Ron Main's Flatfire V-8
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Ron Main's Flatfire V-8
December 27, 2007 By
[ Website Article ]
Compiled from Hot Rod Magazine's 10 Historic Hot Rod Engines


Ron Main's Flatfire V-8

At age 65, Ron Main describes himself as a "recycled teenager" and "juvenile delinquent." And at some point along his life's journey as a hot rodder, his mental phonograph needle became stuck on the Ford flathead V-8. Specifically, he was captured by the dream of building the world's fastest flathead. "Everyone was always building flatheads just the way their daddy did," says Main. "We wanted to go faster than daddy did." And that he did, running just over 302 mph at Bonneville in his Flatfire streamliner.


"This is a 21st century flathead," says Main. While still housed in an original '46 Ford 59AB block with three main bearings, the engine was almost totally re-engineered by Mike Landy and the late Dick Landy of Dick Landy Industries. Main's 301ci flathead employs "reverse-flow" breathing-the intake ports are now the exhausts and vice versa. Also, the block has been machined so that the exhaust ports exit through the top of the engine, another exotic hot-rodding trick found in maximum-effort flatmotors. A Moldex crank with Chevy rod journals rides in steel billet main caps fabricated by DLI, while Ernie Cross of Ventura Speed & Marine fabricated the intercooler and Motec-based digital port fuel injection system. Tony Barron aluminum heads have been machined for custom combustion chambers and two spark plugs per cylinder.


Main originally considered a turbocharger, but "they build too much heat," he says. Instead, a V-1 T-trim Vortech centrifugal supercharger was selected that produces 18 psi of boost. On its standard dose of straight methanol the engine has shown over 700 hp on the dyno, but they like to keep it down around 650 hp in the interest of keeping the block in one piece. Main says that with the flathead's traditional breathing problems corrected, the engine was now happily zinging to 7,000 rpm on the dyno. However, with the gearing used on the Bonneville record run the engine was showing 5,600 rpm at 302 mph through the speed trap. So why a flathead? "Because," says the world's oldest adolescent, "the flathead is just such a pretty little motor."
 
 
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