An All-Aluminum, Flat-Plane Crank, DOHC V8 in 1940! Ford's 1,100ci (18L) GAA V8 Is a WWII Marvel

My Dad was a US army tanker immediately after WW2 and into Korea. He loved that engine and would rave about how great it was. And yes they were definitely defeating the governors!

We had this exact engine in our 36' Jeffries cabin cruiser in the late '50s/early '60s. We also had a spare in our locker at Newmark's landing in Wilmington, California, which we swapped in when a wave flooded our exhaust and a valve head embedded itself in a piston...the GAA was a marvel, and would push the Jeffries to 30 knots! As a kid, I used to read the service documentation, while laying on the upholstered engine cover on the way to Catalina Island... Thanks for the blast from the past...

There's more info about the GAA engine: a). it had side oiler oiling 23 years before the Ford 427s had the feature. b). It came with tapered wrist pins in 1940, whereas most rodders think this feature didn't come around until the 1970s-1980s. c). most present day engine builders, as well as auto manufacturers engine design centers, say that the ideal connecting rod to crank stroke ratio ideally should be at 1.70-1.75 :1. The GAA came with rod-to-stroke ratio of 1.75. (10.5 rod centers, divide by 6" stroke.). d). The initial 12,080 engines came with double-splay 4-bolt main bearing caps. The later models went with regular 2-bold main caps because it took too much time to machine the block for the doble splay blocks. e). the engine had 1,000 lbs / ft of torque @ 1,000 rpm. Looking at Ford's dyno sheets (which I have), the hp line goes straight up at a 45-degree angle until 26-2800 rpm, when the engine runs out of carburetors. The first thing any engine modifier does is add carburetion or blowers. I am the website owner of the www.fordgaaengine.com website, and also am one of the administrators for the GAA engine blog site on Facebook. If you are interested, go to the Ford GAA engine website, and go down the pictures section. My #1 engine that I built is the one near the bottom, with the polished valve covers and the black background, and labeled as "reprocessed as screen savers." I have two stories that may be of interest to you: a). Story #1: there was a logger in Washington State that was a friend of a man that I knew who also has some GAA engines. When my friend went out to Washington to visit his friend, the friend showed him his logging truck, which had a GAA engine for power. My friend asked the man what gear he normally ran the truck in when hauling logs. Bearing in mind that a stock GAA engine has a minimum of 1,000 lbs / ft of torque at every rpm from 1,000 revs to beyond the redline, the man just told my friend, "whatever gear it happens to be in at the time." b). Story #2. I bought some parts a couple times from a man out by Lake Mead / Hoover Dam in Nevada, and the man ran an offshore V-hull boat in competition, with his power plant being one GAA engine, modified with some internal goodies, MSD ignitions and 3 Holley double pumper carbs. His one engine drove dual Mercruiser racing outdrives, connecting the drives with a 6" Gilmer timing belt to each one. The class competition was the same hull with dual Big Block Chevys on Hilborn Fuel Injection. He won as many races as he didn't win, his one Ford GAA vs Dual Chevy 427s-454s. b-1). He one time tromped the throttle too hard and snapped a 6-inch Gilmer belt from too much torque being applied too quickly. b-2). An example of: sometimes some is good but more is not better: He had a friend who convinced him to take out the GAA engine and put in a gas turbine engine. He did so, the boat caught fire, burned to the waterline, and the hull is now quietly resting in 800-ft of water behind Lake Mead / Hoover Dam. Thanks for putting out this little video about the GAA engines. Its amazing, a man out in the Seattle area set up the Facebook blog site not quite a year ago, and we now have over 525 members wanting to know more about this engine. I even got, about 2-3 years ago as a result of my website (www.fordgaaengine.com), a man affiliated with a Ford Flathead owner website, and he asked that I send some pics of the GAAs to his website, because he wanted to "bookend" the Pre-WW2 engine building efforts of Henry Ford and Friends. After I sent some pictures, my website provider sent me a tabulation of all the people logging on to the site right afterwards. A 60-HP flathead Ford V8 side by side with an aluminum, DOHC, 32V engine at the far opposite end of the engine spectrum. Who'd a thunk it.

It's amazing that after the war they went right back to producing the flathead for like another 10 years

I'd like to hear it running.

Perfect example of "Necessity is the mother of invention".

A lot of these made their way into marine applications too. I once worked on a fishing boat that had one.

Fun fact - the GAA nomenclature was re-used on another Ford DOHC 4 valve V engine - the Ford Cosworth GAA 3.4 litre V6 used in the racing Ford Capri. Capable of making similar power to its 18 litre namesake, too, though at considerably higher revs.

I’m a huge Ford fan, and this pleases me to no end. Thank you for sharing.

Another reason for the 60° bank angle of the GAA, is it helped to cancel both harmonics and idle vibrations. If you tried to run a flat plane crank on a 90° V8 of this size, it would rattle your teeth out in a tank. They sound weird, but run much better.

Been an engine junkie for 60 years and this is the first time I've heard of this engine. Thank you. Never too old to learn 👍👍👍

When I was truck pulling in the 80's there was a gentleman from Moberly Missouri who had an open class pulling tractor with this engine. It would really scream!

The worm-drive for the camshafts was a brilliant idea.

When I was 16 I found 2 of the Continental radial engines that were new in the crate, I was able to donate one to my automotive shop class. Thanks for this video.

Such a cool engine for 1940 and a great narrative! Thank you.

Can' t believe it : Stood in front of this FORD engine TODAY at the German Tank Museum in Munster/Germany - and here is your full video on this very interesting engine , released on youtube the same day. Thank you !!! Much more info than the exhibit description card offered 👍

As the old saying goes: Necessity is the mother of invention. It's amazing to think of the engineering employed throughout the forties, fifties and sixties that is still unmatched today.

Back in the 1970's there was a local guy that ran one of these in a pulling tractor. I remember seeing when I was kid. That thing really sounded cool!

The Ford GAA V8 is such a glorious sounding machine! I would love to get my hands on some to help keep them going!

Got a friend that just built a pulling tractor using this engine. It’s called the “The Patriot”. I believe he has it making 2000-2500hp