33 replies to this topic

[ray b]

ardun heads in races, records who knows anything about them???
cars used in, race run, results, rep,ect

zora arkus duntof's pre corvett Co. made them for flathead fords
I knew zora but was a little kid or baby at the time of their use 50-54

[Ray Bell]

There were some in Australia... I think Jack Murray had them on his Allard, but John Medley or someone is likely to be a bit more knowledgeable about that.

One car that didn't have them was the Tornado... it had similar heads made by its owner, Lou Abrahams, but many believed them to be Ardun heads.

[john medley]

At some stage Australian Jack Murray used Grancor speed equipment on his Ford V8 engined Day Special in the 40s. I think there were some (number unknown) Ardun heads imported in late 40s- early 50s, some of these used on road cars ( I recall an "Australian Motor Sports" article re this but cant locate it at the moment). Probably the most notable of the Ardun headed racing cars in Australia was the J2 Allard of Tom Hawkes ( 1950s), an impressively quick car with quite a few successes.
Ray Bell may be confusing Hawkes' Ardun Allard with Jack Murray's Cadillac-powered J2 Allard

[WGD706]

Ray
Have you looked at this web-site? There aren't any race results in their history section, but maybe if you were to contact them, they'd be able to provide some info.
http://www.ardun.com/

Here's an interesting bit of info......Zora was born Zachary Arkus in Belgium on Christmas Day, 1909. His father was a Russian born mining engineer, and his mother, also Russian, was a medical student in Brussels. After the family returned to their hometown of Leningrad, Zora's parents divorced. His mother new partner, Josef Duntov, another mining engineer, had move into the household. But even after the divorce, Zora's father continued to live with the family. And out of respect for both men, Zora and brother Yura took on the last name of Arkus-Duntov.
Settled in Manhattan, the two brothers set up Ardun (derived from Arkus and Duntov) which supplied parts to the military and also manufactured aluminum heads for the flathead Ford V8 engine. The overhead valve design enabled a dry lake of oval racer to squeeze 300 plus hp out of the Ford V8. Ardun grew into a 300 employee engineering company with a name as revered as Offenhauser, but the company later went out of business after some questionable financial by a partner that Zora and Yura had taken on. Later, Zora left America for England to do development work on the Allard sports car, co-driving it at Le Mans in 1952 and in 1953. He also won class victories at Le Mans in 1954 and 1955 while driving an 1100cc Porsche Spyder.

http://www.idavette....stFact/zora.htm

[marion5drsn]

After I read this yesterday I went into the net and spent about 2 or 3 hours going thru the posts and although it is interesting it says very little about records set with Ardun heads.
You would have to do a lot of digging to put together anything of real value as it is so dispersed. The part about the man himself is the best part as I always wondered just how he put the heads together. Also one of the places told about how much trouble the heads were to use. It seems the valve seats had a bad tendency to fall out of the pockets.
M.L. Anderson

http://www.speedwaym.../qx/product.htm

http://www.ardun.com...un_histrory.htm

http://lookinbackrac...cations.JPG.JPG

[ray b]

thanks I tryed a little too marion5drsn
and did not find much
old R&T AD WAS ALL IN MY MAGS TOO
see my ride with zora post for that
so was hoping someone here knew something more
then allards he drove ect

what were arduns other products??

[Ray Bell]

Originally posted by john medley
.....Ray Bell may be confusing Hawkes' Ardun Allard with Jack Murray's Cadillac-powered J2 Allard

No, I'm just 1200km away from my books and magazines...

Tom Hawkes took his car to the first Longford, didn't he?

Not only that, he won the first major event at the circuit and took the lap record! Here's the info from Bernd's Tasman site:

It was in this setting that Coombe convinced the authorities to back road closures to enable motorcycle racing to take place. The first meeting was held on the Labor Day weekend in 1953, with the main events on March 2, the Monday. Maurice Quincey was the victorious rider, taking all the motorcycle honours and lapping in around 87mph (140km/h) to show it was all pretty quick. Fastest car competing was the Allard J2 of Tom Hawkes, which was some 14km/h slower. Races were handicaps, with winners like Donald Gorringe (Skoda Spl) amd Warwick Hine (Morris Minor SV), place getters like Dick Crawford's Austin A40, Mick Witts Anglia, Jock Walkem's Jowett Jupiter, and competitors like Geoff Crawfords chain-driven special and Seymour's Salmson Ford. One race was stopped by a passing train. Of the mainlanders on the entry list, Stan Jones, Bill Patterson and Bib Stillwell all failed to appear with the little Coopers. The production car race was won by Alan Hale's Simca from Roach's Vauxhall and Don Goss in a Jowett Javelin.

So there's a little bit of a record for the Ardun heads... this engine was entered in the NZGP, by the way, with a capacity of 4564cc (I think that's the figure Bruce Sergent gives).

[marion5drsn]

I've also been trying to remember just who it was that made similiar heads but for an Inline engine
long before Duntof did it! Was it B.M.W.? I am fairly certain the design was used before. M.L. Anderson

[ray b]

4 banger " FRONTY" fords???? A or T hotrods in 20s or early 30s???

[Ray Bell]

Were they like the Peugeot heads, with angled pushrods and rockers?

Maybach had that pre-war.

[ray b]

Originally posted by Ray Bell
Were they like the Peugeot heads, with angled pushrods and rockers?

Maybach had that pre-war.

Maybach made hi-teck zepplin motors back in those days not hotroded stock blocks
were the fronty's ohv or ohc convertions
I have only heard of them, never seen one!!!!
but thought they were ohc [fronty] race motors

arduns were ohv with pushrods in the flatheads valve places??? right???
were they race or hotrod only use or streetable???

[Ray Bell]

Ray, Marion's question didn't ask about aftermarket heads specifically...

He wrote: "I've also been trying to remember just who it was that made similiar heads but for an Inline engine long before Duntof did it."

And in mentioning BMW in the same breath, he virtually eliminated aftermarket heads.

I haved seen a pic of the rocker gear of a Maybach head, this being from what I understand was a scout car engine and was in the wreck of Stan Jones' car crashed in the 1954 AGP. Thanks to Graham Howard for putting it in the book...

With some thought put into it, a similar head could be made to operate from the cam of a side-valve engine. The Peugeot 203/403 head has virtually the same layout.

I have no doubt the Ardun heads were used on the street. The Tornado heads mentioned earlier were, IIRC, slated to be put into a road car after the race car turned Chevy... but someone threw them out!

[marion5drsn]

I found this and this proves it is not BMW as the push rods go across the cylinder head and then down into the block. M.L. Anderson :

http://w1.855.telia....827/lankar2.htm

Edit; also includes the Frazer-Nash as they were just a copy of the BMW!

[Ray Bell]

That's right, Marion, and Bristols were naturally identical to this... an extra rocker on six of the valves.

Did you find the Maybach?

[David Beard]

Just found this....

[WDH74]

Robert Roof designed what was probably the earliest OHV conversion for the Ford Model T engine, produced by Laurel Motors of Anderson, Indiana. It was a 16-valve design and borrowed heavily from Peugeot practice. Other big names in head conversions for four banger Fords were Frontenac (who also did a twin cam conversion), Rajo, Cragar (better known for wheels nowadays), Murphy (very rare then and now), and Riley. As for Flathead V-8 conversions, Ardun is the best known, as most hot rodders were happy enough to get better non-OHV heads from companies like Ord, Navarro, Offenhauser, etc. Part of the problem with the Flathead was its tendency to overheat, or at least run hot, and I'm led to believe that the Ardun conversion exacerbated this a bit. If you can find one, Issue 20 of The Rodder's Journal features a pair of beautiful Ardun-powered Deuce roadsters and gives a nice history of Ardun heads. Apparently an original set is worth a fortune now, and I believe that reproductions are available.
-William
(My thanks to TRJ and Dean Batchelor's book The American Hot Rod for the info)

[Ray Bell]

Originally posted by WDH74
Robert Roof designed what was probably the earliest OHV conversion for the Ford Model T engine, produced by Laurel Motors of Anderson, Indiana. It was a 16-valve design and borrowed heavily from Peugeot practice. Other big names in head conversions for four banger Fords were Frontenac (who also did a twin cam conversion), Rajo, Cragar (better known for wheels nowadays), Murphy (very rare then and now), and Riley. As for Flathead V-8 conversions, Ardun is the best known, as most hot rodders were happy enough to get better non-OHV heads from companies like Ord, Navarro, Offenhauser, etc. Part of the problem with the Flathead was its tendency to overheat, or at least run hot, and I'm led to believe that the Ardun conversion exacerbated this a bit. If you can find one, Issue 20 of The Rodder's Journal features a pair of beautiful Ardun-powered Deuce roadsters and gives a nice history of Ardun heads. Apparently an original set is worth a fortune now, and I believe that reproductions are available.
-William
(My thanks to TRJ and Dean Batchelor's book The American Hot Rod for the info)

Now that's something I'm glad to know... Roof was included in the name of the Laurel head because that's who designed it!

Check this out:

http://forums.atlasf...s=&postid=17560

There was, as I mentioned a few days ago, a very successful ohv conversion for the Ford made by Lou Abrahams in Melbourne. After sinking a boat, it was stuck into an Alta, then when that was destroyed it went into this car, which blew the doors off the 250Fs on occasion after the converted Ford was replaced with a Chevy...

[D-Type]

Ray,

You frequently post great pictures of obscure (to us northern hemisphere folk) Australian motor racing scenes - but you don't caption them!

This one is typical. I see what looks to me like a Ferrari 500 (or is it a 625 engined 500 or maybe even the 750 engined one?), then something with a red nose, which I assume is the Ford or Chevrolet engined car referred to (Is it the Tornado referred to earlier?) and what could be a Maserati 250F behind. But not being familiar with the Australian scene I just don't know.

So please give us some captions in future.

Duncan

[David Beard]

Originally posted by D-Type
(Is it the Tornado referred to earlier?) and what could be a Maserati 250F behind. But not being familiar with the Australian scene I just don't know.
Duncan

A strange coincidence, this. On Saturday an envelope containing the October 1958 edition of Australian Motor Sports dropped through my letter box. Contained therein are a number of references to the Tornado....a car which is a complete mystery to me. I thought I might ask about it on TNF...

[Ray Bell]

Originally posted by D-Type
You frequently post great pictures of obscure (to us northern hemisphere folk) Australian motor racing scenes - but you don't caption them!

This one is typical. I see what looks to me like a Ferrari 500 (or is it a 625 engined 500 or maybe even the 750 engined one?), then something with a red nose, which I assume is the Ford or Chevrolet engined car referred to (Is it the Tornado referred to earlier?) and what could be a Maserati 250F behind. But not being familiar with the Australian scene I just don't know.

So please give us some captions in future.

You have exactly the information you need to understand the photo... a 250F and a 625/750 Ferrari are being shown the way by a home made car powered by Chevrolet.

If you were to put 'Bathurst' and '1958' into search, with my name and 'show results as posts', you would come up with a complete entry list for that race.

There's a thread entitled 'Australian Grand Prix in former times' in which I gave details for every race and complete entries and results for most. Of course, some little details are missing, and the Ferrari type number is in this one! It's post number 90...

As to your request for captions, I rarely post a picture without some type of description, or at least I don't think I do, unless it's there to arouse questioning minds. I'll keep it in mind...

David, I don't have that one... and more's the pity. Surely as you read that report your heart was with Teddy Gray doing battle with the factory cars?

For the record, it had a Peugeot 203 front suspension, rear suspension was double wishbones using some Holden parts, a Halibrand differential sat in the middle of all that. I'm not sure what the gearbox was, probably 4-speed Corvette, and the chassis was a typical large-diameter tube affair as used in the fifties. The car held (still holds) the Australian land speed record for its class, set on a narrow road near Coonabarrabran.

Getting back to the Ardun heads, I see from the cutaway drawing that they were indeed very much like the Maybach and Peugeot layout.

[Aanderson]

Originally posted by David Beard
Just found this....

As your image shows, the ARDUN OHV heads essentially converted the flathead Ford V8 from a side-valve (British description) or flathead into a push-rod hemi-head engine, oh-so-similar in scope to the famed Chrysler Hemi's of the 50's and 60's. This made for an incredible improvement in breathing over the restricted and convoluted flathead intake and exhaust passages.

The ARDUN should have virtually eliminated any tendency for the flathead engine to run hot. Ford's flatheads, due to their having been designed for low cost and ease of assembly, had their exhaust passages on the outer sides of the cylinder banks, on the opposite side of the cylinders, exactly the reverse of every other flathead V-engine ever built (go look at any side-valve or flathead V8-12-16, you will notice that their exhaust manifolding lays between the cylinder banks, unlike a flathead Ford). For this reason, the Ford flathead V8 used three exhaust passages, each about 4" long, directly through the water jacket area of the cylinder block, which gave it a ready reputation as the finest water heater ever built. Coupled with this feature, Ford V8's through 1936 used water pumps in the cylinder heads which pulled hot water out of the cylinder heads, making for a lower water pressure, leading to frequent steam pockets (great for overheating) and rather low efficiency. In 1937, Ford moved their water pumps (two of them, one on each cylinder bank) to the block, where they pushed cooled water from the bottom of the radiator into the block, where it then circulated, and was pushed out through the cylinder heads. It wasn't the perfect solution, but it did pretty much alleviate overheating.

The ARDUN head, by simply eliminating exhausting out through the sides of the block, by positioning the exhaust valves in the cylinder head, removed the obvious heat source provided by the in-block exhaust passages, thus it would have run cooler from that alone, although higher revs, and higher power outputs would have meant more heat generated. But, in that, the ARDUN probably was not much different than any engine of the day.

Art Anderson

[dbw]

while not anywhere near an expert,i recall that the ARDUN kits were originally developed for flathead powered trucks needing more umph...but i would suspect the best source of information would be don orosco[yes, the scarab guy]..he's the one responsible for the new ARDUN kits...so exact they are,he offers parts for interchange with original sets... i have his business e-mail around somewhere,i'll post it...he's a wonderful guy and will talk your head off on subjects from flathead speed equipment[he loves eddie meyer stuff] to his daily driver; a 289 cobra..completely original and untouched...

[Aanderson]

Originally posted by dbw
while not anywhere near an expert,i recall that the ARDUN kits were originally developed for flathead powered trucks needing more umph...but i would suspect the best source of information would be don orosco[yes, the scarab guy]..he's the one responsible for the new ARDUN kits...so exact they are,he offers parts for interchange with original sets... i have his business e-mail around somewhere,i'll post it...he's a wonderful guy and will talk your head off on subjects from flathead speed equipment[he loves eddie meyer stuff] to his daily driver; a 289 cobra..completely original and untouched...

As was the Maxi-Head (OHV wedge-chamber cylinder head for the flathead V8) which can still be seen today on Ed Iskenderian's T-roadster lakes car, built in 1939. It was also primarily developed as a power-head for truck use, IIRC.

Art Anderson

[Ray Bell]

I wonder if that's really true?

Let's face it, there may have been a commercial advantage in saying that this was so, while at the same time the greater scope for sales would be for performance cars.

Look at the people involved... look at the advertisement reproduced here, look at the Dykes Cyclopedia of 1919 and the Laurel advertisement there, laden down as it is with text about truck applications and pictures of racing cars!

[dbw]

as racing motorheads we often look at things with a rather narrow angle....i'm guessing that for every potential high performance application there were tens of thousands of private and commercial truck users.... roof knew this and i'm sure the ARDUN folks did also....a pic of a racing car or two looked good but a company with a fleet of trucks wishing to be more competetive in their market was where the real money was...

on the other hand the racing guys often benefited from the use of "heavy duty" truck bits in their vehicles...[some still do i would guess]

[Ray Bell]

No doubt this is true with some things, and 2-speed differentials (Ruckstel (sp?) and Columbia) come to mind...

But I really doubt that alloy heads as the Ardun units were would be looked upon smilingly among truckies of the forties.

Much easier and cheaper to throw a Caddy engine in there... or an Olds ohv unit...

[dbw]

keep in mind that when we thought a 671 "jimmy" blower was a standard component of evey top rail dragster,we probably didn't realize every fourth or fifth big rig we passed on the freeway had one...

[dbw]

no substitute for an expert... http://www.team.net/...2/msg00100.hmtl

[karlcars]

I can recommend Jerry Burton's book on Zora as a good source on the origins and background of the Ardun heads. The inspiration for them was the Talbot six with which Zora was very familiar.

BTW, I believe that the V8-60 version of the heads was made in Germany by Veritas and actually did have the BMW 328 style of valve gear.

Jerry's book is referenced here:

http://www.bentleypu...gcza&subject=30

[Ray Bell]

Originally posted by dbw
no substitute for an expert... http://www.team.net/...2/msg00100.hmtl

That one's not working...

And while I accept that the blower was something that was adopted from its original place in the world to go racing, these heads are a different matter.

I suspect that getting backing for their construction might have been easier if you said that trucking companies would buy them by the thousand... rather than that you might have a good market with hotrodders and racers...

[dbw]

sorry the link didn't work...the gist of the post was that duntov did in fact develop the heads as a dealer option for ford [with talbot as the pattern]..100 kits were made and installed but ford changed the design on their truck engines and backed out...duntov sold the business and the remaining 250 kits were offered thru allard...so much for hearsay and legends...[i'm sure someone will post a more accurate history..but back to the original question,i suspect any significant competion history came from the kits sold thur allard....]

[Ray Bell]

They're bound to have had some dragstrip success before the Chrysler Hemi arrived...

But it would have been shortlived!

[Aanderson]

Originally posted by Ray Bell
No doubt this is true with some things, and 2-speed differentials (Ruckstel (sp?) and Columbia) come to mind...

But I really doubt that alloy heads as the Ardun units were would be looked upon smilingly among truckies of the forties.

Much easier and cheaper to throw a Caddy engine in there... or an Olds ohv unit...

After looking up my references on Ford truck engines in the 1940's, something that seems it would have precluded the use of Ardun heads in truck use: In late 1946, Ford introduced an all-new flathead V8 truck engine for heavy-duty use (I would assume for 1.5 ton and larger chassis). Ford's new truck engine was the then-new Lincoln 337cid V8, which while a continuation of their flathead V8 designs, used nothing from the earlier 221-239cid engine, having 5 main bearings (meaning a longer block), larger cylinder bores as well.

You are also correct that truckers and truck fleet owners weren't all that enamored with "exotic" OHV conversions from aftermarket producers for their engines--they would likely have been viewed as expensive to buy (and Ardun's weren't cheap, even by the standards of that day), perhaps unreliable as well, not to mention the likely maintenance headaches. Most of the OHV/OHC conversions for flathead engines were for the purpose of raising the available RPM's, while trucks of the era (much the same today) tend to use much lower RPM engines than passenger cars.

In fact, US truck makers used flathead gasoline engines almost exclusively, with GMC and Chevrolet being the exception. The next makers to adopt OHV truck engines after WW-II were International Harvester and Mack, but they're another story, for another forum.

Art Anderson

[Ray Bell]

Yes, things have certainly changed in truckdom!

It was pointed out to me some years ago that wartime operation required quietness... something that the flathead petrol engines would have delivered much more readily than diesels.

Looking at wartime usage of engines is another thing, and somewhat relevant to TNF too...

Buick's Century engine was used in submarines for instance, the Caddy V8 drove generator plants for anti-aircraft searchlight batteries.

For this reason there were far more Caddy V8 engines in Australia after the war than there were cars... and so they became available for racing car use. Two were used in Queensland (the Saunders car had a pre-war Caddy in it, but after that blew up it might have had the wartime engine fitted to make that tally three), I'm sure there were others in the southern states.

Many were used in trucks and buses, one of them the one that alternated between Rex Law's Regal Special and a rear-engined bus he'd converted himself that still carried an International engine in the front as it performed its twice-weekly return trips between Sydney and Brisbane. The Caddy was needed in there because the Inter engine didn't like the diet of power kerosene Law insisted on feeding it, but the bits were all on board to hook the Inter engine up again should the Caddy give trouble!

Does anyone else know of other uses for automotive power units like this?