Thread: back fire ford flathead

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Another cautionary note related to the distributor (beside memories of skinned knuckles on radiator fins) is that if you take the distributor off, note that the key slot is offset from center and if you bolt it up 180 degrees off, the first time you turn it over the distributor housing will likely crack. On the one hand that makes it likely you will only be able to reinstall it with the correct firing order, but if you do manage to get it put on 180 degrees off, the wobble will probably destroy the distributor housing. 1936 saw some mid-year changes around April '36. The later '36 carb was indeed a Stromberg 97 and the earlier one looks similar so it is likely the carb has been replaced sometime with a 97. The earlier distributor had a three bolt mount for the coil on top while the later one had only two bolt holes for a coil but they function the same as far as I know. One other factoid I discovered is that the flatter pancake style distributor came out as early as 1942 and that had the dual points so '42-'48 distributors were the dual point type. As I recall (from 1954) one of my high school buddies rebuilt my pancake distributor for his '35 when I got a new one, so maybe the later distributor will fit the earlier block, but of course the distributor cap is quite different. Maybe you could take off the side wire "bulbs" and try a shot or two of WD40 inside the distributor without taking it off and maybe check the vacuum advance for carbon clogging or corrosion. The advance mechanism uses pressure changes from the intake manifold so it may be possible that something is clogging that mechanism and you may have to take the distributor all the way off to clear the advance mechanism. If that vacuum line is clogged that would explain the late firing due to insufficient advance. Anyhow you can see that I sure would like to mess around with this piece of nostalgic hardware, but instead I am trying to understand a much "newer" '76 SBC.

Don Shillady
Retired Scientist/teen rodder