I´m not going electronic cause I like the charme of ****og mechanical devices. Cool gizmo Tomy, exactly the stuff I love. Frank
I still occasionally pick up an old waterproof Mallory dual point for early Chevy sixes for <$75.....in fact, I just did recently. The one I stuck in my '53 years ago gave the 0-30 time a noticeable improvement, but it never pinged, so the advance curve must have been right on the money. Honestly, find an old Mallory and sell the new one for whatever you can get. You'll have proper performance as well as the correct look.
Well... Dizzy showed up yesterday - I plopped it on and lit her off. Motor sounded COMPLETELY different; I had attributed the choppiness of the idle to the cam - turns out a lot of it was due to the distributor. the engine ran much smoother at idle and off idle, spooled up under no load with minimal prob...but... under load it still breaks up. Goin' to Napa at lunch to buy another coil and a couple of condensors. <sigh> I'll lick this - eventually.
I wonder if your getting good fuel pressure but the pump is not providing enough volume during high output. If your running an electric one with a regulator I would especially suspect this. I could have sworn the cutout with my setup was totally attributed to an electrical issue and here to find out it was put to bed with increasing the jet size. I once suspected a fuel supply issue until I installed an in line fuel pressure gauge and found it to have plenty of fuel and volume. Missed the fact the fuel issue was within the carbs.
this is EXACTLY what my flat motor was doing. this symptom ended up being the coil. later, I found the cheap as mallory condensor would cause the motor to break up after between 5-10 miles of driving. get the echlin parts, they seem to work good. I just got a condensor for a 60's small block chevy </sigh>
I'd buy that, except... pulled the plugs and they were sooty again; the smell outta the pipes is unburnt fuel. I've got a clear red line to the carb and can see that I've got fuel to the carbs. I'm also runnin' #54 jets - quite a bit bigger than yours.
OK, found specs on crab advance curve, which is generally pretty functional. This is actually a Ford 11A advance unit, also adapting to the '37-41 types... These are DISTRIBUTOR degrees and RPM's, so double them: 200RPM...0--1 degree 400RPM...6 1/2-8 degrees 600...10 1/2--12 degrees, which is to say all in at 22 degree spec. Total Ford is 4 degrees initial plus 22 in curve, all in before 1500. My Mallory collection is spotty...will see if I can find any early specs from them.
Note that is the fastest Ford curve...the vac brake if turned in some (another Mallory patent part) slowed the curve as adjustment for bad gas. For most modern purposes, start by turning out brake adjustment til it stops BY HAND (wrench will pop off the spring seat) , turn it back in maybe two turns. Some light tension is needed to stabilize the brake disc that adjusts advance.
Design of this Mallory system, used on flttop Mallorys and '32-48 Fords, zero vac/full throttle lets brake apply, shortening curve for full throttle, high vac releases brake for extra advance at cruise...most use on modern gas can back this way off and use whole curve.
I've still got my money on poor spark. rev's decent with no load, and breaks up under load sounds like weak spart to me...... flatheads aren't really that sensitive to timing, if you get it even close it will run good. i've set mine within 15 degrees either way and the only thing that happened was if it was at almost 40 degrees of advance it was pinging just a WEEEEEE bit. lol might want to mess around with internally ballasted coil
Flatheads in my experience don't mind a bit of excess advance, but heat up rapidly when retarded much. Those 54 jets sound pretty rich to me.
ya know bruce, I missed that. I'm running 43's on mine and the plugs still come out a bit dark. were they 97's??
I just had a coil wire(non-metallic core) burn up internally about a 1/2" up from the distributor end, causing the symtoms you've described...
I had 51's in and they were coming out with white insulators, so I went up a couple of jet sizes. I can go back, but that's not what's causing breakup...I was able to run the car quite some time on 60's, too. Remember this thing's ported, an eighth over, and has a 400 jr cam...
I called Mallory (Mr Gasket) and told them to check out this thread and maybe shed some light as to their side of the story. I was told they would do so. Tech told me that the Mallory dual distributor is made in Carson City and that the condensers are Performance (something). No chinese parts. Will be interesting to see if they do come on in fact. Hope so. Fourdy
The early style Mallory's for the 8BA can be easily and cheaply converted to Chrysler electronic ignition. You get the look and electronic ignition all in one package. The only thing I miss is the sound of the flatty starter motor growl. It starts instantaneously now. Ker-brooom and it's running!!! The mechanical advance was left as it was found. It ran so well I felt no need to check it.
I called 'em, too...after 20 minutes of hold music - I hung up. Coil was funked up, too. Have a fresh coil and the car finally spools. will sort it out tomorrow. Guys...the dizzy was essentially inoperable out of the box. A part whoich retails for nearly $420 but requires major rework is just sad. Even worse...it sez Made in USA. Orig coil was USA made, too.
I have had extensive contact with a friends SBC Mallory...actually, 4 of them to get his car through its first 4,000 miles...identiacl in most ways to '49 flathead model. I dn't think we ever found anything wrong with the drive gear, but maybe we didn't look. Everything else was multiple layers of bad design, incorrect ***embly, parts with incredibly short lives. I'm pretty sure mechanical advance is too slow and vac advance doesn't work, as well, but my friend refuses to let me touch that because there id so much fiddling necessary to run. I have had a LOT of experience tuning both dual point and electronic distribs...I have NEVER had reliability problems from a distributor before, even old frapped out ones. I don't know where these parts are made, but HOLY ****!!
By the way, I love OLD Mallorys for 4-bangers and '49 flatheads, and collect Mallory literature...it pains me to see the garbage sold under an old genius inventor's name.
A good testemony to the quality of the original Mallory distributors is that, over the years, I've seen several '40s/'50s Buicks, Cadillacs, and Oldsmobiles that were completely stock under the hood with the exception of a Mallory ignition system. One of the local independent garages in the '50s and '60s was an authorized Mallory dealer.
I recently had a similar issue with a bad Dist cap. It was a NOS cap. I think the hotter spark with the new dizzy broke down an already weak cap. I could see a carbon trace forming between cyl 4&8 but my timing marks were all off and all over the place. Turns out cly 1&2 were also shorting. This all took place during initial run up. Makes you second guess everything. Good luck.
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