Mining a mystery

Them boys over at Hooniverse uncovered a stumper recently. Out at some abandoned mine in Arizona, they came across a V-8 engine still in its chassis that’s been repurposed to run an air compressor. Not unusual in itself, but they’ve had a devil of a time trying to identify the L-head, aluminum-crankcase, exhaust-in-valley engine.

I count 34 American auto manufacturers that offered V-8s before overhead-valve designs became popular:

Abbott (Herschell-Spillman)
Apperson
Cadillac
Chevrolet
Cole (Northway)
Cord
Cunningham
Daniels (Herschell-Spillman)
Douglas (Herschell-Spillman)
Drummond (Herschell-Spillman)
Economy (Ferro)
Ford
Hollier
Homer
Jackson (Ferro)
King
La Fayette
Laughlin
Lincoln
Mercury
Monarch
Murray (Herschell-Spillman)
Oakland
Peerless (Herschell-Spillman)
Pilot
Regal
Rock Falls (Herschell-Spillman)
Ross (Herschell-Spillman)
Scripps-Booth (Ferro)
Sheridan (Northway)
Standard (Herschell-Spillman)
Viking
Wills Saint Claire
Yale

Of these, we can immediately strike Wills Saint Claire (overhead-camshaft) and Ford/Lincoln/Mercury (exhaust manifolds outside of V), and visual comparisons also strike out Cadillac, Chevrolet, Cole, Cord, La Fayette, Oakland, and Scripps-Booth. As many cars (and trucks) that the Herschell-Spillman V-8 powered, I’ve yet to come across a decent photograph of one for comparison purposes.

Of course, there’s also the possibilities that it’s not an American-made V-8, or that it’s a truck-based engine and chassis. So does it look familiar to anybody out there in Hemmings Nation?