Perfect rat rod roadster motor to go in front of an early 1920's Dodge touring or roadster bucket. Those bodies are fairly cheap when they show up for sale like on eBay. Other orphan touring bodies from larger cars than the popular Fords are a good bet. If the rest of the car isn't there then little motivation exists to go the restoration route. And the "must have a Ford" crowd with their fat credit lines aren't usually interested in the heavy steel body. So a lowbuck hot rod is a good bet.

Put a Torqueflite behind it and a strong rear axle. Minimum frame rails 2x4 rectangular tubing or a 6" channel from some pre 1960 American car/light truck. Some early frames like Essex or pre 1935 Studebaker will work well. I'd mount the body on top of the frame rails and avoid channeling. Make the wheelbase over 105" and put some good disk brakes on a hefty beam axle up front. This will be a heavy hot rod in the neighborhood of 2500 pounds. But these motors put out gobs of torque and you will want the chassis to be able to handle it safely and be a fun ride.

Ed Weldon

I think you got something there, Ed. I wouldn't much of anything you listed, though think I would upgrade the ignition system to something like a high output programmable MSD system (at least 50kV), spiral wound spark plug wires, good platinum plugs gapped .050+, tuned larger dia headers, elec water pump, cold air ram induction, crosstube in the exhaust, 2.5" exhaust, low pressure high-flow elec fuel pump, windage tray if there isn't one, at 2500 lbs I'd recommend a 1800 - 2000 stall converter (not real wild, but better than stock), a built 727-B with re-gear kit to get a lower 1st gear, ~3.70 rear gears (maybe even closer to ~3.50 if the 1st gear is low enough).

You might also consider using an axle set up from Strange Engineering (they make them lighter and tougher than stock). They also make some awesome brake & spindle set ups. I would also do something like a 4-link rear suspension as it can be fine tuned to keep you front wheels on the ground if you launch hard.

Not sure what cam you are running, but with the mods above I would (if I had the money ;) ) dyno tune the motor for the best torque out as you will have all the HP you will need. Redline is probably somewhere around 6500, maybe a little more so if you have a nice strong torque band from around 3000 - 6000+ it will be a hell of a ride.

Have fun and let us know what you end up doing!

Stick it on an internet auction site.

I was thinking we could add a shackle to the chain across the manifolds, some line, and it would keep my boat from floating away.

That looks HEAVY! Does anybody know what the weight of that engine is?

Not off-hand, but the Chevy Rat motors and the Ford Mountain motors (all big blocks in the 390+ Cubic inch range) all weighed in the area of 550 to 690 pounds, if I remember correctly. But I don't know if that was short block, long block, or all up as installed. I suspect it was long block. I think the Chrysler big-blocks were up in that range, also. A few exotic attempts with aluminum heads were done, but those don't count here.

http://www.gomog.com/allmorgan/engineweights.html

gives the weight as 670 lbs. Looks like a good site for this kind of info. The ram intake manifold may add something to that. ......... Ed Weldon

Good link. Thanks. Put's the weight of this one at the high end of my estimates. That's one massive block of milled iron.

I was going to say fully dressed, about 725 - 750 with crossram intake and cast iron headers.

BOAT ANCHOR!!