Thread: 1939 Cadilac V8 question

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Brickman -

Don and blue57 are right. The Cadillac flatheads are heavy and they displace 346 inches. I got interested in them many years ago and was curious about their drag racing potential for what was then the "flathead class". Yeah. they were heavy but in stock form they had cubic inches all over the Fords.

The engines exhausted up and out of the valley through three ports on each bank and were piped over the top of the block and down the back. You can see the ports in your picture. Not too convenient, but a guy could make a wild looking set of headers for that puppy, couldn't he?

These were tough engines and they powered about a zillion WWII army tanks, two per tank. Blue57 mentions transmission availability. The tank engines had early Hydramatics, believe it or not. Who knows? Maybe a hydramatic out of a '49 Olds or Cad would hook right up. I couldn't say. Of course the once popular super strong Cad-La Salle three speed would work (that's what came on the engine) but those were used up by hot rodders long, long ago.

A company in Dallas had a whole yard full of army tank Cadillac flatheads at one time. My partner and I were looking at them out of curiosity one day and he said "Hey .... Look!" On each engine was what looked just like the famous big oil can size Scintilla Vertex magneto. We decided that the dealer probably didn't know what he had, so we took off a couple of them and strolled up the kid at the counter and told him we wanted to buy two of these "distributors" which he happliy sold us. We left thinking we had pulled off a great coup. Trouble was, distributors was exactly what they were. Big, heavy, and very obsolete ones.

A Caddy flathead would no doubt make a very interesting engine for a sedate street ride, but I'd think getting really satisfying horsepower out of one would be a big challenge.

Thanks for bringing the subject up!

Jim