Thread: 53 flathead ?

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Hey guys I joined this sight a couple years back when i bought my truck then I kinda stoped working on it. I have a 1953 ford pickup with the original 53 flathead. Last night i put new plugs in new battery and after 3 year of no noise she fired right up. Purrs like a kitten. This motor has never been overhauled or anything smokes a little but does run. My question is when you throttle it up there is a hesitation before it reves up. It seems to run fine and higher rpms but its the first initial throttle response htat it hesitates. Any suggestions on what might cause this. Im new to these engines but learning.

accelerator pump is not giving enough/ possibly not working. verify by closing choke a little, if it helps, theres your cause. this causes a richer mixture

thinks for getting back so quickly but now i have to play the dumb roll remember im ne wto this whats the accelerator pump and where is it.

Thanks

it's part of the carb, it will pump fuel from a sqirter jet, if it's working, you should hear fuel pumping when you manually pump the throttle at the carb, to full throttle and back. old 1's had a cork pump pistion, so the cork swells and seizes.
newer carbs like a basic holley, uses a pump dia[phram which is rubber, those do not have this problem.

Sitting for 3 years the gas will have evaporated and sludged up the carburetor. It'll need a good cleaning, and a carb kit.

Yep, carb has varnished up. Those carb sprays won't do it either, you need to disassemble, soak in carb cleaner, and then put a kit in the carb, as R Pope suggested.

When gas sits it is like putting a can of coke out and letting it sit.........everything evaporates and leaves only the gummy residue. An overnight soak in something like NAPA carb cleaner, then blowing out all the passages with compressed air will dislodge it.

Don

R Pope and Don are right on about cleaning and maybe rebuilding your carb. I had a 3 carb set up that I bought on E-bay with the guy stating that it was just taken off his engine. Looked great when I got it and put it on andtried to start it and it ran like sh--. My mistake as I found out later that the car he took it off had be sitting for 7 months. Evaporating gas sure leaves a gummy residue

As well as the carb, for sure, needing a good cleaning, make sure that the vacuum advance or the actual advance plate in the distributor is working. These dists were only vacuum advance/retard, with no centrifugal weights until '57.

Thanks fellows I cleaned the carb rebuilt it and still had the problem. We drained the gas put in fresh gas re cleaned the carb and wala no more problem. So last evening I pulled the engine out getting ready to sandblast the frame. Im trying to get some prices on a rebuild on the engine but im not sure if i should bore it out or not i plan on putting the dual carbs on and offenhasuer heads what do you guys think bore and a different cam???

Thanks
Flattie 53

Magnaflux a flathead V8 b4 thinking bout rebuilding rebuilding. prone to cracking, some fixable some not

If you want any noticible performance then bore it to 3-5/16 with a Merc 4" crank. Then with the right cam you will notice the improvement your heads and carbs will make. It isn't cheap but it will sure keep up with traffic.

im sending the block out to check for cracks if its all good im going to rebuild the flathead. What type of automatic tranny can i hook up to the flathead.

Originally Posted by Flattie53

im sending the block out to check for cracks if its all good im going to rebuild the flathead. What type of automatic tranny can i hook up to the flathead.

most any Ford or Chevy Auto trans, adaptors are made to adapt to the ford flatheads. Speedway has most of them

Similar problems turns out to be accelerator pump on the Packard's carb too.