3b Act II

F yea she's back! This fhead is a beast. It pulls way harder than the old setup even with the tires/gearing. It can still lug down and recover which is a plus.
I can actually lock up the brakes now too. The old stuff worked ok but always felt weak.
Went for a short two mile drive. Road manners are still there; no bump steer or wandering.
After I get some wiring fixed, I'll be going to my buddy's place right up the road and testing it out on his property.
It took roughly 8 days to get this from roller to driver. I think I could've done better but pulling all nighters comletely burned me out.

Most of the video somehow disappeared but it's proof that it does drive. I went ahead and ran over some saplings to christen the 3b.

 

gotta love an F-head

 

I can honestly say I’ve never heard the f head described this way .

 

Went and picked up a 3A salad for my buddy. Took the 3b and drug it into its current resting place until I feel like doing another build.



3b doing its thing.



So much for the fresh coat on the bumper.

 

Oh yeah !!

 

Git some! Glad it's moving again. Always liked this B. Gotta admit, I was chuckling watching the tach flop all around. I'm sure it's on the list of things to finish up but it made me laugh a little.

 

Went and dragged the blade out of the woods. I know if I don't make a mount now it'll never get done.



Here is the mount that came with it. I suppose this would work fine on a stock Jeep. I'll either modify it or just try to come up with something else entirely.

 

I wish I had good pictures but all that stuff is heavy.
My plow has a heavy 2x2" angle that hangs in the front spring pack with metal straps. The front of the angle has tabs for the plow the back has tabs for tubes that go to clamps on the frame rails. It allows the blade to follow the axle instead if the body.

Angle and tubes:
20220905_180838 by Joe with a jeep, on Flickr

On the jeep:
20220731_163658 by Joe with a jeep, on Flickr

This is the best view of the frame clamp. They are diamond plate with 4 bolts squeezing.
There are tabs for the pin to the push tube stuff.
If you hit something really hard they slip.
20230123_131007 by Joe with a jeep, on Flickr

And you need to make it multi functional
062409_1429a-1 by Joe with a jeep, on Flickr

 

Here is what I came up with last night. I need to make a run and get more steel to finish it up. I went to use the mig and it was out of wire so the Marquette came in clutch. I used it a fair bit while putting the 3b back together and it runs really smooth compared to the Lincoln.

Welded (4) 3/8" tabs to (2) pieces of 1/2" plate and welded it to the transmission cross member.

 

...and it plows. I wasn't sure I could squeeze a pto winch, Saginaw box, and plow lift up front but I'm glad it all fit. This thing is a hoot.
I took a couple 1/2" plates and welded them to the spring hangers and cut out some tabs (1/2") to run the pins through on the front. Went to the steel yard and found a 13ft stick of 2x2x1/4 to use for the front half of the plow harness. It should be plenty strong enough.



One thing I had in mind during the remodel was to make it lower to the ground. Definitely got that right. I've been thinking about cutting out the back half of the wheel well to match the passenger side where it fell off, almost like a comp cut.

 

Things that keep me up at night. Well, that and insomnia...
I noticed when I put the plow on and had it lifted up the steering took more effort than usual to turn. I had hoped to squeak by without an assist... In just a few hours I'll be at the shop and measure for a ram and hopefully, there's room for everything. Currently looking at the redneck ram. I *might* be taking this to Sicily for the first shake down run this weekend. Not quite ready to be honest, well the 3b isn't at least. The rear driveshaft needs to be lengthened some, limiting strap, and I'm still waiting for USPS to deliver my solenoid for the bus bar.

One more thing that irks me. I didn't realize how bad the gangster lean was until I walked around it and stood back. Of course, it's on the driver's rear side but I'm 80# lighter than the last time I drove this thing and I know it didn't lean this bad even then. I know the spring mounts are very close as I ran a steel bar through the bolt holes without binding or anything. I blame the old springs. The front just about has a negative arch.

 

Went to Sicily for the break in....literally. Last night and most of the day went very well until the head gasket let loose on #4. I won't use a NOS gasket this next time.
A couple of guys out there told me the axles in the 3b came from Boston, Massachusetts. Apparently, the rig they were on wheeled all over Rausch and the like.

This thing does very well on the more open roads. It pulls hard, handles great at speed, and soaks up the ruts fairly well. I'd imagine the average build probably wouldn't fare as well for that kind of driving.

To recap...
No, I don't regret building a Fhead that would definitely walk a stock one and I think it'd give an AMC 2.5 and Iron duke a run for their money....
The 3.73 gears are fine and they work quite well.
No steering problems but I didn't really get into a bind this weekend. Tires were aired down to 15 psi.
Surprisingly no driveshaft issues. The traction bar must be working...
The biggest issue this weekend was the r2g did not like side hills or hard bumps. I need to rejet it and try to make it less sensitive to rough terrain.

All in all, I had a good time with some great people this weekend.

 

Ordered a gasket set and a few carburetor parts. The parts are listed as 2g marine applications with a spring loaded needle and a poly float. Going to try a #47 jet. I have a gauge spot open so I think I'll get a wideband O2 to try and tune it.

Looks like I blew out a shock. Oh well, there're 7 more.



Fender rub was unbearable so the trail "fix" was to cut it out.



Also wired up the bus bar and a 3 wire gm alternator Friday before leaving.

 

I was looking at EFI setups and thinking how nice it'd be and I checked my email... The 2g marine parts weren't in stock and it was unknown when they would be back in stock sooo I pulled the trigger on EFI.

 

I ran Redneck Ram on my '66 and it works very well. I just sent the steering box to them for my LJ for rebuild and porting. Their turn around time is really good. I expect the box and ram parts within 2 weeks. Justin is the big dog there. In fact he may be the only dog there.

 

Here is where the gasket failed. As far as I'm concerned it's not a problem with my machining. I do think the radiator cap may possibly be to blame. It's a much higher pressure than the 7 psi cap that was OE.



Recall me being worried about exhaust valve clearance? Yea close enough for me. The head gasket crushed much more than I anticipated. It's roughly .097" thick uncompressed and only .068" thick compressed. That ate up my safety margin and that's why the exhaust valves are playing tag with the cylinder head. Personally, I'll let it ride because it's my junk and there's little I can do about it at this point in time.

Now that being said a STOCK camshaft wouldn't touch whereas this custom grind has a little bit more lift than stock.

A copper gasket may be thick enough to give me better clearance but I'd have to buy two gaskets and assume they'd be roughly the same thickness after being torqued.

There are rules of thumb for the safety margin of exhaust and intake valve clearance but they generally apply to OHV. On a flathead, gravity is on your side. I've heard of hot flatheads running around .040" on the exhaust without issue so I applied that to this. Another hunch is the valves only contact the head at higher rpm and the stock exhaust springs can't compensate. More or less I might have some valve float... I only turned this engine to 6.5k rpm. I might just stay under that number for longevity's sake. It's quite the sound though. Nothing like it.





Now I'm sure most people wouldn't publicly share their failures but this will hopefully help someone in the future if they decide to try and hot rod a Fhead. The only general information out there I could find and go off of was from Itlksez when he mentioned taking .125" from his Fhead back in the day. I used the information presented and took it just a step further.

Small rant...
From reading various posts plenty of people have regurgitated the same information that is blatantly wrong and nothing but pure assumption when mentioning getting more performance out of these. IMO it can be done successfully but it helps when you don't push the envelope. You won't have the power of a V6 or even a modern I4 but it's better than nothing I suppose.

 

To each their own but it will be interesting to see how many miles/hours you get out of that build between tear downs. You can obviously wring a lot of power out of just about any platform with enough effort and $ but making that power reliably for what most would consider a proper rebuild interval is an entirely different proposition. And I don't think I ever got more than 75K out of a stock F head between rebuilds to start with. I'll watch---

At least you can do all the machine work yourself.