with intake valves in the heads!
Trivia: They used to experiment with putting cylinder ports in flathead Fords. I'm still not all up on how that was supposed to work, but given how hard it was to find info about it, I'm assuming the answer is "not very well".
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