After reading the thread about the death of Ed Almquist. http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/threads/ed-almquist-1921-2015.985238/ I realized I've never seen much of Almquist/Sparkomatic speed parts which makes them much more rare (less popular) then let's say Edelbrock speed parts so lets see some of the stuff they made.
in the last year, I had and sold 2, Almquist 3 carb fuel blocks, and 1 pair of Almquist finned aluminum fined heads foe the 1939-48 Ford flathead.
I had a Sparkomatic shifter in my 51 Merc in the 60's and it constantly hung up between gears. You didn't get much for 20.00 even then.
No disrespect to Mr. Almquist; but I've pulled out and s****ed quite a few of his shifters for Hurst replacements over the years. They were pretty Mickey Mouse stuff!
Hard to see but this engine has Almquist breathers on it. And this one I had one of those old Sparkomatic shifters on a Ford once. you had to baby it or like @Mr48chev said it would hang between gears. I had a sparkomatic stereo once don't know if it was the same company.
With a Spark-O-Matic Shifter you can put a Chevy three speed in 2nd gear while it still stays in first. Ask me how I know.....
I had one of those in my '48 Chevy and I had to crawl under it more than once in traffic to get it in just one gear. Mostly the shifter went into second and the trans stayed in first. But I did not take note of the Almquist brand until I was reading a kid's mystery book to my 3rd grade cl***. It was a cheap 1954 Whitman book from a series by Troy Nesbitt ( not a real guy) called The Indian Mummy Mystery. The three teenage boys along with breaking every rule in Mesa Verdi National Park wanted to build a "jalopy". All in all they were fun books that combined a mystery with a little US history and geography. The hot rod parts and spelling were a little off.
JC Whitney/Warshawski sold a lot of Almquist-Sparkomatic stuff. above descriptions of the shifter are right on the money!
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