I have one of these and would love to run it, but am nervous that there are no parts available. Does anybody make parts for these. I am thinking that the caps could be reproduce easily rotor might me a bit tougher. My question is would there be a market for these if parts were repoped? How long were these produced and what happened to Spalding? Thanks.
If there is currently a source for parts, I'd like to know it too. If you're gonna make some, I would be interested. How would you do it?
Check with Sam,at Rocco and Cheater's Speed Shop.205-328-5140...205-328-5141 Tell them Sparky sent ya
I was in there last weekend. He had a couple fairly complete ones(used).But he has a whole wall shelf of ignition stuff. Parts for 'oddball''obsolete",dizzys,you know,the good stuff. Only he knows for sure. Sparky
Sam knows the parts needed as far as coils, points etc. He is a wealth of knowlege. Also contact Troy at Hollywood Hot Rods, he runs one and can help. He converted his to electronic.
just picked one up myself here on the HAMB.. the seller told me he was going to convert it to electronic via 4cyl Pertronix modules. about all i know of these other than they are huge and rather neat looking
I don't know where you would find replacement parts but in my opinion they don't need to be replaced nearly as often as a conventional dizzy. The terminals are damn near 1/4" brass rods. To replace the rotor the dizzy would have to be completely disassembled. They are heavy duty. The side plates/caps have rubber gaskets. I do know that they can be converted to Chrysler electronic using the Omni 4 cyl reluctor and 2 Chrysler magnetic pick ups. Getting them syncronized could be a bitch IMHO. Pertronics might work. I ran this one for a while with the old fashioned points, condensers and coils on the street. It ran fine. There are better performance dizzys but these do look cool.
I emailed Troy at Hollywood Hot Rods he sent this pic of his Flamethrower with 2 Petrix...He also said I used 2 Pertonix pickups in place of thepoints, with a 4 cylinder rotor (4 magnets). The trick is to set up thepickups so that they are in phase, you will also want to retain theadjustable phase plate that is already in the distributer. I do not havea source for the internal rotor & side caps, I wish I did. Also... don'ttry to bump up the spark any more than the Pertronix (MSD for instance)because the spark will jump through the rotor to the center shaft. I thought this was helpful info to share and should be on the HAMB.
Have a Chev V8 flamethrower in case I ever get a Chev V8 ... the cent. advance plate came apart, should be fairly easy to fix. Think it has a vacuum advance ???? Has factory metallic blue finish. 302
I just talked with Tom Spalding the other day. He is the son of one of the Spalding Brothers who created and produced the Spalding Flamethrowers. He's a very nice guy. Told me all kinds of cool info and we talked hot rods and ignitions for over an hour. He used to assemble them and he painted every one that came out of their company from the late 50's though the mid 60's. There are no aftermarket parts that either he or I are aware of and no one making any repro-parts as of yet. The 2 problems are that there is little interest in these (I know, it's a shame) and the parts would be very very expensive to replicate. Some of you may remember that "back in the day", these were among the most expensive ignitions you could buy. They work great but the rotor and a few other parts are very expensive to make, even back then. For now, we just need to scrounge around at swap meets and the internet to find spare parts. I asked Tom if anyone had ever showed interest in making repro-parts and he said yes, until they found out how expensive it would be to make them, then the interest disapeared. I have 4 or 5 in the shop right now. I buy them every chance I get, even if they are beat up, I strip the good parts. Matt P.S. Do you know why they are painted that kinda orange color???
ill take a look when i get home tonight - as far as i know, its a cherry setup. color wise, i thought someone had painted it orange long ago... wasnt aware it came from the factory like that. it would be neat to find out why. i totally forget his name but the guy who owns Rotofaze might have some insight on where to find some parts. i talked with him awhile at the Antique Nats, he can apparently build up all kinds of *stuff*. pricey though. edit - forgot to add, he is based in So. Cal.
Because I painted it that color back in the sixtys. Spaldings were red from the factory. I had it on a chocolate brown 283. The red looked ugly. I painted it school bus yellow. Grants were polished potmetal I think. They were available with a vacuum advance. It looks kind of weird because it's mounted at the very top where the points are. There is a removable plate on the side at the top covering the slot where the advance mounts on the non-vacuum units. I made my cover plate from a stainless worn drive hose clamp. One of my side plates has what appears to be a crack but it's still in one piece. I really don't think it's a big problem like a thin conventional dist. cap. The crack is no wheres near the path of the voltage. You can see the full rubber gasket in the first picture that will seal out any moisture. I do a quick bead blast in case of any carbon tracking and it removes all the corrosion at the brass terninals. They come out looking new.
I just ran across this post again and forgot to answer a question I had asked "in fun" from a previous post. I asked if you all knew why they were painted that sort of redish orange color. Well, when I talked with Tom Spalding (he was the son of the guy who made them) he explained that he did all the painting of them from the late 50's through the 60's and that they used that color because when he was a kid, his Dad had built him a go-kart as a gift and had bought a ton of orange-red paint and painted it that color for him. They kept the extra paint all those years and later used it to paint their ignitions. Matt
Honest Charlies 1961 catalog lists replacement parts including the rotor so I suppose there could be some NOS stuff still around but then again they were probably special order. The ones with the vacuum advance look weird with the vac diaphram at the very top of the unit.
very rarely do these parts wear out every once in a while i see parts on ebay for sale. the points are 56 ford V8 and 56 ford 6 cyl the bearings can be bought from local commercail suppliers part number EE4S2RSC3 [Koyo brg co] be carefull to make sure the rotors are "timed correctly they have two keyway slots i have the fact rebuild sheets and install sheets on these will try to post during next teck week i also have an very early spalding flamethrower around 1956 which uses single wire nipples for plug wires instead of black side caps would like to post picts but can't figure out how to down size to send to ham vintakes
Here's the Spalding I've been running on my nailhead for the last couple of years. So far it runs great and looks even better. I picked up a few backups on Ebay just in case but so far so good. Does anyone know what the optional vacuum advance unit came off of. I was told possibly an American Motors distributor. Went thru a NAPA book of advance units but none came close. I'm sure the Spalding Bros. used something from a mid fifties car just like they used Ford points and standard bearing. Any guesses?
I have built four of these units and have a couple complete ones laying here to build now. Assuming they are not broken from dropping etc they seldom need anything other than a good clean up, some new (Napa) ignition points, condensors and adjusted on a distributor machine. They should run a long time without any real maintance other than usual contact stuff. Syncing the units MUST be done on a machine as each contact fires four cylinders and they can be off quite a bit. Just a few degrees can really cause a problem. Got one and want it built? PM with what it is etc and i will give you a price quote ... I just finished a really nice one for 29sedanman and hes driving it from Indianapolis to Fla in a few weeks etc. We are making some custom cables for it and firing it up next week. Will down load some pics...
I have all the wiring done on the car and the plug wires made. I repainted the unit and made it pretty and Bubba set it up with new points, condensers, coils,and set it up on his machine. We are going to drop it in Thursday after work. I will be driving it to Florida and back for the Billetproof show. I will post some pictures of it installed and give a report about how it performs for me when I get back from my trip. We are planning on running another one of these in my wifes 32 Ford Truck when we get it going. Ever since Bubba showed me one of these I have fallen in love with them. We have one of his units reserved for her but I couldn't let her be cooler than me so I bought one off of Ebay and am just about ready to put it back on the street. Wish me luck.
I haven't mounted it on it yet, but one from late 60's early 70's ford small block [ I have one off a 289 mustang] the curve is right and it mounts on the proper side.
I am searching for a spalding flamethower for my 289 ford engine for my '63 Competition Cobra. The '63 Comp Cars raced with these distributors. Please let me know if anyone with a small block ford version is willing to sell!! Thanks Mike
My son have one converted by Pertronix last year.It cost $600 & he was not happy, as they said if it exceeded $300 they would call him. Not so, they did the whole thing without his approval & billed him the $600 or he could not get it back.Needless to say, they are on a different "not recommended" list. I did some research for him on the vaccume advance unit & found that the late 50's & early 60's chev. v8's used the same advance unit. What the numbers stamped on the side of each of them mean is unknown, so you may want to use the old spring in the new unit, just to be safe?.
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