supercharged flathead six

I've been itchy for a new [ foolish ] project, was thinking about more modern engines for the early American chassis. My built 195.6 OHV is still great, only 35,000 miles on it, no problems there.

I've come to my senses though and decided I'm gonna build the L-head six I got from a forum member, Andy L., can't recall his forum name. He's not been on for a while I think. He's got a '58 American, this engine was a "spare" for the rebuild of that car.

He also collected a Mazda Roots-type supercharger, used, but clean and great condition. It's a good fit for this motor. I assume I will be running 5 - 6 PSI max, pending research.

Clearly they need to go together. FARNA did the basic math, with modest boost if I'm lucky I'll get from the flathead all the power of the OHV, with twice the complexity.  Sounds like a plan to me.

I inventoried my parts, notes and tools, and decided this is a go.

It's a great physical package. The engine is 24" long (as short as a lot of 4's). I think it will live on the driver's side, parallel to and level with the head. I'll use EDIS or Megajolt/Megasquirt (though those two are very different) so there will be no distrib there and of course the exhaust is on the pass. side of this engine.

Fuel setup is almost certainly going to be blow-through, boxed, carburetor, because nothing else will work with this engine. It's a trough intake of profoundly primitive dimensions. This is a 1930's engine. There's four right-angle turns from the vacuum cleaner hose sized into hole to the valve.  The intake trough is boxed in by water jacket (strange). Down the hole the fuel must go. I've been constantly searching for usable 150-ish HP throttle-body setups, nothing I can rely on. Blow-through carb is my least-favorite method. Maybe something else will come up in research.

COOLING: it's common knowledge (and obvious when you look at all) that exhaust heat retained in block and head is a huge problem. But! I have a plan, man. My roadster's 195.6 OHV has a very sophisticated two-pump closed-loop all electronic cooling system no thermostat, no belts. I figured out how to drill the head to get at, and open up slightly, the head and block coolant passageways, so I will add a three-hole manifold and drive "cold" coolant straight down onto the three siamesed exhaust port pairs, down into the block, and then closed-loop it.

I've got a bunch of nifty parts, a 1965 crank that's good (I'll have it checked and turned).

Stock cam is all that's available, and under the new circumstances the cam won't be the limiting factor.

Just bought a new oil pump (no way I'll ever use a use oil pump in these engines).

It will get crankshaft spark, electronic cooling as mentioned, and full-flow oil filtration and, importantly, oil cooling. The crankshaft spark also solves a lot of packaging issues, by ditching the distributor.

I'm not happy with the pressurized carburetor box, but at low boost, low power (I'm assuming 130 - 150, and 150 is probably foolish) it shoudn't be too hard. I've read about boost-compensated fuel pressure and all that but have never seen it. It's not high-tech any mroe though.

Gotta start cleaning parts.

Welp, that block is junk. Six substantial cracks. The bores were standard size, not overbored, with little taper. I should have known there was a catch -- it seems most likely that someone ran it hard and hot.

I've already located another, and will fetch that, scrape it clean and all that, and try again.

The head was good at least.