Fish Carbs

[Dave Williams]

-> Same reason as the valve in block L head "Flat Head" reigned supreme
-> for 40 odd years.  Just because it is very good doesn't make it cheap

 I doubt any of the OEMs saved much, if any, money with flathead motors
vs. OHV.  The required machining is about the same, except doing it all
in the block instead of splitting it between the block and head(s)
causes handling problems, and those flathead blocks were highly complex
castings since the inlet and exhaust ports had to be accomodated in the
block.

 Back in the 1930s and 1940s it was common for "pump" gas to be as low
as 60 octane.  The flatheads had a naturally low compression ratio, and
the large squish area and high turbulence let them make more power on
the gas *of the day* than most OHV designs.  It wasn't until leaded gas
became widely available in the late '40s that manufacturers started to
abandon the flathead.

 The engineers of the old days weren't total morons.  The stumbling
block was the poor quality of available fuel.  With crap gas, most of
the advantages of overhead valves are negated.

==dave.williams at chaos.lrk.ar.us======================================
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