Converting Loadomatic for use with '57 & later carbs

46yblock

46yblock

Senior Member
I was talking to a man yesterday who is trying to get restarted on his '55 T-bird project. Turns out he has a cracked block and can use one of mine.

During the talk he mentioned that he had sent his tach drive distributor to a place in S. CA to have them modify it for use with a later model Holley using the B manifold. He had no idea what they did, just that the dist. was supposed to be set to specs of the later non Loadomatic distributors.

What do you figure they did? Install stronger advance springs? I said it would be good if he could find someone up there (Eugene) with a Sun distributor machine, and check out the advance curve.

Any other comments would be appreciated.
 
Mike, I'm not sure what they could have done since the Load-o does not have any mechanical advance, it's all vacuum advance. The vacuum for the Load-o is supplied from ports on the carb that later carbs don't have.

Hey Mike, While I have your attention I thought you might like this. Or perhaps you've already seen it. Not same year as yours but close.

10928097673_7bebb535e7_z.jpg
 
46yblock said:
I was talking to a man yesterday who is trying to get restarted on his '55 T-bird project. Turns out he has a cracked block and can use one of mine.

During the talk he mentioned that he had sent his tach drive distributor to a place in S. CA to have them modify it for use with a later model Holley using the B manifold. He had no idea what they did, just that the dist. was supposed to be set to specs of the later non Loadomatic distributors.

What do you figure they did? Install stronger advance springs? I said it would be good if he could find someone up there (Eugene) with a Sun distributor machine, and check out the advance curve.

Any other comments would be appreciated.
Click to expand...

I would imagine they had to remove all of the inside parts and install fly weights, springs and a two piece dist shaft to get centrifugal advance along with the vacuum advance, other wise you would not have any spark advance other than the base timing you set at idle when under a heavy load. You do want to retard timing a little to avoid detonation under heavy loads, but not all the way back to the base timing. I assume they put on a '57 and later style vacuum pot too.
That's just my opinion from working on cars all of my life. Sal
 
So it sounds like you guys havent heard of this being done before, either. I am very skeptical. Hopefully I can take a look at it when he comes down to get the block. The time hasnt been set so it may be a couple weeks.

Dennis, that is WEIRD :eek: . Took a while to figure out what I was seeing. Maybe like the distributor.
 
The Load-O-matic housing is very shallow. Just guessing, there's probably only about 3/8 inch of space to work with below the breaker plate and you would need to carefully consider the wiring routed under there and the locations of the counter-spring shafts might also be prohibitive with placing counterweights.
If you could do it, it would be about the tightest fit in the world.
 
I didnt get the opportunity to see the dist.. The guy's mechanic drove down late
yesterday and picked up the block. The mechanic didnt know much of anything about the dist. either.
 
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