Super Rare Supercharged Ardun Flathead Ford Making Huge Horsepower!

foreign [Music] if you're anything like me and I've met a few of you so I know you are the more rare and obscuring engine the more you love it so today's video is going to be right up your alley how about an Arden headed Flathead Zora Arcus done top only made about 200 to 250 pairs of these castings so they're super rare but they're also really cool and not only that we're throwing on a supercharger and making well north of 700 horsepower on this thing to go land speed racing now I do want to let you know ahead of time this isn't going to be the horsepower monster as usual full engine build instead this is going to be more of a highlights package Jeff and Keith dorton over at Automotive Specialists spent over two years designing and developing parts for this engine package so I don't have all the video that I need but we were able to shoot pictures along the way something like this so hopefully you'll like them anyhow hope you enjoy this video and oh by the way horsepower monster T-shirts if you're all about that horsepower life pick yourself up one they are available in the store below this video and I don't have them yet but by the time you see this video we'll probably also have them printed in cool heather gray anyhow thanks a lot on with the show so this is a bit of a cheat showing you the final product on the dino first but I wanted you to be able to see what we're working with in comparison to a stock style flat head and how it looks now this example isn't totally stopped the way Henry Ford himself built them but it's close this is a build we did with Keith and Jeff dorton a couple years ago and I'll include a link to it in the description if you want to watch a build for comparison so that you can see just how much varies from the artist anyhow the most horsepower the original Ford flathead was ever able to produce was a measly 110 but the flat head is still historically a very important engine because it brought both reliability and relatively speaking for the time period good power to the average guy with an average budget now Arden cylinder heads were developed by Zora Arcus duntoff now that's right the father of the Corvette and his brother Yura I think I'm pronouncing that right after developing these heads and all the parts it took to make it work with the flat head they took the whole kit to Ford for the manufacturer to sell but the decision makers at Ford didn't see enough profit in it so they turned the Arcus duntoff Brothers down so Zora and Yura decided to produce and sell the Arden cylinder head kit for the Flathead Ford themselves depending on tuning and other components most customers saw a power boost between 25 and 60 percent with most engines averaging around 160 horsepower unfortunately even though they did make power and were undeniably cool the Arden head kits did have some issues namely they were right at 500 which is hugely expensive for the time period plus the large heads meant they wouldn't fit in many engine compartments and oh this one kind of hurt too turns out the seats had a tendency to fall out after a few heat cycles and destroy the engine so only somewhere between 200 and 250 pairs of the original heads were ever produced although a few people have made re-pop heads over the years so it was pretty exciting when Doug Kenny brought his blown up Arden engine he uses for land speed racing to Keith and Jeff Dort did Automotive Specialists for both a rebuild and an upgrade because so many components had to be custom made to the dorton specs it took nearly two years for this engine to be completed and that's why I don't have a typical video of the build but still it is too cool to pass up so I hope you can appreciate these photos this was an already highly modified Arden Flathead when Keith and Jeff got it so I'll try to explain the changes they made along the way this engine is being built to race in the xxf engine class the xxf engine code requires a stock block from either a Ford or Mercury Flathead with an overhead valve conversion so we've got to start with a stock block which you can see here even if you can find an original block that's not used up or doesn't have casting issues a serious design issue that really limits how much power the block can handle is it only has three Mains securing the crankshaft to compare that to the five that's normal in modern V8s lots of people have tried to strengthen the block by adding a main girdle that includes two additional Mains and a custom crankshaft but dorton says he's found that once the engine goes through a few heat Cycles the girdle tends to lose alignment with the Block's Mains which can drastically increase heat and parasitic drag instead he's come up with an Innovative system that utilizes beefy Billet main caps and two thick steel main supports that bolt to the block along the oil pan rails and secure all three Billet main caps laterally here's another look at the main supports and how they bolt to the Billet main caps the crane was the existing unit that came with the engine but Keith has re-grounded it to their specs to accept modern main seals and the rear flange of the crank has also been modified so that they can ditch the old Ford stuff and go with Modern Chevrolet flywheel and clutch also check out those aluminum plates bookending the custom main caps these are really smart adaptations Keith and Jeff came up with so you can see it better we're going to go back a bit before the crankshaft is installed this is a custom seal adapter that allows a modern high quality rear main seal and if you've ever fought with an old-school rope seal you'll immediately understand how nice this is plus it's size the same as a standard Chevrolet small block so you can pick one up at practically any parts store these adapters also serve a second purpose mating to the lateral main cap supports to create a simple Arc for a custom oil pan to seal to also you can see the aluminum disc pressed into the block underneath the adapter right here that's a plug to delete the original oil pump and pickup this engine is still going to be a wet saw but it will use a more efficient external single stage oil pump which you'll be able to see when everything's bolted together and here's a look at the front of the engine so you can see how the retainer plate adapts with the timing cover as you can see the timing cover has been cut into two pieces here the upper half has been bolted up and from the scratches in the paint you can tell that the Jordans have had this engine together and apart more than a few times as they've refined their design upgrades to seal against the aluminum adapter the lower half of the timing cover is filled with epoxy and then milled flat a little silicone eliminates the chance of any oil weeping past and here's the 100 custom fabbed oil pan for the build the original oil pan would never Mount up with those lateral main cap supports in the way but the new custom pan is Light Years better in terms of design anyway there's more volume for additional cooling oil the pickup is integrated into the pan and there are Provisions to work with the external oil pump here's a look at the combustion Chambers even though these are beautiful hemispherical Chambers please resist the urge to call these heads Hemi knockoffs after all ardents were first made available for sale to the public in 1947 in a Chrysler Hemi didn't show up until 51. anyhow as you can imagine from their Rarity these Arden heads are incredibly valuable so the actual castings were changed as little as possible the original valves were quite heavy so for a better option cylinder head specialist Jeff dorton cut down a set of Chevrolet valves to make them fit they are sized at 1.875 inches for the intakes and an inch 550 thousandths for the exhaust sorry I don't have a better photo of the cam than this Keith says that this solid roller has been ground with 260 degrees of duration at fifty thousandths tap and lift for the intakes and 257 thousands for the exhaust lobe lift is 438 inches it's not exactly extreme but the idea is not to stress the valve train too much and potentially break a rocker or a valve so we'll depend on the supercharger to do the heavy lifting when it comes to making power the lifters are solid rollers from iski now they've been modified to keyed lifters with the tie bars removed on Flathead blocks there's no provision for pressurized oiling to the lifter galleries like you have on practically every modern engine it relies on Splash oiling from the crank so the rollers are spun around needle bearings instead of a bushing because they're less dependent on a constant supply of oil the lifter borers are bushed to bring the bore diameter down from approximately an inch to 843 thousandths of an inch so the Del fit Chevrolet size lifters if you look closely you can see the small metal tabs on the left side of each lifter body which we refer to as Keys these slide in the grooves and the lifter bushings so that the lifters can't Spin and keep them properly aligned with the roller Wheels in line with the camshaft rotation it's these keys that allow the lifters tie bars to be removed here's a look at the top of the Arden head with the valve train in place we know the rocker arms aren't original but they came with the engine when Kenny purchased it so we're not exactly sure where they came from but they follow the original style design with the short rockers for the intakes and really long ones for the exhaust and if you've ever worked on a Hemi this will all look very familiar to you on the right side of this image you can see the flexible line bringing pressurized oil to the shaft mounted rocker system the valve springs are Chevy Springs from iski with approximately 225 pounds on the seat nothing too exotic but again this engine is way too valuable to try to spin up to the moon plus with the blower Keith says we shouldn't need to after making a quick last check on the dyno Keith reinstalls a heavy cast valve covers these neural brass pieces thread into the spark plug tubes to hold the valve covers in place and then the plug wires can be installed through the hole in the center here's one of the most modern pieces on this engine providing boost is a procharger f1r which is sized at nine and three quarter inches in diameter for the impeller with a step up ratio of 5.4 to 1 this supercharger is driven off a belt from the crank and the impeller can be spun up to 68 000 RPM of course even though it's capable of some pretty serious boost for the Arden we're limiting the Boost to 10 pounds of pressure in this wider shot you can see how the f1r feeds the Boost through a custom built what are the air intercooler and into the 750 CFM double pumper carb the off-kilter setup may look a little bit weird but it was done to be able to maximize the surface area of the cooler while still keeping everything underneath the hood of the Roadster for top speed runs you don't want anything sticking out so let's make a pull [Music] [Music] [Music] that my friends is what a boosted Arden flat head sounds like making 722.8 horsepower and 654 and a half foot pounds of torque all with just 10 pounds of pressure and you can see that the horsepower line is quite obviously still heading straight toward the stratosphere when Keith pulled a stop to the pull at just 5800 RPM so there's obviously more to be had since the ProCharger is capable of producing scabs of boost but Keith and Jeff believe that's plenty of power to break the records they're going for and they don't want to push the stock Flathead block too hard after all we're still dealing with a three main block that was cast nearly a hundred years ago and here's a few shots Doug Kenny was kind enough to send me once he had the Arden in his 1929 Ford Roadster and nearly ready to be fired up this wider shot allows you to see the entire land speed race car setup check out all that lead weight just behind the driver against the firewall is an 11 gallon tank of water for the intercooler unfortunately Bonneville speed weeks was rained out for the second year in a row so Doug wasn't able to make any runs and I'm not able to give you any information if a record was broken this shot is from his previous visit to Bonneville just before the engine melted down on him still both Doug and Keith think the new setup is more than capable of breaking both the blown gas Roadster record which currently sits at 208.24 miles per hour and even the blown fuel Roadster record which is even softer at 203.4 you can burn gasoline into fuel classes so Doug's Roadster with the Arden engine is legal for both anyhow thanks for watching I hope you enjoyed this build video even though it was mostly photos these Origins are so unique I just couldn't pass it up plus given the advancements that Keith and Jeff have been making on these flatheads and their success with them more customers have been bringing them some really cool projects to build and I can't wait to show you some of them anyhow if you don't mind please leave a like and drop a comment on your thoughts about this engine build it really helps us out and we'll see you next time with another great engine build

Channel: The Horsepower Monster

Views: 186,052

Keywords: Ardun ford, Ardun flathead, Ford flathead, supercharged flathead, supercharged ardun, boosted flathead, boosted ardun flathead, bonneville speed racing, land speed racing, classic ford engines, Keith Dorton, Automotive Specialists, flathead engine dyno, rare engines, ardun, ford, flathead, procharger

Id: qRInlRfARwk

Length: 15min 24sec (924 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 18 2023