I have a buddy coming over tonight that needs some help with his 52 Ford pass car. It has the "Loadamatic" distributor. He has it running but he thinks the timing is a little slow. I will be the first to admit that I don't know squat nothing about a flathead. I have a total advance style light. Just wondering what the total advance is on one of these? I found this online, but I am thinking this may be just advance in the distributor, not total. Late 1950 to 1953 8BA-12127 0-1 0.30 5¼-6¼ 1.32 8¾-10 2.85 10-11¼ Late 1950 to 1953 0BA-12127 0-1 0.30 5¼-6¼ 1.32 8¾-10 2.85 10-11¼ 1949-53 7RA-12127C 1¼-2¼ 0.40 4¼-5¼ 1.70 6½-7½ 2.85 7½-8½ How much total advance should I expect? 20-24? Anything different about this type of distributor?
Try to PM Bruce lancaster, he wrote the book on them, they aren't his favorite but he's is as knowledgable and able to explain them as anybody in the country.
I worked on it for a bit. It would idle fine, then when you dropped into gear it would miss heavily. I started looking at the obvious and all the wires on the cap were jacked. It is amazing that it ran at all. He had taken it to a “shop” to get it tuned up. They didn’t know the firing order I presume. The timing looked ok, but it still surges at idle from 800-950 or so. I am thinking he has too much fuel pressure since he added an electric pump.
Those rubber Vacuum diaphragms under the loadamatic fail over the years. Odds are it’s not operating. Pull the carb Venturi vacuum hose and give it a suck. Also be sure it’s running a Holley 94 and the vac hose is connected to the Venturi port and not some random port.
It is a 94. I only found one large vacuum port that went to the old fuel pump, and then the Venturi port. The goal is to replace the stock fuel pump and remove the electric.
Normally those distributors should not have two vac hoses or one hose split into two. It actually changes the timing.
Sorry, one on the distributor. Has a threaded steel line, from the back of the carb up to the distributor. Second line is picked up from the back of the carb base plate to the fuel pump.
Remember that the Loadamatic distributor has to be used with the correct Loadamatic carburetor to operate correctly. And even when new their operation was sluggish as far as responding to changes in engine speed and load. This article seems to give a pretty good description of the system's operation and shortcomings. And consider also the real possibility of a carb swap done by someone who didn't understand what the distributor required. http://m571.com/yblock/loadomatic.htm A swap to a later model distributor with a mechanical advance seems to cure a lot of the problems you may be experiencing.
Best bang for the buck improvement I’ve done on all of the 8BA flatheads I’ve ever owned was throw that loadamatic in the garbage and get a converted SBC distributor. I always get them from Jim Linder but there are other sources. I’ve done several of them and never had one that didn’t make a huge improvement in performance and usually they will run a good bit cooler. I usually set them up at about 22* total but that’s just my experience, some others like Bruce or Jim can probably tell what works best in their experience.
Not a great idea,I would keep the electric pump those Fords have been known for vapor lock issues for decades the electric pump is the most common cure for that. Holley makes a low pressure fuel regulator so you can set it at 2.5 psi. Almost all manual fuel pumps now are import garbage and pressures are all over the place it comes up a lot on Ford forums.
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