I am restoring a 50 f-1. I bought a running flatty. It is suppose to be a 49 but I noticed it just had a piece of flat iron bolted to water pumps as a motor mounts. I noticed on most all other engines that the mounts are part of the water pump. I looked in a manual and it says there are early and later "R" series flatties. I wonder if it is really a 49. Why did Ford make this change?

 

There were several changes to the late series, but all used the same blocks. The only differences were bolt-on accessories.

A picture would help - I'm having trouble picturing the flat bar and how it is bolted to the pumps. The car pumps that were used on the '53 pickups have a small sloped area under the water inlet. The 53 pickups actually used a 'U' shaped bracket that fastened to the block on both sides of the distributor cover plate and attached to the crossmember in front of the engine.

The 49 truck pumps should have a definite foot sticking out with the motor mount bolt holes 20" apart when bolted to the engine.

 

As Tim said there are several different water pumps used on these Ol' Flatmotors.

This link will show the different pumps used.
http://www.vanpeltsales.com/FH_web/F...rpumptypes.jpg

 

Do the pumps have wide or narrow belts?

 

It is the pump on bottom right. The engine is also bronze color. Can I use this engine? Is there anything different. Will I still be able to bolt up my bell housing, tranny, and flywheel? I have flywheel from different engine since this one didn't come with one. I also noticed the fan only had 3 blades. My other engines have 4.

 

Addition to last link.

The guy I bought it from said it came out of a 49 panal truck. Thet link says it is an 8BA series use in 49 - 53 cars and 53 trucks. What I should have is an 8RT. Can I still use the 8BA?

 

thats a great picture to keep as a reference. thanks!

 

The only things that make an 8RT a truck engine are the heads (low compression), waterpumps, oilfilter canister location, etc. For our purposes it is the same as the 8BA.

Being bronze I'd say you have either a 53 truck engine or more likely a car engine. Change the waterpumps and you'll have a truck engine.

THe guy that had this in a panel truck cobbled up a way to make it work with the truck motor mounts. Not hard to do at all. Do your heads have any large cast letters on them? 8BA, EAB etc? No other numbers or letters matter.

 

Hey get this. I have 3 8BAs. One in a donor truck, the engine I bought and the original engine in my dad's 50. Go Figure? The one I bought is bronze. I have not idea what color the two others were. All but one truck that I have seen have red engines. I have seen one with bronze. Take a look at this website. http://www.telusplanet.net/public/bboogaar/ Also take a look at this one. http://www.vanpeltsales.com/FH_web/flathead_home.htm They both contridict each other and both contridict what I have. One the engine I bought had narrow belts and one of donor engines has wide belts. I did get a few extra water pumps with one of the trucks. I woul like to put them on. I hope I have two that are good and have narrow pullies. Gaskets is another issue.

 

With the flathead V8's the only sure, proof posivitive, almost maybe way to be sure that an engine is original is to have bought it off the showroom floor yourself, have done all the maintenance yourself, and then only changed the oil, filter, plugs and points.
In Fifty plus years there have been lots of opportunities to mix and match parts, as the Flatheads neared the end of there service life even the dealerships were mixing and matching. Now you use whatever you can buy borrow or steal to keep them going.
Put a set of truck pumps on and paint it whatever color you want and call it Sweet.

 

will water pumps interchange between models

 

Yes, they will swap between any late series flathead. The late (48-53 US truck) series have an extra coolant bypass hole at the top of the pump that doesn't exist on the 37-48 pumps.