I am surprised to hear that the Arduns were designed for performance alone since I had heard the story that Ford Motor Co. contracted for their development for trucks and then decided to use Lincoln engines instead. For this I blamed FoMoCo for dropping the ball and then producing the questionable Y-block instead when they could have had what we now know as the Chryler hemi. Is it not also true that the smallest Chrysler Corp. engine, the '55 Dodge Red Ram 239 was/is a near copy of the flathead Ford block (although the Dodge has five main bearing webs compared to only three in the Ford flathead) with copies of the Ardun heads rendered in iron? It is shame that the Red Ram Dodge engines were not saved for this reason, but I guess the larger Chrysler hemi was more interesting. If any of you come across a '55 Dodge (??) take a look for this similarity. Apparently major motor companies did less market analysis in those days, although the lawsuit of a few years ago by Olds owners suing over buying Oldsmobiles with SBC engines instead of Rocket-88 engines is along the same lines. Still Olds is gone now anyway.
Time Flys!

Don Shillady
Retired Scientis/teen rodder