Thread: Ardun Heads

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Gee, that's a good question. The Lincoln "H" engine was made from '39-'48 as a V-12, and the OHV Lincoln probably came in '54 with the other Y-blocks so I do not know what engines were put into the trucks. I only remember reading an article about the Duntov brothers describing how they finished their contract and then Ford did not use their design. I am from a lower economic class and have few or no memories of Lincolns, but one of my high school buddies had a large Lincoln which was a '46-'48 sedan with what appeared to be gold plated interior handles and a luxurious interior BUT, as happened with many Lincolns, it was retrofitted with a 59AB Ford flathead V8. That was my first introduction to any type of engine swapping and I recall the motor mounts were crude and made from flamecut angle iron, but they worked! All I can tell you is that there was a lot of extra space in terms of length where the longer V12 had been. The main point of historical note is that somehow Chrysler Corp. was able to obtain whatever patents covered the ARDUN design to make the hemi engines and then Zora went to GM to improve the Corvette and design the famous Duntov cam which has only recently been improved by modern cam design. In a sense the Ford Motor Co. made two errors in not adopting the ARDUN design and not retaining the Duntov brothers. Should I also mention the debut of the Edsel? As a Fordnatic in my youth I was amazed at these developments, although I originally thought that Chrysler came up with the hemi themselves and it was not until about 1960 that I realized the FoMoCo errors. Although there were stock car successes with the '57 Y-block (check track records) the early '54 Y-block had problems with rapid cam wear and poor lubrication of the rockers so Ford should have just added two more main bearing webs to the 59-AB and adopted the ARDUN heads and maybe the Thunderbird would be what Corvettes are today, but of course hindsight is 20-20.

Don Shillady
Retired Scientist/teen rodder