Sunday was a great day. I rode in a rickety old 26 cut off touring pickup with a Chevy head on it. Now I wont say it is fast, and the truth is it’s bottom end is worn out. But, even so, it had enough torque to pull many hills in this gentlemans town in high gear with not so much of a hint of needing to go down to low. It cruised 40 with ease.
Now this really isn’t a whole lot different in my opinion of running a good T aluminum head. And while it is hard to compare to that for several reasons. One as I said, the bottom end was worn out, it has blowby that gets increasingly worse as the drive goes on. That eventually fouls a couple plugs I was told–notably #1. Two, it was under carbed. He was using the stock Chevy Carter carb and had to have some choke applied to get the mixture a little richer. Maybe a NH might work if the manifold is changed around, maybe a Model A carb might work too and would almost bolt on the chevy intake. He is actually looking at running two OF’s on a custom built intake.
Also of note, this was a '26 car, still using the stock gas tank under the cowl. If I am to try this on my '25 pickup, there is going to have to be something done about getting fuel up high to the carb. There is just enough downward slope in the fuel line with the cowl gas tank that you can get away with this issue and still run a gravity feed system.
Another issue that needs to be overcome is you need a hot air pipe for the carb. It was a balmy 45 degrees and there were some issues getting it warmed up. The way he had the Carter mounted (modified the flange direction on the intake), the air inlet was about 3/4-1 inch from the block side. He said in warmer weather, it has no problem picking the heat off the engine, but it can at times still ice the intake. He also mentioned if the inlet can not pick up hot air in any way, it defiantly will ice the intake over and it won’t run. This is quite clear in the stock Chevy setup as there is a hot air pipe those vehicles had that went from the exhaust manifold, around the back of the engine and fed the carb inlet.
Also of note, he originally had Model T coils for the ignition, and wanted to try a distributor (which was on it when I visited). As far as performance on the road, he noted there was zero gain or loss between the two. I personally feel the Coils will provide a much hotter spark than the distributor, but that is my opinion based on my experiences and things I have seen over the years. When I am done, I want to use Model T coils on this myself.
He also noted that his radiator which has an aftermarket core in it with a ton of fins packed in between the tubes helps this thing to run cool. Using the infrared gun right after we got back and engine idleing showed 160 degrees at the bottom of the radiator and 215 degrees at the top. The back of the head showed 230 degrees, 215 degrees at the front and 275-300 degrees out the exhaust ports. Pretty reasonable and normal temps in my opinion. There is no water pump on this engine, the thermo-siphon works just fine, but as seen the back of the head does get a little warm.
