>Season's Greetings;
> What is the difference between the early (1939-1948)..
>and late (1949-1953) V8s? Will an early quad 97 setup work
>on my 1950 F68?
> My original manifold has the castings: "C8BA" over
>"C8RT" over "3520". The heads are cast "8BA MADE IN
>CANADA". The plate on the firewall indentifies the engine as
>"OJ506". The stamp on the firewall is "Mar 1, 1950".
> I have a chance to pick up a quad intake with 4
>stromberg 97s. It is thought to have come off an "early" V8.
>Will it work on my engine? He also has some alumiminum
>finned high compression heads. Will they work on this block?
> Thanks, in advance, for any help, advice.
> Get all that leftover turkey eaten up.
> Regards.........Keith.

Keith,
The quad intake looks really cool, but is impractical. It will dump more gas and air than your flathead can use. Three deuces is even too much and if you look close at cars that guys run fairly often, you'll find the center carb to be inactive with a plate under the carb base. If you decide to go with it I'd block off either the two middle carbs or the two ends depending on where they line up best with the intake runners.

The practical benchmark for the 239 flathead is 390 cfm. Each of your '97's produce 135 cfm and 4 will make 540. I don't think you'll be able to jet down enough to make them run right.

Otherwise, you have some crankcase ventilation issues to deal with. The 8BA/8RT intake has the breather up front and if you look under the intake you'll find it pipes fresh air down into the oil pan where it sweeps the gasses and evacuates them out the road draft tube, also at the front of the engine. If your intake is older it'll vent thru the oil filler/fuel pump stand and won't work as efficiently as the stock system, but will work. You may find increased blow-by.

Heads can be interchanged with a couple of mods - if you compare the heads with the holes in the block you'll notice there are two coolant holes that are different. One hole on each side of the block needs tapped and a flush plug installed (I think it's at the front) and one hole in the heads (rear) needs similar treatment.

But they do look Kool!