Simon Manley

A Tech Book From 1954 Still Relevant Today

Rooting through a salvage yard can turn up all kinds of treasures — and a lot of junk quite honestly — but this time I did find something interesting; Ford service books from 1954 with some great information about engines and service from that era.

Flicking through the first one I found a great section discussing Volumetric Efficiency.

Today, we can calculate VE so much easier than they could back then. With even a basic scan tool and a simple VE calculator, you can see exactly how well an engine is breathing in real time.

But a lot of people don’t know this test exists, let alone the value of it or when to deploy it.

But there it is as a fundamental measurement of engine performance in a book that’s over 70 years old.