latest update on the e-fire distributor...it's not good.
note that this post is with respect to the Stromberg E-Fire Electronic Distributor (6v positive ground) and to a lessor extent the Stromberg E-Fire High Performance Sparkplug Wire Kit.
this comment assumes that the E-Fire distributor and E-Fire sparkplug kit bought from Lucky's Speed shop were the latest up-to-date offerings from Stromberg.
first the distributor...
installing the distributor was straight forward until i found that one of the three bolts that hold the distributor to the timing cover will not fit past the driver's side cap's retaining clip! (if anyone at Stromberg ever even tried to install their three hole distributor on a flathead timing cover they would have noticed it!) it's close, but it does not fit unless one of the six sides of the bolt head is shaved, preferably all six. which afterward means that neither a standard socket nor a box wrench will fit it. and even an open end wrench becomes problematical. i suppose one could source a shorter bolt, but then...well...who knows where that will lead?
to be fair, i guess it's possible. although unlikely, that the three well-worn bolts that secure my distributor housing are not originals and that the originals were a few millimeters shorter and so would fit, but there's no excuse, IMO, for the following...
a more egregious engineering oversight involves the rotor.
every rotor on every distributor i've ever seen has some method of securing the rotor to the distributor's shaft. it usually involves a clip that creates a bit of friction. they usually "snap", gently into place. sometimes a small screw into the end of the distributor's shaft. but there is no such provision on my E-Fire distributor's rotor. and it doesn't look to me that one ever existed. the rotor slids over the "D" shaped end of the distributor shaft, but with at least a 1/16" of space all around it! such that when attempting to mount the distributor housing to the timing cover, the rotor falls to the ground! essentially the rotor only maintains it's position WRT the eight posts in the cap by trapping it between the cap and the shaft! can this be?
so it was not surprising that the car would not start and with an hours worth of work ran for about five seconds then stalled and would never start again! of course, i assumed i had done something wrong and spent entire two days double checking everything, until i discovered that the rotor was essentially flopping around inside the cap!
i have since removed it and am now running and starting well with my old OEM diver's helmet distributor from 1941.
now the E-fire sparkplug wires...
because i could not easily reuse the sparkplug wires on the old diver's helmet distributor, i bought the Stromberg recommended High Performance Sparkplug Kit.
the connectors to the sparkplugs must be crimped on by the purchaser, as is common in most sparkplug kits i've installed (and i have installed successfully a couple of them), and so the boot must be threaded over the end of the sparkplug wire before trimming off the insulating material around the core.
a brief description of the sparkplug wire's construction: the Stromberg E-Fire High Performance Sparkplug wires have 1) a conductive filament core, surrounded by 2) a thin coil of metal about a two millimeters in diameter, surrounded by 3) black rubber several millimeters in diameter, surrounded by 4) a fancy colored multi-stranded nylon braided sheath that is in turn covered with a 5) clear plastic sheath.
and here's the problem...the inside diameter of the boot is WAY TOO SMALL to accommodate the wire that must pass through it, even with a generous amount of the very slickest of silicone lubricant. the clear plastic and the fancy braided nylon simply bunch up as one desperately attempts to push the boot over the wire. why do they bunch up? because the clear plastic outermost sheath is not bonded to the nylon that is in turn not bonded to the black rubber!
i have a suspicion that the boots did fit at one time but only before they added the fancy (unbonded) nylon sheath over the rubber and before they realized the nylon was not up to the heat and/or abrasion it was experiencing in the engine bay and decided to add yet another layer (unbonded again) over the (unbonded) nylon layer.
this accretion of (unbonded) layers inevitably increased the diameter of the wire but the boots in the kit were never changed! the crimps suffer a similar problem, but to a lesser degree.
two eight hour days and about $700 wasted; the distributor will sit on the shelf or be thrown out, the wires are already in the trash, and now i have, of course, no need for the Stromberg 44 coil. all in all a bad show, IMO
