Who has experience building early straight 8 engines?

Unknown

Lots of things to consider here, Jim. For one thing tooling down road the at 70 to 75 with either factory rear end gearing offered in '46-'47 even with an OD is not a good idea IMHO. As far as the engine the key things I would look at are: mileage, condition of the rods and main bearings (eg: have they been recently adjusted, etc.), condition of the splasher troughs, cylinder compression, valve condition and condition of the water jacket.



A quick drop of the oil pan will take care of validating most of those items.



Can you post some pictures of the Drivemaster set-up? I am always looking for documentary pics showing an original factory HDM set-up.



Thanks!



Todd H

Winchester, VA

Unknown

Joe Polkus, Mesa ,Az. Builds Hudson engines that go like hell and LIVE!

Unknown

Contact Rex Gardner at Flat Motor Research in Grove, OK. Don't expect cheap repairs or budget fixes. He does it right the first time and charges accordingly. Plus, when he's done, they're pretty.

Park_W

Charlie Salvato, on Long Island, has done a lot of splasher 8s. He's the club's tech adviser for these engines. From my experience of fifty years ago, if you put a dual exhaust manifold on it, take a little off the head to increase compression, and have Al Saffrahn in AZ regrind the bottom of the lifters with a flatter contour, you'll be impressed with the results. With these mods the '42 Eight in my big ol' 3300 pound '38 sedan produced 84 mph and 17 seconds in the quarter. Not spectacular by today's standards, but still pretty impressive for an old flathead 8. The dual exhaust was a big contributor to that performance ... evidently the enlarging of the exhaust manifolds done by Hudson in '37 should have been taken a bit further.