This 1953 Ford Needs a McCulloch VS57 Supercharger on its Flathead V-8. Here’s How I’d Build It.

I’d really like a supercharged 1949-’53 V-8 Ford and when I saw this 1953 Customline Tudor, I thought it would be the perfect candidate.

Flatheads and forced induction just go hand in hand. The only real complaint about the old L-head/sidevalve/flathead arrangement is that gasses moving through the engine have to make 90-degree turns both entering and exiting the combustion chamber. A supercharger or turbocharger remedies that issue by pressurizing the intake charge, pushing it through in greater volumes than a naturally aspirated flathead ever could.

The Ford flathead V-8s of 1932-’53 came with a performance reputation from the beginning and launched an aftermarket speed-part industry as big or bigger than the ones that had grown up around the Model T and Model A/B four-cylinder engines. Naturally, one of those power-adding accessories was a supercharger.

While the term “blower” brings to mind the Roots-style compressors used on 1920s Bentleys and 1960s rail dragsters (or even the SCoT units of the ’40s and ’50s), it’s not the only type. Due to its packaging issues, that type of supercharger isn’t ideal for the driveway do-it-yourselfer. Instead, the first accessory supercharger broadly marketed to flathead owners was a centrifugal unit that came from McCulloch Engineering, of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, founded by Robert McCulloch, who also developed an eponymous line of two-stroke engines and Lake Havasu City, Arizona, present home of the London Bridge.

The original McCulloch supercharger promised to boost the power of your 85-hp engine by more than 1/3. Image courtesy Jim Moody / vs57.y-block.info

The original McCulloch was on the market from 1937 to 1940. Production ended due to World War II and McCulloch Engineering was sold to Borg-Warner. After World War II, Robert McCulloch opened a new business, McCulloch Motors, in Southern California. While not initially re-entering the supercharger business, McCulloch eventually engineered a new accessory supercharger, which it began road testing in 1951. It hit the market in 1953.

The first postwar McCulloch was called the VS57. Although centrifugal, it was most unlike the prewar units and was intended for more than just Ford engines. Early test vehicles included a Studebaker Starlight hardtop and a Corvette, both 1953s. The first bolt-on kits, however, were specifically aimed at the 1949-’53 Ford V-8.

McCulloch eventually spun off its supercharger business, which is now called Paxton and owned by Vortech. Paxton hasn’t supported the earlier blowers in a couple decades now, but because of continued enthusiasm for the older units—especially those factory-installed on F-code 1957 Fords and Studebaker Golden Hawks, plus those optionally installed on Shelby G.T. 350 Mustangs—it’s not a hopeless cause to obtain and install one as a period accessory.

This 1953 Ford Customline Tudor in Polynesian Brown over Sungate Ivory appears to be the ideal candidate for such an installation. Aside from the Continental Kit and wheels, it appears to be a clean, mostly original stocker. The original 110-hp, 239-cu.in. V-8 is still underhood, looking a little naked with that chrome aftermarket air cleaner on the Holley two-barrel—a pressure bonnet will fix that right up.

The 110-hp, 239-cu.in. was the last version of the Ford flathead V-8 produced in the United States. Ford police cars and Mercury cars got a 125-hp, 255-cu.in. version, thanks to a four-inch stroke.

I debate on whether to open up this engine—if for no other reason than to install a four-inch-stroke crankshaft and push the cubic inches from 239 to the 255 boasted by Mercury cars. On the other hand, the VS57 was intended to bolt to a stock powerplant and certainly you don’t want to put on high-compression cylinder heads and risk detonation. I doubt I’d be unable to resist adding cast-iron Fenton headers (available new in 1953 and once again today) flowing through dual tailpipes and steel-pack mufflers, and an aftermarket aluminum four-barrel intake. The stock iron heads (giving 7.2:1 compression) and factory cam can probably stay, though.

In fact, most of the car can be left absolutely as-is. I’m not a huge fan of an automatic transmission in this application, but Ford made the Fordomatic work in some supercharged ’57s, so it’s not off the table. That said, there’s little to compare with a three-on-the-tree setup, and I’ve always wanted to own a ’50s car with Borg-Warner automatic overdrive, a $184 feature on 1953 Fords and something that could be obtained and installed on this car with some patience and determination.

I would, however, absolutely toss those wheels and the externally mounted spare tire. OE-style steel wheels are plentiful on the market today and a set of 15x5.5-inch units painted Sungate Ivory and topped off with 1953 dog-dish hubcaps and 7.10x15 (station-wagon size; 6.70x15 was stock for a sedan) Firestone pie-crust blackwalls would lend an appropriately beefy look to this car and provide some additional contact patch to go with the added power.

The factory rear gear with the Fordomatic is probably 3.31:1, whereas originally overdriven cars came with 4.10s standard and 4.27s as an option. These days, 4.27s might be a bridge too far (even though they’d act like 2.99s with the overdrive engaged), but the 4.10s would seem reasonable. Swapping gears in a ’49-’56 Ford isn’t quite as straightforward as it could be, unfortunately, as the original passenger-car rear axle from this era isn’t well supported. The station-wagon/Thunderbird Dana 44 unit is an option, or the ubiquitous Ford 9-inch (which debuted for 1957), along with a limited-slip differential (another new-for-’57 item).

Although it looks a lot like the later 8- and 9-inch units, the 1953 Ford passenger-car rear axle is a bit of an orphan. Note that the dual tailpipes join before they meet the exhaust manifolds--something that I'd remedy when installing Fenton headers.

Aside from actually assembling the brackets and accoutrements to mount the VS57, it’s possibly the four-barrel carburetor selection that would mandate the most effort on this build. The flange pattern on the typical four-barrel flathead intake is that of the first generation of four-barrel carburetors: the Rochester 4G (confusingly dubbed the "Quadri-Jet" in period ads), the Carter WCFB, the Holley “Teapot”, and the Stromberg Aeroquad.

The Rochester, Carter, and Stromberg designs all appeared on GM products in 1952, including the Buick Roadmaster 320-cu.in. straight-eight and the Oldsmobile Super 88 303-cu.in. V-8. The Aeroquad, which shares some internal pieces with the hot rodder’s favorite Stromberg 97 two-barrel, seems most closely paired with the Buick, though it was by no means the exclusive Roadmaster four-barrel. The WCFB likely needs no introduction and also saw duty on Chrysler Hemi V-8s in the 1950s.

Initially, I leaned toward wanting an Aeroquad, due to the 97 interchange and its status as the only four-barrel Stromberg ever produced. The Rochester is rarely seen in non-stock applications, although it’s a good carburetor—just small. In fact, the popularity of dual-quad intakes in the later 1950s and the eventual replacement of the first-generation four-barrels stems from their inherent airflow limitations. Any one of them is perfectly capable of feeding a sub-300-cu.in. flathead engine, however.

The WCFB might seem to be the most likely candidate, as it had a performance reputation even when new, but in the end I think I might follow Ford’s own lead and use the Holley. Although it (probably unfairly) developed a reputation for catching fire, the Teapot (aka “haystack,” “inside-out,” or “Mayor McCheese”) Holley got the nod from Ford when it put a McCulloch VR57 (a later development of the VS57) on its 312-cu.in. Y-block V-8 in 1957.

When the four-barrel carburetor arrived as factory equipment on the 1952 Oldsmobile, it was considered quite the technical achievement. Image via lov2xlr8

This always seemed odd to me, since 1957 was also the year the standard-bearer of ’60s performance carburetors arrived—the Holley 4150. In fact, Ford installed it on lower-output 312s. So why not on the supercharged cars? I turned to Don Antilla for an answer.

Don is a hardcore Ford fan, but not just some Mustang guy. He’s got stuff like the 427-powered ’66 Fairlane that was our 2013 Muscle Machine of the Year, the 1957 F-code Thunderbird that we featured as a two-part restoration profile, and a K-code 1964 Fairlane. He’s been into blown Thunderbirds since they were nearly new and over the years he’s dedicated himself to documenting the surviving originals (and a number that were awaiting disposal) and talk to the folks who were there.

What Don told me was that the 4150’s layout was unsuited to the pressure-cap used in a blow-through installation. “It squirted a lot of fuel out of the carb float assembly vent openings. They would have had to completely enclose the carb in a total pressure box to resolve fuel squirting out. I guess they could have done that as Studebaker did, but Ford had apparently experimented with a Lincoln Teapot carb during development and found it satisfactory.

It's hard to argue with success. Ford developed its own McCulloch supercharger setup around the Holley four-barrel, as introduced on the 1953 Lincoln. Image courtesy lov2xlr8

“The Teapot carb has the float bowls integral to the top area of the carb assembly, and thus when the designer installs a pressure cap (aka ‘bonnet’), the pressure differential does not cause fuel to squirt out because the entire fuel bowls are contained inside the pressurized volume under the bonnet.

“Of course, Ford engineering had to change jetting and Power Valve, and secondary venturi opening logic since high pressure was the signal to command the secondaries open.”

I suppose, if you don’t want to deal with all that, this would also be a pretty cool car with just twin carbs and dual exhausts. Just please, get rid of those wheels.

How would you build it?

1953 Ford Customline

See more Ford Customlines at Hemmings.com