Vintage Fridays with Stromberg Carburetor !

vintage-fridays-april-full_800We’ve got together with Stromberg dealer Sacramento Vintage Ford this year to help sponsor their Vintage Fridays family cruise night season. After a well earned rest last year, Vintage Fridays are back with a bang for 2014, hoping to beat the $8843.86 they presented to the Make-A-Wish Foundation in 2012. If you’re in the Sacto area, set your diaries for the last Friday of June through October and get yourself some raffle tickets. You could be winning some cool Stromberg stuff – Stromberg signs, license plates, and even a pair of new Stromberg 97 carbs with a linkage and fuel hose barbs!

 

Project Pontiac gets new floorpans

The Stromberg project Pontiac moved a little further up the road this week when Rick, our fabricator made new floor pans. The ’55 Wagon had sat in an Oregon barn from 1976 until last year when we bought it, so I guess a little rust in the pans was to be expected. They weren’t rotten through rusty, but the little perforations were clearly only going to get worse and the water was soaking into the felt matting. The car came with a felt-backed red plastic flooring, but it had become so crispy, it snapped into pieces every time we stepped on it. So we decided to take the seats out, remove the whole mat and replace it with some red square weave carpet, which kinda matches the pattern on the old plastic. We didn’t really want to swap the original mat out, but it was shedding plastic badly and by the time we’d pulled it out to swap the floorpans there would have been nothing left. We’ll post again once the new carpets are in.

In the meantime, here are some pics of the floorpan installation. Rick cut the old sections out and made new pieces, including all the correct rolled strengtheners. Once we had treated all the surrounding metal and hit everything with the smart weld-thru primer, he welded them in, sealed everything up, painted the top and undersealed the bottom. He also replaced the wiring cover strips on the outside edges. In case you’re wondering, that sheet metal lump in the center is the underfloor heating outlet.

Other recent tasks have included fixing the instrument lights as the rheostat in the switch packed in (we have jumped the power across the switch). We’ve bought a complete set of front end rebuild parts for when we fit the lowered spindles. New wiper blades. Oh and I’m driving the wheels off it. Kids’ bikes and dogs in the back, trips to the dump, you name it – everybody needs a Wagon!

Connecting a throttle cable kit to a Stromberg TwoStep linkage

Linkage 1We just uploaded a new article to the Stromberg Tech Center. ‘How do I connect a throttle cable to a Stromberg TwoStep Linkage?’ Cable throttle systems using our 9136K bracket kit make Stromberg 97 carburetor set-ups even easier to use. And this article explains how it all happens. To read it in full, click this link – Stromberg Tech Center, How do I connect a throttle cable kit to a Stromberg TwoStep linkage?

Our 9136K Cable Throttle Bracket is compatible with pretty much all Stromberg 97-based intake manifolds, though some Ford Flathead intakes need a remote fuel pump to work with cable throttle. It’s easy to install, of course, especially if you download our ‘How To: Install 9136K Cable Throttle Bracket’ instructions from the Stromberg Tech Center. Just remember to stick it under the rear carburetor on your intake. And note that on a 3×2 direct linkage, the bracket lifts the rear carburetor a little, so the front two carbs may need packing with extra gaskets (see our kit 69447K) for perfect linkage alignment. On a 2×2 direct or 3×2 progressive linkage, this is not a problem.

Aftermarket throttle cable kits should come with a fitting on the carburetor end of the cable which clips into a small threaded ball. To attach that ball to your Stromberg linkage, simply remove it from the cable end fitting. Remove the small black set-screw from one of the Stromberg linkage swivels. Screw the threaded ball into the swivel (clamping the linkage rod as with the set screw) and clip your throttle cable end back onto it. If you have a 2×2 linkage, fix the cable to the front carburetor. On a 3×2 system, fix it to the center carb, either into the swivel or (on the longer progressive lever) through the lower adjustment hole. Always check that the threaded ball clamps the linkage rod tight.Linkage 2

WARNING! Always double check that you have connected all of the linkages – throttle, choke, accelerator pump – and fuel lines correctly. Manually (and from inside the car), operate the throttle lever and choke mechanism to ensure free movement. Any sticking, binding, or ‘over-center’ movement in the linkage could result in uncontrolled engine speed, property damage, serious personal injury, or death. Always use a throttle return spring.