While Speed Week at Bonneville is still some months away, that doesn’t mean we can’t lust after cool LSR machinery. This video shows the Kohler Racing “Street Roadster” entry on the chassis dyno back in 2007. The engine is the previously mentioned Ardun-headed Ford and it makes some glorious noise on the way up to the 6200-RPM redline.
With this engine the car went 157.8 MPH and reset the record in the class. Ardun heads have some interesting history. Of course most of us know that Zora Arkus Duntov and his brother Yura developed these Hemi heads for the flattie eons ago. Their intial designs has some drawbacks like the super heavy cast steel pushrods, but they were an amazing development for anyone wanting to make larger power with their Flathead. Amazingly, only 50 sets were made when the heads were sold by the brothers. Later on down the line, the famed California shop C&T Automotive refined the heads and corrected some of those early flaws. C&T were building engines capable of making around 300hp and that was big stuff at the time for hot rodders in the early 1950s.
The third and current generation of Ardun heads was brought to market in the 1990s with a small production run that worked as a proof of concept for the fact that there were still guys out there wanting to bolt this kick ass pieces to their Flatheads. The venerable old Ford engine has certainly been living in a renaissance period for the last 10-15 years. They look and sound bitchin’ in old hot rods and trucks, although we’re guessing some fraction of 1% of them actually make power like the one in the video. Dare we say that this one is also equipped with EFI?
Getting 400hp out of a motor that made 85hp stock and has more hurdles than an Olympic race? That’s bad ass in our book!
