I was researching flathead fords for a future project and ran across this:
http://www.halibrand.com/flathead_info.htm#GENERAL

They have newer Ford flathead castings, from French military surplus. Not cheap, but most dimensions and SAE thread sizes are preserved (no metric).

It just blew me away that they had used these up until the early 1990s, but I suppose in some applications, the flathead is more compact...

--Matt

 

..I read that somewhere too. If I remember, the France got the rights to the flatty and made it up till the late 80's. I think they were cast steel though and not cast iron. So I've read.

 

I was looking around in this junkyard that is seldom ever visited by anyone other than me and a couple others, and I found 2 Flathead V-8's. On had the distributer in the front, and the other had the distributer on the top. what is the difference between these 2 motors, and which one would be better for a build-up?

 

The distributer on the front was used from 1932-1948. The distributer on top was used on the 1949-1953 models. I don't know what it takes to interchange the 2 types. The early ones had an enclosed driveshaft. While the later models (49-53) had an open driveshaft.

 

the inclosed drive shaft was called a torqe tube by most