[Squadron]

Thanks for all the help so far, I took some time last night to make sure my horses weren't panicking from all the fireworks and then poked at it a bit more today. Some further information:

I wouldnt run that new efire distributer if you paid me.

Fine by me, that saves me $500 and however many headaches I'd have.

Where are you located? Let me know if you are in NorCal...

Nope! Outside of Portland a bit (Oregon). I typically buy stuff from Cal though, good parts people there.

i would turn the two idle/mixture screws all the way in (gently) and unscrew them about one full turn on an aged carb, and maybe 1 1/2 to 2 full turns on a newish carb. i've found that aged carb's idle/mixture holes become enlarged as the decades pass) but before that, i would remove and clean the sparkplugs...

then make sure, after the engine has warmed up, that the choke is NOT on (i.e. the large butterfly at the top of the carb is straight up and down).

Solid advice here. I'll do that and report back. Some further information about the carb:

It's definitely some weird carb that a previous mechanic tossed on there. I hate carbs and know nothing about them so I had no idea what he was putting on there. Live and learn. The carb it replaced wasn't the original either, it was a different replacement of the OEM part.

I'll try to dig up something, but I'm open to advice here if anyone has a recommendation. From what I can tell it looks like I'd be looking at this guy from CW but I can't tell if it's Chinese or anything:

https://cwmoss.com/collections/v8/pr...uretor-1938-48

The previous carb had a serious stumble at high RPM, and with the new carb I didn't notice that at all.

The video sounds like a motor running very rich (too much gasoline).

You're not kidding - the other giveaway is the cloud of black smoke out the exhaust when I hit the accelerator. Probably a good thing for making a quick getaway but terrible for literally everything else.

Fix the last thing touched! The car worked, got parts replaced, and now has a problem. Don't replace more parts, fix the problem that got added during the last work done. I see this often and don't understand it. Work done is no guarantee of success. Adding more work without diagnosing the problem will just compound the problem and make figuring it out that much harder.

Yep noted for sure. Not gonna mess with the distributor. The things that were last touched were the spark plugs and carb. As I mentioned above I'll look for a more original carb, that would definitely have the right jets and adjustments and probably a better filter to get more air in.

One other note, you have the mechanical fan hub but no mechanical fan. I would put the mechanical fan back on. If you plan on relying only on the electric fan you can take the mechanical fan hub off and remove the belt, it isn't doing anything for you like it is now.

What I really want to do is remount the radiator to give me more space and put the fan back on. But you're right - that belt is doing nothing right now. Well, except robbing the engine of like a whole HP or something.

So all in all:

1. I'll clean off the plugs and grab pics of them anyway. I'm almost positive they're pure black, but the plugs are new (less than 10 miles on it).
2. I'll readjust the knobs on the carb to a known start point (2 full turns from all the way in)
3. Start looking for a more standard, less crap carb.

Thanks for the help and breakdown folks. As you can tell this is my first old car and I'm making lots of mistakes but learning a lot too. I'll stay away from the distributor for now.