L-head power improvement

Me and my buddy where trying figure out how to get some more power out of the L-head when the time comes to rebuild it. Is it possible to deck the block and cut new valve seats to improve compression. Looked at the thought of decking the head but that would seem to reduce the flow through the valves due to the way its shaped. Any body have any experience doing this?


And no a :v6: is not a option. Your welcome Billy

 

after some searching I found the head your talking about billy

http://clubs.hemmings.com/clubsites/wocv/willywilly/willywilly.htm

Reading the site about the head dosnt seem like it raises the compression that much, from 6.5:1 to 7:1. Is that much of a gain worth trying to hunt one of these heads down if it would even be possible.

and looking at this intake

http://clubs.hemmings.com/clubsites/wocv/willywilly/willywilly.htm


it appears that the intake could be made fairly easily. Any idea on if it would be possible to set the linkage up so that one of the carbs would work like a secondary? so it would kick in at full throttle :twisted:

 

Hardened Valve seats and new valves would be a good idea to run unleaded pump gas.

 

yeah, we are diffinently going hardened valve seats and valves. probaly cam and a little stiffer springs. i know these and f-head have head gasket issues, but with the advances in gasket technology i think we could go 8 or 9 to 1 if we can deck the block enough without compromising the water jacket stenghen.

 

don't think these engines can take that much compression. remember reading about it somewhere. I thought about doing the same thing.

 

Jason I bet with some ingenuity you could make the second carb be progressive.

 

You can't make the carb progressive unless you make a plenum to run on top of this intake tube, the way this is setup is the one carb feeds 2 cylinders and the other carb feeds the other 2 cylinders. I would love to see a hopped up L-head. If it were me, 3 angle valve job with hardened seats, swirl polish the valves, electronic distributor. Polished chambers in the flat head, mill head surface to gain compression but don't go overboard. Dual carbs and the intake along with a K&N filter and larger flow air tube. Header and good free flow muffler and 2" pipe along with getting rid of the factory generator and using an electric fan to gain all the power out of the motor you can.

 

Im sure this has been talked about, but Clifford makes a great header for the L-head. Great improvement in performance. They also sell the weber 2bbl carb conversion, I dont know much about that, its real expensive, and dont think it could possibly make that much difference. my engine was rebuilt by the PO and he says that the head has been milled about .009 or so. Dont know about the benefits of that one either, but Ive had it off, and there is not much clearance at all. For a while I was running an electric fan, and I never could get it just right, but while it was off....my little squirrels ran faster than they ever had before. That little engine revved up jsut fine, even with bigger heavier tires. I put a pertronix ignition in, and it starts great, and idles much smoother, but Im not sure there was any spectacular increase in HP. As far as being able to handle the extra compression, I think they are capable of some increases, for high altitude running, but not too much. Thats about all Im familiar with.

Im sure you guys have heard this before, but the ol History Channel told me that Willys Overland got the contract with the US military because they were the only ones developing more than 60HP, and they also had to be able to withstand 4,000 RPM for at least 40 consecutive hours. Thats pretty crazy, but it makes me feel a little better about planting the right foot in the mud. Good luck with the buildup, and let us know what you find, especially about a source for that head!!

 

Yes - that is CRAZY!!!!!!!!!

Pretty darn durable motor.

 

You could always swap in a F head.
The dual carb setup looks promising.

 

AFAIK an F-head will fit if you use a side-draft carb. How about a couple of side-draft motorcycle carbs (Mikuni)?

Also I would point out that the 4000 rpm torture test was on a new engine, and maybe under no load. Not dissing the 134, but running 4000 rpm today would be risky and pointless.

 

That would look SWEET!!

 

Hmmm.. maybe with the L-head ... IIRC the F-head intake manifold is cast in to the head and the port faces up, so mods would be hard.

 

With a sheet metal intake anything is possible.

 

How about individual throttle bodies with EFI, if you want to dream why not dream big.

 

Usually when you think performance, you consider the 4 Cs: cam, carburetion, compression, cubic inches. You should be able to get a few more hp out of the L-head without any radical changes - make it breath better, raise the CR, and possibly a bumpier cam (custom grind?).

There's no easy way to increase the displacement, but you can increase the effective displacement by packing more air and fuel into the available space. This would play to some of the 134's strengths - strong, thick cylinder walls, and steel crank & rods. Could work out pretty well as long as your boost comes on at a low enough speed and you don't try to spin too fast.

BTW Dick Datson has a few pages in his Jeep performance book about porting the flathead (I think it's in reference to the 226, but should apply to the 134) - probably there's info in books about hot rodding the Ford flathead V8 too.