Just a response based on nostalgia for my old '47 Ford convert with a rebuilt 239. If your trans is OK and assuming you have the standard 3.78 rear gear, you should find that acceleration in low gear is pretty good, but you will be lucky to go over 80 mph in high gear. You should expect about 18 mpg. The valves were set at the factory by grinding the length of the valve stems unless you have aftermarket adjustable tappets. Back in the '50s the cheapshot improvements were to find the stock Ford dual-point distributor, shave (resurface) the iron heads about 0.050" and add Belond steel headers or Fenton iron headers with glass/steel pack mufflers. Edelbrock dual carb manifolds were not easy to set up and the later manifolds offer the opportunity to use a 4-barrel carb of about 400 cfm which is a lot easier to set up and maintain. For the sake of nostalgia I would like to have any running Ford with a flathead, but I bought three blocks which all had serious cracks and I have looked at others locally which are cracked so check for cracks, especially between a cylinder and a valve seat. With such a crack the engine may still run quite well but the tipoff is that coolant miraculously disappears, as steam out the exhaust pipe! With the stock cylinder bore of 3 3/16" the block is capable of withstanding considerable abuse, even running overheated, but if it has been bored the cylinders may not be uniform in the walls (core-shift at casting) and with thin spots in the walls it really will overheat. Well some of you know these things like the back of your hand, but if you are fooling with a flathead for the first time I hope you will have fun. One other trick was to chop the flywheel or use an aluminum flywheel, that really helped acceleration but if you don't plan to take it apart just enjoy low gear. However even there you can break a tooth off of one of the trans gears if you rev it up in low and miss a shift to second. Have Fun!

Don Shillady
Retired Scientist/teen rodder