I'd like to see an F1 engine appear as a feature sometime. Don't know that it counts as any sort of workhorse, but it'd be cool to see a good tech writeup and some pictures.

@elwood: How about a NASCAR engine instead?

Valves parallel to the cylinders? It's just crazy enough to work.

See the problem with the Nazis (they had many) was that they used actual work horses -- as in neigh,my name's Ed -- while the Allies were running around in these wacky jump mobiles.

Where did the engine go???

Great Engine Nomination, but where is there a picture of the actual engine? The Wiki entry is a bit brief as well.

Murilee, you're definately working a bit too hard, with the DOTS, PCH, and other delicious posts. Time for the rest of the staff to pickup the pace, and leave our girl to finish the V8LVO!

So help me wrap my mind around this concept, fellow Jalops -
60 HP is enough to rid the world of facism, but I need 275 HP to run take the rugrats to soccer practice?
I guess suburban sprawl has more power than I thought.

@danio3834: Meh. Nascar engines are fancy castings, expensive alloys, and precision assembly, but there's not a whole lot of impressive technology going on there. F1 engines are all that, AND you've got things like pneumatic valvesprings and so on.

@rexplex: Not only that, but the whole "My car interior has to be 10x nicer than my home interior" mentality. And the weight/complexity/cost/waste cycle continues.

Blah, blah Mark Levinson blah blah leather/power everything...

Sorry for sounding so anti-jalop. Just trying to be a purist.

@rexplex: I think 295hp is the minimum.

Karl Malden is my co-pilot. The L134 is straight-edged engine pr0n.

How many minutes before requisite slant-six rant?

At the very least, let's give this engine the old Hee-Haw Saluuuuuute! I've heard dozens of stories about how indestructible and forgiving these engines were.

@ash78:
Let's not start on those who spend more on car than on house. We all love cars here, but why would you lease a 3-series and a crappy 1 bedroom apt at the same time.

Ok, here is a try at a picture

[48cj2a.com]

The straight L heads (flatheads, side valves depending where you hail from)in 4 and 6 cylinder form were a robust if underpowered design.

My dad just traded a 95' Dodge Ram 1500 w/ 200k+ miles for two WWII era Willys Jeeps. One for me, one for my brother. Sweet.

@rexplex: So help me wrap my mind around this concept, fellow Jalops -
60 HP is enough to rid the world of facism, but I need 275 HP to run take the rugrats to soccer practice?

Yes, but you're ridding the world of fascism so slowly. Took, what, three, maybe four long, grueling years to do it in pokey old Jeeps. Now take for example those high HP Hummers we had in Iraq for only the past five years or so ...

Huh.

Well, anyway, the kids are getting to soccer practice on time. And in record comfort too! America, fuck yeah!

An old guy I knew (died early last year) used to talk about a Jeep he and his buddies hooned around West Germany - one of his friends had found an "abandoned" (not driven in almost a week, poor thing mustbe abandoned) flathead Ford V8 and somehow stuffed that under the hood of an otherwise stock Jeep. Said Jeep was the fastest little troop carrier in Europe - went like stink, endangered the lives of himself and his similarly inebriated GI friends, and confounded the local and US gendarmie. He came Stateside and thought nothing further of it until a general mentioned catching hell as a colonel in charge of security at the German base, attempting and failing to respond to an unreasonably fast Jeep, tearing ass all over the locale, full of drunk GIs on leave.

Frog heard the general, and said nothing.

A wise man.

@bswinfor: That is sweet.

Willys also spawned the inescapably addictive Rat Patrol series.

Dude, awesome! So glad this series is back. I'd completely forgotten about it!

@Number_Six: There was a straight six version of it! The Willy's Lightning was a 6 cylinder flathead that was essentially a worked over Go Devil. Think of it as the granddaddy to your 4.0 AMC.

@murileemartin
I had a 47' willys when I lived in Bozeman Montana, the thing was awesome (as long as you didn't have to go over 53 miles per hour).
Stuck it so bad once the wrecker couldn't get to it, had to be winched across a stream (full cable and 50' of chain from the wrecker).

Maybe I shouldn't have been driving on that snowmobile trail?

From Wikipedia:
"The engine displaced 134 in³ (2.2 L) with a 3.125 in (79.4 mm) bore and 4.375 in (111.1 mm) stroke. It is most likely the most undersquare engine ever built"

I think that's a longer stroke than by 390, another known torque monster.

Seriously, that's like a diesel: Peak torque (100lb-ft, great for the day) at 2k rpm.

@brandonvalentine:I never got to see the Lightning but I did hoon some L134 Jeeps and a Jeep Commander at an airbase for a few years when I was a teen. My pilot uncle constantly lectured me about the danger of rolling a jeep, so I rolled an early seventies Dodge pickup instead.

@cyclopticgaze:
Isn't that how the nailhead Buick engine worked?

@BSAKat: I honestly can't tell you. I pulled that info straight off Wikipedia. I'm much more stupidest than I seem.

The wikipedia entry for the T-34 says it's engine was the 12-cyl. diesel model V-2. I just wanted to mention this so people wouldn't mistakenly believe that the Soviets were sporting mad powerful V-twins in their armor of choice.

@cyclopticgaze:
Come to think of it, that's not how the Nailhead worked. I'll shut the hell up, now.

the Pratt Wasp series and Rolls / Packard Merlin had more to do with winning the war... not exactly car engines though

@rexplex:
True. Let the rich snots buy that new 3 Series and turn up their noses at your "beater" 2002, which just happens to be joy they'll never find in an automobile, being far too busy chatting via bluetooth, choking down a latte, and caressing the iDrive knob with all the finesse of a seventh grader getting to second base.

@DarthLefty
Its called hyperbole. Many writers use this technique to emphasize a point they're trying to make. For instance, Jezza quipped "the Ferrari 355 is like a quail's egg dipped in celery salt and served in Julia Roberts' belly button." I doubt the Ferrari is that good...but perhaps the L134 is that good.

Most lawnmower engines are flatheads: the camshaft is next to the crankshaft and is gear-driven, which pushes directly on the valves. Compression ratios were low for these cars because you'd have to have space for the valves to open.

The head is a flat piece of metal carved out a bit for the combustion chamber: while some old cars may have needed new heads every 10,000 miles, it wasn't any more difficult to do than changing a valve cover gasket on a modern car.

Also, like most off-road vehicles of the time, the gas tank is protected from rocks by placing it inside the cab, underneath the driver's seat.

@kingedwin: Now if we could just fix that pesky problem with protecting drivers from exploding gas tanks.

@kingedwin:

I've heard the gas tank was under the driver to reduce fatal shots to the crew. IE: kill the driver or hit the tank and it might be game over for the crew. So fuel and driver in about the same place reduced the risk.

Beaut of a transmission to, eh?

America, Truck Ya!

Drove an M151A1 for a few years in the Army (yes, I'm that old, besides, they were phasing them out as I left). They are every bit as tough-and dangerous-as advertised. Don't bother using first gear if you're on-road. 4-wheel independent suspension means be careful how you corner it. The driver is sitting on the gas tank, but it's OK - the passenger is sitting on two batteries (Jeeps are 24v). The MG pintle was usually left on to provide a 'one-point roll cage'. One big-ass, oil-filled aircleaner. With the optional snorkel kit, I drove it in chin-deep water - standing on the seat. They respond well to bump-starting, too. Nothing quite as comical as a dozen of these, spare to spare, in an open field, firing the ones that had comm gear on all night.

My father's first vehicle was a 1948 Willys pickup truck with a Go-Devil flathead four. The truck has since become something of a family legend--there was the time Dad had to rescue my grandfather, whose FJ40 Landcruiser had died in the middle of nowhere; the way the 4.88:1 axles meant the motor was at redline by the time you reached highway speeds; there was even a time it blew by Deskman's Slant Six Dart at 200 miles an hour. It seems strange to have a 2.2 liter engine in a serious off-road vehicle, but that thing was a damn good motor. The first two engine teardowns my dad did were on the Go-Devil and a Ford Model A motor. Later, when he took apart an Oldsmobile 330, he was worried by the "insubstantial" appearance of the parts. Willys built their engines to LAST. And they did, which is why we won the war.

Oh, and thank you, Mr. Martin, for bringing back one of my favorite features.

@Armand, Star-Spangled Pedant: I had sort of painted myself into a corner with the "workhorse" part- too much of a distraction- so now we'll just have plain old EOTD.

@brandonvalentine:
The Lightning six was superseded by the Continental Motors flathead six (via Kaiser), then the 230 OHC update, then the modern AMC OHV six, which ended its days as the 4.0.

But Willys, truck yeah!

My first car was a '54 Willys with a Kaiser Lightning 4-banger.

Top speed: 45MPH, downhill, in a hurricane.

Absolutely, positively impossible to get stuck, and believe me, I tried.