1937 Pickup runs with choke, dies as soon as choke is off. And other questions

[BrentFreeman]

Vehicle: 1937 Ford Pickup 85hp V8 21 stud flathead with a Stromberg 97 Carbutetor in a 1938 Body style. So looks like a '38 with a '37 motor, which I hear is quite common.

Problem: Truck will start and idle with full choke and a slight amount of throttle, soon as partial choke truck immediately dies. Pressing the accelerator does not appear to do much of anything, other than prolong the dying a second.

I am highly suspicious of the carburetor, but I know very little about them other than what I have learned recently, as my backyard mechanic experience has pertained to 1990's+ cars. I am also suspicious of the ignition system for 3 reasons, though I kinda want to discount this since the car basically idles under choke. Is there any reason that the ignition part of a car that idles under choke would have issues without it? 1st reason is that I thought I detected a slight random miss the day before and wanted to check to make sure I was getting good current on the spark plugs. I had read in one of my grandfathers old repair books that you could pull off a wire and check to see if it would jump to the spark plug at a distance that I don't recall right now. On the first plug I tried, I got a nice shock, dropped the wire, and shut the truck off. Put the wire back on the plug, restarted it, checked to make sure it seamed ok, and shut it off again. It did seam ok, but the next day, the truck had the problem. 2nd reason is that when I pulled the wire, I made sure I grabbed insulation and not the metal end. I noticed that the wire arched within itself, which surprises me as I thought that one would have to ground it before you had a circuit completed and a spark occurred, unless my hand was just a little too close to the metal end and I was completing the circuit. Leaves me wondering if perhaps I need new wires? 3rd reason probably not a reason but I will mention it anyway, day before I pulled the wire I had put motor oil in the little cap that's on the right-front part of the distributor, someone on the forums had mentioned it, and not knowing where that was, and how much to put in, I had checked my 38's manual I noticed it mentioned putting oil in the distributor having a little "cap" in the diagram with a similar appearance to the one on my truck. I assumed I had found the correct location for it. Can someone confirm for me that I indeed put oil in the correct cap? Its about the diameter of a pencil, with a spring loaded cap on top of it that lifts up, and perhaps expand on how much oil to put in it, I used a plastic straw to put about 2 inches worth in it (ie. not too much).


A little history that might help with the diagnostic: This was my great grandfathers truck, and it's been garaged for ~25-30 years. I know my grandfather had worked on it before he passed away. The last time it was tagged was in '86. When we had to move it about 5 years ago it was started up and moved, with only thing being done to it was a new battery. The water pumps froze up at this time, and it was shutdown and left.

Over the last year I have started to clean it up, replaced the water pumps, flushed the radiator, replaced the oil/filter with 20w-50, and replaced the battery. When we couldn't get the truck to start other than dumping fuel down the carb for a few seconds, my dad and I traced the problem to the valves in the fuel pump and then replaced the fuel pump/filter and dumped the old gas from the tank and put new gas in.

At this point the truck fired right up with no issues at all. It ran and idled just fine with no choke at all! I let it run for about 5 minutes until it warmed up a bit, and then shut it down. For about 4 days or so, I would start and run the truck for about 5-10 minutes, each time it started quickly with no choke, just a couple of pumps on the acc. pedal. Then the day after the aforementioned sparkplug wire incident, it just refused to start. Any help or suggestions would be appreciated!