I saw a bit of information on the HAMB about a Ford 351W block that was reworked with an added cast iron decks and a cast frontal structure made to work as a flathead. Dick Beith that manufactured ET wheels back in the day evidently made the deck & cylinder assemblies with valve pockets and ports designed pretty much at the old L-head V8s were structured. It looked like he was trying to get a kit together back in the 2006 time frame but I've not heard anything more about it. The damn thing had the three port exhaust & rectangular intake all as part of the added deck structure. He had to make custom heads and manifold for the 402 CID thing. I'm not sure how the exhaust worked though since you can't see it. I'm not sure if you could make it work like the flathead did.
Pictures are on post 37 of this thread.
http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/s...=351w+flathead It was definitely a strange idea but then Dick Beith liked to run the VW bugs at Bonneville so he likes strange stuff for sure. Interesting idea though. I always figured someone would try to make new deck structures for worn out flathead blocks but never figured to see something like this on a later design OHV block.